Although he didn’t travel with the Minnesota Twins on their charter flight a night ago, there still was hope Byron Buxton’s sore hip would improve enough by Thursday to prevent an injured list stint. When Buxton reported to Target Field on Thursday and hadn’t made enough progress to convince the team he was ready, the Twins placed him on the 10-day injured list with right hip inflammation.
Though an MRI taken Tuesday showed no structural damage to Buxton’s hip, the center fielder required a cortisone shot and will need a few days of rest, something the Twins couldn’t afford to offer while keeping him active. The Twins recalled second baseman Edouard Julien to replace Buxton; the start of the IL stint was retroactive to Tuesday.
It’s the second trip to the IL this season for Buxton, who is batting .275/.334/.528 with 23 doubles, 16 home runs and 49 RBIs in 335 plate appearances.
“We didn’t make the decision to go and put him on the IL because we were just trying to play it safe,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said Thursday at Globe Life Field before his team’s game against the Texas Rangers. “We were trying to actually keep him active and that’s why he didn’t go on the IL (Wednesday) and that’s why even with him not traveling with the team, we still waited. We wanted to see how he was this morning. We wanted to get probably what you would say is the most up-to-date information that we could get and wait as long as we could before making the decision.
“There are times where we’ve probably said, ‘Hey, it’s not worth it to push it right now. Let’s just wait and see.’ This actually wasn’t one of those times. This was more how is he and is he going to be available tomorrow to play? And the answer was probably not. Actually, it was almost certainly not, and so at that point, let’s just make the right decision to put him on the IL.”
The Twins felt fine enough about playing short-handed Thursday to afford Buxton the opportunity to recover for one more day. But when they realized Buxton wouldn’t be available for Friday’s game, they made the decision to sideline him.
Already without Carlos Correa and Brooks Lee, Baldelli said it wasn’t an easy call for a team currently holding onto the second spot in the AL wild-card standings. The Twins entered Thursday 1 1/2 games in front of Kansas City and two games up on Boston in the wild-card race.
“We just understood that he wasn’t going to be back for a few more days,” Baldelli said. “There’s some other players that are probably also going to need to be off at some point over the next handful of days and we just can’t play short for almost a week in order to do that. He’s doing OK. He received an injection. It was going to take a little while before that calmed down, but he came out of it OK. He just wasn’t going to be playing (Thursday) or playing (Friday) really.”
Adding Julien to the roster gives the Twins much-needed flexibility.
Though Willi Castro is likely to remain the team’s shortstop through the duration of Correa’s absence, Julien playing would free up Kyle Farmer to stand in if needed. Julien’s presence also means Austin Martin can spend more time in center along with Manny Margot.
Julien’s bat has been heating up in August. He’s batting .289/.396/.533 with five doubles, two homers, eight RBIs and eight walks in 53 plate appearances this month.
The hope is Buxton could return soon. He is eligible to come off the IL on Aug. 23 when the Twins open a three-opponent homestand against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“I don’t think, based on everything I know and everything that the medical staff thinks, that it will be much longer than the minimum stay, but we have to get through the next few days,” Baldelli said. “We have to see the improvement that we think is going to be there and we have to go from there. The imaging that he had done did not show anything that looked like any sort of long-term injury, something that should keep him out a while, so that was positive.”
This isn’t the first time Buxton’s dealt with hip issues. He also battled hip ailments in 2021 and 2022.
Buxton missed 14 games earlier this season with right knee inflammation. He struggled after returning but has been in a groove lately, batting .325/.388/.675 over his past 46 games.
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