On Thursday, Seattle Mariners President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto announced that Mariners first baseman Evan White would miss at least two months with a groin injury suffered at AAA Tacoma.
White played just two games with Tacoma before getting injured with the grade-2 strain. Injuries are something he's dealt with a lot over the last few years.
A first-round pick 2017 out of the University of Kentucky, White was expected to be a major part of the Mariners rebuild. He signed a six-year contract worth $24 million before ever playing a major league game. The contract included three option years as well.
He played 54 games in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and won the gold glove at first base in the American League.
He started the 2021 season as the cleanup hitter for the Mariners but played just 30 games and eventually missed the rest of the season with a hip flexor injury.
He underwent surgery for a sports hernia in March of 2022 and was pulled multiple times from rehab assignments. He came into 2023 with optimism and started the year at AAA, only to suffer this latest setback.
Here's video of the play where White injured his groin, per Daniel Kramer of MLB.com.
White hits a sharp ground ball to the second baseman and tries to beat out the double play but clearly comes up gimpy after crossing first base.
While this injury doesn't affect the Mariners at the major league level, it does deliver a blow to organizational depth in case something happened to Ty France. Last year, when France got hurt and White was unavailable to play, the team acquired Carlos Santana in a trade with the Royals.
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