Royals’ Hunter Renfroe Placed on 10-Day IL With Fractured Toe
Kansas City Royals outfielder Hunter Renfroe fouled not one but two pitches off his left foot in Monday’s 4-2 loss to the New York Yankees, which has now landed him on the 10-day injured list after fracturing his left big toe.
Renfroe left Monday’s series opener following his first and only at-bat of the contest, with the team later announcing he had suffered a broken toe. There’s no timetable for his return, as the medical staff awaits the results from his latest series of additional imaging.
Kansas City announced a pair of roster moves prior to first pitch on Tuesday, placing Renfroe on the IL and infielder Adam Frazier on the bereavement list while recalling outfielder Drew Waters and utility player Nick Pratto from Triple-A Omaha.
This IL stint comes at an inopportune time for Renfroe, who had recovered from his early-season dry spell, hitting .326/.392/.674 with seven doubles, three home runs and 11 RBIs since May 20th. He also carried a nine-game hitting streak into Monday’s affair.
That impressive run, however, ended versus New York as he struck out in his lone plate appearance before departing due to injury.
“It’s pretty aggravating,” Renfroe told reporters Tuesday, including MLB.com’s Anne Rogers. “It always seems to happen, for any player really, once you start going good, you start moving around a lot, get on base a lot, all of a sudden, something happens. You pull something, you get hurt, a freak accident happens. It’s one of those things in baseball where it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s part of it.”
The 32-year-old, in the first season of a two-year, $13-million contract signed last off-season, has appeared in 56 of the Royals’ 68 games in 2024. He’s made 49 starts in right field, logging 437 innings thus far, committing just a single error during that span.
Renfroe is part of a surprisingly impressive Royals team that’s exceeded expectations this season, sitting second in the AL Central at 39-29. That’s good for the second wild-card seed, behind the first-seeded Baltimore Orioles.
“It hurts [Renfroe], it hurts us, clearly,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “We want him in there every opportunity, and he was doing what we expected [when] we signed him. He got himself going, dug himself out of that hole and was a huge part of what was going on.”
Waters, who can play all three outfield positions, will likely assume most of the reps in right field during Renfroe’s absence. Dairon Blanco could also fill in off the bench when needed as well.
The Royals’ outfield defence should be in safe hands with Waters in right. But, as a .229 career hitter across 131 big-league games, there are far more questions surrounding his potential impact at the plate.
The 25-year-old outfielder has performed well at Triple-A this season, slashing .277/.350/.484 while posting seven home runs, 33 RBIs and a 112 wRC+ over 50 games. He’s accompanied that with a modest 26.6 percent strikeout rate and a 9.3 percent walk rate.
Limiting swing and miss, however, has been a notable concern for Waters in the major leagues, given his career 33.1 percent clip with the Royals.
-Thomas Hall
Twitter: @Hall_Thomas_
Photo: Brandonrush. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.