The Minnesota Twins need to shut several players down for the season

Tyler Austin

Austin has seen diminished playing time in September due to a lingering sore back. Nothing too serious, but certainly something you don’t want to push too quickly in a lost season. However, on Sunday Austin was involved in a scary play that saw him flip head over heels over a railing and into a concrete area next to the field-

Quite the catch, but something you absolutely do not want to see from one of your players at this point in the year, given the situation the Minnesota Twins are in with nothing on the line. That goes double when the play involves someone that had already been dealing with soreness. Perhaps hindsight helps out in this case, but should Austin really have been playing at this point?

Again, there’s no reason to rush anything. Similar to the Eddie Rosario incident, there are only downsides to letting a player return too soon this year, and in both cases we saw exactly what we didn’t want to see. This play may look worse than it was in actuality, as Austin only missed Monday’s game before returning to the lineup Tuesday. But you have to wonder, with barely over a week left in the season, is this really the right decision? Maybe he’ll turn out to be just fine and play out the rest of the season no problem. His 2-4 night with 3 RBIs in his return is a good way to start. But maybe he’ll suffer another injury and leave us wondering what in the world he was doing back out on the field.