There’s never really a good time to lose a player to injury, but during the final three weeks of the regular season seems to be one of the worst times.
During Saturday’s 6-5 loss against Georgia Southern, Ishmael Edwards made an early exit after stealing second. He went head first and wound up injuring his thumb when he touched the bag.
“It looks like it’s a fracture.” Tony Robichaux said after the game, “Now we’re going to do an MRI to see if there’s any ligament damage in between the thumb and the first finger.”
Odds are the Cajuns could lose one of their best hitters all season in Edwards for the rest of the season. The overall hitting for the Cajuns has been hot and cold, but Edwards has become one of the most consistent hitters on this squad in 2017.
The senior out of Tomball, Texas was hitting at an extremely high clip in the last month including a 13-game hit streak and headed into Saturday’s game with a .302 batting average.
This puts the Cajuns in a pickle as the rest of their lineup has underwhelmed in recent series, leaving the Cajuns unable to put runs on the board despite solid performances from the pitching staff. While most coaches would be concerned about losing one of their stars, Robichaux embraces the challenge.
“That’s going to be a key injury, but the next man’s got to come on up and keep moving forward. It’s not going to change anything because our whole M.O. right now is we need to pitch and play defense to keep the score down since we don’t score a lot of runs.”
With the conference tournament coming up at the end of the month, whoever steps up will have to make a statement during Sunday’s rubber match.
-Clint Domingue