J.P. Crawford to 7-day concussion protocol; Sam Haggerty recalled

While sweeping the Padres wasn’t entirely a Pyrrhic victory, it might be slightly Pyrrh-adjacent, as the Mariners announced today that their de facto captain and steady offensive force, J.P. Crawford, will head to 7-day concussion protocol after a collision with third baseman Eugenio Suárez in Wednesday’s victory. J.P. stuck it through for a while after he and Geno collided in the fourth inning, but eventually was lifted in the eighth inning for Dylan Moore after Crawford felt unwell.

Here’s the collision if you missed it, but feel free to skip over it if you’ve already seen it.

Eugenio’s shoulder apparently caught J.P. in the jaw area; he felt some wooziness initially but thought he could play through it, but a “pounding” headache developed as the game went on, leading to him being lifted from the game and evaluated for a concussion.

Per Scott Servais, Crawford is feeling a “little bit better” after yesterday’s off-day but the team decided to be safe and move him to the concussion list in order to monitor his symptoms more closely and make sure he’s 100% before returning to play.

“It hurts,” said Scott Servais. “J.P. has been our guy in the middle of everything—not just in the middle of the field making the plays defensively, but he’s been awesome at the top of our lineup.”

Dylan Moore will take the majority of reps at shortstop in J.P.’s absence, and Caballero will also see some time at short. Sam Haggerty, who was called up to replace J.P. on the 26-man roster, will be used as a defensive fill-in all over the field including the outfield.

Haggerty was held out of last night’s game in Tacoma in case Crawford did have to go on the IL and will join the team in J.P.’s absence. The moves made at the trade deadline to bring on infielder Josh Rojas seemed to damage Haggerty’s chance to be recalled from Tacoma, despite a strong performance over the past few weeks from the switch-hitting superutility player.

Haggerty has been on an absolute tear in Tacoma lately, punishing PCL pitchers over the first week of August, where he’s hitting .321 with two doubles, two triples, and a homer, with five strikeouts to six walks. The previous week, he took it to a poor Salt Lake pitching staff, hitting .458 for the week with four homers, including three consecutive games with a homer. After struggling to get back to full power after last year’s season-ending groin injury that required surgery, Haggerty seems to be back to the fully operational battle station he was that provided such a lift to the Mariners last season. He’ll have to translate that success from Triple-A back to the bigs, but his speed and defensive flexibility help soften the blow of losing J.P. Crawford—provided it’s a short stint on the IL for the Mariners’ de facto team captain.