Nick Senzel expected to miss start of Cincinnati Reds season
The toe issue that has lingered for months will likely cost him Opening Day.
This is not a scheduled post, nor is it a re-heat of a former one. It’s a new one, from March of 2023, about Cincinnati Reds infielder/outfielder Nick Senzel being slated to miss time due to a lingering injury issue.
I simply hate it for the guy, but it’s the scenario the Reds again face. According to The Enquirer’s Bobby Nightengale, the extended absence of Senzel from the Reds lineup is expected to last past Opening Day and into the regular season.
Nick Senzel is expected to be out for the start of the season. No injury setback, but he's no longer scheduled to play in a spring training game this week. Reds don't want to rush him if he'll miss Opening Day anyway.
— Bobby Nightengale (@nightengalejr) March 13, 2023
The good news here is that there’s apparently been no further setback, though hearing this after he was taking at-bats in simulated games at the end of last week certainly casts an odd backdrop to this most recent update. As recently as this weekend there was talk of him not just getting back into games, but doing so as a hybrid outfielder/infielder - a role that would have expanded upon what he’d been tasked with doing in previous years.
It’s a toe this time, I believe. Given that his speed and defense is his calling card these days, I do suppose that’s something that could cause him more trouble right now than a lumbering slugger who wasn’t ever going to use his mobility as an advantage anyway.
This news comes just an hour or so after the most recent Opening Day roster projection here had him included, continuing a lovely tradition of having our projections utterly destroyed before the ink on them has a chance to dry. We promise to produce v3.0 in the coming weeks, too, so look forward to other roster-damning news shortly after that publishes.