ARLINGTON — The Rangers on Friday acknowledged the obvious. Neither oblique injuries nor prized young players are to be toyed with.
And so another hitter, this time outfielder Wyatt Langford, has been placed on the injured list with a mildly strained left oblique muscle. The Rangers back-dated the IL assignment to Wednesday as he hasn’t played since Tuesday.
The Rangers debated long and hard about the decision, thinking that Langford could be ready in five to seven more days and playing a man short for several days to get him back a little earlier than as mandated by an IL stint.
The Rangers were off on Thursday and are off again next Thursday, meaning Langford could miss as few as eight games while on the IL. Since a team can only backdate an IL by three days, if the club waited another day or two to make the moves, it risked adding time to the IL stint.
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“I feel like it’s just the right thing to do with two off days,” President of Baseball Operations Chris Young said. “It shortens the amount of games missed. So I think it’s just important to get this right on the front end. It’s very low grade strain. It’s something that’s right on the cusp of not using the IL. But we felt like this was the right course of action. We want to get this thing right.”
Langford, who missed three weeks during spring training with a right oblique strain, said he had been dealing with some minor soreness in the area for the last couple of weeks. He did feel a bit more tightness, he said, on Tuesday.
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The Rangers recalled 29-year-old utility infielder Michael Helman from Triple-A Round Rock to replace Langford. They had claimed Helman off waivers from Pittsburgh last month.
Helman is primarily a middle infielder, but can also give the Rangers some extra coverage in the outfield. Though he is only hitting .225 with a .686 OPS for the full minor league season, he’s been hot over the last three weeks, hitting .293/.341/.526/.861.
Helman made his major league debut last year with Minnesota, getting 10 at-bats in nine games.
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