Franchy Cordero to DL; Hunter Renfroe from DL. It’s a WWE tag team!

Franchy Cordero hadn’t been playing much the last few days, which seemed only slightly curious until rumors started to spread yesterday that something might not have been right with his arm. By the end of Sunday it was no secret that he was headed to the disabled list, and that Hunter Renfroe would be coming back up to the big league team.

Franchy’s injury has been reported as “forearm soreness”, which tends to make baseball fans cringe. The symptom could be just fatigue or a tweak, or it could be a precursor to elbow issues that I don’t even want to think about. (I suppose this is where we should note that Alex Dickerson had Tommy John surgery in March and Austin Hedges has had setbacks with elbow issues while on the DL since the start of May.) The rookie has been a bright spot for the team this month, showing development and maturation as the season has grown. One apparent sign has been a decline in power over the last few weeks, hitting only one homer in May after slugging six in a much smaller April sample size.

The good news today is that Hunter Renfroe is returning from the DL. He went down with elbow inflammation on April 18th, so perhaps his recovery is a sign that Franchy might be back in a similar time frame. The righty masher has struggled to find his power stroke this season, and an increasingly crowded outfield picture adds pressure for the 26-year-old to perform and earn a job. It will be interesting to see how manager Andy Green handles Renfroe alongside Franmil Reyes, as both are power-hitting right-handed corner outfielders with similar skill sets.