A's rookie ruptures testicle, still gets a hit, needs surgery

Baseball has seen plenty of guys milk a hit-by-pitch for a extra base or two, but nothing this week topped what Athletics rookie Joshua Kuroda-Grauer pulled off against the Diamondbacks. On the first pitch of an at-bat, he fouled a ball straight into himself, crumpled in the batter's box in visible agony, and somehow got back up and ripped a single.

Barstool Baseball

@StoolBaseball

Prayers up for Joshua Kuroda-Grauer who fouled a ball off his balls….stayed in the game, hit a single and then had to have surgery for a ruptured testicle.

What makes it wild isn't just that he stayed in the box after that kind of shot — it's that he stayed in the game entirely. Kuroda-Grauer went out and played third base in the bottom half of the inning before finally being pulled a half-inning later. It wasn't until after the game that the full extent came out: a ruptured testicle that required emergency surgery.

Athletics manager Mark Kotsay summed it up about as well as anyone could, joking that Kuroda-Grauer might be the only player in major league history to rupture a testicle, get a hit, and then play a half-inning of defense before coming out. The A's placed him on the 10-day injured list the next day.

Barstool Sports

@barstoolsports

Some dudes flop & are out for weeks Others literally rupture a testicle, stay in to get a hit, & then get emergency surgery after

The context makes this stranger than a random gross-out injury. Kuroda-Grauer, a third-round pick out of Rutgers in the 2024 draft, only debuted in the majors on June 29 against the Dodgers, going 3-for-4 in his first taste of the big leagues. He'd been raking his way up the system all year —.285 at Double-A, then a.352 mark at Triple-A before the callup — and even got his first career homer against Arizona just two days before the injury. This is about as brutal a gut-punch as a hot rookie summer can take.

It's also not entirely unprecedented, unfortunately. Adrian Beltre suffered a nearly identical injury while playing for the Mariners back in 2009 and was out roughly 5 1/2 weeks. If Kuroda-Grauer's recovery tracks similarly, the A's could be without one of their most promising bats for over a month, right as he was starting to prove he belongs.

For now the story is equal parts horrifying and impressive — a 23-year-old toughing out an at-bat through what a treating doctor reportedly called a tough-kid moment, then getting shut down the moment the adrenaline wore off. Expect updates on his recovery timeline as the 10-day IL stint plays out, with the Beltre precedent looming as the realistic bar for when he's back in the lineup.