Nick Kurtz has been fighting this thumb since mid-July, and it finally caught up with him. He first landed on the injured list July 11 with a sprained right thumb, came back two weeks later, and immediately looked like a different hitter, going 1-for-18 in his first 7 games back. That's not a slump. That's a guy who wasn't right.
Turns out he wasn't. A visit to a hand specialist in Los Angeles led to a diagnosis of a chronic volar plate tear of the MCP joint in his right thumb. On August 4, Kurtz got a platelet-rich plasma injection that comes with a mandatory four-week stint in a brace. Do that math against a season that wraps up in late September and there's not much runway left.
Athletics manager Mark Kotsay didn't formally shut the door, but he didn't need to say much more than the math already says. Four weeks of zero mobility in a thumb brace pushes any realistic return into the season's final days at best, and Kotsay has already acknowledged that a comeback before the year ends is hard to picture.
The injury cost Kurtz his first All-Star Game appearance despite making the roster, and it's now threatening to close the book on a second big-league season that had him hitting.256 with 21 home runs and 69 RBIs. For a 23-year-old who just won AL Rookie of the Year, it's a brutal way to see a breakout follow-up campaign end early.
For Oakland, this is about more than one bat. Kurtz has been the anchor of that lineup, and losing him for good shuffles the middle of the order down the stretch while the front office leans on whoever slides into first base. Fantasy managers who rode him all year are staring at the same reality, an MVP-caliber power bat now shelved indefinitely with no real return timetable attached.
The next update to watch for is whether the A's formally move Kurtz to the 60-day IL or an equivalent designation, which would be the clearest signal yet that this season is officially over for him. Until then, it's a waiting game on a thumb that's already fought him twice this year and looks like it's finally winning.