Courtesy of the ABJ via Rotoworld

"It's no fun when a guy of that caliber goes down," said Aeros manager Tim Bogar. "Initially, it seemed worse, the way he reacted and what he said out there. But right now, it just appears to be an ankle sprain. How bad of one we won't begin to know until [Wednesday]."

4-6 weeks?

Hello everyone,

Hopefully, it's not broken, so that would be good news.

It's not good when any worthwhile prospect misses time, but hopefully, Crowe can still get some more AA at-bats in before the season ends.

mrich - While I can understand the frustration
with Aubrey, and to a lesser extent, Kouzmanoff, Crowe has been virtually healthy since he was drafted.

Plus, the "glass" analogy may not be totally accurate with him; he's not the first guy to go sliding hard into 2B and injure his ankle, so that is a somewhat common occurrence with any base-stealing threat, not just Crowe.

Kouzmanoff, outside of the hamstring injuries this year, has been relatively healthy for the most part as well (he has around 200 ABs or so); at least his back injury from last year hasn't been bothering him, which was a major concern coming into this season (part of the reason why the Indians wanted Marte so badly; they really didn't think they had ANY future 3B prospects in the system because of the lack of quality depth outside of Kouzmanoff and they figured Kouzmanoff's back injury would be a recurring injury problem like it has been with Aubrey, so they didn't feel they could count on him either.  Being that Marte was a highly-regarded prospect was the other half of the reason why they were willing to trade for him as well.)

Regarding Aubrey, as I've said before, if we get any ML production out of him, I'll consider it a bonus; in my opinion, he really is no longer a prospect until he can remain healthy for an extended period of time, so unless he has very good health over the next year, I'd take him off of my prospect radar and keep my eyes on Garko, Mulhern, and Head as far as 1B prospects in the organization.

Just my 2 cents. :-)

Yes, mrich, the injury to Crowe is a bummer.  That said, let's take a minute to appreciate what Ryan Goleski has done this year.  Without much fanfare, he has hit something like .320 with 19 homers and 75 RBIs between Kinston and Akron.  The mid-season promotion to AA hasn't slowed him down at all.  Maybe the best part is that he is a legitimate right field because of his strong arm.  How many of those do we have in our system?  Or maybe the best part, to get back to your theme, is that he manages to stay healthy.

Baseball America indicates that Crowe is probably done for the year, though the Indians are hopeful that he'll be able to participate in the AFL.

Hello InfiniteMonkeyTypists,

Thanks for the info.! :-)

It's probably better that the Indians proceed cautiously with Crowe anyway regarding his health.  Besides, he's made quite a bit of progress in his first full professional season - he was already handling AA pretty well over a few weeks when he injured his ankle.

Being only 23 next year, he has a quick tour of AA to start 2007, just to make sure he's ready, gets up to AAA by June at the latest, spends the rest of the time there, and presuming the same rate of progression, is probably up to Cleveland by the end of 2007 (August/September,) permanently staying with the Indians in 2008 at the age of 24.  That's not bad, in my opinion.  

Now hopefully, he will recover and stay healthy from now on. :-)  

Just my 2 cents.