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At some point after his third appearance of the season, after making his MLB debut earlier this month, 24-year-old, 2017 1st Round pick Seth Romero fell down some steps and broke his right hand while bracing himself for the fall.
Romero showed up at the park the next day with a swollen right hand and was taken to get X-rays on it.
“He came in, trainer came into my office, and said Seth’s right hand is swollen, we’re going to get him an X-ray today. We had to wait for the technician. We were actually in the game, playing the game when [trainer] Paul [Lessard] came back out and told me, ‘X-rays showed that he had broken his hand,’” Washington Nationals’ manager Davey Martinez explained.
It was a disappointing development for the lefty, who underwent Tommy John surgery back in August of 2018, then worked his way up to the mound in the majors during this 60-game MLB campaign.
“It’s unfortunate,” Martinez said. “I feel bad for the kid because he worked diligently to get here, and he’s still young. Like I said, he’s a big part of our future. He had the Tommy John and he worked really hard to get back and he was doing well.
“Hopefully this is just a minor setback for him and as soon as he heals we’ll get him back here.”
On Wednesday afternoon, in his pregame press conference, Martinez updated reporters on the plan for Romero.
“Seth is going to have surgery. He’s due to have surgery. I think they’re going to put a pin in his hand, they think that’s the fastest way to heal his fracture,” the manager said.
As for the plan post-surgical procedure?
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“Hopefully, if everything goes well, we’re going to continue to have him throw. He’s going to go to Fredericksburg and throw,” Martinez told reporters, referring to the Alternate Training Site in Virginia.
“The good thing is it’s his glove hand. So if everything goes well and he can start throwing right away, the sooner we can get a glove on — it will take two weeks, he’ll get reexamined, two to three weeks, and as soon as they deem that that bone is healing then he can get a glove on and we’ll go from there.
“We’re definitely going to keep him going, keep him throwing. I know we talked about maybe him throwing, he can throw bullpens if he needed to because it’s not his throwing hand, so that’s kind of good. Hopefully we’ll get him going, he heals fast, he’s a young kid, and then we’ll see if we can get him back here.”