tough luck — again
Jarrod Dyson is expected to be ready for spring training in 2019, according to one report on Thursday. That’s the glass is half full part of the story. The other part: For the second straight year, the former Southwest Mississippi Community College star has seen his season halted early by a lower body injury that requires surgery. Last year it was a double hernia, this year an abductor muscle. Dyson is 34. The comeback next spring won’t be a snap. Dyson, in the big leagues since 2010, signed a two-year deal as a free agent with Arizona this past off-season. In 67 games with the Diamondbacks, the speedy outfielder batted .189 with 16 stolen bases. He went on the disabled list on July 5 with a groin injury. He was on a minor league rehab assignment last weekend when the abductor issue flared up. “Jarrod was trying to gut it out and get back here as fast as he possibly could,” D’backs manager Torey Lovullo said in an mlb.com story. Dyson spent the first seven years of his career with Kansas City, winning a ring in 2015, before moving to Seattle in a trade. Though he missed most of the last month of 2017 because of the double hernia, he batted .251 with a career-best 56 runs and 28 steals. For his career, the onetime 50th-round draft pick, a McComb native, is hitting .251 with 220 steals, third-most among Mississippi-born players. P.S. Toronto manager John Gibbons, the old Jackson Mets catcher from 1982 and ’83, won’t return with the Blue Jays in 2019. Gibbons, much-criticized as a manager, has won more than 780 games in 11 seasons spread over two stints with Toronto, twice making the postseason.