Athletics starter Jesús Luzardo landed on the injured list Sunday after fracturing his pinky on his left hand playing video games.
“I was at home before my start playing video games, kind of a way to distract myself from the game, get my mind off of it, and it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Luzardo told reporters on Tuesday.
Luzardo showed reporters that he hit the top of his left hand (throwing hand) in a swiping motion in a reaction to the video game he was playing on Saturday. It was about an hour and a half before he was to head to the field and about four hours prior to his start. The A’s would go on to lose, 8-4 against the Baltimore Orioles.
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“I knew something was up, I didn’t know what it was,” Luzardo said. “It was a mistake, a dumb mistake and it was also kind of just a freak accident and I felt pretty stupid about it.”
In three innings, Luzardo gave up five hits, three earned runs, walking two and striking out only one.
He took responsibility for going through with the start.
“I’m not one to make excuses, so I made my decision to go out there and pitch,” Luzardo said. “I said I was fine. I don’t know subconsciously, I had adrenaline. I just -- I wanted to go out there and pitch, maybe it did. I thought I felt good.”
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Luzardo originally thought it could have been a bruise, but he noticed his hand began to swell pretty quickly.
“There’s no way for me to describe this in any other way other than stupid and maybe immature. I’ve never had something like this happen and I don’t plan on anything like this happening again.”
“I’m a 23-year-old kid, I make mistakes, I feel like a lot of people don’t realize that we are people as well and we make mistakes that fans make, the same mistakes that work normal jobs makes,” Luzardo said. “Just because I’m 23 and we make the money that we make, and we’re on this stage that we are, people believe that we can’t make mistakes. It was an immature mistake, it was a stupid mistake, but it was still a mistake and that’s something I’m going to learn from and I’m not going to do it again.”
A’s first baseman Matt Olson, who also suffered a strange injury to his eye recently during batting practice, was asked about Luzardo’s injury. He, along with the rest of the team supported Luzardo after the 23-year-old spoke to the team.
“Obviously, I felt really bad,” Luzardo said. “I didn’t want to put anyone in a position to have to fill in for me that day or put someone in a position that was jeopardizing them, so I felt bad. I felt bad. I went and I apologized to the team. I said what I had to say, what I felt was right to say. And like [Olson] said, I felt like they did have my back.”
“They said, ‘You’re going to learn from this, it won’t happen again.’”
As far as the next step, it appears Luzardo isn’t too worried about any rehabilitation process or being out too long, and noted the last couple of days, he’s been seeing progress.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be ready to go,” he said.
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Luzardo was wearing a device during Sunday’s game that essentially is a portable ultrasound machine as well as a splint just to make sure he doesn’t bang his pinky on anything.
He added he won’t have to undergo surgery and it should heal just fine on its own.