A. J. Pollock fractures hand

A.J. Pollock was removed from tonight's game with a fractured right hand.

— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) June 1, 2014

Pollock was hit on the hand by a 92 mph Johnny Cueto fastball during this evening's 5-0 loss to the Reds at Chase Field. Adding insult to injury, the umpire initially called it a foul ball, and it took an appeal from Kirk Gibson to get the call overturned and a hit by pitch ruled instead. A.J. had been insanely productive of late, and when he left the game, had a line of .316/.366/.554, easily the best of any regular D-backs - that's a .920 OPS, with the next best being Paul Goldschmidt, at .884. By fWAR, Pollock was also leading the team, with 2.0 fWAR, ahead of Goldschmidt at 1.6.

There's no word of any recovery time, but one imagines we may be looking at something similar to Aaron Hill last season, who ended up missing over two months and 63 games, after he suffered fractured bones in his hand when hit by a pitch. There'll certainly be a roster move, but not sure what as yet. We could see the return of Tony Campana to play center, or the team may try running Ender Inciarte out there on a regular basis. It's definitely going to hurt the team, just as they came to the end of the month of May with a winning record for it, substantially better than the one they posted in April.