Wil Myers can’t catch a break, heads back to the DL

The San Diego Padres, already off to a slower than expected start and three days removed from firing their manager, are going to be without one of their best young players for a significant portion of the season.

Wil Myers, one of the Padres big name offseason acquisitions, is going to have surgery on his left wrist and is expected to miss eight weeks. The 32-36 Padres don’t even really know what they have in the 24-year-old outfielder. He’s already missed 28 games in 2015 and had just returned from a wrist injury, playing only three games before going on the shelf again.

It’s a big blow for new interim manager Pat Murphy who is trying to right the ship after taking over for Bud Black. The Padres have lost four in a row, seven out of 10, and are already six games behind in the NL West. They are in the middle of a tough eight-game road trip that still takes them to Arizona and San Francisco, two division rivals that are ahead of them.

Don’t expect to see Myers before September. By then, given the competitiveness of the division, the Padres could be out of the race and it might be worth letting him rest and recover. Myers won the rookie-of-the-year award in 2013 with the Rays and has been traded twice already in his young career. He has only played 210 games in three major-league seasons, plagued by injuries to, now, both his left and right wrists.

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