Dodgers Chris Taylor Day-to-day with Ankle Injury

Dodgers LF/2B Chris Taylor left Saturday’s game against San Diego with a foot contusion in the fifth inning. He attempted to catch a fly ball off the bat of Jose Azocar by sliding, but missed the catch. It appeared his left foot got caught underneath him and his weight fell on top of it. When he stood up he looked down at his feet and appeared to hobble a little, but finished the inning.

He didn’t come back out for the top of the sixth, which raised some eyebrows but since he had just one hit in his last 19 at-bats it looked like it was just to give him some rest. After the game, though, the injury was revealed. Manager Dave Roberts announced that Taylor would undergo X-rays and was likely to miss Sunday’s game. Shortly after that, the team announced that the X-rays came back negative, but confirmed Taylor would sit out Sunday.

Taylor returned on Monday against the Rockies, but left in the sixth inning with swelling in his left ankle. He had already rounded the bases once, scoring a run, and it could be that’s when things got worse according to Roberts. “He tried to run the bases there and it just kind of flared up on him. He’s going to get a CT scan and we’ll see where we’re at.

“If Chris has got to come out of the game, you know it’s something that’s pretty significant. So my assumption is he’ll be down a couple days and then we’ll sort of re-evaluate.”

Taylor elaborated on the injury when speaking to the press. “It was something that was feeling better before the game and I thought it wasn’t going to be an issue,

“I thought I would be able to play through it, and progressively every inning it got worse and worse and got to a point where it wasn’t worth continuing to try to push it […] Every time I ran I just progressively got worse.”

He added that he hopes to avoid the IL, and that he isn’t too concerned with the injury himself. “On the inside of my foot and then it kind of runs into my ankle. There’s a little bit of swelling and there might be a tendon or something that runs up. It’s mainly inside to the ankle.”

The Dodgers have him listed as day-to-day for now, but that could turn into a few weeks if Taylor is dealing with an eversion sprain. Based on the location of the swelling, it’s likely this is what he’s dealing with. Grade 1 sprains can take up to three weeks to heal completely, but if the sprain is a little more mild he could return much sooner.