Opening Day is less than a week away and it really can’t come any sooner. Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports pointed out that Friday was a particularly nasty day for injuries across both the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues. Ichiro took a pitch to his helmet, Chris Archer got hit by a grounder, and Yoan Moncada hurt himself sliding into third base. While those three players are probably going to be fine, one player who got seriously injured was Madison Bumgarner.

The Giants’ ace pitcher missed a massive chunk of the 2017 season due to an unfortunate dirtbike incident but this time, an on-field incident is going to cost him six-to-eight weeks. Bumgarner was hit in his throwing hand by a comebacker and it turns out that he’s got a broken pinky finger. It’s safe to say that both the Giants and Bumgarner were hoping to get things going in 2018 with a clean bill of health after last season’s injury woes. They’re already off to a bad start in that regard and the news got even worse for San Francisco at around the same time they got informed of Bumgarner’s status.

Jeff Samardzija suffered a pectoral injury on Thursday and the MRI results revealed that Samardzija will be out for three weeks-to-a-month. So that’s now two of San Francisco’s best pitchers who will be on the shelf for a significant period of time. Just like that, the Giants’ hopes of coming out of the gates strong for 2018 have taken a major blow. It would be a stunner if the Giants were as bad in 2018 as they were last year but for now it appears that their rotten luck has carried over into the new season.

While injuries can happen anytime and anywhere, it has to be considered a bigger bummer that all of these incidents occurred during exhibition games. We’re probably not going to see spring training curtailed anytime soon but it’s clear that at this point, everybody is ready for the regular season to start — if only because that means that the dangers of exhibition injuries can finally go by the wayside.

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