WASHINGTON — Trea Turner had an awkward moment in the sixth inning of Game 3, lunging at a pitch out of the zone and appearing to take an injury to his groin area.
He shook it off and continued the at-bat, but it was a briefly worrying moment for a critical piece of a Nationals team who's dealt with a few lingering injury issues throughout his career.
The current injury bugging the shortstop is a finger that's never seemed to quite fully heal this season, as seen in his batting stance. Turner swings the bat with his right index finger off the bat. It stems from when he first broke it back in early April.
It wound up costing Turner basically all of April and half of May - 40 games in all, as he appeared in 122 games after he played the full 162 games for the first time in his career last season.
"It's a big loss," manager Dave Martinez said at the time. "He's our starting shortstop."
You can see the difference in the photos below, the first showing how he's held the bat since the injury, and the second showing how he held it normally before breaking the finger.
Fortunately, it hasn't slowed Turner down all that much. After coming back from the injury he still hit .296 the rest of the way this year and tied his career best in home runs, with 19.
He looked mostly okay after taking one to what announcer Joe Buck called his "vulnerable area" in Game 3.