CHICAGO – Detroit Tigers right fielder Kerry Carpenter has been dealing with the strangest injury of his career.
Carpenter has a bruised heel on his left foot from – the Tigers think – his cleats.
Seriously.
Carpenter has always worn Under Armour cleats but his favorite pair was discontinued. So, he switched to a pair of New Balance cleats.
“Under Armour stopped making the model I’ve worn the last seven years,” Carpenter said before the Tigers played the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday, July 22. “So I switched to New Balance because those were the only ones that felt good on my feet.”
Only there has been a problem: “There’s like a little extra molded spike on the bottom of it,” he said. “It’s right in the middle of my heel, and I think that’s just like been crushing my heel.”
Carpenter can run and deal with the pain, but it gets far worse when he tries to stop running.
“It’s been pretty painful the last week or so,” he said.
The bruised heel is on the back leg of his swing, where he generates his power, but he thinks it has impacted him more running than swinging the bat.
“I had no idea why it was happening for a while,” he said.
The injury came to light when Carpenter was pulled for a pinch-runner on Monday in the Tigers’ 10-inning win.
“I think [manager A.J. Hinch] just wanted somebody that wasn’t hobbling around,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter does not feel it has impacted him at the plate, despite his recent slump – an 0-for-26 skid with nine strikeouts in 10 games entering Wednesday – dropping him to a .206 batting average with 13 home runs.
“Feel great, mentally and spiritually and everything,” Carpenter said. “I am just bummed that I feel like I’m not helping the team at all or even hurting the team sometimes by not hitting well, so it’s kind of a bummer in that regard.
“But I am just working as hard as I possibly can to figure it out and find the right adjustment again, and it’ll hopefully come soon enough. But I feel like I’m on the right track. So I just have to find the right adjustment because it’s not like I’m swinging and missing a ton or striking out a ton. I’m swinging and my barrel’s not going where it usually should go. It’s nothing more than that.”
As far as the cleat problem, the Tigers hope they have solved the issue. Before Wednesday’s game, an equipment manager removed the plastic spike. Carpenter picked up the cleat from his locker and turned it over. It looked like somebody had sawed off the plastic molded piece.
Will that help?
“I have no idea,” Carpenter said. “I haven’t even put on my cleats yet. But hopefully.”
Carpenter is hoping he can find some of the old Under Armour cleats at home.
“I think I still have some in the locker room at home,” Carpenter said. “So we’ll see if I can find any. I’ll be wearing that the rest of the year if I can.”
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on X @seideljeff.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kerry Carpenter injury update: Tigers slugger deals with bruised heel
Reporting by Jeff Seidel, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Jeff Seidel, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
