Oregon's Drew Cowley out with hand injury
The Oregon baseball team will be without one of the best hitters in the Pac-12 for the next several weeks.
Drew Cowley, the Ducks’ starting second basemen and No. 2 hitter, suffered a hamate bone injury earlier this month and is continuing to work his way back from it.
“Drew Cowley had his hamate bone removed,” Oregon coach Mark Wasikowski said. “He broke his hamate bone on the first swing at Stanford (on March 11) and he played with it broken for the rest of the game. Then he had his hamate bone removed.”
Wasikowski said Cowley will be out for four weeks and will be back at the start of April.
Cowley, a junior who is in his first season with the Ducks after transferring in from Cal Poly Pomona, is slashing .467/.571/.822 with a team-best OPS of 1.393. He has three homers, five doubles, and 15 RBIs in just 12 starts.
“You don’t replace Drew Cowley,” Wasikowski said. “He’s a 1,200 or 1,300 OPS guy. So unless you’ve got a guy like that laying around on the bench, which nobody really does, it’s a big loss. We’ve got other players who are good players. But losing a guy that is possibly one of the best hitters on the West coast, in the country is never fun.”
With Cowley absent during the past six games, Gavin Grant has stepped in at second base and is providing a strong offensive presence. Grant is hitting .339 on the season and has 10 hits, two homers and nine RBIs during that six-game stretch.
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Injury notes
Oregon will continue to roll without its two top starting pitchers for the foreseeable future.
Wasikowski said there is no update on Ducks’ ace Adam Maier, who has not pitched since March 4. He left that start after 5 1/3 innings with an unspecified arm injury.
Saturday starter Andrew Mosiello has also missed time due to injury, and Wazikowski said he is “day-to-day.”
“He’s been penning and he’s just day-to-day,” Wazikowski said. “He’s got something going on in his back with spasms or something like that. So if we can get it to settle down, he’ll be in the mix pretty quick.”
With Maier and Mosiello out, RJ Gordon, Isaac Ayon, and Caleb Sloan will be the weekend starters for the upcoming series with USC in Eugene.
