Bushog Spearripper will miss five months. The Bree Cheese announced the diagnosis on March 24: a ruptured foot tendon, sustained while running the bases in spring camp. The team is confident in a full recovery. The season starts without their second baseman.
This is the third significant injury to a Tolkien Baseball position player in the past week. Bucklebury lost Isengrim Madlight for five months. Numenor's Rumzug Steale went down for three weeks. Now Bree loses Spearripper before a single regular-season pitch has been thrown. The Dwarven Runes, consulted ahead of the 2053 campaign, glowed for eleven uninterrupted minutes over the Cheese's infield depth chart. Eleven minutes is not alarming. It is not reassuring either.
The Cheese already carry two names on the injured list before Opening Day. Ngouna Bjørndal is out roughly 389 days with a torn thigh muscle. Togo Bracegirdle will not return for approximately 277 more days following a torn groin. As MESN covered in the preseason spending piece, Bree signed starting pitcher Bloodcrawler to a $108.8 million deal this winter — the offense was supposed to be the part that was settled. Spearripper at second base was part of what settled it.
Five months puts a return date somewhere in August, assuming the recovery goes cleanly. Bree's front office is publicly confident. Front offices are always publicly confident. The question is who plays second base in April, May, June, July, and the first half of August.
The brief answer is that Bree does not have an obvious answer. The roster has been built around established contributors, not around a glut of infield depth. The Goblin Coin Flip, consulted on the matter of whether an unproven replacement could hold the position adequately through a five-month stretch, came up tails. Tails, in this context, means "insufficient evidence." That is the coin's way of saying the question is open.
What is not open is the absence. Spearripper is out. The Cheese play regardless. The infield adjusts or it doesn't, and by August the answer will be plain enough.