Edwin Diaz Suffers Knee Injury at WBC

Diaz injured his knee while the Puerto Rican team was celebrating its victory.

Diaz injured his knee while the Puerto Rican team was celebrating its victory.

During Wednesday night’s game in the World Baseball Classic between the Puerto Rican and Dominican Republic teams, the Puerto Rican team pulled off a solid 5-2 victory. It was a great night for the team, with all of the players gathering up to bounce around and celebrate, until something brought the festivities to a halt.

While the team was celebrating, closing pitcher Edwin Diaz of the Puerto Rican team, usually of the New York Mets, suddenly collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain as he clutched his right knee. Through a currently unknown means, Diaz had injured his knee during the celebration. Diaz was carefully removed from the field, and will be undergoing an MRI today to determine the extent of the damage.

“I didn’t see it right away,” Puerto Rico team manager Yadier Molina said about the incident. “I was hugging our coaches in the dugout, and when we looked up, Edwin was on the ground. I didn’t know. I didn’t know how to act, I didn’t know what to say. It caught me by surprise. It sucks. When you see a guy that works so hard like Edwin — when you see him on the ground like that, it’s just sad.”

Hernández said that when the team returned to the locker room, they were virtually silent in sorrow for their teammate. “It comes to a certain point that it gets bigger than a game. Something very unfortunate happened. As excited as we were about the game and all that, that’s one of our brothers. Some of us grew up together and all that. It’s real easy to set aside the game and worry about us as humans. It definitely doesn’t feel in there like we just beat the Dominican Republic to advance.”