When it rains it pours, and there is a monsoon falling on Founders Park right now.
On top of what has already been a brutal season for South Carolina baseball with a 5-16 record in SEC play, the Gamecocks are now dealing with simultaneous injuries to their two most impactful hitters. Right fielder Ethan Petry and center fielder Nathan Hall both missed South Carolina's 5-3 midweek win over Charleston Southern, leaving the Gamecocks lacking a single player in their lineup with at least five home runs or 25 RBIs on the season.
Petry's injury is the more severe one, and it might mark a bitter end to his collegiate career after he left the first game of the series at Kentucky last Saturday and has not played since.
"He's got what they call a strain of the AC joint in his left shoulder," head coach Paul Mainieri said. " It was such a freak injury. If you watched the video of it, the ball took a funny bounce and he was kind of ready to play it. And when it took a funny bounce he kind of accelerated to try to field the ball and rammed his left shoulder into the wall.
"But that injury is probably 2-4 weeks to heal, so there's a good chance that he's done for the year. But maybe he can get back for the last series or the SEC Tournament, we'll see."
Petry is second on South Carolina's all-time home run list after three stellar seasons and does have one more year of eligibility, but will almost certainly enter the MLB Draft as a projected high-round pick.
South Carolina starts its final series of the regular season in 16 days and the SEC Tournament in 21 days, both technically within the optimistic side of the timeline Mainieri laid out, but also would require a quick recovery.
Hall's injury has lingered since he slammed his heel into the outfield wall chasing a home run at Texas A&M three weeks ago, but it got worse over the weekend playing on Kentucky's artificial turf.
There's not a sand base to it, and I worried about his heel pounding on that hard ground all weekend," Mainieri said. "About two-thirds of the way through the game on Sunday I could start to see him limping when he'd run out to center field for a new inning, so I wasn't really surprised on Monday when he couldn't run at all. We practiced on Monday, and he couldn't participate."
Mainieri did offer one glimmer of hope, though. Hall is still taking batting practice and was even available as a pinch hitter on Tuesday night, although his status for the weekend series starting Friday against Florida remains unclear.
"We'll have to see how he feels over the next couple days," Mainieri concluded. "Hopefully with a couple days rest he'll be feeling better by Friday and be able to play."
The series starts at 7 p.m. ET Friday with live coverage on SECN+.
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