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The eyes of Orioles fans have been on Twitter all morning waiting to hear the results of Nick Markakis' MRI. Markakis has been suffering from a sore neck for a week now. And as our fearless beat writers tend to do, they all tweeted out the news back-to-back with each other. Here is the news from all three:
Roch Kubatko @masnRoch
Markakis has small disc herniation. C4 c5. Seeing spine specialist in Balt.Eduardo A. Encina @EddieInTheYard
Markakis has small disk herniation between c4 and c5 vertibrae. Recovery time is 7-14 days.Brittany Ghiroli @Britt_Ghiroli
Markakis has a slightly herniated disc- heals 7-14 days and is still on track for Opening Day.Brittany Ghiroli @Britt_Ghiroli
The good news is Markakis came in feeling better yesterday. Team optimistic it will be healed in another week.
Nick will continue rest his sore neck and while the phrase "herniated disc" is one that strikes fear into our hearts (and rightly so), for now the prognosis is good. I'm hopeful that with just less than a month still until Opening Day, they err on the side of caution and rest him longer rather than getting him back into action.
The O's lost Nick twice last season and it hurt them, especially before they had Nate McLouth up with the big club. They do have some roster depth for the outfield including Steve Pearce, Conor Jackson, Russ Canzler, and Chris Dickerson, to name a few, but losing Nick for a significant amount of time could really hurt the team, especially early in the season when they might have the chance to jump out ahead of the ailing New York Yankees, and especially if Nolan Reimold ends up missing time as well.