Mariners History: What Ken Griffey Jr.'s broken hamate cost him in 1996

Aside from your typical spring training reports and the upcoming World Baseball Classic, an unexpected recurring storyline is the recent outbreak of hamate bone injuries. Several players, including Francisco Lindor and Corbin Carroll, are undergoing surgery to treat the injury. It's not as common an injury as torn UCLs, but Lindor and Carroll are hardly the first athletes to be afflicted with such an ailment.

In 1996, Seattle's own Ken Griffey Jr. was sidelined with the injury in June, causing him to miss nearly a month of games. Luckily, it didn't seem to limit his productivity too much. He still finished the season with a 154 OPS+ and 49 home runs in 140 games, winning a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger.

Unfortunately, baseball media didn't quite have the same level of analytics we're spoiled with now. Although Griffey led all of MLB with 9.7 rWAR, writers felt that Juan González deserved MVP honors for helping to lead the Rangers to a first-place finish in the division. Ironically, he was fifth on his own team that year in rWAR (3.8).

Did a broken hamate cost Ken Griffey Jr. a historic season in 1996?

It didn't help that Álex Rodríguez was also on the 1996 Mariners. He put up numbers nearly on par with Griffey, leading all of MLB in batting average (.358), the AL in runs (141), and accumulating 9.4 rWAR. On the MVP ballot, he came in second while Griffey came in fourth.

In hindsight, Rodríguez likely would've won had he not cannibalized his own vote by advocating for Griffey. In classic Rodríguez fashion, he later expressed dissatisfaction that some writers actually took his word and voted for Junior instead of him.

But all of this begs the question — what could Griffey have accomplished if he hadn't missed any time due to injury?

Assuming he maintained his performance through that entire month (a bold assumption, I might add), he likely would've led the American League in RBI and home runs. He was just eight RBI short of Albert Belle (148) and three homers short of Mark McGwire (52), and a month would've been more than enough time to exceed both of these marks. This added black ink would've made his MVP case irrefutable.

Fortunately, this missed month is ultimately immaterial in a career as long and impressive as Griffey's. He'd get the MVP he so rightfully deserved just one year later in 1997 and would go down as one of the best to ever do it.

He may have gotten a little additional hardware, but given his downfall was ultimately caused by a litany of various injuries, a broken hamate bone is probably the least of his regrets. Nonetheless, he will forever be known as an all-time great and most importantly, a Mariners legend.