Kevin Kiermaier to begin rehab assignment Thursday

The Tampa Bay Rays have announced that Kevin Kiermaier will begin a rehab assignment with the Charlotte Stone Crabs, starting on Thursday. Kiermaier still has a while to go until he can be activated though as he is on the 60-day DL and isn’t eligible to be activated until August 9th.

Kevin Kiermaier has had a bizarre season for the Rays as he started the year out with a slump, then enjoyed a hot streak, but got sick and his production immediately fell off. All the while his outfield defense was exceptional and awful as his misplayed routine balls but still made his standard five star catches daily leading some to wonder if he had caught a case of the Yips.

He eventually seemed to get all the kinks worked out only to suffer a freak injury as he slid into first base in order to avoid a collision with White Sox behemoth, Jose Abreu.

This incident occurred back on June 8th and he’d exit the game. He’d be diagnosed with a fractured hip soon after and was expected to miss at least two months due to the injury.

So far in 2017, Kevin Kiermaier has slashed .258/.329/.408 with 7 HR over 62 games, good for a 100 wRC+ while he’s accrued 1.2 fWAR.