When Dioner Navarro and Chase Utley collided Wednesday night at Philadelphia, and Navarro had to be driven off the field on a cart, we all feared the worst. Fortunately:
Dioner Navarro's x-rays were negative. It is being treated as a contusion (bruise).
— Todd Zolecki (@ToddZolecki) August 8, 2013
Instead of being out for the year and perhaps requiring surgery, Navarro might miss only a few days. That's good news.
For their part, the Cubs thought it was a clean baseball play. Manager Dale Sveum:
“I don’t think anything was wrong,” Sveum said. “He was blocking the plate. Guys have the right to do that. You want your players to do everything they can to get home plate. You don’t want to hurt somebody in the process, but unfortunately we’ve seen it (before). It was probably the same kind of thing (with Buster) Posey.”
Catchers are really in a no-win situation with plays like this. As Len and JD pointed out, the throw came in from right field, which meant Navarro was looking the other way as Utley was bearing down on him. The Posey situation inspired some debate about whether catchers should be allowed to block the plate (and technically, they're not allowed to do that, regardless of what Sveum said).
Glad to hear Navarro isn't seriously injured. Above is a sequence of photos of the hit.