Detroit Tigers left fielder Willie Figueroa is going to spend the next week watching from the dugout. The club diagnosed him with hamstring tendinitis, an injury he picked up while running the bases. He is expected to miss about a week of action.

Running the bases is supposed to be the reward for putting the ball in play, but it is also where a lot of these lower-body bugs catch up to guys. Figueroa felt it on the basepaths, and the training staff shut him down before it turned into something worse. Tendinitis is a nagging, stubborn inflammation. You don’t try to run it off unless you want a one-week absence to turn into a month-long headache.

The Tigers will just have to patch things together in left field while he mends. It is never ideal to lose your left fielder, but a week on the shelf for tendinitis is a manageable timeline in the grand scheme of a long grind. The alternative is playing through it, compensating for the tight hamstring on every stride, and eventually pulling a muscle that requires a whole lot more time off. Nobody in the clubhouse wants that.

Figueroa will take his daily treatment, get his rehab reps in the trainer’s room, and wait for the inflammation to finally die down. The club will check on his progress and re-evaluate him when the week is up. Until then, he is strictly a spectator in uniform. He will be back out there when the leg tells him it is ready. The basepaths will just have to wait.