He destroyed his ankle after hitting a walk-off granny.
Video here.
Jumped, landed. Believe it was a compound fracture of his ankle and possibly a fracture of one of the small bones in the lower leg. Rehab also went poorly, which is why he missed almost 2 full seasons. You can tell from this clip, too, comparing it to pictures of him now, he has probably put on 20-30 pounds since the injury.
To further elaborate on this, check out the chart in
this article: About 1/3 down the page.
Cliffs: Morales has been measured at costing his team 28.2 runs since he debuted in 2006 (Butler debuted in 2007). Butler is measured as costing the Royals 31.7 runs. So Morales' total comes out to 89 percent of Butler's total.
Sounds like they're about the same then, right? Well, they're not... because Morales total comes in 2284 PA, while Butler's comes in 4064 PA. Morales has just 56 percent of Butler's PA but has cost his team nearly as many runs on the bases.
Spread Morales' total out to the same number of PAs as Billy, and you're looking at Morales costing you 50.2 runs... or 58 percent more than Butler.
Morales isn't just worse than Butler. He's SIGNIFICANTLY worse on the bases than Billy Butler.