Giants catcher Buster Posey was hurt in a collision yesterday and the news regarding his health is bad. Amy Gutierrez of CSN Bay Area reports that Posey has a broken leg and torn ligaments, so he’ll likely be out for the season.

Posey sustained the injury while blocking home plate in the 12th inning of yesterday’s game agains the Marlins. Scott Cousins collided with Posey to score the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly by Emilio Bonifacio.

“I felt like he was blocking the dish. It’s the go-ahead run to win the game, I got to do whatever I can to score,” Cousins said (via ESPN’s Buster Olney). “I’m not trying to end anybody’s season or anything like that. I just was trying to play hard and score the go-ahead run. He didn’t say much and you could tell he was in pain.

“And when their manager, when Bruce (Bochy) came out, he was pretty frustrated. I didn’t want to make things any more tense.”

The catcher’s agent, Jeff Berry, was not pleased with the situation, said today he is going to reach out to Joe Torre, the leader of on-field operations for MLB, and raise the idea of changing the rules regarding plays at the plate.

“You leave players way too vulnerable,” Berry said. “I can tell you Major League Baseball is less than it was before [Posey's injury]. It’s stupid. I don’t know if this ends up leading to a rule change, but it should. The guy [at the plate] is too exposed.

“If you go helmet to helmet in the NFL, it’s a $100,000 fine, but in baseball, you have a situation in which runners are [slamming into] fielders. It’s brutal. It’s borderline shocking. It just stinks for baseball. I’m going to call Major League Baseball and put this on the radar. Because it’s just wrong.”

The Giants will not only lose their everyday catcher and the cleanup guy for the rest of the season, but also a team leader. “It’s huge. He’s one of the leaders of the team already and what he brings every day is something you can’t replace,” teammate Nate Schierholtz said. “I’m just hoping for the best. I couldn’t really see what happened from out there. I was just hoping for the best. Maybe he got the wind knocked out of him or something.”

Image by SD Dirk under the Creative Commons License.