Ouch.

(Ignore the arrow. At the top of the other bone is a broken styloid process.)

So the word on Jed Lowrie's wrist is that he's fractured the styloid process of his left ulna. It's likely that this is the same bone he broke last season (nondisplaced fractures of the wrist are almost always of the ulnar styloid.)

The styloid process is a little spike of bone attached to the head of the ulna. You can feel it if you feel up your wrist. The bump on your wrist is the head of the ulna, if you start at the top of the ulnar head and move laterally toward the outside of the wrist and dig in a little, there's a little triangle of bone-that's the ulnar styloid process. It's function is to have a place for the ulnar collateral ligament to attach. If it's broken(besides being painful), the wrist becomes unstable.

There are three options for him:

The first would be to get cortisone shots to reduce inflammation, rest it, and hope that the bone reknits itself. If he goes with that plan, they'd be looking at three to six weeks in a splint.

The second option would be a closed reduction of the fracture. In that case, they'd wire or screw the process back onto the ulnar head. Recovery from that would take at least a couple of months. His wrist would look like this:

The last, and least likely option, would be to open his wrist up and take out the bone the completely. The problem, if they were to pursue that option, would be finding a new home for the connective tissuses that relie on that structure. If they did that, he'd be done for the year. In addition, you couldn't be absolutely certain that the wrist would still function in a way that would allow him to play baseball. Of course, it might go the other way and stucturally changing his wrist might improve his ability to play the game ala Rookie of the Year.

Not having seen his x-rays, I'd guess that if they think he can be healed by rest, they bone isn't displaced enough to warrant the surgery.