ANAHEIM, Calif. — Wrists are tricky, the Yankees told us repeatedly, and we nodded in agreement because this ain’t our first rodeo, either. This whole 2013 Mark Teixeira comeback, his rehabilitation from a torn ECU sheath in his right wrist, was an endeavor rooted in an odd mix of anxiety and wishful thinking.
And now it could go down in flames, perhaps taking the Yankees’ season with it.
Teixeira left yesterday’s game, an eventual 6-2 Angels victory over the Yankees at Angel Stadium, after two at-bats with what Joe Girardi described as aggravation in Teixeira’s right wrist. He’ll see Yankees team physician Chris Ahmad today, and the always conservative Girardi didn’t even to attempt to hide his worry.
“I’ve always said that wrists are tricky,” Girardi said after the Yankees’ fifth straight loss. “People have wrist problems, back problems. I’m concerned.”
For now, we know only this: What already was a daunting road back to the playoffs became even trickier. The Yankees were supposed to get healthier as the season progressed. Instead, they’re getting sicklier.
“It feels like we’ve come up, and all of a sudden we get beat down again,” said first baseman Lyle Overbay, whom the Yankees kept as a spare part for this very contingency plan. “This is going to test us.”
If Teixeira goes back on the disabled list, where he resided from Opening Day until May 31, the Yankees will be in even worse shape than they were with the makeshift roster they fielded at the season’s outset. Let us count the ways:
1) They’ll have lost Teixeira and Curtis Granderson back to the DL after brief stays with the club. Granderson suffered a second injury, fracturing his left pinkie on May 24, and won’t return this month.
2) Derek Jeter suffered the setback to his left ankle, pushing his return past the All-Star break.
3) A suspension to Alex Rodriguez looks more feasible thanks to Biogenesis founder Anthony Bosch’s cooperation with Major League Baseball’s investigators.
4) Francisco Cervelli (fractured right hand) and Kevin Youkilis (two DL stays, both due to back injuries) have gone down, too.
Teixeira offered some encouraging signs upon his activation, hitting three homers in four days from June 3 to June 6, and his bat displayed signs of life in the first couple of losses this week at Oakland. He looked dreadful the past three games, however, and for the season, he has a nightmarish slash line of .151/.270/.340. Hitting lefty, where the injury affects him, the switch-hitter is 3-for-35 (.086).
Following the game, Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long divulged how dramatically the injury had compromised Teixeira, as the first baseman had not been doing his usual pre-game drill with the hitting tee. He tried a couple of times, Long said, but stopped when he felt “discomfort.”
“I just want a healthy Mark Teixeira. I think everyone does at this point,” Long said. “To go out there and do it at I don’t know at what percent — a shell of who he is — it’s not fun for him. It’s not fun for the team. It’s not fun for his hitting coach. I feel bad for him more than anything else.”
So if it’s back to the DL for Teixeira, as sounds like the case, then it’s back to everyday play for Overbay. And Ichiro Suzuki has to continue his recent hot streak and Robinson Cano must pick up on the strands of effectiveness he has displayed lately and Brennan Boesch has to get healthy and help, too, since it just isn’t reasonable to expect Vernon Wells to hit right-handed pitching.
“It’s the ‘B’ squad back in action,” Long said, sharing the sentiment that he spread throughout the team. “Here we go.”
“You’ve got to remember, that group got us to 11 or 12 games above .500,” Girardi said, referring to the 30-18 peak. “We know they’re capable of doing it.”
It’s to the Yankees’ credit that they outran reality for a good two months. Only the finest smoke and mirrors, though, allow you to keep the illusion going for 162 games.
And the only people the Yankees might be tricking right now would be themselves, if they think they’ve encountered just your ordinary speed bump. This looks more like an iceberg.