To hitting, pitching and fielding, add another critical element to this 2014 Yankees season:
Pain tolerance.
The Yankees will thrive or dive depending on how well some individual players can handle the discomfort associated with their current conditions. And as a collective unit, they must shrug off the excessive setbacks just as their immediate predecessors mostly did.
Hitting leadoff in this current crisis is Carlos Beltran, who told reporters Tuesday he received a cortisone shot (late Monday night) to treat a bone spur in his right elbow.
“We’re hoping that the cortisone shot will take the pain away,” Beltran said, before the Yankees and Mets continued the Subway Series at Yankee Stadium. “… If the cortisone doesn’t do any good, we might have to do something during the season.”
That “something” would be surgery to shave down the spur. Dr. Michael Hausman, chief of hand and elbow surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital, said the recovery period from such a procedure ranges generally from three weeks to two months, depending on the bone spur’s location and severity.
“In a couple of days if he doesn’t feel better, then my level of concern will be pretty high,” manager Joe Girardi said of his right fielder. And so we’re revisiting an earlier time in New York baseball: With the Mets five years ago, Beltran grinded through a right knee injury and put up an elite first 2 ³/₄ months — as his All-Star teammates Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes went down with season-ending injuries — only to finally relent and miss most of the next year-plus.
The difference is, the Yankees have a much healthier (pun intended) approach to player safety than the Mets did at that juncture. If Beltran feels he requires surgery, the Yankees will suck it up and try to get by with Alfonso Soriano, Ichiro Suzuki and Zoilo Almonte (called up Tuesday) in right field, though Ichiro counted himself out of Tuesday’s action with continuing lower back problems.
Beltran has been a significant disappointment to date, putting up a .234/.286/.430 slash line over 140 plate appearances. But he has a recent history of excellence, as does his fellow first-year Yankee Brian McCann, and the club could use both players to rediscover their old selves in order to ascend comfortably past the .500 mark.
Speaking of mark, Mark Teixeira has increased his importance by succeeding in that self-rediscovery project, hitting the ball with an authority we hadn’t seen much in recent seasons. Yet his age and lessening durability have surfaced once again, as a tight left groin limited him to pinch-hitting duty Monday and had him starting at designated hitter Tuesday. We’ll see how much this condition restricts his playing time.
While we’ve made much ado over the Yankees’ age problems, as have the Yankees themselves, the one player they placed on the disabled list Tuesday was 30-year-old setup man Shawn Kelley, who couldn’t overcome a strained lumbar spine.
The flood of Yankees injuries this last week — we’re just now getting to CC Sabathia’s visit to Dr. James Andrews to have his right knee examined — evoked memories of the 2013 fiasco, when they lost Teixeira, Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson and Alex Rodriguez for the bulk of the campaign.
“You’ve got to fight through it. That’s what you’ve got to do,” Girardi said. “No one’s going to feel sorry for you. I don’t feel sorry for us. We’ve got to play through it and find a way to get it done. That’s all you can do. We had a lot of practice at it last year. So we’re used to it.”
The thinned-out 2013 Yankees fielded a joke of a lineup, with Robinson Cano and Brett Gardner the only two above-average hitters around all year. They seemed to gain mental strength from each victory, since each represented an upset of sorts.
This 2014 mix is different. Even with the injuries, they can put together a representative offense; their pitching staff has suffered the most significant losses with Ivan Nova (out for the year, Tommy John surgery) and Michael Pineda (strained upper back muscle) accompanying Sabathia on the disabled list. If they fall apart, it’s on them.
We know these Yankees own more talent than the 2013 group. We’ll soon get a better feel concerning relative toughness.