For an offense stuck in the doldrums, the last thing the Yankees needed was for perhaps their hottest hitter to suffer a hamstring injury, but Martin Prado didn’t play Wednesday because of a mild strain to his left hamstring.
Prado said he underwent an MRI exam and received treatment on Wednesday after suffering the injury running bases in Tuesday’s loss.
“I think we made a little progress and we’ll see how it responds,” Prado said after the Yankees’ 5-1 win over the Red Sox.
Prado said he expects to go through normal pregame activities, including hitting, on Thursday, but admitted he was unsure how it will feel since he’d never dealt with this type of injury.
“I just want it to be one or two days and not the rest of the season,” Prado said of why he came out of Tuesday’s game. “I don’t feel it walking. I’m not going to play 50 percent. I have to be 100 percent.”
Prado is 12-for-28 with six runs, four doubles and eight RBIs in his last seven games in The Bronx.
While Masahiro Tanaka tries to avoid Tommy John surgery, Ivan Nova’s comeback still is ongoing.
The right-hander played catch for the second time on Wednesday.
“It was awesome to be throwing a baseball again,” Nova said. “For me, I always worried about how I’m going to be. It feels a little weird, but once you start throwing, you’re more confident.”
Nova went under the knife in April, so he figures to be out at least through the opening of 2015, but the 27-year-old said he’s trying not to look too far ahead.
“I haven’t asked and I don’t want to ask,” Nova said of what the next step will be. “I know the process is a little bit slow.”
One aspect of Nova’s recovery he has figured out is he intends to spend the offseason in Tampa so he can work out at the team’s facility.
Hitting coach Kevin Long still can’t explain the team’s offensive issues.
“There’s obviously a lot of things that factor into it,” Long said. “You’d have to be some kind of mad hitting scientist to go through it all and try to figure it out. I don’t have all those answers. The work ethic is there and how we’re going about it is the right way, but the results have been inconsistent. That’s it.”
Dellin Betances struck out two batters in a perfect eighth and has 122 strikeouts for the season, tied for Goose Gossage for second most by a reliever in franchise history. Next up is Mariano Rivera, who fanned 130 in 1996.
Before Thursday’s game at Yankee Stadium, men 40 years of age and older will be invited to get PSA blood tests done as part of Fans for the Cure, a charity that promotes awareness of prostate cancer.