It turns out that the injury to New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira, is a bit more serious than the sprained wrist he was diagnosed with a few weeks ago.
In a story courtesy of ESPN, Teixeira confirmed that he has a partially torn tendon sheath, and he isn’t sure how long he’s going to be sidelined.
“This is one of those things I can’t come back too early,” he said. “We saw last season when I tried to play too early [with a calf injury] what happened. If I try to play too early from this we could miss the whole season, and we don’t want that. I don’t know if it’s the beginning of May, the end of May, the beginning of June, I don’t know when it is but we got a whole bunch of season left and the time that really matters is the playoffs.”
The torn tendon sheath, has become sort of a common injury in recent seasons, plaguing the likes of the Boston Red Sox’s David Ortiz in 2008, Tampa Bay Rays’ Sam Fuld a few seasons ago and the Toronto Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista just last season.
The common theme in the successful return to play for all those players, have been surgery and a lengthy amount of recovery time. Yankees GM Brian Cashman has been assured by team doctor Chris Ahmad, that Teixeira won’t need surgery.
“Ahmad told me if he had a fully torn sheath, it’s automatic surgery, and if he had a partially torn sheath with an unstable tendon, it’s automatic surgery,” Cashman said. “This is a best-case scenario injury, the only one that can heal without surgery.”
The Yankees first baseman is very disappointed but has every intention of waiting until he’s fully healed before returning, no matter how long it takes.
“It’s not fun,” said Teixeira, who has been doing cardiovascular workouts and hopes to start one-handed baseball drills in a week or so. “I had a very similar wrist thing in 2009, and I missed three games. I had a cortisone shot and I wound up having a great 2009. If this is just a little bit worse than what I had, then I have full confidence that I’ll be back 100 percent. It’s just a matter of letting it heal.”
“Everyone’s body heals differently,” he said. “I’d love to be back before 8-10 weeks but we won’t know until I start swinging. It’s different from a broken bone, because you have a pretty good idea how long a bone takes to heal.”
Teixeira is taking the right approach when it comes to this injury. In the cases of Fuld and Bautista, they did further damage to their wrists by trying to return earlier than they should have, so I’m pretty sure he’ll seek their counsel since they have experience dealing with the exact injury.