Don’t count out Mark Teixeira just yet.
The Yankees’ switch-hitting first baseman, suffering from a severe bone bruise on the lower part of his right leg, said Friday he is “100 percent” confident he will return before the end of the regular season.
Of course, that’s his belief, not a fact or even a doctor’s opinion. The Yankees don’t know when to expect to see him in the lineup.
“[I] can’t tell you when we’re going to get him back,” manager Joe Girardi said before the Yankees’ 5-2 victory over the Rays at the Stadium. “The hope is by not doing anything it heals up and he gets back sooner than later.”
Teixeira walked into the Yankees locker room on crutches, though he was able to stand on his own as he answered questions from reporters. General manager Brian Cashman said on Tuesday the bone bruise hasn’t healed at all and Teixeira has soft-tissue inflammation and inflammation around the nerve in the leg. “We are looking at weeks,” Cashman said.
Girardi said he isn’t thinking about having to go the rest of the way without Teixeira, despite the iffy prognosis.
“I’m not ready to do that yet because I really think that we’ll get him back,” Girardi said. “I don’t have anything where someone said he’ll definitely be back in this many days or that many days. I have that feeling we’ll get him back.”
The regular season has just a shade under four weeks remaining. Teixeira said they are “starting from scratch” with the injury.
“It was a lot worse than we first expected,” he said. “We’re just going to give it some time to heal. Be back in no time.”
When “no time” is, however, is uncertain.
Since fouling the ball off his shin Aug. 17, Teixeira started one game Aug. 25, pinch hit the next night and hasn’t played since. He was finally placed on the 15-day disabled list on Friday, in order to call-up recently demoted reliever Nick Rumbelow.
Teixeira said the injury didn’t get worse as he tried, but failed, to come back — but it didn’t help it heal, either. Previously, he went from crutches to running.
The plan now is to take it slow to avoid any chance of a setback.
“There’s progression now,” he said. “Now that we know it’s a lot worse than we first suspected, there’s going to be a build-up, from walking to jogging and running, making sure I can do everything.”
“That’s why I’m back on the crutches, really letting the whole thing calm down and starting from scratch. Hopefully this weekend, I’ll be off the crutches and getting into walking again.”
The nagging injury came at a terrible time for Teixeira, who was enjoying a bounce-back season, batting .255 with 31 homers, 79 RBIs and a .906 OPS that was his highest since 2009, his first year with the Yankees that ended in a World Series crown. Injuries have been a issue for most of Teixeira’s Yankees career — he played in an average of 87 games the last three seasons, mostly the result of right wrist problems that needed surgery — but this was more of a fluke.
“It’s just bad luck,” he said.
Teixeira later said: “This happens, guys. This is sports. Show me a team that doesn’t have an injury problem today. There’s not one out there. You just deal with, we’re dealing with it. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
“Hopefully we have two months of the season left, so there’s plenty of time for me to get healthy and get back.”
— Additional reporting by Dan Martin