Greg Bird‘s 2016 has ended before it began. Reports surfaced that the 23-year-old first baseman would have shoulder surgery, thus effectively concluding his season. Bird first experienced problems in May 2015 when he was playing for Double-A Trenton. He did not have surgery on the torn labrum in his right shoulder and spent time on the Yankees roster, helping the club to its first playoff appearance since 2012. Still, with the shoulder problem resurfacing, he won’t be back in pinstripes until 2017.
Greg Bird’s Injury and What it Means for the Yankees
While it is unfortunate for anybody to have a season-ending injury, especially before even reporting to spring training, Greg Bird probably wouldn’t have reaped the benefits he did towards the end of last year anyway. At the GM Meetings in November, Brian Cashman said the young lefty was pegged in to play at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. There would be nowhere for him to play. Mark Texeira’s injury enabled Bird to take his spot, but he’s back for the final year of his deal. Alex Rodriguez has two seasons left on his contract, so designated hitter is ruled out. Even if Rodriguez were to go down to injury, then Carlos Beltran would assume the role of designated hitter, Cashman had told reporters.
However, even though Bird playing might not have been ideal to the longtime Yankee GM, the facts are that he was implying that all or part of Texeira, A-Rod and Beltran would’ve been 100% healthy the entire 2016 campaign. Texeira’s injury problems last year was hardly something new since he became a Yankee. From 2009-2011, he appeared in 470 games. Since 2012, however, he’s played in a mere 372 of them. The fact that he’s been injury prone whitewashes his productivity when he has played and considering that Texeira turns 36 in April, it’s obvious he has more games behind him than ahead of him.
Rodriguez is 40 and has missed a lot of playing time in recent years, too. Part of this is because of the infamy surrounding his ties to performance-enhancing drugs, but the injury bug has also bit him a number of times over the years in the Bronx. Sure, he was very healthy in 2015 and had his best year in a very long time, but who is to say what he did in 2015 will carry over to 2016? A-Rod’s numbers might drastically decline, or he could spend more time on the disabled list.
The good news about Beltran is that while he has seen fewer games in a Yankee uniform compared to previous stops, he’s probably the most reliable out of the three at this point. Even if he isn’t what he once was, Beltran can still put up respectable numbers. His problem, like Texeira and Rodriguez, is age. He’ll be 39 towards the end of April. We are talking about three players who will have a combined age of 116 by the time the season is over. It makes sense that Greg Bird might have been roadblocked, but let’s face it, considering that he can swing a powerful bat in a hitter friendly Yankee Stadium, coupled with the question marks about the others, him missing 2016 could potentially be disastrous for the Yanks.
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