Mets manager Carlos Mendoza on Oswaldo Cabrera's injury: 'It made me sick to my stomach'
Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, inset, was close with Oswaldo Cabrera when he worked in the Yankees' organization. Credit: AP
SEATTLE — The shock and sadness that followed the ugly injury Oswaldo Cabrera suffered late Monday night, which the team announced Tuesday was a left ankle fracture, wasn’t felt only in the Yankees’ clubhouse.
It extended to Queens.
“It made me sick to my stomach, to be honest,” second-year Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told Newsday from his Citi Field office early Tuesday afternoon. “You hate to see that happen to anyone, but knowing the kid, how much joy he brings every day, how much he cares, the personality, it just breaks your heart.”
Mendoza, who knows Cabrera better than most because of the 15 years he spent in a variety of roles in the Yankees' organization, spoke several hours before Aaron Boone talked to the media in Seattle.
Boone, speaking in the visitor’s dugout at T-Mobile Park before Tuesday night’s game against the Mariners, said overall the news appeared to be “good” regarding Cabrera, who did not require emergency surgery and who was released from the hospital in the early-morning hours Tuesday.
Boone, who visited Cabrera in the hospital late Monday night, as did much of the team, said the infielder flew back to New York on Tuesday and will be evaluated further by a specialist on Wednesday, mostly to see if surgery will be needed.
“It was great to see him,” Boone said. “Classic Cabby. He was in amazing spirits, making us feel good and grateful to see us all, and he was feeling good at that point. I think, all things considered, the early rounds of things, good news considering. Hopefully over the next couple of days we know exactly what we’re dealing with and start the mending process.”
Boone added: “And then a lot of guys were able to see him down in the [team hotel] lobby, too, today before he left for his flight. I would say he’s doing great. Honestly, it’s Cabby. He was smiling, happy, and trust he’s in good hands.”
Boone used “joy” multiple times in talking about Cabrera, a word around the Yankees that typically gets a workout when his name comes up.
“The joy he always exudes was prevalent,” Boone said of his visit with Cabrera in the hospital.
Mendoza, Boone’s bench coach for four seasons before getting the Mets' job before the 2024 season, saw that joy pretty much from the day he met Cabrera. That occurred in 2015 shortly after the Yankees took Cabrera that July in the international draft. Mendoza at the time served as the organization’s minor-league field coordinator, a position he held from 2013-17.
“I saw him grow up in the organization since they signed him,” said Mendoza, who first came across Cabrera, then 16 years old, at the Yankees’ complex in the Dominican Republic.
“Same guy then that he was walking into Yankee Stadium as a big-leaguer,” said Mendoza, who, like Cabrera, is a native of Venezuela. “Doesn’t matter if he’s going good or bad, he brings joy to everyone. There’s people who walk in a room and it just gets brighter, and he’s that person. It just sucks.”
Mendoza, whose NL East-leading team will play the Yankees in the Bronx on Friday night in the season’s first iteration of the Subway Series, said he first became aware of Cabrera’s injury in the early-morning hours Tuesday after returning home from Citi Field following the Mets’ 4-3 win over the Pirates and getting ready to go to bed.
“I saw his name come across my phone,” Mendoza said. “It was pretty hard to see it.”
The gruesome injury occurred in the ninth inning of the Yankees’ 11-5 victory over the Mariners on a play at the plate in which Cabrera scored on Aaron Judge’s sacrifice fly to right. After about 10 minutes, Cabrera’s left leg was braced and put in an air cast and he was taken by ambulance to the hospital (head trainer Tim Lentych accompanied him).
The injury turned what had been a joyous dugout sullen. Multiple players in a mostly quiet clubhouse afterward still had welled-up eyes.
“He’s one of the best human beings in the clubhouse,” said Trent Grisham, who homered twice Monday. “It stings and hurts a lot to see somebody that’s so good, the best of us, go down like that.”
Said Mendoza: “It goes to show you the impact that this guy has on the locker room.”
Mendoza said he planned to talk with Boone later in the day Tuesday to get the latest on Cabrera’s condition, something he was able to do, Boone confirmed.
“Watching him develop and go through ups and downs [in the minor leagues] and becoming a big-leaguer, he’s one of the guys I’m most proud of,” Mendoza said. “Because he was never an upper prospect and he had to earn it just by working really hard . . . His tools didn’t wow you, but there was something special about the kid you could tell right away.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
