Oswaldo Cabrera suffers serious ankle injury in Yankees' rout
Oswaldo Cabrera of the New York Yankees injures his lower left leg after scoring a run against the Seattle Mariners during the ninth inning on Monday. Credit: Getty Images/Steph Chambers
SEATTLE — The excitement in the Yankees’ dugout, with another blowout win in hand, came to a sudden and horrifying stop Monday night in the ninth inning when Oswaldo Cabrera, among the most popular players on the team from the time he debuted in 2022, suffered a ghastly left ankle injury and had to be taken off the field via ambulance.
“Just praying for our guy Cabby tonight,” Aaron Boone said.
Stone-cold silence took over T-Mobile Park after Cabrera tagged up and came home on Aaron Judge’s sacrifice fly to right in the Yankees’ 11-5 victory over the Mariners.
Leodys Tavares’ throw from right brought catcher Cal Raleigh slightly up the third-base line and Cabrera made an awkward move to avoid him. He did not initially touch home plate and it appeared his left ankle gave way as he planted to reach for the plate.
Ben Rice, due up next, turned away and grimaced as multiple Yankees trainers and manager Aaron Boone sprinted from the dugout, with the trainers calling for additional help. Head trainer Tim Lentych lay on the ground cradling Cabrera, lightly rubbing his back in a circular motion as first a cart came onto the field and then an ambulance. Judge kneeled nearby. With Cabrera clearly in agony, players in both dugouts looked on with blank stares as his left leg eventually was braced and put in an air cast and he was taken off the field and to Harborview Medical Center.
Lentych accompanied Cabrera — who asked Judge, “Hey, did I score?” shortly before being put into the ambulance — to the hospital, which is less than two miles from T-Mobile Park.
“He’s one of the best human beings in the clubhouse,” Trent Grisham, who homered twice, said in the somber clubhouse, which after any victory has party music blasting but was quiet on this night. “It stings and hurts a lot to see somebody that’s so good, the best of us, go down like that.”
Cabrera, with the organization since he was taken in the 2015 international draft at the age of 16 out of Venezuela, has been a beloved figure in each clubhouse he’s been in during his climb to the majors because of the unrelenting joy with which he shows up to the ballpark every day.
“Just an infectious smile,” Judge said. “He’s a guy that, if I strike out, if I pop up, if he’s running out there to give me my glove, he’s like, ‘Hey, you’ve got three more at-bats, let’s go.’ He’s a guy that’s a leader among all of us. He’s one of my favorite teammates.”
Clarke Schmidt, who earned the win after allowing three runs, three hits and two walks in six innings-plus, said Cabrera “just always has a smile on his face. Any time you see him, it’s hard not to smile.”
As for the game, which took on a completely different feel in terms of significance, the Yankees racked up 15 hits, including four homers, after scoring 29 runs and accruing 38 hits in winning two of three from the A’s over the weekend.
Austin Wells hit a three-run shot in a six-run fifth and Anthony Volpe had a two-run blast in the ninth. Grisham’s second solo homer of the game in the fifth gave him 12 home runs in 101 at-bats to that point.
Judge went 2-for-3 with a double, two walks and a sacrifice fly, bumping his season batting average to .414 and his OPS to 1.286.
Raleigh hit a two-out, two-run homer off Tim Hill in the eight to draw the Mariners within 8-5, but Volpe responded with his homer in the ninth to give the Yankees a cushion. Julio Rodriguez and Jorge Polanco also homered for Seattle.
The Yankees, who have won five of their last six, improved to a season-high seven games over .500 (24-17). The Mariners (22-18), swept by the Blue Jays over the weekend, have lost four straight.
Though not nearly the level of dominance the Yankees have enjoyed over the Twins the last 20 years, the Yankees are 34-15 against the Mariners in their last 49 games against them and, entering Monday, had won or tied 16 of their last 19 series vs. the M’s dating to 2014.
None of that, however, mattered in a clubhouse afterward that still had more than a few players with welled-up eyes.
“It smacks you with that perspective thing that we try to talk about, try and have all the time,” Boone said. “It’s at the end of the day a game. And so we just hope our teammate’s doing all right.”
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.
