Yankees' Anthony Rizzo goes on IL with post-concussion syndrome
Anthony Rizzo of the Yankees speaks to the media before a game against the Astros at Yankee Stadium on Thursday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
A befuddled Anthony Rizzo figured there had to be a reason why he was playing like one of the worst hitters in baseball for more than two months.
“I didn’t just forget how to do this all of a sudden,” he said.
Finally, on Wednesday, Rizzo got the answer he was seeking. A battery of tests by a top neurologist showed Rizzo had suffered a concussion when he was hit in the head by the hip of San Diego’s Fernando Tatis at first base on May 28 at Yankee Stadium.
The concussion went undiagnosed for more than two months. During that time, Rizzo’s symptoms included what he on Thursday called a “hazy” feeling that he described as “you go to bed sober and you wake up a little hungover.”
On Thursday, the Yankees placed Rizzo on the 10-day injured list with post-concussion syndrome. There is no timetable for his return; manager Aaron Boone called it “week-to-week.”
Boone said the tests showed Rizzo had “some cognitive impairment,” which Rizzo confirmed.
Said Rizzo: “We went and got the tests ran and it comes back saying that I'm moving a lot slower than the normal person reaction time would be. It's definitely alarming, especially for what I do for a living. But the good news is they said that with the [treatment] regimen they put me on, it should be fully healed.”
Rizzo, 33, said the treatment includes supplements and video exercises. He said the diagnosis was “a little relieving” because he had been perplexed as to why he had been performing so poorly for so long.
“[It’s] a silver lining of I’m not crazy for walking back to the dugout consistently thinking, 'Man, how did I miss that pitch? I usually don't miss that,’ “ Rizzo said. “Or, when I swing at a pitch thinking it was in one location and go and look at the video and it's in a different location.”
The answer was that he had suffered an undiagnosed brain injury and was trying to play through it.
At the time of his injury, Rizzo was batting .304 with 11 home runs and an .880 OPS.
Rizzo left the game immediately after the collision — which happened on a simple pickoff attempt by the Yankees catcher when Tatis did not slide — and underwent the standard Major League Baseball concussion protocol tests. Rizzo was cleared and flew with the team that night to Seattle.
“We did the standard league testing and I think that was good,” he said. “The baseline for that was fine. There was really no symptoms. It’s not like I had headaches afterward. It's not like I was really losing memory afterward or anything like that. Our training staff handled it very well and respectfully. It’s just something that the neurologist said these things cascade afterward. Maybe you don't initially feel the initial [symptoms]. Every concussion’s different. So you don't feel the initial blow, but what happens is then your brain starts cascading . . .. and I guess that's what happened.”
The only consequence of the collision that was immediately diagnosed was a neck injury. Rizzo returned to the lineup on June 2.
Since then, Rizzo has hit .172 (29-for-169) with one home run. He had a five-strikeout game in Baltimore on Sunday.
Although Boone said Rizzo saw the neurologist because he was feeling worse, Rizzo made it sound more like he underwent the tests more in an effort to find out why he was unable to perform at his normal level.
“It wasn’t more the fogginess, because I thought that was kind of just normal throughout a big-league season,” Rizzo said. “You wake up some days feeling not very good. Some days you wake up better. That's kind of normal throughout the years. It did feel a little different, but it was more of the walking back and just saying, ‘Man, I don't understand how I'm missing that pitch, or I would swing at a pitch middle away and I thought it was three feet off the plate. Things like that . . . To find out these test results is a little relieving in one way because I’m not as crazy as what I was putting myself through.”
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
