Yankees' Clarke Schmidt joins Jazz Chisholm Jr. with flank injury
Clarke Schmidt of the New York Yankees. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Yankees are getting outflanked by injuries.
Clarke Schmidt was scratched from Saturday's start as he became the second Yankee this week to be sidelined by what the club is calling a “flank” injury. That means a strain in his side, which until this turn of a phrase was more commonly referred to as an oblique strain.
The first to injure his flank, Jazz Chisholm Jr., said the other day that the strain that landed him on the injured list was “really in my flank — if you look at a cow, that’s their oblique, I guess.”
The good news for Schmidt is that the Yankees aren’t having a cow about his sore left side. The righthander has been re-slotted to start on Tuesday after having an MRI on Friday that came back clean on his flank.
“I guess that’s the new term everybody’s using,” Schmidt said. “I feel fine. I left [Friday] expecting to start. They just felt like there was maneuverability to give me an extra day. Feel fine and just, I guess, part of the process.”
The Yankees' off-day on Thursday and Max Fried’s seven-inning start on Friday helped the club make the decision to be cautious with Schmidt as their bullpen went into Saturday well rested. Lefthander Ryan Yarbrough started in place of Schmidt, who said he lobbied to not get skipped.
“There was a little pushback,” he said. “But I’m not the decision-maker here. I just go out there whenever they tell me to. Thankful it’s just a couple of days moving it around. Nothing in the grand scheme of things.”
Yarbrough allowed one run and one hit with three walks and two strikeouts in four innings in the Yankees’ 3-2 loss.
“Going into the day, if you would have said, ‘Four innings, one run’ — sign us up all day long,'' manager Aaron Boone said. “He gave us exactly what we needed, gave us a chance and put us in a good position to win a game. Unfortunately, we just couldn't quite get to the finish line.”
Chisholm, who originally thought his flank injury was not going to be a big deal, said on Saturday that he was surprised when an MRI showed an oblique strain in not one, not two, but three different spots.
“I'm very surprised, just depending on how my body feels and how I feel,” he said. “It’s the second time I've had an oblique [injury]. This feels completely different from the first one. So for me, I was surprised when I saw the results.”
So Chisholm now accepts that he will be out about four to six weeks.
“That's what they say is like a normal average for someone to come back on it,” he said. “So that's what we’re planning on trying to get to, if not before. It’s super-frustrating. I want to be out there every day on my team. When I don’t get a chance to do that, it sucks.”
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.
