ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It turns out that Giancarlo Stanton’s setback last month was more complicated than just a reinjury of his right calf strain.
General manager Brian Cashman revealed Thursday that Stanton “had a whole new injury … not a setback from the prior injury,” after the Yankees veteran DH had been on the verge of returning from the initial injury he sustained in late April.
The new injury, suffered while running the bases in mid-June, is still a right calf strain, but in a slightly different area, Cashman said, which is why his progress has been slow.
“It kind of resets the whole thing,” Cashman said before a 12-4 win over the Rays. “So he’s finally been cleared to start some running. He’s gotten PRP injections along the way but, ultimately, it was an unfortunate circumstance. Certainly, we’d love to have him in that lineup and being the weapon that he is. But we have to let it heal. We have to give it the time it takes, and unfortunately, it takes time.”
How long that will take remains to be seen, though it seems unlikely at this point that Stanton will be available to the Yankees before August.
The 36-year-old’s extended absence has especially hurt since Aaron Judge went down at the end of May with a right rib stress fracture, which he will finally have re-imaged during the All-Star break next week.
The offense is in the midst of a brutal stretch without the two sluggers, and it is still going to be weeks before either has a chance of returning.
Giancarlo Stanton suffered a new injury when he had a setback last month. Jason Szenes for the New York Post
Carlos Rodón played catch on flat ground Thursday for the first time since landing on the injured list last week with left elbow inflammation.
Cashman said he did not think that Carlos Lagrange’s transition from starting to relieving — in hopes of impacting the big league club in the second half — led to the top prospect sustaining a capsular sprain of the right shoulder, which may cost him the rest of the season.
“I really don’t,” Cashman said. “I feel like the transition was really conservative. You’ll see starters come up and just collapse in the pen like that; there’s no de-load and no transition. This was a very slow, methodical process. … I don’t think this had any contribution to that. He probably was feeling stuff that he didn’t really tell us about, which is not abnormal. He might have been dealing with this for a little while prior.”