When crucial utility man/part-time third baseman Jon Berti collapsed at the end of Friday’s blowout victory, it didn’t seem like a delusional assumption to dread the worst. Berti slumped without making contact and shuffled off the field, avoiding putting weight on his damaged leg.
A broken achilles would ruin Berti’s season and remove some much-needed length and variety off the Yankees’ bench, not to mention being personally upsetting to a player who has garnered plaudits year after year of mediocrity in Miami.
Nobody hates to see a vital player go down, but in the ninth inning of a game with the Yankees up 7-0? New York sports radio had to avoid blaming Tom Thibodeau.
Concerns about Berti intensified after Aaron Boone failed to provide an update on his scans over 24 hours after Saturday’s win. Thankfully, Sunday’s arrival at the ballpark brought some good news: Berti’s season is likely not done. He’ll be out for a time while he recovers from a high-grade calf strain, and the Yankees may give him some rest while DJ LeMahieu and Oswald Peraza are reportedly preparing to return.
Yankees infielder Jon Berti sustains a high-grade calf strain; comeback timeline unknown.
The immediate concern was a full tear, and while a “high-grade strain” is essentially a minor tear, the fact is that Berti will recover slowly but should return to aid this squad down the stretch run, rather than sitting out the rest of the season.
Berti, who is batting.273 in 55 at-bats and is less than a week removed from blasting a game-changing three-run homer against the White Sox, is one of those absences that you realize weeks later, understanding you don’t have that extra trustworthy element to help you get through the long season. Remember when Mike Tauchman went down in September 2019 at Fenway (always Fenway), and we thought the Yankees would be fine, only for Giancarlo Stanton to go down a few weeks later and the entire house to collapse?
Tauchman may have helped. Berti will help when he returns. However, as always, the “crowded infield” appears to figure itself out in cosmic terms. LeMahieu should return shortly; in the meantime, Kevin Smith will take Berti’s spot, while The Machine was shifted to the 60-Day IL in a paperwork-only manoeuvre.
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