Newsletter signup

Professional

Advertisement
baseball

Teixeira hopes to avoid surgery

– Mark Teixeira says he has a partially torn tendon sheath in his right wrist and didn’t rule out missing up to two months of the regular season.

The first baseman rejoined the New York Yankees at spring training Sunday after getting hurt March 5 while with the U.S. team at the World Baseball Classic. The injury initially was announced as a strained wrist.

“The tendon is fine,” Teixeira said. “That’s the good thing. It’s the sheath that holds the tendon over. ... It’s the little covering that holds the tendon in place. When you rotate your wrist, that tendon will snap in and out if the sheath is gone, and so the tendon sheath just got damaged a little bit, and we just want to make sure that the tendon is sitting in the groove right and it’s stable. If that doesn’t heal, then the tendon has a chance to get damaged, and you really don’t want that.”

Teixeira plans to start limited baseball drills in about a week and is optimistic that surgery will not be necessary.

He was hurt while swinging a weighted bat left-handed off a tee in an indoor cage during pregame warmups with the U.S. at the World Baseball Classic.

The Yankees have said Teixeira will be out until at least May.

“The good thing is it’s nothing major, nothing where I’m missing a whole season,” Teixeira said.

Teixeira is not blaming his national team participation for the injury.

“It has nothing to do with the WBC,” he said. “It would be one thing if we weren’t playing games. We started playing games on the 23rd of February. February 23rd, think about it.”

Advertisement