The Yankees said that Greg Bird is going to be out a month with a plantar fascia tear. By Yankees logic in terms of injury return timetables, you have to move the decimal over about two spots to the right and that is probably more of an actual timetable for Bird.
Who knows when we’ll see him again. For a guy who was essentially the first baby bomber to breakthrough in 2015, it’s strange to see how such a young hitter with so much promise and backing from the front office essentially just petered out to a point where, a team riddled with injuries won’t miss his production because he didn’t really do anything anyway.
If his replacement Mike Ford goes hitless for prolonged periods of time, it’s essentially what Bird has done since 2018.
I can’t even begin to imagine what Bird is feeling right now. All he’s ever known is baseball and being good at it. Just look at him slinging dingers in high school. He never could’ve imagined the vitriol that would be pointed at him by the Yankee Stadium faithful coming some eight years-later.
Maybe only Robb Stark has had such a bigger fall from grace the way Bird has. Here are two guys who looked the part of the conquering hero and were thought to be the prince we were promised.
Both had their great moments to make you think this too. Robb’s time in the spotlight came after defeating the Lannister forces a few times in battle and Bird’s was the Andrew Miller home run.
In the end though, Robb was mutilated at a wedding and Bird was mutilated by 89 mile per hour off-speed pitches right down broadway that he couldn’t catch up to.
Their predecessors were never thought to be the quintessential hero figure either. Jon Snow, the bastard of the Starks – allegedly – became the King of the North and Luke Voit, a young man who was destined for a lot of minor league bus rides in the St. Louis Cardinals organization – essentially making him a baseball bastard – now dons the role of first basemen for the New York Yankees.
In all honesty, I don’t know what happens to Bird. Maybe there’s an alternate universe where he comes back healthy and goes on to win Comeback Player of the Year. I just don’t see it here, though.
I don’t know how many more chances he gets from the front office now. Having to compete with Voit for a job that has been his for years should’ve been a sign that maybe this was the last straw for him. I guess we shall see.
Now Brian Cashman’s statements regarding the Bird injury don’t really lend themselves to optimism either:
“Obviously the injury history is for the record and every question is fair game,” Cashman was quoted as saying in the New York Post. “Obviously when you employ a player like that, you give all the treatment possible to try and stay healthy. It is a fair question to ask. Obviously I don’t have an answer. I don’t want to pile on while [Bird] is going through things. We are going to give him the best care and treatment possible.”
When Cashman says “pile on” you have to wonder just what that means. Is he purposely holding out on the future of Greg Bird because, well, things probably can’t go any worse for him?
As we saw with Sonny Gray, Cashman doesn’t usually mince words. Guess we’ll have to file this under “We shall see”, as well.
