Miguel Andújar goes under the knife

The first hints started trickling back to the Yankees’ analytics department, although it didn’t require any special grasp of sabermetrics to know what was going on with Miguel Andújar. His shoulder was bothering him again – to the point where every at-bat had become a referendum on whether or not he needed surgery. The American League’s runner-up for the Rookie of the Year award in 2018 was a near-automatic out. It was time for hard decisions.

Andújar had spent a month rehabbing a partially torn labrum, diligently working through every drill the medical staff had devised for him. The injury was a bad one, although not season-ending – at least that’s what the Yankees wanted to believe. Andújar damaged the shoulder with a head-first slide into third base on March 31, leaving the club with two options.

The first was a cortisone injection, followed with a conservative regimen of muscle-strengthening exercises around the labrum. With any luck, the club said, Andújar would be able to avoid surgery and spend the rest of the summer at third or, more likely, in the DH slot. It was an ambitious plan but not an impossible one considering Andújar was a position player. Had he been a pitcher there would’ve been no alternative except the operating table and a 6-8 month rehab which would’ve automatically flipped the calendar to 2020.

Both the Yankees and Andújar desperately wanted to avoid Door No. 2 and for obvious reasons. He was coming off a stellar 2018 season with limitless possibilities for ’19 and beyond. The 24-year-old Dominican wasn’t a he-man by any stretch but he was blessed with loose, wiry strength and extraordinary bat speed. Together they posed a threat to opposing pitchers that came out of nowhere. The result? A .297 average with 27 HRs and 92 RBIs. Only Giancarlo Stanton hit more homers for the Yankees.

Through it all Andújar was quiet and self-contained, fiercely devoted to improving his game. Defense was never Andújar’s strength but he worked hard to at least ensure it wouldn’t be a liability. While the rest of his teammates were home at Christmas time Andújar was training at the Yankees’ minor league facility in Tampa. “I wanted to improve my footwork and be more relaxed and comfortable” around third base he said after the full squad had reported to spring training.

Andújar was feeling like a breakthrough season was in front of him – bat-skills and a dependable glove all rolled into a can’t-miss package the Yankees would call their own for years. Along with Gleyber Torres, the Bombers were sitting on a gold mine of young infield talent. All that was missing was time and experience and success.

But the narrative changed dramatically barely a week into the regular season when Andújar fully extended his right arm diving back into the third base in a game against the Orioles. He felt an ominous twinge, like something had jammed deep within the shoulder joint. Managers and coaches wince any time one of their players attempts a head-first slide for this precise reason: the hand, elbow and shoulder are all uniquely vulnerable in that position. In this case it was Andújar’s labrum that suffered a partial tear.

So it was onto Door No. 1 for the next month. After two weeks of full rest Andújar began gently testing the shoulder, surprised to learn it had indeed improved. The searing pain was gone, the range of motion was increasing. Even the first few tentative throws returned a positive verdict: no pain.

Little by little, the Yankees started imagining Andújar’s return and tabling the idea of surgery until the winter. Manager Aaron Boone said, “we wouldn’t be putting Miggy through this (rehab) if we thought there was any chance he could injure himself any further.” The days of recovery turned into weeks until there were no more tests to administer. Andújar was ready to be activated from the IL, apparently having beaten the odds.

“I feel good, I feel strong,” he said before taking the field on May 4. He went 1-for-4 that night against the Twins, giving the Yankees every reason to believe they could count on Andújar’s bat for the rest of the year. Only, the warning signs soon started flashing: there were only five hits in the first 22 at-bats followed by an 0-for-15 drought over the next four games. This wasn’t the real Andújar, at least not the healthy one.

By May 12, with his average down to .143 it was obvious something was wrong, a suspicion that was verified by a second MRI. The tear was still there, and despite all the work put into strengthening the kinetic chain Andújar was still in pain summoning that extra gear. As his agent Ulises Cabrera told the New York Times: “Miguel tried to give as much to the team as he could but realized that he just wasn’t physically able to deal with the pain and still be as productive as we all know he can be.”

The arc of Andújar’s 2019 story was completed earlier this week when the Yankees announced Andújar would undergo the surgery he’d tried so hard to avoid. The club is lucky to have a flashy replacement in rookie Gio Urshela, but there’s otherwise little consolation losing a dynamic, middle-of-the-lineup force. Andújar will be back in 2020, but he’ll forever remember this as the season of the lost wager.

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