Weird Injury Situations Already Popping Up This Year

(Never a good look.  Courtesy of Corey Sipkin/NY Daily News)

Spring Training still isn't two weeks old and already it's been an eventful one for the Yankees, especially in the health department.  The Bombers had their fair share of injury concerns coming into camp with A-Rod's hip surgery and their collection of veterans fighting to come back on schedule from major 2012 injuries.  And after a season as injury-plagued as 2012, it would have been nice to have a spring that was light on the injury news.  I guess the infamous baseball gods didn't get that memo because these first two weeks have been chock full of injury stories, and not just from the expected recovery sources.  As luck would have it, none of those guys have been problem areas at all so far, quite the opposite in fact.


All the injured or recovering-from-being-injured guys are moving forward with their respective rehab plans seemingly without issue:

• Derek Jeter has taken hacks in the cage, fielded grounders, started running and agility drills, and according to Cash is scheduled to get into his first ST game as a DH sometime around March 10th.
• CC Sabathia threw his first bullpen since elbow surgery and felt good.  He's a little behind schedule but currently on track to pitch his first ST game sometime next month.
• Michael Pineda, who may or may not be ahead of schedule, is back working off a full mound and has thrown two bullpens off the full mound so far, with positive reviews in both sessions.
• Mariano Rivera has also thrown two bullpen sessions early in camp and has had nothing but good things to say about his knee and arm feel after almost a year off.

At the same time, all the guys who came into camp 100% healthy with no pre-existing injuries have been the ones getting hurt:

• David Adams had back problems before even getting into camp and has already missed the first week of team activities.
• Mark Montgomery has missed about a week of normal work with back stiffness, although he did throw a side session yesterday.
• Phil Hughes added a line to his already well-documented injury ledger with another bulging disc issue in his upper back.  He's still at least a week away from throwing again.
• Nick Goody apparently injured his ankle in a car accident and showed up to the team facility yesterday on crutches.
• Curtis Granderson was hit on the right forearm with the 5th pitch he saw this spring and will now be out 10 weeks with a fracture to that forearm.

I'm not saying there's any connection to be made or anything to be read into to try to explain this turn of events.  It just seems like an imperfect storm of the nature of the game, bad injury history, and even worse luck, and there's nothing that anybody can do about it.  But it does create a feeling of uneasiness looking at the rest of the roster and waiting for the next injury shoe to drop.  2012 was a seemingly endless string of injuries that felled a lot of key contributors at both the Minor and Major League levels.  2013 is starting off on a similar path, and it'd be nice to have that trend turn around soon.