As The Quads Strain...

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

The Yankees lost an absolute heartbreaker in Boston last night, a game in which their offense surprisingly picked itself up off the mat and climbed back into a game that they probably had no business being in.  If there was a tougher way to send the team off to Texas to possibly watch their postseason lights get turned out, I'd hate to see it.  Look around the locker room after the game and there would have been plenty of worthy candidates for the finger of blame, including the guy in the manager's office, and after a loss like that what is everybody in Yankeeland going to be talking about today?  A couple of old guys with strained quads.

The Derek Jeter-Alex Rodriguez injury stories of 2013 are growing to near saga levels with what's gone down in the last 3 days.  After attempting to talk down the severity of the injury upon suffering it, Jeter was quickly placed on the 15-day DL on Friday morning, a sure sign that there is more going on with him physically than the team is letting on.  He's eligible to come off the DL this Saturday, but the early talk is that chances are good that won't happen.

If that wasn't enough, A-Rod's comeback plans were put on hold after he was forced to DH on Saturday instead of playing the field due to some tightness in his quad.  After going 0-4 with 3 Ks in that game, A-Rod was not in the Triple-A lineup yesterday and the news quickly came out that he was traveling back to New York to have an MRI on his quad.  The team confirmed last night that it was a Grade I strain and in an almost identical situation to Jeter, no timetable for A-Rod's return has been given.

The Captain heroically coming back to save his team only to end up back on the DL for over-exerting himself.  The Great Villainous A-Rod making plans to return only to suffer the same injury and give the fans and writers one more chance to roll their eyes at him and dredge up everything they hate about him.  It's classic NY tabloid stuff and it's going to sell a lot of papers, gain people a lot of Twitter followers, and give the ESPN talking heads reason to turn to the camera and blab for 30 seconds at a time.  It also might not even matter much anymore when they do come back, if they even come back at all.  With no timetable for either of their returns, it's likely that the Yankees' playoff chances will be gone by the time they return.

Guess you gotta love New York, huh?  Only place where 2 guys in their late 30s with strained quads can be the leading sports story in town.