What If Mark Teixeira’s Injury is Worse than We’re Being Told?

As I was watching the Chattanooga Lookouts on Tuesday night I checked Twitter to learn that Mark Teixeira needed a day from manager Joe Girardi to nurse some bothersome neck spasms. Now call me pessimistic if you want to but you can also call me something else, right more times than not. As I’ve said many times before on this blog I know no more than anyone reading this and I have no inside information into the front office or the players so I have to either speculate or use history and my common sense to make judgements about what is likely to come. In my experience the Yankees tend to under-exaggerate their injuries, remember Mark Teixeira’s broken leg that started out as a “day-to-day” injury and turned into him missing six months as a recent example of this, so what if they are doing the same with this latest Teixeira injury?

We all saw what happened to the Yankees offense in 2015 without Teixeira in the middle of it. Sure we got to see the emergence of Greg Bird and he did damn well hitting a plethora of home runs but the offense was just not the same. Alex Rodriguez never got the fastballs to hit like he did earlier in the season and no one wanted any part of being hurt by Brian McCann. Carlos Beltran hit for average but he never got a high fastball that he could drive and the Yankees offense sputtered into a first round loss in the playoffs. De ja vu all over again. Well minus the whole playoffs thing.

If Teixeira were to go down the whole Yankees offense would go down. Alex Rodriguez is already on the disabled list while Brian McCann and Carlos Beltran would never get another pitch to hit again this season. Starlin Castro would continue to rake and the table setters at the top of the order would continue to try and do their best but this offense would suffer immensely. A lineup with Ronald Torreyes and Chase Headley looks a lot different than one with Mark Teixeira and anyone else.

So here’s to hoping for just a day or two thing with these neck spasms and a strong return from the rest for Mark Teixeira. Teixeira wasn’t exactly tearing the cover off the ball but his presence alone makes up for a lot in the Yankees lineup. Get healthy Mark!