Yankees injuries mount; Greg Bird shut down again

Thursday was a rough night for Yankees. Not only did they lose to the A’s in 10 innings — two integral players left the contest with injuries. And this came 4 1/2 hours after Greg Bird was reportedly been shut down yet again.

The Yankees are smack dab in the middle of a nightmare California road trip. As if losing three out of four games wasn’t bad enough, both Gary Sanchez (abductor muscle) and Aaron Hicks (Achilles) exited in the ninth inning of Thursday night’s heartbreaking 8-7 defeat.

On the pitching front, reliever Adam Warren was unavailable to pitch in the contest due to a strained trap muscle in his right shoulder — in addition to CC Sabathia hitting the 10-day DL with a Grade 2 left hamstring strain. He’ll likely miss the next month.

But perhaps most deflating of all was the news that the Yankees were sending Greg Bird to see team doctor Chris Ahmad after the 24-year-old first baseman complained of right leg pain.

General manager Brian Cashman explained the situation to the New York Post:

“We were caught off guard. He called and said the foot didn’t feel right,’’ the general manager said Thursday before the Yankees opened a four-game series against the A’s at the Coliseum.“We are pulling the plug on his rehab and he will see Ahmad,’’ Cashman said.

Bird is also reportedly dealing with a right knee contusion after fouling a ball off it sometime within the last 10 days.

Manager Joe Girardi told NJ Advance Media he is hopeful Sanchez and Hicks can avoid a DL stint.

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“As of right now, I don’t think it’s a long period of time (for either),” he said. “Maybe a day or two. I don’t know. But I think we’ll know a lot more (Friday) morning when they wake up.”

In regards to the Bird situation, the club won’t know more until Dr. Ahmad’s evaluation. Sadly, with each passing day, Bird is looking more and more like past Yankee prospect Nick Johnson.

Chris Carter, who homered off of John Axford on Thursday night will continue to see the bulk of playing time at first. However, with spotty offensive production, and offering little to nothing defensively, where else will the Yankees turn if Bird is shut down indefinitely?

The likeliest scenario is Tyler Austin who is batting .300 with one home run and seven RBI in 76 at-bats at Triple-A Scranton. Another internal candidate is Mike Ford who is hitting .306 with four dingers and 10 RBI in 35 at-bats for the RailRiders. As for Rob Refsyder — in my opinion, that ship has sailed.

Outside the organization, names that have popped up include:

• Pedro Alvarez – Has a minor league opt-out with the Orioles. Currently, the New York native has 13 homers and 41 RBI in 64 games at Triple-A Norfolk.
• Yonder Alonso – Likely to be a hot commodity come July 31 — Alonso, 30, is absolutely raking at a .306/.398/.654 clip — 17 homers and 38 RBI for the last placed A’s.
• Eric Hosmer – Who I wrote about yesterday.
• James Loney – Which scares me profoundly.

Yankees Rumors: Eric Hosmer to the Bronx?

With Greg Bird scuffling to find his swing while on a rehab assignment, the idea of the Yankees acquiring free-agent-to-be Eric Hosmer has been floated.

Matt Holliday, who has manned first base six times this season hasn’t looked all that comfortable, as he proved during Wednesday night’s 7-5 loss to the Angels when he consistently ventured way too far away from the first base bag.