Yankees’ Corey Kluber injury update is a riddle wrapped in an enigma

The New York Yankees gave us a medical update on Corey Kluber’s shoulder last week — which did not hurt, but felt heavy — and sent us on our merry way.

Then they revealed that a dye contrast MRI was still coming, which portended doom. After all, those are typically the examinations that reveal fuller tears, and it was fair to wonder if we were wasting time Googling “subscapular strain” in the first place because in reality it was something more normal and worse.

Aaron Boone dropped a dribble of information to the media this week, implying that he would have more Kluber information later on after even more exams. That, too, seemed bad.

And yet there was Boone on Thursday afternoon, as promised, delivering a positive yet cryptic update on Kluber that both encouraged us and confused us.

Though we were girded for horrible information, we actually got good news? We think?

We also got the type of “clarity” that sounds more like an ancient riddle.

Yankees Corey Kluber injury update is…good? But confusing.

After a series of additional examinations, it seems Kluber is still on track to return in eight weeks or so, but is harboring a different injury than we’d been told he had? The timeline hasn’t changed, but the entire process has?

Why does every Yankees injury have to be such an extended process? Why does Boone have to sound like an old wizard giving the media a riddle to solve? “Kluber’s injuries number three, but as they get closer, farther away ye be!”

According to what we learned on Thursday, Kluber actually intends to start a flat ground throwing program in the next few days to ramp up his strength, about two or three weeks ahead of any schedule we’d considered before.

In fact, we’d very much prepared ourselves for a season-ending injury announcement Thursday.

Every feeling we have is obviously still guarded, but we’d rather a mysterious pronouncement with a positive spin than a declarative statement of something horrible.

Kluber is 35 years old with lingering injury issues (remember, he didn’t even have shoulder surgery last year!), and anything the Yankees get from him until the end of the year should be considered a bonus.

He’d look awfully nice in some sort of postseason rotation, though, and the Bombers have at least kept the chances of that happening alive this week in more ways than one, by both beating the Rays a few times to stay in the AL East hunt and by dropping this enigmatic update.

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