Yankees prospect Trey Sweeney hits IL after mysterious weekend injury

One day, you’re praising a prospect’s red-hot start, the next you’re reading between the lines of his trip to the Injured List. Such is life assessing the New York Yankees farm system.

Remember when the Yanks sprung several surprise Tommy John surgeries upon us on a random, quiet day of the offseason? We do. Tuesday’s IL announcement didn’t spark quite as much distrust and distaste, but it did make fans wonder about the severity of Trey Sweeney’s injury, considering all beat writers learned from the team was that he was injured.

Sweeney, the Yankees’ 2021 first-round selection, was off to an impressive start at High-A Hudson Valley, though the highlights didn’t quite match the numbers.

Clips of his thunderous home runs went viral, but an end-of-week slump left him triple-slashing .250/.333/.531, solid if unspectacular numbers.

That was, of course, before he was mysteriously removed from Sunday’s action, with the only updates coming from Minor-League Baseball’s painfully detail-averse app.

Sweeney knocked a single, then sat through an “injury delay” … at which point, radio silence ensued until Tuesday afternoon.

Yankees place Trey Sweeney on Hudson Valley IL with lower body injury

On Tuesday, the move became official (sponsored by Westchester Med!), as Sweeney joined the minors’ 7-day IL, replaced by prospects James Nelson and Cristian Perez on Hudson Valley’s active roster.

What … exactly … had befallen him? The team didn’t give out a single detail other than announcing he was taking a brief pause from the action.

“7-day” is, of course, also meaningless. The Yankees are famously tight-lipped, and as any follower of the minors can tell you, a “7-Day IL” stint can inexplicably last months.

According to Yankees minor-league sleuth Hugh McKenna, though, Sweeney’s injury is being described as “lower half tightness,” and his week-long rest is said to be out of an abundance of caution.

Generic descriptions of the affected area that hint the injury could reside … really anywhere in one specific half of Sweeney’s body? Man, are the NHL playoffs really here already?

Stop revving up the panic meter on Sweeney. No eyewitnesses reported anything disastrous and, at the very worst, this seems like some muscle soreness. Blame the stop-start of a quiet offseason followed by a quick spring training.

If Sweeney isn’t on the mend in week or so, though, you might want to pay a visit to Westchester Med and see what’s up.

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