Yankees fans breathe loud sigh of relief after Juan Soto injury update, MRI results

When New York Yankees superstar, all-everything outfielder Juan Soto exited after Thursday night's rain delay under a shroud of silence, every fan's guard went up immediately. When the root cause of the quick disappearing act was announced as "left forearm discomfort," the silence became deafening.

Was Soto headed for Jasson Dominguez's fate? That was announced as some form of elbow inflammation, then was revealed to need surgical intervention in a morose Aaron Boone postgame press conference. This sounded slightly less ominous; Soto commented and revealed that the issue, which had persisted for nearly two weeks, caused him no pain while hitting or throwing, but that the team (and surgeon Christopher Ahmad) agreed that scans were necessary, and that he should sit out Thursday's resumption.

Still, Boone's postgame availability, where he called the move "precautionary," then admitted the issue had been lingering a while, wasn't exactly comforting, especially for a fan base that's been uniquely acclimated to position player Tommy Johns in recent years (sigh ... Gleyber Torres, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Hicks, and Dominguez).

Though Yankee fans were forced to wait with bated breath all morning and afternoon, Jon Heyman's 3:00 PM EST report indicated that Soto's noon scans came back clean, though the team is confirming everything looks copacetic via a radiologist's review.

Unsurprisingly, Soto is not in Friday's lineup. At the very least, he could use some time on the shelf for the inflammation to clear up.

Yankees star Juan Soto diagnosed with inflammation after initial MRI of left arm

Adding to the oddness, the first leak of any sort of news (beyond the MRI's timeline) came from YES Network posting a video of Soto arriving on Friday to Yankee Stadium. Was he gleeful? No, but he wasn't glum. He raised his left forearm to flash a peace sign. That was good ... right? He wouldn't be doing that if he'd received awful news ... you'd think?

Apparently, per Heyman, the video portended good news, though the Yankees should still ease off Soto, who was reportedly playing through tension and receiving treatment for quite a while, and theoretically hammered his dramatic pair of homers in San Francisco last weekend while battling back against this affliction.

Apologies to the national crews in town to cover the Dodgers series, but Soto's long-term health is far more important than MLB's version of the FA Cup.