TAMPA — DJ LeMahieu’s availability for Opening Day is suddenly in jeopardy.
The Yankees’ veteran third baseman has a “pretty significant bone bruise” on his right foot, manager Aaron Boone said Monday, two days after LeMahieu fouled a ball off of it.
X-rays and a CT scan were negative, and LeMahieu saw a foot specialist on Monday for a hands-on evaluation that was “encouraging,” Boone said.
But whether LeMahieu would have enough of a runway to get back in time for Opening Day on March 28 in Houston was not immediately certain.
“We’ll see,” Boone said Monday at Steinbrenner Field. “We’re going to listen to the foot. I hope so. It’s certainly reasonable to think so. But I’m not going to speculate too much on that. We’re going to look at it every couple days.
The Yankees may treat the situation with extra caution considering it is the same right foot that gave LeMahieu trouble in 2022, when he broke a bone in his big right toe and tore a ligament in the second toe, and then the first half of 2023.
“It’s one of the reasons that [the medical staff] and I am on board with, you’re not playing through anything initially,” Boone said. “So if that means missing a day, so be it. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We’ll see.”
LeMahieu’s previous issues with the right foot — his pivot foot in his swing — largely sapped his production at the plate. He did not begin to look like himself again until the second half of last season.
Coming off a healthy offseason, LeMahieu had the Yankees encouraged by what they were seeing early this spring, but now that progress has been halted in its tracks.
“The thing is, I’m not going to have him playing through anything initially,” Boone said. “Because I feel like that’s where you start compensating and then you start putting other parts of the body and that foot even in jeopardy. I’ve been clear with DJ on that. So we’ll be treating it.
“He’s doing significantly better than he was [Sunday] and the day before. So that’s all good. We’ll kind of re-evaluate it here probably going into the [Wednesday] night game or [Thursday] and see where we’re at.”