And breathe.
Juan Soto and the Yankees avoided the worst. Greatness will resume shortly.
After the superstar outfielder underwent imaging Friday for left forearm soreness, The Post’s Jon Heyman reported the Soto is dealing with inflammation.
Radiologists will review the scans to confirm.
Soto exited with the injury during Thursday night’s 8-5 win over the Twins, not returning to the game after a 56-minute rain delay before the sixth inning.
He was checked by the Yankees’ training staff and team physician and orthopedic surgeon Chris Ahamd during the rain delay and they decided it was best to pull Soto from the game.
Soto then underwent the imaging Friday.
Clearly, the imaging results did not reveal major cause for concern for the Yankees, who enter Friday’s series-opener against the Dodgers – in what could be a World Series preview – with an MLB-best 45-19 record.
Soto said Thursday he’s felt the discomfort for “like a week-and-a-half or two,” though it hasn’t prevented him from playing – or slowed him down.
“It’s not any specific activity,” Soto said Thursday. “It’s kind of funny that it doesn’t hurt me whenever I throw or hit. It’s more like soreness that I feel with any kind of move that I make with my arm. But definitely it doesn’t stop me from doing anything baseball-wise in the field.”
Soto is enjoying a brilliant first season with the Yankees, combining with Aaron Judge to form a dominant 1-2 punch that is on a historic pace.
He is batting .318/.424/.603 with a 1.027 OPS, 17 home runs and 53 RBIs this year, with is batting average and on-base percentage both best in the American League, entering Friday’s games.
In the last two weeks, in which Soto said he began to feel the discomfort, he actually performed better than his season-long stats, hitting .350/.491/.800 with a 1.291 OPS, four homers and 12 RBIs in 12 games. The Yankees went 10-2 in that stretch.
He and Judge had been challenging to combine for the most bWAR between two teammates in MLB history, since the league went from 154 games to 162 in 1961.
That pursuit of history should not be paused for long.
Soto has largely been incredibly durable throughout his career. He played all 162 games for the Padres last year, and played at least 101 games in all five seasons of which MLB had a full 162-game schedule (he played 47 of 60 games in the condensed 2020 season due to Covid-19) in his career.
The 25-year-old had played every game this year, as well.
But for the first time in pinstripes, Soto delivered a scare. That scare quickly turned to a sigh of relief, however, and the Soto Show will be back to regularly scheduled programming soon.