Frustrations mount for Bird

All Greg Bird and the Yankees can do now is wait.

It’s something they have done a lot of the last two seasons.

The first baseman received a cortisone shot on Monday in an attempt to get rid of inflammation in his right ankle. It’s the same ankle on which he suffered a bone bruise at the end of spring training, which has sidetracked his entire season.

“It’s disappointing,” Bird said Thursday of the latest setback. “I felt like I was making improvements and kind of getting where I wanted to be. I don’t want to be shut down again, but it needs to get better. That’s kind of the plain and simple answer.”

These days, there’s nothing plain and simple about Bird’s injury situation. He was forced to miss all of last year because of a torn labrum that resulted in shoulder surgery, and this season Bird has been limited to 19 mostly ineffective games thanks to a ball he fouled off his ankle just as he was finishing an excellent Grapefruit League season.

Bird said he has been told the bone bruise has healed, but the inflammation has lingered, which is why his rehab assignment with Triple-A Scranton/WilkesBarre was shut down.

The inflammation affects Bird’s ability to rotate on his foot and he soon will find out whether the cortisone shot worked.

Asked if he was concerned it would linger the entire season, Bird said: “I’m hopeful it won’t. I think the good thing is there’s nothing degenerative about it. I didn’t tear anything. I didn’t break anything. It’s just something that hasn’t quite agreed with my game so far. Hopefully, the shot clears it up and we go from there.”