Bird hid injured ankle in spring
All spring, Greg Bird said his shaky performance on the field was unrelated to the right ankle injury that cost him most of last season.
But on Sunday, in his first comments since he underwent another surgery on the ankle last month, Bird admitted he had been dealing with discomfort and pain since last year.
Asked how much the Yankees knew of Bird’s new issue during spring training, general manager Brian Cashman said on Sunday: “Not much. He had no complaints throughout spring training. I don’t think he was hiding anything from us, he just didn’t say anything [so] he couldn’t play.”
Still, despite the fact Bird has had two surgeries on his ankle in the past year, the first baseman is certain it’s not going to be a chronic issue.
“I don’t have a bad ankle,” Bird said at the Sta- dium. “That was told to me by the doctor. He said everything in there is fine. It was a bone spur that needed to be taken out.”
The 25-year-old has missed significant time in each of the past three seasons, suffering a torn labrum in his shoulder in 2016 and then having to get a bone removed from his ankle last season.
Bird acknowledged his rough spring training this year was due in part to the discomfort he felt in the area — and that he dealt with it even when he returned to the Yankees in September. He saw operating surgeon Dr. Martin O’Malley at the Hospital for Special Surgery following the playoffs and received a platelet-rich plasma injection, but the injury wasn’t severe enough at the time to require another procedure, according to Bird.
“I had it going on last year,” Bird said. “They thought it would go away. We’ve known about it. It became problematic this spring.”