TAKIN’ FLIGHT
Bird is starting to get into the swing of things following surgery
BALTIMORE — Greg Bird on Friday played just his fifth game for the Yankees since coming back from his second ankle procedure in less than a year, but Aaron Boone has already seen an improvement from how the first baseman looked during the spring.
“It kind of leaps off the screen,” the manager said of the difference in Bird now as opposed to prior to the second operation. “Which tells me, obviously, he wasn’t quite right with the foot there in spring training.”
The latest example Bird is approaching his old form came in Friday’s 4-1 win over the Orioles, when he hammered a run-scoring triple to center field in the fifth.
The two-out shot scored Brett Gardner and gave the Yankees the lead for good, as Adam Jones couldn’t make the leaping play at the wall.
“I knew I hit it well,” Bird said. “Luckily, he didn’t catch it.”
Even getting to third showed what has improved about Bird and his ankle.
“I didn’t think about it,’’ Bird said. “I just went. That’s good. Obviously, speed isn’t a huge part of my game ... but I feel better just moving around.”
It will take some time before anyone knows for sure whether Bird is back to where he was before he fouled a ball off his ankle at the end of spring training in Atlanta in 2017.
He struck out looking against lefty Tanner Scott in the seventh and is 0for-2 with a hit by pitch in three plate appearances versus southpaws, but said he is pleased with his approach.
“It’s a pretty cool feeling, being able to go out and just focus on playing,’’ said Bird, who missed the first 47 games of the regular season. “You kind of wonder as you’re going through the rehab process, whether it’s all going to work out. But I knew I didn’t have a significant ankle surgery. The shoulder [injury] was trickier. That was a long time to be out.”
After tearing the labrum in his shoulder prior to the 2016 season, Bird didn’t play from the February surgery until he returned for the Arizona Fall League in October.
Bird already has made a believer out of Boone.
“Even watching him take batting practice, the way he’s impacting the ball right now, the atbat quality we’ve seen in pretty much every game, it seems like a much better player, a much better hitter, in a much better place [than in the spring],’’ Boone said.
Those early spring struggles — when Bird went just 12-for-52 with one homer and 16 strikeouts before being shut down with the sore ankle that resulted in March surgery — were Boone’s f irst up-close look at the 25-year-old.
Boone, though, said he wasn’t especially concerned with the lack of production.
“Not so much,” Boone said. “I knew he wasn’t getting a lot of results in the spring, but because he controls the zone so well, you chalk some things up to spring training. But seeing it up close now every day in batting practice and his work [in the cage], he seems like a much more impactful guy.”