SAN FRANCISCO — It’s never good when a player has to come out of a game, but the Giants’ positive vibes on the field seem to have translated to the MRI tube, too.
A day after what looked like a serious hamstring injury, Mike Yastrzemski said he felt good and anticipated avoiding the Injured List. An MRI on Thursday morning showed just mild inflammation in his left hamstring but no strain.
“Under the circumstances and what we saw in last night’s game — when we really got the sense that he re-injured that hamstring and it was going to be a problem for a longer period of time — I don’t want to say we’re completely out of the woods, but it feels less serious for that,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “We have the idea that perhaps he’s ready to play for us in the next couple of days.”
It was the second time in two days the Giants got a good result after a player went down. A day earlier, LaMonte Wade Jr’s MRI on a sore side showed no strain, and Wade looked just about ready to return to the lineup while doing pregame work on Thursday.
The Yastrzemski injury was more concerning as it happened because it’s one he has already dealt with this season. Yastrzemski hurt his left hamstring in Mexico City at the end of April and feared he would be out for a while, but he ended up missing just 15 games. He said he was very happy with Thursday’s scan results.
Yastrzemski doesn’t anticipate changing much when he returns, even though the hamstring has now grabbed him twice in about seven weeks. He said Buster Posey told him early in his career to stop running into walls to make catches, but he believes that pulling back could actually lead to more injuries.
Yastrzemski had an RBI single a few minutes before he got hurt Thursday, continuing a red-hot stretch. He has four homers in his last eight games, including a walk-off, but one of the most important moments of the week came when Kapler and a trainer convinced him to take it easy. That might have allowed the Giants to catch the tightness in time.
“I’m grateful for Kapl and the training staff,” he said. “I was trying to convince them to give me a moment and stay in the game.”
— A day after Sean Hjelle threw four huge innings out of the bullpen, he was optioned to Triple-A. The Giants brought outfielder Bryce Johnson back up to get a little more coverage with Yastrzemski and Wade both day-to-day.
Kapler said the staff had a conversation in the morning about how focused Hjelle looked in the spring.
“Nothing could stop him, and we sort of saw that in his eyes last night again,” he said. “That’s a really good sign and I shared that with him. We tried to give him some positive reinforcement. The last pitch that he threw to (Fernando Tatis Jr.) was really nasty and those were some pretty good hitters he got out.
“He’s fully capable of being that pitcher for us going forward. He’s just gotta keep doing his work in Triple-A and hopefully we’ll have a chance to get him back here at some point.”
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