DETROIT — Not only does Jazz Chisholm Jr. believe he will avoid surgery, he thinks he could be back by the end of his minimum 10 days on the injured list.
The Yankees may ultimately decide to pump the brakes slightly on Chisholm’s plan for a speedy return from a left UCL sprain, but the third baseman was encouraged Friday by how he was feeling — including not experiencing any pain since Monday, when he sustained the injury.
“It’s 100 percent realistic in my mind that at the end of the 10 days I’ll be back,” Chisholm said after playing catch at Comerica Park.
The elbow injury is to his non-throwing arm, but playing catch was the first kind of baseball activity Chisholm has done after taking the last few days to receive treatment and strengthen the area around the ligament.
The real test will be seeing how Chisholm responds to swinging a bat, which he believes could happen in the next few days.
“Me knowing myself, I really wanted to rush into it and start swinging a couple days ago,” Chisholm said. “But right now, I’m just going to go with the training staff. We’re probably going to start swinging in a day or two.”
Chisholm has taken an optimistic view on his injury from the start, even saying Monday night he was “not super-concerned” about it before an MRI on Tuesday revealed the sprain.
He is not expected to receive any injections and sounded confident that surgery will not ultimately be required.
“We’re definitely going to avoid surgery,” Chisholm said. “The only way we’d have to get surgery is if it gets worse, and right now, it’s looking better every day.”
Aaron Boone took a more cautiously optimistic approach, saying the Yankees won’t know for sure until Chisholm is back playing and going “full-bore.”
“He’s got really good strength and range of motion,” Boone said. “So it’ll be that treatment to get all the soreness out of there and then hopefully start introducing baseball activities and see how that ramp-up goes. Hopefully it’s not something that’s really long, but we gotta get there.
“We’re in the getting-soreness-out [stage], but I think the early signs are encouraging.”
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