The Bad News Yankees received a positive vibe from an MRI yesterday concerning Hideki Matsui, whose status for tonight’s game against the Pirates at Yankee Stadium remains in doubt.
According to a club spokesman, the test done on Matsui’s twisted and swollen right ankle at Columbia-Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan didn’t reveal structural damage. Matsui, who had X-rays in St. Louis on Sunday and more X-rays yesterday, is listed as day-to-day.
“If there was a game today, I couldn’t play,” Matsui told reporters outside the Stadium yesterday. “So it’s day by day.”
Matsui plans to test the ankle before tonight’s game, and manager Joe Torre is to make a decision on whether he plays.
The good news for the Yanks was that Matsui didn’t feel pain in the ankle. In fact, he felt good enough to attend Derek Jeter’s charity function last night.
Matsui, who suffered the injury in Sunday’s 5-3 loss while playing right field and had to be helped off the field, was at the Stadium for treatment. The ankle, which was too swollen to put a shoe on for the flight home Sunday, had some swelling in it.
Since Matsui has a 1,637-game consecutive streak working that bridges Japan and America, all eyes will be on Torre’s lineup card tonight when bench coach Joe Girardi posts it on the clubhouse door.
“We have the luxury of the DH and he could enter into it,” Torre said of Matsui if the versatile outfielder can’t get around well enough to play the field tonight. “That’s an option.”
What’s also an option is sitting out Matsui and breaking the streak, which, according to Torre, is important to Matsui but only in regards to Matsui wanting to help the Yankees win. Stopping the streak would be major news in Japan.
The twisted ankle is the latest roadblock in Matsui’s third Yankee season. After tasting personal and team success in the first two years, the first 10 weeks of this campaign have been difficult.
A career .292 hitter in the states who hit 47 homers in the first two years (31 last year), Matsui is muddling along at .270 and has four homers in 237 at-bats. On top of that, the Yankees are 30-32 and 6 ½ games out of first place after the AL East-leading Orioles beat the Astros last night.
Due to Torre using Tony Womack in left field, Matsui has shifted between left and center and has started four games in right.