SAN DIEGO - Trent Grisham’s latest hamstring problem landed at exactly the wrong time for the Yankees, and it did more than force a roster move. It shoved a once-straightforward center-field picture into uncertainty.
Grisham felt something in his right hamstring while trying to steal second in the second inning of Friday night’s 3-2, 10-inning loss to the Padres at Petco Park. He stayed in long enough to play center field in the bottom half, but the issue showed up again when he moved slowly toward a Xander Bogaerts blooper that fell in for an RBI single.
By the bottom of the third, he was out. Spencer Jones moved from right to center, Heliot Ramos came in on the right side, and the Yankees were suddenly dealing with a much bigger question than one play in one game.
The answer came quickly. New York placed Grisham on the 10-day injured list Saturday with a right hamstring strain and recalled Jasson Dominguez from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. The notable part: the Yankees made that call before Grisham had imaging.
That tells you plenty about how seriously they viewed it, even if it doesn’t yet tell them the full grade of the strain or whether Grisham’s regular season is done. As Greg Joyce put it, “Trent Grisham has not gotten imaging yet, but they knew it was significant enough for an IL. Still TBD whether he can get back in time with three weeks left in the regular season.”
Aaron Boone wasn’t offering much comfort either. Asked if Grisham could return before the regular season ends, he said, “I think it’s too early to know,” Boone said.
The timing is what makes this injury sting. The Yankees entered Sunday at 81-61 with 20 games left, four behind Tampa Bay in the AL East and 3 1/2 ahead of Boston for the American League’s top wild-card spot, according to MLB’s official standings.
A hamstring issue in June is one thing. One in September, with the playoff calendar closing in, is another.
And this isn’t even Grisham’s first right-hamstring problem this year. He missed about three weeks earlier in the season with a moderate strain of the same hamstring. Grisham said this latest discomfort was in a different spot, and Boone said he felt better the next day than he did after the earlier injury.
“Feels like he felt a little bit better today than when he did it a couple months ago,” Boone said. “Different spot. So we’ll see.”
Still, the runway is short. A minimum 10-day stay after a Sept.
5 IL placement puts Grisham deep into the final three weeks before the Sept. 29 start of the Wild Card Series. Even if he returns at the first possible moment, he’d have very little time to prove the hamstring can handle everyday center-field work again.
That matters because his season had already started to tilt in the wrong direction. Grisham is in the final stretch of a one-year, $22.025 million deal he accepted through the qualifying-offer process last winter, and MLB’s official numbers have him at .211/.308/.395 with 18 home runs, 59 RBIs and a .703 OPS through 121 games. His recent stretch was even rougher: he entered the injury batting .127 with two homers over his previous 19 games, and he was 4-for-44 over his final 14 games before going on the IL, a .091 average with a .414 OPS.
That slump opened the door for Jones, who had started pushing for more playing time. The rookie was batting .326 with four homers and 11 RBIs over 15 games since Aug. 20 before going 2-for-4 with an RBI double in the Yankees’ 5-1 win over San Diego on Saturday.
Boone now expects Jones to get regular run in center, with Cody Bellinger also available there in certain matchups. Domínguez adds another outfield option while Aaron Judge keeps working back from his rib injury.
The situation also shifts the bigger roster puzzle. Before Friday, the Yankees were heading toward a difficult choice once Judge returned, potentially forcing them to decide between Jones and another roster move.
Grisham’s injury takes that immediate pressure off. But it also changes the center-field competition itself.
Jones now has a real chance to settle in with steady reps, and Boone said the Yankees believe that kind of repetition can help clean up the rookie’s routes and jumps.
For Grisham, that means this is about more than getting healthy. It’s about getting healthy fast enough to matter. If Jones keeps hitting while Grisham is sidelined, the Yankees could be looking at a different September question than the one they had before the injury: not whether Jones has a place, but what kind of role Grisham would even return to.
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