New Injury Halts Jeter’s Comeback

Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Derek Jeter played his first game of the season on Thursday. It is unknown when he'll play his next game.

Derek Jeter has been one of the most durable players in baseball over his 19-year career, playing 2,586 regular-season games, including almost 22,000 innings at shortstop. Until this year he had never missed more than 43 games in a season because of an injury, but at age 39 he is facing a level of physical adversity he has never encountered.

A day after Jeter made his season debut after missing 91 games with the most serious injury of his career — a twice-fractured left ankle — he was found to have a Grade 1 strain of the quadriceps muscle in his right thigh, an injury he sustained while running to first base Thursday.

The Yankees hope Jeter will miss only three games and then take advantage of the four-day All-Star break to make a full recovery and avoid the 15-day disabled list.

There is no certainty that the injury will heal quickly, and it raises the question of whether the Yankees can depend on him to be their everyday shortstop.

General Manager Brian Cashman said the injury may have resulted from Jeter's body compensating for the ankle injury, but Cashman did not see it as an indication that Jeter was not capable of performing at a high level.

"I don't want to say it's Father Time knocking on his door and reminding him," Cashman said, "as much as listen, he really is coming back from something pretty significant."

The Yankees were planning to play their three-game series against the Minnesota Twins with a 24-man roster before the All-Star break begins Monday. Jeter will rest and receive treatment, and if he does not recover completely, he will have to go on the D.L. and will not be eligible to return until July 27.

For Jeter, who spent nearly nine months rehabilitating his ankle through exercise, methodical treatment programs and simulated games in Tampa, Fla., the injury was hard to bear.

"It's frustrating," he said in a statement released by the Yankees. "I don't know what else you want me to say. I worked hard to get to the point of rejoining the team yesterday. It's not how you draw it up, but hopefully I'll be back out there soon and help this team win some games."

Jeter injured his thigh muscle while running to first base in his third at-bat during an 8-4 win over the Kansas City Royals.

He had been scheduled to play as the designated hitter with Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Thursday and play shortstop with the Yankees on Friday. But when Brett Gardner and Travis Hafner sustained foot injuries Wednesday night, Cashman brought Jeter back a day early as the D.H. No one can be sure, but Cashman did not rule out the possibility that the more heated environment of a major league game may have caused Jeter to push too hard and injure himself.

"It was my call to move him up based on what had occurred in our game," Cashman said. "We thought it was a safe harbor, a D.H. situation. All the reports were he was running extremely well, responding well, but obviously the intensity at Yankee Stadium and a major league environment is obviously more, and certainly stuff can happen. And the quad strain did happen."

Considering Jeter had one of his most productive seasons last year, there would not ordinarily be a concern coming into this year. Jeter collected a major-league-leading 216 hits and 740 plate appearances in 2012, while playing 1,1861/3 innings at shortstop.

But toward the end of the season, he played with a bone bruise in the ankle and received cortisone shots as the Yankees were involved in a close, monthlong playoff race. On Oct. 13, in the 12th inning of Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, his ankle finally gave out. After surgery, he was supposed to be back in time for opening day in April, but during spring training the ankle cracked again.

Jeter said Thursday that despite the quad injury, the ankle felt fine, and Cashman said he had no indication there was any problem with it.

"I have great confidence in his abilities to persevere and overcome," Cashman said. "But bad circumstances on that day for us. I guess you've got to be careful even when it's a D.H. situation, if there was a lesson to be learned. Moving up one day appeared to be a harmless circumstance at the time. But you go through the process for a reason, and you set it up for a reason, and you adjust when you can. Unfortunately, we had a bad result from yesterday."

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