Gary Sanchez got through his rehab game without apparent incident.
Mission completed. Even if the means for surviving that game were comical.
Low-A Charleston welcomed the on-the-mend Yankee on Monday, a one-game tuneup before he could chart a plane to California on Tuesday and be activated for Wednesday’s matchup against the Angels.
All he was tasked with was to show the Yankees he, after a left calf strain, was healthy enough to play.
He’s definitely healthy enough to jog.
Five innings of Sanchez’s RiverDogs tenure produced a few funny Sanchez moments, including a check-swing bloop toward shortstop, which took him a few seconds to get out of the batter’s box and a few more seconds of meandering toward first.
His hustle improved a bit in his last at-bat of an 0-for-3 day, when he hit a hard ground ball to shortstop and was thrown out at first.
With 6,588 RiverDogs fans on hand — the second-largest crowd at Joe Riley Park this season — Sanchez also let up two passed balls. To be fair, he hadn’t exactly caught 21-year-old Alexander Vizcaino before.
Either way, the Yankees will be thrilled when he arrives, the first of many reinforcements after an unfathomably painful first few weeks of this season.