For the second time in three games, a Yankees reliever walked off the mound with a trainer in the middle of an at-bat.
On Sunday afternoon, it was Ron Marinaccio, who exited in the eighth inning with right shin soreness, the latest concern for the Yankees’ unsettled bullpen with four games left in the regular season.
“The shin thing’s just been a lingering issue I’ve been dealing with all year,” Marinaccio said after a 3-1 loss to the Orioles. “Today it was just a little bit more fired up. I don’t know if it was bouncing back from the last outing, just didn’t bounce back as well.”
Marinaccio got an MRI and CT scan earlier in the year and “everything was fine,” he said. The rookie will undergo more tests on Monday morning to determine if anything has changed.
“Hopefully nothing comes back,” said Marinaccio, who owns a 2.05 ERA across 44 innings this season. “I’m pretty confident it’ll be similar — maybe just a day.”
Marinaccio’s fastball velocity was down 2.1 mph from his season average, which he said he hoped was due to the shin issue. After the right-hander threw a 1-1 fastball to Jorge Mateo with one out in the eighth inning, manager Aaron Boone and a trainer visited Marinaccio, and following a short conversation, he left the game.
Marinaccio, who missed three-plus weeks with shoulder inflammation earlier this season, had entered the game to record the final two outs of the seventh inning.
Boone said Marinaccio would “not necessarily” be shut down for the rest of the regular season, but wanted to see what the tests showed before making that call.
“If we feel like we need to do that, then we will,” Boone said. “But that’ll be a trainer/medical decision. I wouldn’t say necessarily that, but it’s possible.”
The Yankees previously lost Zack Britton during an at-bat in Friday night’s game, due to shoulder fatigue. The left-handed reliever has since been shut down for the season.
Clay Holmes (shoulder strain) is also done for the rest of the regular season while Wandy Peralta (thoracic spine tightness), Miguel Castro (shoulder inflammation) and Albert Abreu (elbow inflammation) are still on the IL.