Justin Wilson was placed on the 10-day injured list Saturday, a right hamstring strain set to sideline the lefty through at least next week. It’s the second IL stint Wilson has incurred this season, after a shoulder ailment that cost him the beginning of the year, and he has also had a nagging calf issue as well.
Wilson surrendered Robbie Grossman’s walk-off home run to end Friday night’s game, a homer that raised his ERA to 6.08 this season, and after the game, he said that he has been struggling to find consistency after starting the season with three scoreless outings – and seeing his 3.00 overall April ERA balloon to an 8.59 mark in May.
“I haven't pitched well. I know that and no one's harder on myself than me. I just need to pitch better,” Wilson said. “For a while there, I think my delivery was bad. Now I'm back on track, but I made a couple of bad pitches and they made me pay for it. I just have to grind it out.”
Perhaps, manager Aaron Boone said Saturday after the IL stint was announced, this hamstring issue that has been nagging Wilson “for a few weeks” is a big part of the reason.
“It’s something he thought he could work through, but with his season getting started late because of the shoulder, and then dealing with a little calf issue and now the hamstring – when we add it all up, those have probably been contributing factors for the lack of life on his fastball, and him struggling repeating his delivery consistently,” Boone said. “We have to get this thing totally right, and hopefully this will allow him to work out some things mechanically.”
Wilson’s calling card, regardless of his velocity, has been the life on his fastball, which has just not been there – something Boone again pinned, possibly, on the balky hammy.
“It’s been something he’s been adamant he could pitch through – when you have a long career you pitch through a lot of things – but we had to take a step back and see that it may be something affecting the life on his pitches,” Boone said. “What’s special about Justin is the life on his fastball through the zone. That’s been inconsistent and the power hasn’t been there, and I think the hamstring is a part of that. When he’s right, he has that life and he’s able to pitch up in the zone and work the cutter off of that.”
“It's not the same, that's for sure,” Wilson said of his fastball Friday night. “There are days where it's been better and days where it's not. Sometimes when I have some life on it, pitches are fouled off or swung through, but right now they're not so I've got to make an adjustment.”
With Zack Britton set to start a rehab assignment Saturday at Double-A Somerset and likely a couple weeks away from returning, the Yankees can take this chance to shut Wilson down until he’s totally healthy – and when he is, Boone will have no problem inserting him back into the late-game mix, as he intimated on Friday night.
“Oh yeah, he’ll get those opportunities in the future for sure.”
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