When the Yankees take the field for Opening Day on Thursday, they will do so without their star first baseman, as Luke Voit underwent successful surgery on Monday to repair a partially torn meniscus after dealing with knee discomfort that had appeared to be minor before an MRI revealed the injury last week.
“I feel good,” Voit said in a Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday. “I’m glad I got it done. It was something that popped up early in the spring and kind of got better as we went on, but I just didn’t feel right. That’s why I decided I wanted to do the MRI.”
Voit, the league’s home run leader last season, tried pushing through the injury during spring, even testing it out by running first to third during a spring training game, but ultimately decided on having surgery after fighting through nagging injuries for each of the past two seasons, with a core issue hampering him down the stretch in 2019 and a foot injury for most of 2020.
“It was tough,” Voit said. “I got the MRI Friday and I had opinions from three different doctors, and it was either cortisone and drain it, and I’d probably have to do that a couple more times during the season, and I just didn’t want to play hurt. After last year with that foot injury I was just done playing hurt. I wanted to play at 100 percent, and I feel like it was the right thing.”
The decision for Voit was made clear after trying to battle through the injury, a painfully familiar task that he had already begun before the season even started. Given the time of year, he felt surgery was the best route to get back early enough in the season to still make a major impact, with no physical discomfort holding him back.
“It was nagging, man,” Voit said. “I’d have a good day, and then the next day I’d get out of bed and it would be killing me. I’d run five or six sprints before games, and by that fourth of fifth spring it would start to feel good, but when I’d come off the bag after holding a guy on and have to twist my knee, I just don’t feel like I was landing on my front leg and was losing a lot of power when I was hitting…it just kept swelling up.”
The surgery will shut Voit down from baseball activities for three weeks, but he anticipates making his return sooner than later, even if there isn’t a specific return time in mind just yet.
“No timetable yet, but I expect to be back pretty quick,” Voit said. “I’ll do everything in my power to get back as soon as possible.”
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