Yankees’ Bad Injury Luck Continues: Pettitte Leaves With Groin Injury (UPDATE)

by Glenn Davis | 4:11 pm, July 18th, 2010

First it was the Red Sox dealing with horrible injury luck – apparently they’ve now transferred that luck to the rival Yankees. A day after A.J. Burnett injured himself in a dumb way, teammate Andy Pettitte had to leave today’s game with a groin strain.

UPDATE: The AP is now reporting Pettitte is expected to miss at least a month. Needless to say, if he does indeed miss that length of time, it is an extremely bad break for the Yankees. Again, hopefully injuries will not be the deciding factor in what could be a classic division race.

While Pettitte’s injury hasn’t affected the Yankees much today (they‘re leading 9-4 won 9-5) and more sardonic fans might wonder if going without Burnett for a bit might constitute addition by subtraction, losing Pettitte for an extended period would unquestionably hurt. He’s having one of his best seasons, and you need every top pitching performance you can get when locked in a tight division race.

And while Burnett’s hoping not to miss a start and Pettitte’s injury may not be serious, perhaps this is some cosmic equalizing of injury luck to ensure fairness in the AL East. Or maybe not. Either way, we’d advise the Yankees to keep a very close eye on, say, Mariano Rivera for a while.

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