New York Yankees News: Andy Pettitte, Chris Stewart

New York Yankees veteran southpaw Andy Pettitte left his start yesterday against the Seattle Mariners with what is termed as a tight left trapezius muscle which is a muscle located in the upper back, near the neck. Pettitte suffered from back spasms last month, so these injures could very well be related. Pettitte is slated to miss at least one start, and that would mean he would be placed on the 15-day disabled list, according to a tweet from NJ.com’s Andy McCullough. This news comes from Joe Girardi, so the Yankees will either end up seeing Pettitte taking a start or a guy like Ivan Nova replacing Pettitte in the rotation for a few more starts to come.

The Yankees weren’t initially concerned about Pettitte’s injury, and it will be interesting to see if Pettitte ends up undergoing an MRI in the near future. Pettitte’s injury is one to monitor, and it sounds like an inexact science; it might just depend on the confidence the Yankees have in pulling Pettitte or just how Pettitte seems to be feeling at any given moment. I also feel like Pettitte will continue to have back issues, and that’s not uncommon for a pitcher of his age and with his mileage. He’s been pretty good this season all told with a 3.83 ERA, so let’s hope that the Yankees won’t lose a couple of quality starts out of his left arm. However, this injury could have been worse, so the Yankees will likely play it safe and place him on the DL. Yeah, the injuries keep coming for the Yanks.

Catcher Chris Stewart also left yesterday’s game against the Mariners with an injury, as he injured his left groin sliding into third base and needed an MRI on it. Luckily for the 31-year-old, the results from the MRI came back “clean”, per McCullough, and McCullough described the injury as “a bullet dodged”. We’ll see how much time Stewart misses, but it will likely end up being just a game or two thanks to the surprisingly (given the Yankees bad luck this year) clean results of Stewart’s MRI.