SEATTLE — Another Yankees romp turned sour in the blink of an eye, with third baseman Oswaldo Cabrera suffering a serious left leg injury in the top of the ninth inning on Monday night during the team’s 11-5 victory over the Mariners at T-Mobile Park.
“I think everyone understands it was a pretty serious situation,” manager Aaron Boone said. “Just praying for our guy Cabby tonight and hoping for the best, and trusting he’s in good hands as he goes through the night here. Obviously, a great game in a lot of ways, but a lot of guys feeling for their teammate, who is the best of the best of them.”
Cabrera tagged up from third base on an Aaron Judge sacrifice fly to right field with the bases loaded and one out. As Leody Taveras’ throw came home, Cabrera ran wide to avoid Cal Raleigh’s tag at the plate. Cabrera beat the throw and the tag, but overran the plate by multiple steps. As he tried to stop, his left ankle buckled under his momentum.
Cabrera was able to stumble back and tag home plate with his hand but stayed on the ground after the play and did not move as the training staff rushed out to check on him.
After a brief time, the center-field gate at T-Mobile Park opened to allow the cart to come out, but it made its way only to the right-field foul pole before turning back and exiting. A few minutes later, as players from both teams stood in silence on the field, an ambulance came out and made its way to home plate.
“It’s definitely one of those unfortunate things that pops up that lends perspective to what we’re doing,” Boone said. “We’re playing a game. You get so consumed with it all the time and the ups and downs of it, and something like that happens for someone you feel so good about. … It smacks you with that perspective that we try to talk about and have all the time. At the end of the day, it’s a game.”
The training staff put a brace on Cabrera’s leg and set him up on a gurney as teammates — including Judge — huddled around home plate and the crowd in Seattle turned silent.
“For him to get hurt on a play like that, it speaks tons to what type of guy he is,” Judge said. “It’s a game where we’ve got a little bit of a lead, and he’s still fighting to the very last out. Everyone in here feels terrible, just because we know how much he works, how hard he works, how much he loves and cares about everybody in this room, the way he would treat every game, and every day he got to be here as such a blessing.”
After being loaded onto the gurney, Cabrera left in the ambulance — along with head trainer Tim Lentych — out of the gate in center field, to be taken to the hospital.
Just before he left, Cabrera had one question for his captain.
“Before he got on [the gurney], he said, ‘Judgy, did I score?’ and Judge said, ‘Yeah,’” Boone said. “That made him smile.”
Cabrera, in his fourth season in the Majors, has been getting the most consistent playing time of his career, starting 30 of the Yankees’ first 41 games at third base. In 34 games, he’s hitting .243 with a .630 OPS, four doubles, one home run and 11 RBIs. He went 1-for-4 on Monday with a walk.
“He loves being a Yankee; he wears this jersey with pride,” Judge said. “This is a tough one, especially for a guy who’s grinded his whole life and finally got the opportunity to be our everyday guy and has been excelling at it.”
But beyond the simple numbers, the 26-year-old — who signed with the Yankees as a 16-year-old out of Guarenas, Venezuela in 2016 and spent five seasons in the Minors before making his debut in ’22 — has become one of the foremost figures in the New York clubhouse.
“[Trent Grisham] said something after: ‘Cabby does it right every day,’” Boone said. “Every day. How he prepares to do his job, the kind of teammate he is, the joy he walks in this room with every single day. He is an example in so many ways for anyone to look to for how to go about living their life.”
Added Grisham, who hit a pair of solo home runs to spark the Yankees’ offense: “The way that he cares for other people, it just pours out of him. If you watch him play baseball, you get a taste of it. But when you get to know him, it’s so much deeper than that.”
The Yankees had no further updates on Cabrera’s condition late Monday night.
