Mariners’ Ryon Healy seeing good early results from hand surgery
Feb 20, 2018, 4:31 PM | Updated: 4:34 pm
New Mariners first baseman Ryon Healy is recovering from hand surgery. (AP)
(AP)
Mariners first baseman Ryon Healy met with the media for the first time Tuesday since undergoing surgery last week to remove a loose bone spur from his hand.
This is clearly not the start to his Mariners career he wanted to have, but he said he remains focused on staying positive through his recovery. The early reports are good as he has good strength and range of motion in the hand. He said he no troubles last year with the hand while with the Oakland Athletics, yet he wasn’t surprised to feel a little discomfort when he first picked up the bat this winter.
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“It started early in December,” he said. “You always have some rust in your hands when you start hitting again, I kind of expected it to go away but it never did. I eventually spoke up after a couple of weeks, said it was too much, let’s get it checked out. Took five weeks off, came back and hit and the pain was still there. From there we took more drastic measures, figured out from hand specialists what this was and continued to move forward.”
Despite being shut down from hitting, Healy didn’t put the bat away.
“I’ve done a lot of bottom-hand, left-hand hitting only,” he said. “I’ve been able to keep my eyes acclimated, I have been able to track pitches. I’ve been able to continue to do that this spring but no, there has not been a ton of two-hand swings.”
His focus in recovery is to stay positive, and one big plus is that once healed he should be able to put this injury behind him quickly.
“That was the biggest goal,” he said. “What’s the best timeline to get me healthy for the long term – not a quick fix that is going to get me on the field for spring training. What’s going to get me on the field to compete at a big league level at 100 percent that I know I can be.”
