On Returning From Injuries

by Paul Semendinger

June 18, 2026

***

There is a familiar pattern that emerges among fans...

A player returns from an injury and has a big game or two. The fans immediately begin saying, "He's back." Just this season alone we have seen people make that very point about Giancarlo Stanton, Jazz Chisholm, and D.J. LeMahieu. "He's back!"

More often than not, and especially with older players like Stanton and LeMahieu, returning to form isn't that easy.

One good game does not a season make. Nor does one series, one week, or even a few weeks.

In short, it isn't easy to return from an injury. It is very difficult to return from an absence. But, for a short period, a player can perform way above expectations.

The issue though isn't having that player do well for a few games or any short period, it is having them do well over the long term. The Yankees need their returning players to be consistently good, not just good for a couple of games.

And doing well over the long term is the much more difficult challenge.

Ramping up day-after-day-after-day simply is not easy. At all.

Having a good return is one thing, bouncing back and doing it again and again and again is completely different.

***

Here is a little personal history to provide a real-life non-Yankees, non professional athlete perspective.

I am an athlete. I exercise every single day - often times twice a day. I run, a lot. My annual mileage is over 1,000 miles, often closer to 2,000.

I have completed 27 marathons, including, just a few months ago, the Dopey Challenge at Walt Disney World (48.6 miles over four days).

I also play baseball in a very competitive baseball league against many players who are close to half my age.

I know what it is to compete. I know what it takes to accomplish tough physical tasks.

I also know what it's like to be injured.

In 2020, I had surgery on my right Achilles. Battling back from that was a long process. I did it, but it took a lot of time. And while I still ran a few marathons after that, I was determined to make it back, I was not the same runner I had been. Part of that was age, of course. (But, along the same lines, D.J. LeMahieu and Giancarlo Stanton are by no means young for the sport they're playing.)

More recently, after completeing the Dopey Challenge in January of this year, I cut back my running a lot. I had run the NYC Marathon in November and followed that up by doing the big races at Disney less than two months later. My body was tired. Running a marathon is a lot more than the race. I had been in hard training mode for about 8 months.

Even with cutting back my miles, after a few weeks, a nagging pain in my left Achilles forced me to see my doctor who said he could treat the injury there, it wasn't very bad, but that I should stop running for a bit to let my body heal. He allowed me to keep exercising, but I stopped running. That was in March.

I didn't run for most of March. I didn't run at all in April. I also didn't run at all in May, until Memorial Day weekend, when I lined up to run one of my favorite races, The Spring Lake 5. (You can read about that race here.)

In short, heading into the race, I figured I would slowly jog and walk the five-mile course. I reasoned that after months of not running, there was no way I had a fast five-mile race in me. I didn't know if I could run one mile without stopping, let alone five. I was hoping to cover the distance, slowly jogging and walking, in about 75 minutes. I told myself I'd be thrilled if I did it in an hour. 12-minute miles seemed very reasonable.

Well, I did better than I ever thought I could or would. I ran the entire race. I didn't walk one step. That alone shocked me.

Amazingly, I even ran each mile faster than the one before it. I ran my last mile at 8:34 which is fast for me even when I'm in my best shape, let along when I'm coming back from an injury. I clocked in over the five miles at 46:13. I didn't just break an hour, I broke 50 minutes. I flew over that course!

Equate my performance in Spring Lake to a player's first game coming back. Giancarlo Stanton had two hits in his first game back including a double. In Jazz Chsiholm's first game back, he homered. If someone saw my race (and if they cared), they would have said, "He's back!"

It's not that simple.

I wasn't and I'm not.

Since that race, my runs have been plodding, slow, and mostly difficult. I have reached five miles again only once. I'm running at about 10-minute-miles, a far cry from how I did in the race just a few weeks ago. This is the reality of returning from an injury. We are human beings with human bodies. We can push, we can train, but it's difficult to maintain a high level for an extended period.

In my race, the competition helped fuel my performance. I was racing. It's a challange to find that same level of excitiement on a morning run, alone on the streets. This same dynamic is true for a MLB player. Those first games back are filled with adrelanine. The games after that, simply, are not. At all. The daily grind sets in. Baseball is a grind. A body doesn't get to rest and recover. Add to all of that bthe travel, the hotels, the airports, the late nights, the early mornings...

One game doesn't mean a player is back just as one race doesn't prove a runner is back.

We can hope that Giancarlo Stanton and D.J. LeMahieu, and Jazz Chisholm (and hopefully soon Luis Gil, and others) all return to play at a high level, but it isn't that easy. A game, or a few games, or even a few weeks don't demonstrate that a player has returned to form. Most often, and almost exclusively, it just doesn't work that way with athletes.

For players who are trying to return from years of injuries and a lack of playing time, coming back is even more difficult. We sometimes think these players are more than they are. Missed time means missed reptition and missed opportunities. That missed time is also compounded negatively because most of the competition hasn't missed that time. Most of them are sharp and in prime shape. It is difficult to reach that level with a body that keeps breaking down, especially when that process takes place over many years. Repitition matters. It just does. Bodies work best when they are in sync. Bodies that keep missing time due to injuries get out of that rhythm. It doesn't just come back because we hope and want it to.

It's always to fun to hope, and to say, "He's back," and proclaim that a superhero has returned.

I wish it were that simple, but it's not.

***

Google Gemini created today's image from the following prompt: "Please create an image of an injured NY Yankees player, maybe with his arm in a sling, standing on crutches, and with a black eye."