(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo by Henk Seppen)
  Didi Gregorius back in Major League with Yankees
Nederlands
 NEW YORK, New York (USA) -
Didi Gregorius made his comeback in the Major League on Friday-evening (April 28) and was in the starting line-up for the New York Yankees in its home game against the Baltimore Orioles.
On March 20, during the World Baseball Classic, the short stop left the Netherlands Kingdom Team with a right shoulder-injury and returned to New York to be examined.
In the evening, the Orange-squad played in the Semi-Final of the Classic in Los Angeles against Puerto Rico and lost 4-3 in eleven innings.
Gregorus was replaced on the roster by Chadwick Tromp, who was with the team as bullpen-catcher.
...Didi Gregorius made his comeback in the Major League...
(© Photo: Henk Seppen) |
The next day, the New York Yankees announced that Gregorius might miss the first month of the regular season due to the shoulder-injury.
According to the Yankees, the 27-year old Gregorius had a strained subscapularis muscle in his right shoulder.
He sustained the injury on March 18 while completing a double play in the exhibition game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, which was played in between the Second Round and Final Round of the Classic.
It was reported that a full recovery even could take six weeks.
But his recovery went very well and so, he was back in a Yankee-uniform again tonight.
Gregorius plays for the New York Yankees since 2015, taking over at short stop after Derek Jeter retired.
Last year, he played in 153 games and batted .276 with 20 homeruns and 70 runs batted in.
In the past week, Gregorius worked on his recovery, playing in five games for the Tampa Yankees (Single-A).
There, he did very well and batted .444 (8-for-18) with a double and a homerun.
In his first game back with the Yankees, Gregorius made a great defensive play as short stop in the first inning and hit a double in his first at bat.
For Gregorius, it was his 500th game at the big league-level.
Later in the game, he batted in a run with a grounder and added a single.
The Orioles led 9-1 halfway the sixth inning, but when the bottom of the ninth began, they led only 11-8.
Up to that moment, there were six homeruns in tonight's game, three for the Orioles, three for the Yankees.
Welington Castillo, Manny Machado and Mark Trumbo (grand slam) homered for the Orioles.
Aaron Judge homered twice for the Yankees, while Jacoby Ellsbury hit his 100th career homerun, which also was his first grand slam!
In the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees then got runners on the corners with no outs.
A force play-grounder by Ellsbury then made it 11-9 and Starlin Castro followed with a 2-run homerun to make it an 11-11 score!
With that, the game went into extra innings.
In the bottom of the 10th, Aaron Hicks and Kyle Higashioka walked.
With one out, Matt Holliday hit a 3-run, walk-off homerun to give the Yankees a remarkable, come-from-behind 14-11 victory!
(April 28)
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