Here We Go Again: James Paxton Will Miss 3-4 Months After The Removal of a Peridiscal Cyst In His Back

Oh cool! We're doing this shit again. James Paxton is going to miss 4 months. We have not begun baseball activities yet and people are already dying on the Yankees. Picking up right where they left off in 2019. Super duper. 

I have no clue what a microscopic lumbar discectomy means. Not in the slightest. From a quick Google search it appears to be a back issue that was causing him pain. They did a scan and found this cyst. How long the cyst was there for beats me, but here we fucking go again. I wonder if this has anything to do with the tightness in his ass that he had at the very end of the year. Seems like that could be true. 

Here's a little explanation of what we're dealing with here from someone in this sort of field (shout out my friend Nick)

It’s an extremely rare thing. Basically he had low back pain with pain down the leg I’m assuming and was probably treated for such and if you don’t get improvement you get an MRI. They go in and basically cut out the cyst. according to the scientific journal, patients will be better within a month.

We'll hopefully see Paxton in June or July. It's brutal news for a guy entering his walk year. The good news is that the Yankees starting pitching is quite deep and they'll be able to survive relatively easy without the Big Maple until June. 

I can't believe I just said this out loud, but thank god Cashman kept JA Happ. Bizarro world indeed. Seems like Cashman knew about this lingering issue and held onto Happ just in case. Smart man. He'll slide into the 4th spot in the rotation for the time being and I assume there will be a battle for the final rotation slot between Jordan Montgomery, Clarke Schmidt, Deivi Garcia, and Mike King in Tampa. On the positive side, it'll be fun to see these young guys duke it out in Spring Training.  

Hopefully 3-4 months is all it takes and the Yankees get their number 3 pitcher back for the 2nd half of the year. Good thing the Yankees signed Gerrit Cole. This would have been much more troubling news had that not happened. Gerrit Cole is a New York Yankee if you didn't know that already.