Yankees RHP Darren O'Day knew exactly what happened when he felt a pop while sprinting at T-Mobile Park before taking on the Seattle Mariners earlier this month.
"I was sprinting in the outfield and thought somebody had run into me and it was my – I fell down and my hamstring just popped," O'Day told reporters via Zoom on Tuesday. "Immediately kinda rolled around on the ground and knew exactly what I’d done or what had happened because I had the injury previously in 2018 when I was with the Orioles. I finally tore my hamstring enough in 2018 to have it repaired.
"The repair never fully healed, so it seems like this was bound to happen at some point and unfortunately it happened during the season."
The Yankees announced that O'Day was lost for the season due to his hamstring injury that needs surgery once again to fix. O'Day hopes this time there aren't any after effects.
"Speaking with the surgeon that did it, she just said in a certain percentage of repairs it never fully heals. There’s no rhyme or reason," he explained, talking about his previous 2018 surgery.
Approaching 39 years old, O'Day's baseball future is entirely up in the air now. And he knows it, as he admitted to being very emotional when he left the field after his injury.
"The decision is tough because of the point I’m at in my career, but speaking with these surgeons, if I ever want to play baseball again or if I wanna live the life I want to live post-baseball, I have to get it fixed," he said.
"I’ve given it a lot of thought actually and still haven’t come up with the right answer. So I’m terrible at big decisions like that and that’s actually the first thing I thought of when I did it.”
O'Day pitched just 10.2 innings with the Yanks this season, owning a 3.38 ERA with four earned runs and 11 strikeouts.