Ben Cherington is encouraged by the progress being made by Ke’Bryan Hayes, and the Pittsburgh Pirates general manager said Saturday he expects the rookie third baseman to join the club on its road trip.
Hayes, who has been on the injured list since April 4, is throwing and running to stay in shape but still hasn’t tested his tender wrist by swinging a bat since reaggravating the injury last week in Detroit. The Pirates visit the San Diego Padres from May 3-5 and the Chicago Cubs on May 7-9.
“There continues to be progress every day, so we’re encouraged by that,” Cherington said. “He feels better every day. He’s feeling improvement. We’re hopeful that there’ll be enough improvement soon where he can get the bat back in his hands and start a swing progression. That hasn’t happened quite yet.”
Cherington also gave a deeper explanation to the nature of Hayes’ injury, which occurred on a swing in his first at-bat against the Chicago Cubs on April 3, the second game of the season. Cherington said Hayes initially felt symptoms in two places.
“It’s now really localized in the wrist,” Cherington said. “So he was feeling something up higher in his hand when he first did it back in Chicago. From what I know, that’s gone. It’s really localized down into the wrist. We know there’s an injury there. There’s signs of healing, based on the imaging we’ve done.”
Cherington said Hayes got a second opinion in a consultation with renowned hand/wrist specialist Dr. Thomas Graham, and “we feel really good and confident about the diagnosis.”
“All the doctors feel very confident that this is an injury he’s going to get past, with conservative care,” Cherington said. “But it is in his wrist, and he’s a hitter so we’ve got to listen to what he’s feeling. What we don’t want to do is for him to ramp up and, even though he’s feeling good enough, to start to compensate in some way where it either affects another part of his body or it affects his performance.”
Cherington added Hayes has experimented with different grips and knob shapes, but the Pirates will leave that up to him.
“It’s just hard to hit major league pitching when you don’t feel good or feel confident in your wrist or your hand,” Cherington said. “We want him to feel that way, so we continue to listen to him and we’ll continue to test his strength, his hand and wrist strength, and listen to the symptoms. … We’ll just keep going from there. We’re confident that he’s going to play a lot this year, and we all want him out there and nobody wants to be out there more than he does.”
