Andrew Benintendi may have finally been available to make his return from injury had the Yankees advanced to the World Series.
Except they never made it out of the ALCS, in part because they were missing Benintendi’s left-handed, contact-oriented bat.
After the Astros finished off their sweep of the Yankees on Sunday night in The Bronx, Benintendi indicated he was targeting a World Series return from the broken hook of his hamate bone that he had sustained on Sept. 2 and required surgery.
“Obviously I wanted to be out there and do what I could to help the team win,” Benintendi said. “But there’s only so much you can do. It just sucks that it didn’t heal in time.”
Benintendi said he was “close” to being back in play, and the Yankees certainly could have used him. Their offense sputtered for most of the ALCS, scoring just nine runs on 21 hits in the four-game series.
Without Benintendi in left field, the Yankees cycled through Oswaldo Cabrera, Aaron Hicks and even Giancarlo Stanton starting games there in the postseason.
Manager Aaron Boone revealed during the ALDS that Benintendi had received a shot in his wrist to treat some residual pain he experienced as he continued rehabbing. But Benintendi on Sunday said it was not a setback and that is not what kept him from being a part of the ALCS roster.
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“Not at all,” Benintendi said. “If anything — well, I don’t want to say anything on that. But that was not a setback. There were no setbacks. It just took what it took [to heal].”
Now set to enter free agency, Benintendi’s Yankees tenure felt incomplete after they acquired him from the Royals at the trade deadline for minor league pitchers Chandler Champlain, T.J. Sikkema and Beck Way.
In 33 games with the Yankees, Benintendi hit just .254 with a .734 OPS — numbers skewed by his slow start in The Bronx.
“You get traded over and you want to help the team get far in the playoffs,” he said. “I started off slow. I don’t know, I just feel like I didn’t play my best baseball when I was here, healthy.”
Benintendi said he had not given much thought to his free agency yet, but that he would be open to a return to the Yankees. The only starting outfielder the Yankees have locked in for next year is center fielder Harrison Bader, though Hicks is also under contract coming off a brutal 2022.
“I’ll listen to every team,” Benintendi said.
