TORONTO — The two-run single off the bat of Trent Grisham in the sixth inning Friday night at Rogers Centre was supposed to be another data point in the hottest stretch of his New York Yankees season. It turned into something far less encouraging.
Grisham rounded first base after the hit, took second on the throw home, slid awkwardly into the bag, and signaled toward the Yankees dugout almost immediately. He exited the game with right hamstring tightness. The Yankees lost 8-5 to the Toronto Blue Jays. The bigger story, by the time the dust settled in the visiting clubhouse, was the player walking off the field rather than the score on the board.
The hot streak that may be on pause
Grisham had been one of the most productive bats in the Yankees lineup for over a month before the injury. He entered Friday’s game hitting .377 with a 1.014 OPS over his last 18 games. He had reached base multiple times in 12 of those 18 contests. Stretching the window out, his line over the previous 34 games sat at .285 with an .832 OPS.
Since May 1, his 141 wRC+ has been third on the Yankees behind only Paul Goldschmidt and Ben Rice, with Cody Bellinger tied in the same range. He was supposed to be the player keeping the lineup steady while the team navigated injuries to several other regulars. He was doing exactly that until Friday’s sixth inning ended in a hamstring grab.
Asked after the loss what his level of concern was, Grisham did not try to hide that he was still gathering information about his own body. He said it was too early to tell what he was dealing with.
“We’ll see where it wakes up [Saturday],” Grisham said. “Hopefully, it’s good news, no IL, but we’ll see.”
The Yankees injury list keeps growing
The Grisham scare lands on top of an injured list that has reshaped the Yankees roster over the last six weeks. Aaron Judge has been out since May 31 with a rib stress fracture. Giancarlo Stanton has been sidelined nearly two months with a right calf strain. Catcher Austin Wells is on the IL. Ace lefty Max Fried is working back from a left elbow bone bruise. Dominguez has been out with the AC joint sprain. Adding Grisham to that group would be a sixth significant absence in a stretch that has tested roster depth.
Despite all of it, the Yankees and the Tampa Bay Rays are the only two American League teams with at least 40 wins. Boone, when asked about the cumulative injury picture, leaned on the depth conversation the Yankees have been having since spring training.
“It’s part of it,” Boone said. “As we’ve talked about all year, I feel like it’s one of the deeper rosters we’ve had in a while. So we got capable people of going in there and picking up any slack left. You never like key guys going down of course, but in a long season, that’s unfortunately part of it sometimes.”
Why losing Grisham would hurt
Grisham started the 2026 season as one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball. His .145 BABIP through April was the second-lowest in the majors, ahead of only Tampa Bay’s Cedric Mullins. The underlying contact data suggested positive regression was coming. It arrived in volume starting in May.
Boone, asked before Friday’s game about Grisham’s recent surge, framed it less as a hot streak and more as the player simply getting the results his at-bats had been earning all year.
“He’s been great,” Boone said. “I really think he’s been the same all year. Early on, he was kind of unlucky and not getting results. Now he’s getting results.”
Center field also requires legs to play, which adds risk to any hamstring concern for a position-specific player. The Yankees offense has been exactly league-average in June. Losing one of the bats keeping it afloat would compound the pressure. The decision now sits in how Grisham’s hamstring feels overnight. The Yankees will have an answer by Saturday morning.
Is Dominguez the answer?
The Yankees have not scheduled imaging yet, but manager Aaron Boone indicated tests could come in the next 24 to 48 hours depending on how Grisham feels Saturday morning. He underwent treatment immediately after being pulled. The Yankees will know more before deciding whether to formally place him on the injured list.
If Grisham does land on the IL, the move would not happen in a vacuum. Jasson Dominguez has been on a Triple-A rehab assignment recovering from a left AC joint sprain and just homered in his fifth game on Friday. He has also been working in right field during recent rehab games, a position he had played only once in his professional career before this rehab stint. That detail has suddenly become important.
“There’s a chance we bring [Dominguez] up, depending on Grish,” Boone said on Friday. “It just depends. We’ll see what we have overnight and in the morning. But Jasson could be in play.”
The outfield alignment the Yankees could roll out as soon as Saturday would feature Cody Bellinger in left field, rookie Spencer Jones in center field, and Dominguez in right field. That is a major shift from the Bellinger-Grisham-Judge configuration the Yankees opened the season with.
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