The dramatic saga between the Yankees and Alex Rodriguez continues to develop and worsen by the day.
Rodriguez has started the process of filing a medical grievance against the Yankees, according to Andrew Marchand of ESPNNewYork.com.
Marchand reports that Rodriguez’s lawyers contacted the Major League Baseball Players Association within the last two weeks to begin the process with claims that the Yankees have mishandled the third baseman’s hip injury dating back to last season’s playoffs.
On Saturday, Rodriguez’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina told The New York Times that the Yankees misled Rodriguez about the extent of his injury in an effort to conspire to keep him off the field. That same day, Yankees team president Randy Levine fired back — offering to release all of the team’s medical records, and he also challenged Rodriguez to file a grievance if he believed he didn’t receive the best care from the team’s medical staff.
Tacopina alleges that the Yankees allowed Rodriguez to struggle in the 2012 playoffs and play despite a torn labrum in his left hip. Tacopina also accuses Levine of telling the surgeon who performed his offseason surgery that he would be fine with it if Rodriguez never saw the field again, and lastly he claims that the Yankees did not allow the 38-year-old to play with a quad strain despite his claims that he was healthy enough to be on the diamond earlier this season.
Levine and the Yankees have denied all of the claims.
According to Marchand, notifying the union is the first step in eventually getting this resolved by arbitrator Frederic Horowitz, who is also overseeing Rodriguez’s 211-game suspension appeal.
