Healy positive, focused on return post-surgery

SEATTLE -- Ryon Healy may be out, but he’s not down.

The Mariners first baseman certainly isn’t thrilled to be whiling away the hours recovering from hip surgery at his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., as his teammates head down the home stretch of their season back in Seattle, but he is glad to finally have answers and a corrective path back to the game he loves.

Healy’s last at-bat came on May 20 in Texas, with a sixth-inning sacrifice fly to center field off Rangers lefty Mike Minor that scored Mitch Haniger in a game Seattle wound up losing, 10-9. After trying to play through back pain that had been lingering for several weeks, Healy finally allowed that he needed a break, and he was replaced in mid-game by Daniel Vogelbach.

“It was initially a 10-day process,” Healy said. “I never imagined it would turn into something like this, but here I am.”

The initial prognosis was lower back tightness. When rest didn’t solve the issue, Healy went to a back specialist who diagnosed him with spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spine. So after another rest period, he headed to Arizona to begin a rehab process designed to help that potentially career-threatening problem.

But weeks of therapy led nowhere, and Healy began wondering if something else was going on. Another trip to another back specialist at Stanford University resulted in a different diagnosis and surgery on Tuesday to repair an impingement in his right hip socket that was referring pain to his lower back.

“That hip was pretty bad at the end of last year,” Healy said. “I knew I had issues there, but nothing I was willing to get surgery on at the time, because I was focused on getting my swing right and getting ready for this season. But it ended up coming back around.”

The feeling now is that the spinal stenosis is a genetic issue that he’s always had, but not something that was causing problems. The hip, however, became an increasing issue with wear and tear, as the ball was not moving smoothly in the socket and was not only pinching the hip labrum, but causing a jolt in his lower back and pelvis when he ran or rotated his body.

“I wasn’t living in a ton of pain every day, waking up and getting out of bed,” Healy said, “but it got to the point where every time I swung a bat, I had a lot of discomfort. And obviously that’s important to do my job.”

At 27, Healy still has a lot of time left to perform that job, and he’s eager to get back at it. While he’s “posted up on [his] couch” at his offseason home for now, he hopes to start weaning off his crutches in a few weeks and begin the therapy and recovery process at the Mariners’ facility in Peoria, Ariz.

The prognosis is for a 4-6 month recovery from the surgery, which should have him ready for Spring Training in early February.

"I fully intend to be 100 percent by spring,” Healy said.

In the meantime, he’s following the Mariners on TV and social media, trying to keep in touch with his teammates when possible.

“I’m trying to stay in the loop as much as I can, because the one thing I miss is being around the guys every day,” Healy said. “I’ve had an amazing support staff with my fiancé and family, leaning on people close to me. But there’s really nothing that can prepare you for a situation like this.

“You can prepare yourself for the grind of a baseball season, the ups and downs and slumps. But the physical or health stuff, you don’t really know how to handle, so these are the most challenging times.

"But the more I look at it and talk to ballplayers, everybody deals with it at some point in their career, some more than others. So you walk away from it stronger than you walked into it. My mindset is staying positive and focused on the big picture.”

And that big picture has him back in uniform next spring.

"For me, it's exciting to start rehab with the hip because I know 4-6 months down the road, not only will I have a healthy hip, but a healthy back as well," Healy said. "It's good to finally have answers."