Josh Hamilton will start the 2016 season on the disabled list.
Hamilton received stem cell and PRP (Platelet-Rich Plasma) injections in the same knee he had surgery on in the offseason.
"Obviously it's frustrating and disappointing," Hamilton said Wednesday. "As an athlete, you don't want to be pushed back and wait and have a drawn-out time period to get back. That stinks. At the same time, I really felt like it was something that needed to be done now."
The knee had begun to swell, and the injections are supposed to speed up healing.
“This is unfortunate timing for this for sure,” Rangers assistant general manager Thad Levine said Wednesday.
"This is something different, that I haven't tried yet," Hamilton said of the stem cell treatment. "This was the next step to go. We've exhausted things. If this makes it 50 percent better, I'll be good to go. Everybody I've talked to who've said they had any kind of stem-cell stuff said they've had good results from them, so that's positive and encouraging. It will never be right, but I just want to get better. That's the simplistic way to put it. There's always that fear there that it might not work."
Hamilton will be on crutches for 7-10 days and is not expected to be available until mid-May. However, Levine stressed this does not change the Rangers plans for the left field position.
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“We had not envisioned that Josh would be a 140-game left fielder for us, so it probably doesn’t change our (approach to left field) demonstratively,” Levine said. “We anticipated that we would need some compliments for him in left field.”
Hamilton appeared in 50 games in 2015, hitting eight home runs in his return to the Rangers. This is his 11th trip to the disabled list.
