Jazz Chisholm is confident he will return to the Yankees after his minimum IL time

DETROIT – Jazz Chisholm Jr. not only believes he can avoid surgery, but also that he could be back at the end of his at least 10-day injured list.

The Yankees may ultimately decide to slow down Chisholm's plan to quickly return to action after straining his left UCL, but the third baseman was encouraged by his condition on Friday – among other things, he hasn't felt any pain since Monday, when he sustained the injury.

“I'm 100 percent realistic that I'll be back after 10 days,” Chisholm said after playing catch at Comerica Park.

He injured his elbow, although catching is not his throwing arm, but after undergoing treatment and strengthening of the area around the ligament over the past few days, catching was the first baseball activity he returned to.

The real test will be how Chisholm responds to swinging the bat, which he believes could happen in the next few days.

“I know myself, I wanted to really rush it and start swinging a couple of days ago,” Chisholm said. “But now I'm just going to go with the training staff. We'll probably start swinging in a day or two.”

Chisholm was optimistic about his injury from the start, even saying on Monday night that he was “not overly concerned” before a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan on Tuesday revealed the sprain.

He is not expected to receive any injections and sounded confident that surgery will not ultimately be necessary.

“We're definitely going to avoid surgery,” Chisholm said. “We'll only have to operate if it gets worse, and right now it's looking better every day.”

Aaron Boone took a more cautiously optimistic stance, saying the Yankees would not know for sure until Chisholm was back playing and “going full throttle.”

“He's got a lot of strength and range of motion,” Boone said. “So it's going to be this treatment to get rid of all the pain and then hopefully start baseball activities and see how that improves. Hopefully it won't take too long, but we've got to get it done.”

“We are getting rid of the pain [stage]but I think the early signs are encouraging.”