It’s weird when a day of spring training goes by and a Yankee isn’t injured. It’s been a weird few days made weirder by Brian Cashman seemingly meeting with the media daily when such occurrences have always been infrequent throughout the year. That’s what happens when your roster is falling apart with two weeks until Opening Day.

“We’ve taken a number of hits in the starting rotation,” Cashman said. “We certainly can’t afford to take too many more.”

“Too many more?” The Yankees can’t afford to take one more. As it stands, either Will Warren or Carlos Carrasco is going to be in the rotation to start the season. One more injury and both of them will be in the rotation.

“Every pitcher is one pitch away,” Cashman said of potential injury. “You certainly hope you can avoid injuries, but injuries are also part of this.”

The free-agent options available aren’t appealing. For the Yankees to think Carlos Carrasco (who has a 5.02 ERA in 547 1/3 innings since the start of 2019) is better than any still-available arm tells you all you need to know about what’s available.

Because Hal Steinbrenner is reluctant to solve his team’s problems with money, if the Yankees are to sign an arm now it will prevent them from trading for an arm actually worth something later. That’s not to say the Yankees shouldn’t be adding to their depth by any means possible right now, it’s just the way it is for the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees. It’s why Cashman said it’s “less likely” the Yankees will add more payroll at the moment. This comes a day after it was reported the Yankees made a franchise record $411.7 million off of ticket and suite revenue last season, including $101.9 million from the postseason alone. The $411.7 million was a 40 percent increase from 2023.

The Yankees’ 2025 payroll is currently the same as it was in 2024 (and actually even a few million fewer). Despite record revenues, the payroll is staying the same, even though ticket prices, concessions, merchandise and advertising costs won’t.

Because the Yankees were planning on Gerrit Cole to pitch on Opening Day, Max Fried’s current schedule doesn’t like up with him being available for Game 1 of 162. Odds are Marcus Stroman is going to get the ball for the first game of the season against the Brewers. (Last April against the Brewers, Stroman blew a 4-0 lead and put 12 baserunners on in four innings.) The same Stroman who showed up to spring training expecting to be traded and who had spent the first day of his spring answering questions about a possible trade and the possibility of him moving to the bullpen. Now it’s likely Stroman will throw the first pitch of the Yankees’ season and the likelihood of him throwing 140 innings and guaranteeing himself $18 million for 2026 grows. All Yankees fans need to be Stroman fans and forget about the possibilty of Stroman being a part of the 2026 roster, the way Cashman forgot about Cole’s elbow issues last season when he brought him back this offseason.

“I think, ultimately, when you get enough distance between episodes,” Cashman said of Cole, “you start to forget a little about things that have happened in the past.”

Only the man who creates the roster would say, think and operate like that, despite age, a decline in strikeout and a decline in velocity serving as reminders for him.

“We’ll evaluate again what we have here,” Cashman said. “We’ll also evaluate what’s available outside camp.”

There’s not much left here. There’s nothing outside camp. The Yankees’ rotation is going to have to stay healthy and stay afloat until July when Gil is expected back and when teams are willing to move reliable starters.

On New Year’s Day, I wrote the following:

Since Juan Soto left for Queens, the Yankees have made themselves into a better team. That’s not to say losing Soto doesn’t suck or that he would have prevented them from being a better team (the Steinbrenners would have prevented the Yankees from being a better team with Soto because they would have been reluctant to add more to their payroll). But the Yankees now have a deeper rotation with the signing of Max Fried. They have a stronger bullpen with the trade for Devin Williams and re-signing of Jonathan Loaisiga, and they are much better defensively with Aaron Judge back in right field, Cody Bellinger now in either center or left, Paul Goldschmidt at first base and Jazz Chisholm back to second base.

On Tuesday, Michael Kay posed a question asking if the Yankees are better off for 2025 with the roster they built following Soto’s signing with the Mets given the litany of injuries that have decimated their roster. The answer is an obvious yes.

Of course I wanted Soto back. I would have given him $100 million per year. I would have given him ownership stake. Who cares? It’s not my money. Long term, Soto is the right decision every time, whether he gains 50 pounds and becomes a full-time designated hitter or not. But for 2025, not having Soto and having the depth (as shallow as that depth is) they created is more important.

With Soto, there’s no Bellinger. There’s likely no Williams. There’s probably no Goldschmidt. (There’s still no third baseman, since apparently fielding an everyday player at every position wasn’t an option for this season.) Yes, Soto, who represents a Top 3 bat in the game would be there, but the defense (which is now a necessity) would be worse, the game’s best closer wouldn’t be on the roster and DJ LeMahieu (who’s unsurprisingly injured) or Ben Rice would be expected to be the team’s first baseman. But most importantly, with Soto, there’s no Fried.

No Fried. No Gerrit Cole. No Luis Gil for at least three months. That makes Carlos Rodon the team’s No. 1 starter. That makes Clarke Schmidt the No. 2. That makes Marcus Stroman (who three weeks ago arrived at spring training assuming a trade was imminent) the No. 3. The 4 and 5? A combination of Carlos Carrasco and Will Warren.

Rodon has made 30-plus starts in two of his 10 seasons, Schmidt is 29 with one season of more than 16 starts in the majors to his name, Stroman pitched to a 5.88 ERA and put 131 baserunners on in 75 innings over his final 16 starts last season, Carrasco has a 5.02 ERA in 547 1/3 innings since the start of 2019 and Warren put 44 baserunners on in 22 2/3 innings with a 10.32 ERA last season.

The same gambles for 2025 of needing Austin Wells to build on his rookie season, Anthony Volpe to build anything, Jasson Dominguez to become an important bat who could catch routine fly balls and one of Oswaldo Cabrera or Oswald Peraza to be close to league average as an every third baseman would exist if Soto were here. But the defense would be worse. The rotation would be a laughingstock and the bullpen would be weaker.

With Soto, the Yankees would still have the greatest offensive duo since Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris with he and Judge. But with Soto and no one else from this offseason, the Yankees would be closer to being the Angels teams of the Mike Trout/Shohei Ohtani era than they would a postseason team in 2025. (Again, the question was asked about 2025 only.)

I completed the five stages of grief when it comes to Soto no longer being a Yankee a couple months ago. It took me a couple of weeks to move through the first (denial) and second (anger) steps, but I was only briefly in the third (bargaining) and fourth (depression) steps. Acceptance (the fifth step) is where I remain, and seeing what the Yankees’ roster has become this spring and knowing what it would look like if the offseason had been Soto and nothing else has only made the acceptance grow.

“Just dealing with some crankiness,” Aaron Boone said rather nonchalantly about Aaron Judge on Feb. 18, 2020. “I guess a little soreness in the shoulder.”

That was the start of spring training five years ago.

“I feel like it’s a pretty minor thing,” Boone said of Judge back then. “Probably in the next couple days, start ramping him back up.”

Judge showed up to spring training with a nagging injury from the past season.

“We did put him through a battery of tests,” Boone said. “He had the MRI.”

“It was kind of what his shoulder has always been,” Boone said in regard to the MRI results, which made it seem like Judge’s shoulder hasn’t always been in the best of conditions.

“It probably started a couple weeks ago, when I first got down here,” Judge said. “I’ve been hitting since early November, and working out since early November. Once I got down here, hit on the field, hitting outside I just felt a little soreness up in the shoulder.

“Nothing alarming, nothing that I was like, ‘Hey, we need to really check this out,” Judge continued. “So I said, ‘We got plenty of time going into spring training. Let’s take it slow these next couple days, make sure everything’s right, and then kind of go from there.”

“I don’t anticipate it will delay the start of the season,” Boone said. “We will treat it very conservatively.”

Not even two weeks later on March 1, Boone told YES that Judge is going through “testing” to find out why his shoulder is still bothering him. The injury Boone described as “minor” and the one Judge thought didn’t need to be checked out had not progressed in 12 days.

Two days later, Brian Cashman referred to the injury as “pec area” after it had originally been called a shoulder injury.

“They are optimistic that it’s a muscle, but it’s premature,” Cashman said. “I know he feels much better and optimistic.”

Later that week, Boone said the injury “shows signs of healing” even though no one seemed to know if it was a shoulder injury or pec injury or muscle injury.

“I wouldn’t say [surgery] is off the table,” Boone said about the unknown injury, but you wouldn’t want to go to that right now especially if the bone is healing.”

Suddenly, it was bone-related.

Finally, two weeks later on March 20, the Yankees announced that in addition to Judge dealing with a fractured rib, he was also suffering from a collapsed lung. It took 31 days from Judge’s shoulder “crankiness” for the Yankees to announce a complete diagnosis.

Judge suffered the injuries diving for a ball in September 2019 and somehow it went undiagnosed for six months. This came after the ‘Next Man Up’ season of 2019 when the Yankees completely overhauled their entire medical and training staff. Here we are five years later and not much has changed with injuries still being handled and diagnosed with Google searches and WebMD visits.

On top of the odd approach to diagnosing and treating injuries, the Yankees’ continued lack of care for creating depth on their roster has compounded the issue that has been a staple of Cashman’s roster building for a decade.

It’s unfortunate Giancarlo Stanton continues to deal with injuries to both elbows that he dealt with last season, which went untreated from the end of the World Series until the start of spring training. It’s not unfortunate Stanton is injured again, since Cashman himself said a little more than a year ago getting hurt “seems to be part of his game.” But did Cashman prepare for the inevitable Stanton injury? Of course not! Why would he? Why build roster depth and invest in proven major-league talent when you can take a chance on Austin Wells being the hitter he was from the end of April until the end of August and not the hitter he was in March, April, September and October? There’s no need to spend anymore when you can pray Anthony Volpe finally takes a step forward after 1,290 plate appearances. There’s no need to do anything when you’re banking on Paul Goldschmidt to turn back the clock a couple of years, DJ LeMahieu to turn it back five years and for Jasson Dominguez to be a generational talent. (Well, so much for a LeMahieu revival as he was injured more than a week ago and no strategy or timetable for his return have been given.)

“Dealing with it at the end of last year, I thought we were in a good place,” Cashman said of Stanton’s elbow problems. “Three weeks before camp it came up.”

Except it didn’t come up three weeks before camp. It came up last year, like you just said. Guess what else came up last year? An elbow injury to Gerrit Cole that kept him out for the first half of the season.

The Yankees know Cole’s age. They know his decreased strikeout numbers and velocity. They know what they saw on those MRI results a year ago. And they still took him back after he opted out. Maybe the Yankees were always going to take him back if he opted out, or maybe they took him back to keep as many names as they could in their effort to entice Juan Soto to re-sign. No matter the reason, it was a regrettable decision in real time, and now that Cole is going to be out until the middle of the 2026 season, it looks like idiotic.

Last year when Cole went down, Luis Gil won the job to replace him in the rotation. The oft-injured Gil hadn’t pitched in the majors in two years, but was awesome in his first full season at age 26, winning Rookie of the Year (despite leading the league in walks). Between injuries and performance, Gil’s stock would never be higher, so it made sense for everyone to agree putting him in a deal for one year of Kyle Tucker was worth it. The Yankees balked at the Cubs’ ask of Gil and kept him. He’s now hurt and expected to miss half of the season.

“Thankfully, as long we handle it right, we’ll get him back sometime in the summer,” Cashman said of Gil.

Not a whole lot of trust in thinking the Yankees will handle Gil’s lat injury properly. Six years ago, Luis Severino went down with a lat injury in spring training. The Yankees let him start to ramp up before doing an MRI to see how his injury was progressing and he was re-injured. Cashman said in hindsight the team should have imaged Severino again. Apparently, Cashman won’t let that happen again with Gil.

“Being a starter he has minimum of six weeks no throw, Cashman said. “They’ll re-image, re-MRI it during that rest period.”

That’s good. But it’s not all good, as Cashman then decided to get flexible with the six-week no-throw period that has been recited countlessly of late.

“Is it six weeks, is it seven weeks, is it eight weeks?” Cashman asked as if he were playing “How Old Are You Now?” after singing “Happy Birthday”.

“You’re talking about three months you’re not going to see him,” Cashman said. “That’s unfortunate, but that’s also part of the existence of pitching.”

Yes, that is the existence of pitching, and that’s why when you have the opportunity to trade it for a superstar bat in its prime, like Tucker, you do it.

“You can never have enough [pitching],” Cashman said, “and hopefully we have what we need.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt, Marcus Stroman and either Carlos Carrasco or Will Warren isn’t all that you will need. Fried has a history of elbow injuries, Rodon has made 30-plus starts in two of his 10 seasons, Schmidt already had a back issue this spring after missing half of last year with a lat injury, Stroman pitched to a 5.88 ERA and put 131 baserunners on in 75 innings over his last 16 starts last season, Carrasco has a 5.02 ERA in 547 1/3 innings since the start of 2019 and Warren put 44 baserunners on in 22 2/3 innings with a 10.32 ERA last season.

This isn’t pessimism, this is realism. Everything written to this point has been fact, either a quote said by a Yankees employee or a stat produced by a Yankees player. If it paints a dark picture of where the Yankees stand with a little more than two weeks until Opening Day it’s because it is a dark picture. The trustworthy part of the Yankees’ lineup is Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm. The trustworthy part of their rotation is less than that. At this rate, Devin Williams and Luke Weaver shouldn’t be allowed to throw another pitch in spring training.

The Yankees’ win total has plummeted from 92.5. to 88.5. Despite all of these issues, I still like the over. Despite all of their issues, I still think this Yankees team is a playoff team. It’s not because I think they still have a well-made roster without Cole for the entire season, without Gil for half of it and without Stanton until who knows when. It’s not because I believe in Volpe’s bat or think Goldschmidt will experience an MVP-like resurgence because he puts on the pinstripes or because I think either Oswaldo Cabrera or Oswald Peraza will become a trusted, everyday major leaguer. No, it’s because the American League isn’t very good.

For years now, the Yankees have operated under the idea of why use our vast financial resources and unrivaled revenue to build the best possible roster when the other 14 teams in the AL aren’t building the best possible rosters they can? The Yankees know they don’t have to be the best team in the AL to consider their season a success. They just have to be better than nine teams in the AL. Even with all of these injuries, they still are.

Good enough to make the playoffs? Yes. Good enough to win the World Series? Not without an inordinate amount of luck. But that’s good enough for the Yankees since that’s what they believe is needed to win in October anyway.

Giancarlo Stanton began spring training by saying he hadn’t swung a bat for three to four weeks because of pain in both of his elbows. The issue Aaron Boone described as “akin to tennis elbow” has become a little more worrisome than tennis elbow as a day after the Yankees manager said Stanton continued to receive treatment, Stanton was reportedly in New York for evaluation. That report was then somewhat rebutted by Boone who said Stanton’s trip to New York is “personal in nature” and “I’m going to leave it at that for now.” Just your normal, run-of-the-mill spring training injury mystery for the Aaron Boone Yankees.

Whether Stanton is in New York to have his elbows evaluated or not, he’s not in Tampa, he’s not at spring training and he hasn’t swung a bat in a month. Given Stanton’s injury history, it’s hard to feel anything other than extremely shitty about his chances of not missing a significant amount of time this season due to this injury (or is it injuries since it’s both elbows?)

If injuries didn’t seem to always progress from an annoyance to season-altering in the span of hours with the Yankees then I may be less worried about every injury announcement the team makes. And if this were a player other than Stanton, I may be less worried. But I know how it goes with Stanton, and I know how his rehab and recoveries generally go. We’re coming up on the six-year anniversary of a biceps strain becoming a shoulder strain becoming a calf strain during the same stint on the injured list for Stanton. It wouldn’t surprise me if the timetable for his return ends up being post-All-Star break. I’m prepared for that. It’s unfortunate the Yankees aren’t.

Prior to last season, it was Brian Cashman who said Stanton is “going to wind up getting hurt again more likely than not because it seems to be part of his game.” Sure enough, Stanton missed 48 regular-season games, equating to 30 percent of the season. Last year, the Yankees had Juan Soto to more than make up for an extended Stanton absence. A year later since Cashman made those remarks and a year older for Stanton and now without Soto, the Yankees’ offense needed help for 2025 even if Stanton were to play in 158 games like he did seven years ago in 2018. But in the Yankees’ annual attempt of letting their success hinge on a massive gamble, the first leg of their 2025 parlay is already in peril.

The Yankees are now going to open the season with three trustworthy bats out of their nine lineup spots. They’re going to have a 37-year-old first baseman coming off the worst two seasons of his career and clearly in decline; they’re going to have a 17-percent-worse-than-league-average bat at shortstop; they don’t know who’s going to play third base; they’re going to play a rookie in left field; they’re going to play a sophomore at catcher coming off a disastrous September/October and then they’re likely to frequently use the now vacated designated hitter spot for Aaron Judge, which means more playing time for Trent Grisham, who wasn’t good enough to play over Alex Verdugo in October (the same Alex Verdugo who remains unwanted by the entire league despite supposedly being in his prime at age 29). If only there was a time during the baseball calendar in which teams could buy the rights to proven, unsigned players, the Yankees would be able to take advantage of their vast financial resources to fill holes and add depth to the roster. If only such a time existed.

I have no issue with Stanton being hurt, considering that’s what he does: he gets hurt, just like Cashman said. What I do have an issue with is the Yankees’ lack of depth entering the season. When the general manager openly opines about the annual injuries to an important piece of the team’s offense and decides against defending the possibility of said player getting hurt it’s irresponsible.

Stanton missing 30 percent of 2024 was nothing new. Aside from his first season with the Yankees (2018) when he played in 158 games and played through a lingering hamstring issue, Stanton has missed an unbelievable amount of time. In 2019, he played in just 18 games, and in 2020, he missed 37 of 60 games (and would have missed at least half the season if the season was played in full as he was expected to be out until July). In 2021, he amazingly played in 139 games, but followed that up by playing in only 110 games in 2022 and 101 in 2023. Here is the breakdown of percentage of the season missed by Stanton during his Yankees tenure.

2018: 2%
2019: 89%
2020: 62%
2021: 14%
2022: 32%
2023: 38%
2024: 30%

In total, Stanton has missed 364 of a possible 1,032 regular-season games as a Yankee, or 35 percent.

Stanton’s bat has always been there in October. With 18 home runs in 41 games (a home run every 9.6 plate appearances) and a .994 postseason OPS, regular-season Stanton has always received a pass because of postseason Stanton. But the Yankees don’t get a pass. Not when they could have planned for the inevitable.

In the past, extended absences for Stanton during the regular season haven’t been as damaging as expected, and that’s because for a while he was a luxury on the Yankees roster. That’s no longer the case. The Yankees need Stanton for more than just October. They need him to get there.

The good news is the injury to both of Stanton’s arms apparently dates back to last season, and he supposedly played through it when he was destroying the pitching of the Royals, Guardians and Dodgers, so he has played with it and performed with it. The bad news is Stanton and the Yankees had four months to diagnose and treat the injuries and they didn’t, and now a large portion or more of his 2025 season is at risk.

I wish an easy answer to replacing Stanton and giving the Yankees a quality bat other than Judge, Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm existed, but it doesn’t. Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t want to spend another dollar on the 2025 roster (he said as much this weekend), and even if he did, there’s no one worth signing.

I’m prepared for the worst when it comes to a return date for Stanton. I’m prepared for a lot of Judge at DH and a lot of Grisham in the lineup. I’m prepared for a lot of games needing to be won by the pitching staff. I know what an extended Stanton absence looks like and I’m prepared for what an extended Stanton absence entails. Somehow, the Yankees weren’t.