The Yankees have one move left to make this offseason and that’s to bring Brett Gardner back.
The Yankees have one move left to make this offseason and that’s to bring Brett Gardner back. In order to stay under the luxury-tax threshold, it’s the only remaining move they “can” make. It’s now just a waiting game until pitchers and catchers report next week.
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The Yankees’ Eric Cressy discussed keeping the team healthy in 2021, especially their two middle-of-the-order bats in Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who have been injured for most of the last two seasons.
I was sitting in the Rogers Centre in Toronto on Opening Day 2018 when Giancarlo Stanton launched an opposite-field home run in his first Yankees at-bat. Later in the game, I watched Stanton hit a second home run, a majestic shot to straightaway center that seemed like it might carry forever. The Yankees had come within one win of the 2017 World Series and had traded for the 2017 National League MVP and he looked like he would continue building on his 59-home run season from the year before. I couldn’t help but spend the entire first two days of the 2018 season in Toronto thinking the Yankees were going to get back to the World Series.
It didn’t work out that way and still hasn’t. The Yankees were humiliated in the 2018 ALDS, lost four of the last five games in the 2019 ALCS and then were embarrassed as an organization in the 2020 ALDS. The team that came within one win of the 2017 World Series hasn’t gotten back to that point. They haven’t gotten timely hitting or consistent starting pitching in the postseason the last three years, but they also haven’t been in the best possible position to win in October by achieving home-field advantage. That’s partially Aaron Boone’s fault, but it’s mainly been due to injuries.
After setting the all-time single-season-record for players placed on the injured list in 2019, the Yankees rebuilt their medical and training staff and hired Eric Cressy as their director of player health and performance. (Cressy also works with non-Yankees and had been working with recently-signed Yankee Corey Kluber, which is part of the reason the Yankees committed $11 million to the former Cy Young winner despite having thrown only 36 2/3 innings over the last two seasons.)
Cressy went on YES on Thursday and discussed keeping the Yankees healthy in 2021, especially their two middle-of-the-order bats in Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who have spent most of the last two seasons on the injured list.
“In both cases, they’ve lifted less than they have in the past,” Cressy said of Judge and Stanton this offseason. “Aaron, in particular, has really taken a heavy interest in a lot of yoga. We have to be mindful of the stresses on guys who are 6-foot-7, 6-foot-8, big dudes who are standing around for long periods of time in cleats. Those are things that normal people don’t encounter.”
Cressy’s comments implying Judge and Stanton can’t stay healthy because they “stand around for long periods of time in cleats” is quite the stretch. Judge’s three most significant injuries (not including the freak hit-by-pitch fractured wrist) in his five years with the Yankees have been two oblique injuries (2016 and 2019) and the fractured rib/collapsed lung (suffered in 2019, but affected 2020). None of the three had anything to do with standing around in cleats.
Stanton, played 158 games in 2018 and played in 73 of those games as an outfielder. In 2019, he played in only 18 games and missed two-and-a-half months after the third game of the season and then another two months after returning in late June, so it’s hard to pin any of his long list of injuries from 2019 on “standing around.” In 2020, Stanton played in only 23 games and was the designated hitter in all 23 games. There was no “standing around” for him except for standing on the bases, which has become difficult for the Stanton.
“Anytime you see an athlete who has some chronic stuff, there is a perception that they’re not working hard,” Cressy said. “It couldn’t be further from the truth. Those guys are rock stars in every aspect of their preparation, from how they come into the training room to the work they put in in the weight room.”
I don’t think anyone thinks Judge and Stanton aren’t working hard. They’re just injury-prone players. Cressy said so himself by saying that they are “rock stars in every aspect of their preparation.” If they are preparing exactly how they should and still suffering injuries, which keep them out for extended periods of time, then they’re injury-prone.
It was mysterious when Judge’s fractured rib/collapsed lung was misdiagnosed as a shoulder issue in February 2020 and when he suffered a calf injury in 2020 on Aug. 11, came back on Aug. 26, and re-injured it in his first game back. (Boone also blatantly lied about the calf injury and the team greatly mishandled it.) But in neither of those instances or any injury Judge has sustained as a Yankee has there ever been any doubt he wasn’t working hard. He just happens to get hurt. He happens to get hurt a lot.
It’s not that Stanton isn’t working hard either, it’s just that his injuries haven’t been as easy to understand. In 2019, he endured a biceps strain in the third game of the season and went on the IL. While he was on the IL, the biceps strain turned into a shoulder strain, and while still on the IL, the biceps strain and shoulder strain also became a calf strain. He went on the IL after the third game of the season, came off it in late June, played in six games and went back on the IL until mid-September. He played in 18 regular-season games, returned for the playoffs and benched himself for health reasons in the ALCS.
In late February 2020, Stanton was shut down with another calf injury in spring training. He was healthy by the time the season started in late July, but in the second week of August, he was back home on the IL with a hamstring injury, which kept him out for more than half of the shortened season. Stanton’s injuries are always related to a muscle strain or pull. He takes an exorbitant amount of time to recover from his injuries and they mostly happen doing something which shouldn’t be an issue for baseball players: running the bases.
“Prior to Game 5 [of the ALDS], he was out doing some sprint work and it was as athletic as I had ever seen him,” Cressy said. “I was confident that he could have gone out to play the outfield for us that night. It was super encouraging.”
In the postseason, Stanton was the player I thought the Yankees were trading for prior to the 2018 season, as he hit .308/.387/1.038 with six home runs in 71 plate appearances in the Yankees’ seven playoff games. So it’s no surprise he looked the best he had ever looked health-wise to Cressy since he was playing better than he had at any point in his three seasons with the Yankees.
Cressy makes it sound like it would take a miracle for Stanton to play the outfield once again and it would have been a miracle had he played the outfield in the postseason. Brian Cashman made it clear in his end-of-the-season press conference that Stanton is no longer an outfield option for the Yankees. Stanton is a 31-year-old who is owed $208 million over the next seven seasons and then another $10 million as a buyout in 2028 (yes, the Marlins are paying a portion of his contract, so it’s not all on the Yankees), and he’s a full-time DH.
Cashman worked tirelessly for years to free up the DH role to use as a way to give players a “half day” of rest and not have spot tied up in a one-dimensional player. After moving on from a 41-year-old Alex Rodriguez during the 2016 season, he gave the spot to a 37-year-old Matt Holliday for 2017. Stanton played more than half of his games as the DH in 2018 and then the spot was somewhat freed up in 2019 and 2020 because of Stanton’s injuries, but as long as Stanton is healthy, he will be the DH. The only way to give players non named Stanton somewhat of a day off for the next seven years is to give them the entire day off.
“2020 was a little bit of a dumpster fire in terms of Major League Baseball injuries,” Cressy said. “What baseball really learned last year above all else is you can’t do spring training in three weeks. There’s a very skill-specific sport aspect of preparation that takes time for that adaptation to kick in.”
The entire league might have been a dumpster fire for injuries last year, but the Yankees have been a dumpster fire for injuries the last two years. The Yankees can’t afford to have 2021 go the same way. They can’t afford to keep losing Judge and Stanton.
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After an abysmal start, the Rangers have won three of four, earning seven of eight points to climb the East standings.
After an abysmal start to the season, the Rangers have won three of their last four games, earning seven of a possible eight points to climb the East standings. Their latest two points came in an impressive 4-2 win over the Capitals in advance of an important upcoming week against the Islanders and Bruins.
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The Yankees will always make the postseason with an expanded field, but I’m against increasing the current format.
The Major League Baseball Players Association rejected the proposal from the owners to delay the start of the season and implement the universal designated hitter and the expanded postseason for a second straight year. That’s bad for the Yankees who will never not be in the top eight teams in the American League, but it’s good for baseball.
Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
Every plate appearance, every swing, every throw, every ball in the dirt for the Yankees’ catcher will be magnified and dissected this season.
Yankees baseball is close to returning. With the Major League Baseball Players Association rejecting the owners’ proposal to delay the start of the season, which would have unnecessarily expanded the postseason field again, the season is scheduled to start on time. We are a couple of weeks away from baseball.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. It seems like the season is going to start on time, and within the next two weeks, the Yankees will begin to arrive and start training in Tampa. Some Yankees are already there, the way there are every year, and batting practice videos of Luke Voit is about all the Yankees baseball action there is right now. With the start of spring training approaching, there are two major storylines this season that will be at the forefront from the first official day of spring training until the final game of 2021, whenever that may be.
2. The first being the health of the Yankees’ new-look rotation. When Jordan Montgomery, who is 52 innings removed from his 2018 Tommy John surgery, is your second healthiest starter, it’s not great. Here are the Yankees’ starters and the amount of innings thrown since the start of 2019:
Luis Severino (unavailable until midseason): Five starts and 20 1/3 innings since start of 2019
Corey Kluber: Eight starts and 36 2/3 innings since start of 2019
Jameson Taillon: Seven starts and 37 1/3 innings since start of 2019
Montgomery: 12 starts and 52 innings since start of 2019
Then there’s Deivi Garcia (seven career starts and 35 1/3 innings, including his “start” in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS) and Clarke Schmidt (one career start and 6 1/3 innings).
3. If Kluber and Taillon both can’t stay healthy, it will be a disaster for Cashman and his team. It will be a horrible look for the luxury-tax champion Yankees, who will have passed on re-signing Masahiro Tanaka, instead choosing Cashman’s so-called “two-for-one” strategy by using the money for Tanaka to sign both Kluber and Taillon. A lot is riding on the health of a bunch of starting pitchers who have been anything but healthy for at least two years. And a lot if riding on a training and medical staff who has about the worst possible back-to-back seasons a training and medical staff could have to keep them healthy.
4. The second is Gary Sanchez. Sanchez’s entire season will be magnified and dissected. His spring training plate appearances will be live tweeted by beat writers and anything he does behind the plate that isn’t throwing the ball back to the pitcher will be reported. There has never been more pressure on Sanchez than there will be this season. There has never been more pressure for a regular-season position player Yankee in the Brian Cashman era.
5. Cashman apparently said the Yankees considered non-tendering Sanchez in December, which would have made him a free agent. There can’t be any truth to that. He would have been signed the second it was announced he had become a free agent. This has to be Cashman trying to motivate Sanchez, otherwise it’s time for a new front office. Kyle Higashioka is going to be 31 in April and isn’t a starting catcher and the Yankees have zero major-league-ready depth at the position. It’s why they signed 40-year-old Erik Kratz (who I love) last season.
“The fact that he’s still with us is proof of how we felt and how we feel,” Cashman said. “I know he’s looking forward to proving last year was a fluke. We look forward to him justifying our continued commitment to him and his talent level. We’ve invest our time, effort and money into him, for good reason.”
6. The only reason the Yankees would have non-tendered Sanchez would have been to stay under the luxury-tax threshold and not pay him the $6.35 million he will make in 2021. I’m honestly surprised penny-pinching Hal Steinbrenner didn’t instruct his front office to let Sanchez go because of that. Steinbrenner would rather pay Higashioka to hopefully hit some groundball singles through the hole on the left side of the infield than try to revitalize Sanchez’s historic production.
7. Hall of Fame catcher (and brief Yankee) Ivan Rodriguez was asked about Gary Sanchez at the Thurman Munson Awards, and a lot of what “Pudge” said I agree with.
“What the Yankees organization needs to do is just let him play baseball,” Rodriguez said. “He has tremendous ability, defensively and offensively. I know that he’s been struggling in both sides of the game, but I think right now it’s more mental.”
It’s nearly impossible to pin underperformance on being mental since no one knows what it’s like inside Sanchez’s head (other than opposing pitchers who know all he wants to do is pull the ball and any low-and-away breaking ball will get him to chase), but I agree Sanchez needs to be allowed to just play. Let him do whatever he was doing in 2016 and 2017 that got him to the majors and briefly made him the face of the future of the Yankees, resulting in him setting all-time home run records.
8. Sanchez needs to figure it out either offensively or defensively. If he can hit the way he did in 2016 and 2017 and to a lesser extent in 2019, then everyone can live with subpar defense and passed balls. If he can become great defensively and his offense takes a hit because of it, then OK, that’s what nearly every other team deals with at the position. But the Yankees need to stop interfering with his defense, stop trying to make him the perfect all-around player, and just let him play the game however he used to play it. If then, he still can’t put it together on at least one side of the ball, whether that be or offense or defense, so be it, and maybe it will be time to move on. Before it gets to the point of moving on, he needs to be given the chance to play how he wants and used to and not how coaches or catching instructors want.
9. This is it for Sanchez as a Yankee. If Cashman is telling the truth that the team considered moving on from him after 2020, then there’s no way they won’t if he doesn’t perform in 2021. The Yankees do have depth in the minors at the position, so it’s rather easy to envision him having another poor year and the Yankees cutting ties with him and letting Higashioka be the everyday catcher in 2022, or finding a one-year stopgap until Austin Wells or Anthony Seigler or Antonio Gomez or Josh Breaux emerge as the next everyday catcher (if one of them ever emerges). If Sanchez doesn’t revert back to his former self, or something close to it in 2021, that will be it. The Yankees will move on and he will likely sign with the Padres, grow facial hair and win the World Series in 2022, while hitting close to 40 regular-season home runs.
10. As President of the Gary Sanchez Fan Club, I believe in him. I truly think he will quiet his critics (who are now pretty much every other Yankees fan other than myself) this season and return to being the Yankees’ biggest advantage at any position in the lineup.
Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes every Monday and Thursday during the offseason.
My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!