The Yankees have so many injuries right now it would be unbelievable for any other fan base aside from the Yankees. For the Yankees and their fans, it’s just business as usual. After setting the single-season record for most players placed on the injured list in 2019 (30 players across 39 IL stints), the Yankees haven’t slowed down when it comes to getting hurt in 2020.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season. There wasn’t a series this past weekend against the Mets, but after the weekend’s injury updates from the Yankees, I thought it would be good to sort through it all.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I think Luke Voit summed up the Yankees’ injury situation best when he said, “Obviously it’s a part of the game, but it’s crazy that it’s happening again.” He’s right, it is crazy that it’s happening again. It’s unbelievable is what it is. As of right now, the Yankees are missing four of their nine everyday position players (DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres, Giancarlo Stanton), their second-best reliever (Zack Britton), a starting pitcher (James Paxton), their backup catcher (Kyle Higashioka) and Aaron Boone’s go-to reliever (Luis Avilan). This is in addition to having lost their No. 2 starter (Luis Severino) and an elite relief option (Tommy Kahnle) for the season. And this doesn’t include all of the injuries the team would have had to play the first half of the season with had the season started on time.

2. Paxton was placed on the injured list with an elbow issue suffered in his most recent start, in which he once again blew a lead to the Rays with a three-run inning. “At first when it happened, I was thinking, ‘This can’t be happening,’” Paxton said. “It just continued to get tighter and tighter. Considering the circumstances, I got very lucky with the injury.” How could Paxton think, “This can’t be happening?” Paxton gets hurt. That’s what he does. He has never made 30 starts in a season and has never pitched more than 160 1/3 innings in a season. Why? Because he gets hurt. He has been on the disablied list/injured list at least once in every season in his career. The Yankees knew who they were trading for and what they were getting when they dealt for the oft-injured left-hander, so none of this should come as a suprise to them. Last season — his first with the Yankees — he missed a month with a knee injury and then hurt his back in his final regular-season start, which eventually led to surgery in February. I’m shocked that Paxton is shocked that he is hurt again.

3. “It should be a short-term thing,” Paxton said. “My goal is to make it back for the end of the season. Hopefully get a few starts in before the postseason begins.” An elbow injury for a pitcher usually isn’t a “short-term thing” in a regular 162-game season, and this elbow injury has come in late August in a 60-game season with 35 games left. Paxton is shut down right now. Then he has to be built back up from basically nothing to the point where he can pitch in a game. I don’t see how it’s possible he could “get a few starts in” with the regular season ending on Sept. 27, which is 35 days from now. And even if he were to “get a few starts in,” who wants Paxton starting a postseason game? He wasn’t deserving of a postseason start before this injury, now he’s going to come back from the injury and suddenly be good enough to be a Top 3 starter on this team? It’s bullpen or nothing for Paxton when he comes back.

4. With Paxton out, there’s an open rotation spot. How should the Yankees handle that open spot? By giving it to Clarke Schmidt. How will the Yankees most likely handle that open spot? By using an opener. Why won’t the Yankees turn to Schmidt? I’ll allow Boone to explain. “[Schmidt] not being on the roster makes it not so simple,” Boone said. “But he’s certainly doing well down there and the reports we continue to get are strong.” Schmidt isn’t an option because he isn’t on the Yankees’ 40-man roster, and putting him on the roster would mean getting rid of someone else and it would also mean starting his service time. In the middle of a championship window, the Yankees aren’t going to put the best possible team together because they might have to cut a reliever undeserving of a 40-man spot and because they continue to operate as if they don’t have endless financial resources. I have a list of names who could be designated for assignment to make room for Schmidt. It’s not hard. Instead, 40 percent of the Yankees’ rotation will be J.A. Happ and an undetermined opener.

5. The good news is DJ LeMahieu is rehabbing this thumb injury. The bad news is what Boone said about LeMahieu’s injury. “I’m excited about how he’s progressed since the injury, because he was in some pretty good pain and had some pretty good swelling in there and lack of range of motion.” So according to Boone, LeMahieu had “some pretty good pain” and “some pretty good swelling” and also a “lack of range of motion,” yet he was evaluated at the plate after the injury and allowed to stay in the game, and evaluated again in the field and allowed to stay in the game. It’s good to know pain, swelling and lack of range of motion aren’t symptoms of someone who needs to removed from a game.

6. Torres is out for two to three weeks after suffering Grade 1 strains to his left quad and hamstring running out a ground ball. So essentially his entire left leg is in shambles from running 90 feet? That is so Yankees it hurts. “The players prepared really well during the quarantine; myself, I prepared really well,” Torres said. “I think injuries just happen.” Torres is right, injuries do just happen, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent them. Unfortunately, the team he plays for doesn’t realize this, and they don’t realize there is nothing that can be done to prevent them from happening even as they continue to records for amount of injured players.

7. “Giancarlo did some running outside on the field, probably about half-speed,” Boone said. “He continues to make really good improvements. Nothing imminent there, but he is making steady progress.” That’s good name for the eventual Stanton biography: Nothing Imminent There: The Giancarlo Stanton Story. I don’t think anyone thought there was anything imminent about a return for Stanton given everything that happened in 2019. Like I have said in all the Yankees Thoughts blogs since Stanton got hurt, I will believe he’s back when he’s standing in the batter’s box in an actual game, and I don’t think that will be happening this season with five weeks left.

8. Judge is expected back on Tuesday. That doesn’t mean he will be back, just that he’s expected back. If you have learned anything from timetables to return from Judge’s previous injuries, then you should know he usually doesn’t meet those timetables. “I felt like I could have been back out there after a couple of days,” Judge said on Sunday. “That’s why I was so adamant about not going on the IL to begin with. … I’m feeling great,” Judge said. “I could run around, I could jump, I could swing a bat, I could throw. Everything that you need to do for a baseball game, I could do.” If Judge was not injured like he claims he wasn’t and was able to play all along, then how did the Yankees know he was banged up in order to remove him from the most recent game he played in? He had just hit a home run and there was no visible injury with him, so clearly he said something to Boone or the training staff, which led to his removal and then to his being placed on the injured list. If Judge was as healthy as he says he was, he wouldn’t have said anything about possibly being injured.

9. Boone talked about the Yankees’ weekend series against the Mets being postponed. “It’s the world we’re living in. We understand that,” Boone said. “It certainly is a little frustrating, especially when we haven’t been infected with it, but that’s the nature of this. We knew what we signed up for and unfortunately it’s happened to us now a couple times. That doesn’t make it ideal, but we also understand that we have to deal with it.” Boone talks like someone who knows any game could be postponed, yet he manages like someone who thinks there are zero days off this season. The Yankees had Friday off. They had Saturday off. They had Sunday off. They are off today. They are off again on Thursday. Every single player and pitcher better be available for a two-game series in Atlanta, otherwise, what’s the point of anything? I’m sure Boone already has scheduled off days for Luke Voit and Gio Urshela this week that were mapped out in July, and he will follow through on them, even if 44 percent of his everyday lineup is out as of right now, and 33 percent of it will still be out if Judge does return on Tuesday.

10. The Yankees trail the Rays by one game in the division. That means the Yankees are currently the No. 4 seed in the AL’s eight-team playoff field, and that means they are currently in line to face the Indians the first round, best-of-3 series. The Rays would face the Orioles right now. The difference between being the 1-seed or the 4-seed is enormous. You can write it down that the Top 7 seeds in the AL will be the Yankees, Rays, Twins, Indians, White Sox, A’s and Astros in some order. The 8-seed will be the Orioles or Blue Jays or Tigers or Rangers or some other horrible team which wouldn’t sniff the postseason race in a 162-game season in a five-team format and might not even finish at .500 this season. Would you rather have the Yankees play a team from the first list of teams or the second list of teams in a best-of-3? If you follow the Yankees’ line of thinking that “just getting in the playoffs” is enough and it doesn’t matter what seed you are, remember that line of thinking when Shane Bieber strikes out 15 Yankees in Game 1 of the first round.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

The Yankees had a three-game loss-column lead on the Rays entering this recent three-game series and a chance to create some real separation in the standings and essentially end the division race. Instead, the Yankees lost all three games and now trail the Rays by a 1/2 game. On top of that, the Yankees added Zack Britton to the injured list and Gleyber Torres and James Paxton are expected to join him.

Last season, I wrote the Off Day Dreaming blogs on every off day, but this season there aren’t many off days. There aren’t many games. So instead, I have decided to use the Off Day Dreaming format following each series. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each series this season.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. Three days ago, I wrote about how the Yankees have the deepest team in baseball (which they still do) and talked about how the Yankees could win the division this week (which they can no longer do). At the time the Yankees had DJ LeMahieu, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton on the injured list and they had a 2 1/2-game lead in the AL East. Today, the Yankees have added Zack Britton to the injured list, will most likely add Gleyber Torres and James Paxton, and their 2 1/2-game lead is now a 1/2-game deficit. First, the perfect 2020 home record went, then the home series unbeaten streak went and then the division lead went. The Yankees lost all three game to the Rays to fall to 1-6 on the season against their only competition for the AL East and they did so with a combination of awful managing, poor pitching and a lack of offense. Did I mention awful managing? Because it was possibly the worst managed series by Aaron Boone since he threw away the 2018 ALDS against the Red Sox. The Yankees had a chance to put the Rays away with 35 games left and instead they gave away their division lead.

2. The Yankees lost the first two games of the series and were clinging to a 1/2-game lead in the division, setting up the series finale to be the biggest game the Yankees have played and might play in the regular season. When the lineup was posted, Mike Tauchman was listed as the 3-hitter. About 12 hours earlier on Wednesday night, Tauchman wasn’t allowed to bat in the bottom of the ninth and was pinch hit for by Miguel Andujar. Andujar struck out on three pitches and was sent down to the alternate site after the game. So Andujar was good enough to pinch hit for someone the Yankees feel can bat third in a lineup, but then following the pinch-hit at-bat wasn’t good enough to be on the Yankees. And Tauchman wasn’t good enough to bat for himself in the ninth inning as the tying run, but was good enough the following day to bat third in the starting lineup. The Yankees have used these players as their 3-hitters this season: Tauchman, Torres, Aaron Hicks, Mike Ford, Clint Frazier and Gio Urshela. Three of the six aren’t everyday players on the Yankees when the team is at full strength, but apparently, everyone gets a chance to bat third for the New York Yankees!

3. The Yankees led the series finale 2-0 before James Paxton had his routine meltdown. Paxton blew the lead in the fifth inning and the Rays went ahead 3-2. In the bottom of the fifth, the Yankees answered with an Urshela two-run home run to go back ahead 4-3. Then the top of the sixth happened. Boone removed Paxton (which was the right move) and went to Adam Ottavino (which was also the right move). Two correct moves in a row for Boone! Clearly, Boone had a predetermined plan of Ottavino for the sixth, Chad Green for the seventh and the eighth and Aroldis Chapman for the ninth since Britton had been placed on the injured list. It was a good plan … in theory. Except plans in baseball rarely work out. The game doesn’t let you perfectly map out your relief situation, and the problem with that is Boone doesn’t know how to deviate from the plan once it goes awry. Ottavino allowed a double to lead off the inning and then walked the next batter. First and second and no outs. Bad Ottavino was clearly in the game, but with the three-batter rule and limited “elite” options, he was going to have to figure it out, and I was OK with him figuring it out. Ottavino got a lineout and strikeout to hold the runners and move one out away from getting out of the self-induced jam. Ottavino got the soft contact every pitcher dreams of, but the bloopiest bloop of all time fell in over Tyler Wade’s outstretched glove to score the tying run. It was unfortunate, but just bad luck. What happened next wasn’t bad luck, it was just plan dumb.

4. Due up for the Rays was the left-handed Joey Wendle. Under no circumstances will Boone allow Ottavino to face a left-handed hitter, especially with the go-ahead run on third and the game on the line. But Boone’s plan of Ottavino for the entire inning and then Green had fallen apart and he needed to adjust. Rather than go to the Yankees’ best reliever in Green like the Rays’ Kevin Cash would have done and has done all season against the Yankees, Boone went to Luis “Everyday” Avilan for a left-on-left matchup to try to “steal” the third out of the sixth. Given Boone’s early-season obsession of Avilan, I knew he would eventually have to lose a game for Boone to lose trust in him. That game came on Aug. 8 in the second game of the doubleheader in Tampa when Avilan let both runners he inherited score and the Yankees lost by two. Or so I thought. Evidently, one disaster for Avilan against the Rays wasn’t enough. Avilan allowed a single to Wendle to put the Rays up 5-4. Boone’s attempt to steal an out had blown up in his face and now because of the three-batter minimum, Avilan had to stay in to face the right-handed hitting Mike Zunino. Zunino crushed a three-run home run to put the Rays up 8-4. Game over.

5. It’s not Avilan’s fault he blew the game. He isn’t very good. He didn’t offer himself a contract with the Yankees and he doesn’t continue to put himself into games for them. Avilan has been on six teams in five years. There’s a reason for that and the reason isn’t because he’s really good at getting out of jams and pitching in high-leverage situations. Green had pitched once and thrown 33 pitches over the last eight days. He could have gotten the last out of the sixth and pitched the seventh and the eighth. But even if Boone didn’t want him to get seven outs, he could have used Green to finish the sixth and then seen what the Yankees’ offense did in the bottom of the sixth (they scored a run). Rather than worry about the next inning or the day next day or the next game, how about worrying about the situation at hand? And guess what? There is no next day or next game right now after a Mets player and staff member tested positive for coronavirus, so it will be at least another few days until Green throws a pitch in a game. The Yankees continue to give their players excessive rest and scheduled off days and keep enforcing their load management strategy when it clearly doesn’t work. After setting the all-time record by putting 30 players on the injured list last season, the Yankees might break that record this season in only 60 games. Every game should be treated with the utmost importance because it’s only a 60-game season and because the next day’s game is always in jeopardy of being postponed by the coronavirus.

6. The problem is the Yankees don’t feel any game is of the utmost importance. They were going to implement their extra rest methods this season even before the postseason field was expanded to eight teams. Now with more than half of the AL going to the playoffs, the Yankees simply don’t care if they win the division or have home-field advantage or play the most possible games in Yankee Stadium in October. They just want to get in, the same way they have just wanted to get in for the last decade, and they have endured the same fate every time they have “just gotten in” over that time: by losing. Boone said as much this week at the Stadium. The Yankees aren’t going to go all out to win the AL East. If they do, great. If they don’t, no big deal. It will be a big deal when they have to travel in October or play more games in a series in Tampa, Oakland or Houston.

7. The Yankees’ current injured list includes:

Zack Britton (hamstring)
Kyle Higashioka (oblique)
Aaron Judge (apparently his entire lower body?)
DJ LeMahieu (thumb)
Giancarlo Stanton (hamstring)

I would be shocked if Torres (hamstring) and Paxton (elbow) aren’t added to the injured list. Luis Severino (elbow) and Tommy Kahnle (elbow) are out for the season. If the 2020 season had started on time, Paxton would have missed the beginning of the season with a completely different injury (back), and Judge (rib/lung) and Stanton (calf) would have missed the first half of the season with completley different injuries than they currently have. And Aaron Hicks (elbow) also would have missed the first half of the season if it had started on time. Excessive rest and load management is working well!

8. The Boone, Avilan and Luis Cessa fans on social media who are pretty vocal whenever any of the three does something positive (it’s rare) were very quiet during and after the series finale. It must have been a scheduled day off for those fans. I don’t think the Yankees are going to move on from Booone after this season when his contract expires. The Hal Steinbrenner Yankees don’t like to upset the apple cart and as long as ownership is making money and turning a profit, they don’t care if the team wins championships or if every member of the team is good at their job. Boone will likely get a three-year contract, the way Girardi did when his initital three-year contract was up. (Girardi got a three-year contract then another three-year contract and then a four-year contract.) Boone was hired because of his communication skills and ability to manage a clubhouse with an even-keeled personality. At least that’s what everoyne says. He clearly wasnt hired for his experience since he didn’t have any before becoming Yankees manager and let’s hope he wasn’t hired for his bullpen management or lineup construction, otherwise that evaluation process needs to be revamped entirely. Boone’s so-called communication speciality though now appears as questionable as his calls to the bullpen after telling lies about Judge’s removal from a game last week and after removing Gerrit Cole was from his start this week.

9. The only glimmer of hope for Boone not returning in 2021 is that Cashman asks the opinions of his players before extending Boone a new contract, because Cole, who will be a Yankee for nearly the next decade, clearly has a problem with Boone. Or at least he does right now. After Boone ended Cole’s winning streak in Tampa a couple weeks ago, he removed him with one out remaining in the seventh this week. Boone motioned to the bullpen before he reached Cole on the mound and then Cole let him have it with his glove covering his mouth, continued to vent in the dugout and then kept going with the media after the game. “I’m just going to keep it at less is more right now,” Cole said after the game, not wanting to say something he might regret about his manager. “I wanted to finish the game. I think the body of work over the course of today and over the course of the last start speaks for itself.” Cole was right. He has earned the right to get out of jams and pitch until he feels his start is over. Personally, I would haven’t even sent him back out for the seventh at 99 pitches because I believe every pitcher’s arm only has a certain number of pitches in it before it breaks down, and there’s no reason to extend Cole in the fifth start into a decade with the team. But once Boone sent him back out there, he should have let him finish the inning. “[Boone] made the move before he even got out there, so it didn’t really matter whatever I said to him on the mound,” Cole said. “Whatever I said to him in my glove, we’ll just leave it at that.” I wish I knew what Cole said to him in his glove because it’s probably similar to many things I have said about him over the last nearly three seasons.

10. The next day, Boone was asked again about Cole and said, “He’s an ace in the sport, and I love the fact that he wants the ball. Sometimes that spills over with some emotion when there’s a lot on the line, so I really don’t have an issue with it.” I like how Boone thinks him having an issue with it would even matter. Boone does a job thousands of people can do. Cole does a job only he and Jacob deGrom can do. No one cares if Boone has an issue with Cole’s reaction or remarks and the Yankees’ front office certainly doesn’t. I wonder who they would side with. The Yankees owe Cole more per start than they own Boone per year and Cole is the the franchise’s most important piece to winning a championship. Boone can’t win championships for the Yankees, he can only lose them, and so far he’s proving he will do that. I’m sure the two are actually fine, but maybe they’re not? Maybe Cole won’t be inviting his fellow Greenwich neighbor Boone over to play catch anytime soon and maybe he will have an opinion if Cashman asks him about Boone at the end of the season.

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Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast. New episodes after every game throughout the season.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!