What was forgotten before the weekend is that the Flyers are very much in a win-now window, while the Rangers are still the youngest overall team in the league and not supposed to contend for a few more seasons.
I can’t lie: I bought into the hype. After the Rangers came out of their 10-day layoff with wins in 12 of 15 games and got within one win of a postseason berth, I started to think of an 83rd Rangers game this season. After back-to-back seasons without playoff hockey, I couldn’t help myself from thinking this rebuilding Rangers team could go from the inconsistent, frustrating club they were all season before the All-Star break to become a wild-card team in the final two-plus months of the season. But after the last two games, the dream of the Rangers reaching the postseason is once again just that: a dream.
When Artemi Panarin scored the first goal of the game on Friday in Philadelphia I started to think the Rangers really might continue their improbable run from barely being alive in the postseason picture to acquiring a berth. But after that first-period goal from Panarin, the Flyers went on to outscore the Rangers 10-4 for the rest of their home-and-home weekend series. Add in the Flyers’ 5-1 win from earlier this season, and it’s been a lopsided rivalry with the Rangers being outscored at a 3-to-1 margin over nine periods.
The Flyers have been just as good as the Rangers lately with wins in 11 of 14 (including six straight), as they have changed their own postseason fate, going from being the second wild-card team to now sitting three points behind Washington for the top seed in the Met. The Flyers are finally doing what they were supposed to do this season, and they have handled the Rangers the way they were supposed to this season.
What was forgotten before the weekend is that the Flyers are very much in a win-now window, while the Rangers are still the youngest overall team in the league and a team that isn’t supposed to contend for a few more seasons. I thought the Rangers might be able to hang with the Flyers better than they had the first time the two teams met, but it ended up being hte same story. The Rangers’ last month wrongly changed every Rangers fan’s perspective of the team and masked the Rangers’ real problem of still lacking winning defense in front of whichever goalie is in net. The way the Rangers have managed to win for the last month isn’t sustainable for much longer than it has been and the Flyers easily exposed the Rangers’ defensive issues.
I’m part of the faction of Rangers fans who were suddenly wearing blinders after the recent run. While the Rangers were winning games they had no business of winning thanks to the kind of great goaltending they have now been leaning on for 15 straight seasons, I thought road wins over Winnipeg, Minnesota, Columbus, Carolina, the Islanders and Montreal meant this team had finally turned a corner. I still think they have turned a corner and are a different team than they were in the first four months of the season, they just have a long way to go, and the Flyers reminded us all of that.
It didn’t take long for Rangers fans to turn on Henrik Lundqvist on Sunday as if the loss or the five goals were in any way his fault. Lundqvist was making just his seventh start in 69 days and first in 27 days and was being asked to somehow steal a win against the hottest team in the league. He might have been able to do so if he was ever given a chance, but with Ryan Strome’s sloppy and undisciplined play combined with an abundance of power-play opportunites and odd-man rushes, Lundqvist never stood a chance. Lundqvist endured the same fate Alexandar Georgiev did two days prior as both were tagged with five goals against. It didn’t matter who played in goal for the Rangers in either game, they weren’t winning. Igor Shesterkin wasn’t stealing a win for the Rangers this weekend. No goalie was.
The Flyers showed how far the gap is between the Rangers and the true contenders in the league. The Rangers are winless in three games against the Flyers and the difference in the teams is blatantly noticeable. The Rangers have been able to win games against some of the league’s top teams like Washington, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh and Colorado, and now they’re going to need to do a whole lot more winning against those teams over their remaining 17 games.
With games against St. Louis, Washington (2), Dallas, Colorado, Arizona, Calgary, Pittsburgh (3), Columbus, Tampa Bay, Florida and Philadelphia, the Rangers have as hard of a remaining schedule as there is. Their games against teams completely out of the playoff picture aren’t exactly a walk in the park either in Montreal, New Jersey, Buffalo and Chicago.
The Rangers did a remarkable job to get within one win and two points of the second wild card, and it would be a letdown if they weren’t able to complete the improbable comeback, and were to unravel over this last month. Their schedule suggests getting within one win and two points is as close as they’ll get to the playoffs this season, a season that was never supposed to be about the playoffs, but this Rangers team has defied the odds to play meaningful hockey in March. If they want to play meaningful hockey in April, they’ll have to close the gap the Flyers exposed this weekend and close it before the defending champion Blues get to the Garden on Tuesday.
There’s 20 games left in the season and each one of them is essentially a playoff game, something this Rangers team hasn’t known in three years.
The Rangers have won 10 of 13 since their 10-day layoff and now the postseason is a very real option for them. The Rangers needed to play .750 hockey after the break through the end of the season and so far they have done more than that to get within four points of a postseason berth. There’s 20 games left in the season and each one of them is essentially a playoff game, something this Rangers team hasn’t known in three years.
1. The Rangers decided not to conduct a third straight selloff and instead extended Chris Kreider for seven years and traded away Brady Skjei and his contract for a first-round pick. Out of all the possibilities the Rangers had to handle the trade deadline, I certainly didn’t see this result and combination coming. The Rangers had the No. 1 asset on the market in Kreider and many other coveted assets like Skjei and Jacob Trouba and Pavel Buchnevich and Jesper Fast and Tony DeAngelo and Ryan Strome and Alexandar Georgiev and anyone other than Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Kaapko Kakko, Filip Chytil, Adam Fox and Igor Shesterkin (and Henrik Lundqvist because of his no-trade clause). That they chose to not sell and only move Skjei in order to free up cap space for their impending cap crunch this summer tells you this front office wants to keep as much of this group together and also wants to make the postseason this season. In a year that was never supposed to be about wins or losses or the playoffs, the Rangers have expedited a lengthy rebuild and in two years are a bubble team that has everyone in hockey talking about their future. So far the rebuild has gone better than anyone could have expected, and that’s mainly because of Panarin’s decision to take less money to be a Ranger and the future attached to landing the No. 2 pick in last year’s draft. A postseason berth in this season, which has been as fun to watch as any from 2011-2015, would be the cherry on top.
2. The Rangers are in a potential postseason position because of what they have done since their 10-day layoff, going 10-3. The point the Islanders were able to gain from them in the final seconds on Tuesday night hurt because it cut their deficit to the Islanders for one of the two wild-card spots by only one point rather than two. As it stands on Thursday morning, the Rangers are four points out of the second wild-card spot currently held by Columbus (though the Rangers have three games in hand), they’re five points out of the first wild-card spot currently held by the Islanders and seven points out of the third Met spot currently held by the Philadelphia. The Rangers needed to play .750 hockey coming out of their break to even be in this position with 20 games left in the schedule and they have done better than that, playing .769 hockey. The hard part is going to be to sustain this level of success for the next five-plus weeks and sustaining it against about as challenging of a schedule as you could have. The Rangers still have to play Philadelphia (3), St. Louis, Washington (2), Dallas, Colorado, Arizona, Calgary, Pittsburgh (3), Columbus, Tampa Bay and Florida. Their games against non-playoff teams aren’t exactly a walk in the park either against Montreal, New Jersey, Buffalo and Chicago. The Rangers are going to have to find a way to continue to win three of every four against some of the league’s best and the games against Philadelphia and Pittsburgh (because they’re 30 percent of their remaining schedule) will most likely decide their fate.
3. The Rangers even being in this position is a major accomplishment. Cap Friendly recently released a list of the league in order from youngest roster to oldest and the Rangers came in at No. 1 with the youngest roster. (Washington has the oldest roster.) The Rangers are filled with young, exciting talent and they’re getting exposure to playoff-like atmospheres and experience playing in a must-win setting each game. Even if this run to a playoff berth ends with the Rangers on the outside looking in for the third straight season, it will have a much different feel to it and it will go a long way in meaning something next season and the seasons to come.
4. A huge reason the Rangers are in this spot is because of their play within the Met. They finished the season 4-0 against Carolina and 3-1 against the Islanders, and they’re 2-1 against Columbus, 2-1 against New Jersey, 1-1 against Washington and 1-0 against Pittsburgh. (They’re 0-1 against Philadelphia with three games left against them). The Rangers play in the hardest and deepest division in the league and they have gone 13-5 so far. That’s promising because many of these teams aren’t going anywhere as the Rangers grow and get closer to their own championship window, but it’s their play outside the Met that will need to improve beginning next season to avoid being in this type of situation a year from now.
5. The Rangers dominance over the Islanders this season was more than enjoyable. The Islanders have been battling the last few weeks to avoid enduring a monumental collapse from being a postseason sure-thing two months ago to being outside the postseason picture completely. The Rangers have had a lot to do with that after taking three of four from their rival. The Islanders are very much in a win-now window (even if it’s obvious their roster’s ceiling is the second round) and the Rangers handled them. The Islanders are nowhere near good enough to win the Cup with their current team as demonstrated by their inability to consistently score. Barry Trotz’s game plan has been to score three goals and play shutdown defense and those three goals will be good enough to win on most nights. The problem is the Islanders have trouble scoring one goal let alone two or three on most nights. The job the Rangers did in being able to beat that veteran defense and style of play three times is impressive and speaks to the offensive talent on this Rangers team. If the Rangers could add in just a little of Trotz’s defensive style they will be a force and one of the league’s elite teams very soon.
6. Each time the Rangers and Islanders play, I can’t help but think about what would have been had Panarin taken the most money and become an Islander. Panarin scored the Rangers’ first goal on Tuesday night and created the play that led to Mika Zibanejad’s game-winning goal in overtime (and what a fucking blast that was from Zibanejad). The only game Panarin has missed this season was the Rangers’ third game against the Islanders and the Rangers lost that game. In the other three — all Rangers wins — Panarin had three goals and five assists. Thankfully, those eight points came for the Rangers against the Islanders and not the other way around like it could have been.
7. After watching Jacob Trouba’s hit on Michael Dal Colle from both the Rangers’ broadcast and the Islanders’ broadcast, it’s amazing that the two could have such varying opinions on the play. If you listen to each without watching, you would think they were describing two completely different hits. The hit was clean and I don’t believe that because I’m a Rangers fan. I believe that because I’m a hockey fan. You can’t be giving buddy passes in the NHL, and you certainly can’t be receiving those passes in your feet and not cleanly. Jean-Gabriel Pageau — in his Islanders debut — can’t be making passes like that to a teammate to exit the defensive zone. If I was Dal Colle, I wouldn’t be mad at Trouba for stepping up and laying his his shoulder into my shoulder (which he did), I would be mad at Pageau for giving me that pass. Pageau then jumped Trouba for making a clean and successful hit and was rightfully given a 2, a 5 and a 10 for his actions. Players shouldn’t have to answer the bell for clean hits, but really players shouldn’t be giving other players passes which could get them severely injured.
8. How about Brendan Smith? After being moved back to D following the trade of Skjei, he looked like the player the Rangers gave a four-year deal to after coming over from Detroit three years ago. It was easily the best game Smith has played since that first year as a Ranger, and he added a goal on top of his outstanding defensive work. For the tumultuous ride it’s been for Smith between getting the four-year deal then getting sent to the AHL then having to become a fourth-line forward, to finally returning to where he belongs and playing like he belongs, I think every Rangers fan is happy to see him contributing with more than a fight or an unnecessary minor penalty. If he can maintain the level of play he displayed at the Coliseum on Tuesday, some team will take the final year of his contract this summer with so many top-end defensive prospects ready to be Rangers.
9. The news about Buchnevich and Shesterkin was both scary and unfortunate. Thankfully, both are generally OK and avoided serious injury. Buchnevich didn’t play against the Islanders, but he was practicing the next day, so I assume he’ll be back this week. As for Shesterkin, it’s a crushing blow to both he and the Rangers as he continued to play at a level Lundqvist used to play at each and every game and Shesterkin and the Rangers continued to rack up wins because of his play. I don’t know that Shesterkin will be back this season, but if he’s not, the Rangers clearly have the heir to Lundqvist, and no matter what happens in the offseason, Shesterkin is clearly the No. 1 now and moving forward.
10. Georgiev did a remarkable job to beat the Islanders for a third time this season and it was announced on Wednesday that he will start the Rangers’ next game on Thursday in Montreal. I would have to think that means Lundqvist will play on Friday against Philadelphia. If not, then I have no idea what the Rangers are doing or thinking. I thought Lundqvist should have been in net against the Islanders, but I’m sure Georgiev was because of his success against them this season. If Lundqvist plays on Friday, he will once again draw the hardest competition of the three, and if he doesn’t play well, every idiot will question why Georgiev wasn’t playing. The Flyers are a contender right now. The Rangers, despite their recent 13-game run, aren’t. That can’t be forgotten when the Rangers play the hottest team in the league other than them on Friday. Lundqvist will be starting for the first time in 25 days and his most recent starts will have come against Philadelphia, Dallas, Detroit, St. Louis, Calgary, Carolina and Philadelphia. It would be hard enough for Lundqvist to shut down the Flyers’ offense and for the Rangers to beat Flyers on the road if this were five years ago and he was playing nearly every game. Given what his situation is now and how this Rangers team stacks up against the Flyers, expectations should be tempered. But given the way the majority of Rangers fans have acted toward Lundqvist this season, I’m sure they won’t be.
In the most and least surprising news ever, Giancarlo Stanton is once again injured. The Yankees will be down two-thirds of their expected outfield to start the season.
I thought the 2019 season ended. I thought the nonstop, devastating injuries which ruined last season would end when the season ended. I thought an offseason of rest and recuperation would lead to a healthier Yankees season in 2020 and ultimately the team’s first championship in 11 years. I was wrong for thinking these things. A day after the Yankees announced Luis Severino needs Tommy Johny surgery and will miss the entire 2020 season and at least part of the 2021 season, the Yankees announced Giancarlo Stanton has a Grade 1 calf strain and will most likely not be ready for Opening Day.
The Stanton injury announcement was the the most and least surprisng news ever. After playing in just 18 regular-season games a year ago when a biceps strain turned into a shoulder strain and that turned into a calf strain (here is a detailed history of those injuries), Stanton returned for the postseason only to end up injured and on the bench again in the ALCS. I decided I would give Stanton a fresh start in 2020. No sarcasm to start the season, no snarky comments, no “Ladies and gentlemen” beginning on Opening Day. I would be positive when it comes to Stanton for as long as he let me be positive. He let me positive until Feb. 26.
I went to the first two games of the 2018 season in Toronto and when Stanton hit a home run in his first Yankees at-bat I couldn’t have been more excited for what was to come in the current Yankees era. When he hit his second home run of the game, I turned to my now wife Brittni and laughed out loud, while thinking of the endless possibilites for the Yankees’ lineup. Yet here we are, nearly two years since that game in Toronto and calling Stanton’s time a disapointment as a Yankee would be an insult to disappointments. While Stanton’s first regular season with the Yankees was OK, he followed it up with an atrocious postseason that ended with him flailing at a Craig Kimbrel slider which bounced several feet away from the plate. And then there was last season. Collectively, Stanton’s Yankees tenure has been a disaster.
I have no idea when Stanton will play a game for the 2020 Yankees, and the Yankees don’t know either. Given the way his biceps strain morphed into other injuries in different parts of his body, there’s no way of knowing what this current calf strain might become. If there were a prop bet on him being ready for Opening Day I would be borrowing money from any and every source in order to maximize my earnings. The way he found new and unusual ways to get injured while already injured on the injured list last season must have made Jacoby Ellsbury proud as Stanton is now the team’s new version of Ellsbury. The Yankees always seem to have an oft-injured player or pitcher signed to a long-term deal who can’t stay healthy, and that person is now Stanton.
For a player who finished his 20s playing in just 11 percent of the team’s games, I highly doubt Stanton is magically going to get healthier with age. He’s now 30 and he’s going to be a Yankee this season and next season … and the season after … and the season after … and the season after … and the season after … and the season after … and the season after … and then season after that in 2028, the Yankees can buy him out and pay him $10 million to not play baseball for them anymore. By then he will be 37 years old and I don’t even want to think about how many games he will have played or not played in the seasons leading up to the end of his career.
The Yankees were able to win 103 regular-season games and get to within two wins of the World Series without him last season, so he’s almost become a luxury. But he’s only a luxury when the team is somewhat healthy, and right now they are nowhere near being somewhat healthy. They are without their starting left fielder in Stanton and starting center fielder in Aaron Hicks. Their No. 2 starter in Severino is out for this season and part of next season and their No. 3 starter in James Paxton will miss at least the first month of the season (and has yet to ever pitch a full season in the majors). On top of these injuries, Aaron Judge has yet to really swing a bat and hasn’t played in a spring training game. So while the Yankees are going to start the season without two-thirds of their expected starting outfield, they are dangerously close to starting it without any of their expected starting outfielders.
I want to like Stanton and I want to root for him. I want him to be the player I thought the Yankees were acquiring when they were handed him by the Marlins, but it’s becoming more and more unlikely he’s ever going to be close to that player again. For now, I will accept him just being healthy and doing his job, which is playing baseball. Let’s start with him being in the regular-season lineup and then I can start to think about him being the middle-of-the-order, MVP presence he’s supposed to be.
The Yankees knew Luis Severino ended the season with a forearm injury, James Paxton with a back issue and Masahiro Tanaka needing bone spurs removed, and they still chose to not bolster their starting pitching.
It’s Wednesday and that means it’s Spring Cleaning time. Unfortunately, all of the thoughts this week are in regards to Luis Severino’s season-ending injury, the poor handling of his injury and the poor planning which now has the Yankees scrambling to build a rotation.
1. A day later and the Luis Severino news still sucks. (I wrote about my reaction and feeling to the news yesterday.) It’s going to suck all season. There’s no finding another Severino during the season unless Deivi Garcia somehow does in 2020 what Severino did in 2015. Other than Garcia going from a 20-year-old who struggled in his brief time at Triple-A to front-end major league starer, there aren’t any options. The free-agent options are the equivalent to the movie options in a DVD bin at a convenient store, and unless the Yankees think they can win the Powerball and Mega Millions on the same day by completely reclamating someone like Matt Harvey or Andrew Cashner, there’s no one worthy of signing. The trade deadline options might be OK if the right teams fall apart before the end of July, but that’s five months away.
2. This was the 2020 Yankees’ expected Opening Day rotation:
Gerrit Cole
Luis Severino
James Paxton
Masahiro Tanaka
J.A. Happ
This is now the 2020 Yankees’ expected Opening Day rotation:
Gerrit Cole
Masahiro Tanaka
J.A. Happ
Jordan Montgomery
Opener or journeyman or rookie with no MLB starting experience
3. The Yankees handled Severino’s injury as poorly as possible, but they also handled planning for starting pitching depth as poorly as possible. All winter the Yankees had the opportunity to sign major-league arms and all winter they knew Severino ended the season with forearm discomfort. They also knew James Paxton battled a back injury in the postseason, Masahiro Tanaka needed to have bone spurs removed from his right arm and J.A. Happ was coming off the worst season of his career. Despite Gerrit Cole being the only healthy and productive member of their upcoming staff, the Yankees chose not to add to their starting pitching depth. Unless you count signing Nick Tropeano and Chad Bettis as adding to their starting pitching depth. Last season, Tropeano pitched 13 2/3 innings in the majors and allowed 18 hits, 15 earned runs, six walks and six home runs, while Bettis had a 6.08 ERA in 63 2/3 innings and has a 5.08 ERA over the last four years and 416 1/3 innings.
4. The Yankees are most likely going to open the season with one of those two as their fifth starter. Garcia or Mike King or Clarke Schmidt might be the answer at some point, but I doubt the Yankees will use any of the three as the No. 5 starter to begin the season. King could use more time at Triple-A, Garcia is 20 and was knocked around in 40 innings at Triple-A and Schmidt has 19 innings at Double-A on his resume. Get ready for Bettis against Rays at the Trop in the fifth game of the season.
5. The other option is to use an opener, pairing Chad Green with say Luis Cessa. Using Green as the opener hurts the bullpen and the ability to use him in high-leverage situations later in the game, but it does prevent Bettis or Tropeano from getting the ball. If a rotation spot isn’t going to go to King, Garcia or Schmidt, which I don’t think it will, then my pick is to use an opener as the fifth starter. However, I think the Yankees will see if they can get mediocre results out of Bettis or Tropeano before moving to an opener and weakening their bullpen strength.
6. The rotation is a mess, and there’s a better chance it gets messier than there is that it gets better. There’s more than four weeks until Opening Day. That’s a lot of time and a lot of spring training games for more injuries to ruin this pitching staff and this team. There’s no spinning the news of losing Severino into a positive. If you’re optimistic because Paxton is expected back after the first month of the season, I just want to remind you that he’s never pitched a full season in the majors in his career, and based off his injury history, it’s more likely this current injured list appearance isn’t going to be his only one of the season. That’s not pessimistic, that’s based on his six-year career in the majors and his career-high for regular-season innings being 160 1/3.
7. Severino first complained of this same forearm issue after his ALCS Game 3 start on Oct. 15. The Yankees’ medical staff examined him after that start and cleared him to pitch in a potential Game 7 in the ALCS, which never happened. During the offseason, the issue subsided because Severino WASN’T PITCHING. As soon as spring training began and he started pitching again, the forearm issue returned. So rather than realizing Severino needed surgery back in October, the Yankees realized it four months later. So instead of being ready in time for the 2021 season, Severino will now miss part of the 2021 season. The botched handling of the injury in October was one final parting gift from the medical staff which oversaw the most injured team in history.
8. It’s not like this is the first time the team botched an injury with Severino either. In spring training a year ago, he hurt his shoulder. While rehabbing the shoulder injury, he suffered a lat injury, which the team later claimed it was unaware of. When Severino suffered a setback, the team admitted they should have had him undergo an MRI prior to throwing again to make sure he was actually healed. The injuries were going to keep him out for a large part of last season, but the handling of the injuries is what kept him out for all but three starts of it. Now it’s the handling that will keep him out for at least part of 2021 as well.
10. The good news … well, there isn’t any good news regarding Severino missing the entire season. The bright side … OK, there isn’t a bright side either. Let’s go with at least … at least the league is top-heavy once again. The only thing keeping me from creating spring, summer and falls plans that have nothing to do with baseball is that the Yankees should still easily win the division and reach the postseason because of how non-competitive most of the teams in baseball will once again be. I’m not worried about the Yankees getting to the postseason, I’m worried about what they will do once they get there. The championship window is open right now and it won’t stay open forever. This will be the fourth season with Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez as full-time players. DJ LeMahieu, Tanaka and Paxton are impending free agents. Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks will undoubtedly age poorly, and the division isn’t going to be a cakewalk forever. This season was going to be the Yankees’ best chance in the last four to win the World Series, and now the chance of them winning is much less. The Yankees can still win the World Series, but it’s going to be a lot harder without Severino.
The second Brian Cashman pointed to the spot on his own forearm where Luis Severino complained of pain while talking to reporters last week, I knew Luis Severino wouldn’t throw a pitch for the 2020 Yankees.
I knew it. The second Brian Cashman pointed to the spot on his own forearm where Luis Severino complained of pain while talking to reporters last week, I knew it. I knew Severino wouldn’t throw a pitch for the 2020 Yankees, and the news on Tuesday confirmed it. The 2019 Yankees didn’t play a single game with their expected roster, and now the 2020 Yankees won’t play a single game with their expected roster as well.
I’m sick over this Severino news. I don’t mean I’m sick of Yankees getting hurt, which I’m also sick of. I mean I’m sick as in I physically don’t feel well. Even though I expected this news, my heart still sank when I opened Twitter on Tuesday afternoon and my expectations were confirmed. I feel bad as a Yankees fan who wants to watch the team built on paper actually play, and I feel bad for Severino, who is the pitching face of the core of Baby Bombers and who had last season ruined by shoulder and lat problems only to now have this season taken from him as well. The next time Severino pitches for the Yankees in 2021, he will have pitched 20 1/3 major league innings since the end of the 2018 season.
I realize pitchers get hurt and the old saying of “You can never have enough pitching” is a saying for a reason, but when will it end? Seriously, when will it end? After setting the single-season record for most players placed on the injured list, the Yankees began spring training down 40 percent of their rotation and now they will be without their No. 2 starter for the entire season. On top of that, their best player is dealing with a shoulder injury that has held him back from batting.
To make matters worse, Severino first complained of this same forearm issue after his ALCS Game 3 start on Oct. 15. The Yankees’ medical staff examined him after that start and cleared him to pitch in a potential Game 7 in the ALCS, which never happened. During the offseason, the issue subsided because Severino WASN’T PITCHING. As soon as spring training began and he started pitching again, the forearm issue returned. So rather than realizing Severino needed surgery back in October, the Yankees realized it four months later. So instead of being ready in time for the 2021 season, Severino will now miss part of the 2021 season. The botched handling of the injury in October was one final parting gift from the medical staff which oversaw the most injured team in history.
It’s not like this is the first time the team botched an injury with Severino either. In spring training a year ago, he hurt his shoulder. While rehabbing the shoulder injury, he suffered a lat injury, which the team later claimed it was unaware of. When Severino suffered a setback, the team admitted they should have had him undergo an MRI prior to throwing again to make sure he was actually healed. The injuries were going to keep him out for a large part of last season, but the handling of the injuries is what kept him out for all but three starts of it.
So now the Yankees will begin the 2021 season without their No. 2 and 3 starters. 37-year-old J.A. Happ coming off the worst season of his career is now the No. 3 starter. That means Jordan Montgomery, who pitched four innings in the majors last season, is the No. 4 starter. The No. 5 starter? It could be journeyman Chad Bettis, who had a respectable 6.08 ERA for the 2019 Rockies and who has a 5.08 ERA over the last four seasons. It could be Deivi Garcia who has never thrown a pitch in the majors. It could be some opener combination featuring Chad Green, which then hurts the bullpen. There’s a good chance if Nestor Cortes hadn’t been sent to the Mariners would be getting work as a Yankee every fifth day for the second straight season.
The Yankees’ rotation is a mess, and there’s a better chance it gets messier than there is that it gets better. There’s more than four weeks until Opening Day. That’s a lot of time and a lot of spring training games for more injuries to ruin this pitching staff and this team. If you’re holding out for the return of James Paxton, consider that he’s never pitched a full season in the majors in his career, and it’s more likely this isn’t his only injured list appearance of the season than it is that once he returns he will be healthy through the end of the year.
This spring was supposed to be about getting excited to watch the odds-on favorite to win the World Series beat the crap out of the top-heavy league, steamroll their way to a second straight division title and finally overcome the Astros in the ALCS on their way to their first World Series appearance in 11 years. Instead it’s once again about injuries. I’m not worried about winning the division and reaching the postseason. I’m worried about winning in the postseason, and the loss of Severino makes it much harder to win in the postseason.
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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!
