If the Yankees are so smart when it comes to preventing injuries then why do all their players keep getting injured?
The Yankees could have set their season-opening rotation in the most logical way with Gerrit Cole followed by Corey Kluber followed by Jameson Taillon followed by Jordan Montgomery followed by scumbag Domingo German. Instead, they decided to try to be smart and crafty, the way they are with their batting order and the way they were in Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS.
The Yankees’ rotation is set for the first six games of the season. It’s poorly set, but it’s set.
There will be Yankees baseball this week. It might be on Friday instead of Thursday because of the weather, but there will be Yankees baseball this week.
1. The rotation is set. It’s poorly set, but it’s set. It will be Gerrit Cole, followed by Corey Kluber and Domingo German. Not only did the Yankees keep scumbag German through his actions, his suspension and the public backlash and criticism, but he’s now the No. 3 starter to open the season rather than the expected No. 5 starter! Yankees baseball!
The Yankees claim they want to bring Jameson Taillon along slowly, which makes no sense, considering he has barely pitched in two years and will be pitching on April 7 rather than April 4. A whole three-day difference! The Yankees are so ridiculous, it’s sickening. They truly believe they can prevent injuries, yet they set the all-time single-season record for players placed on the injured list in 2019 and followed that up with an injury-filled 2020 and have followed that up by losing Zack Britton, Justin Wilson and Luke Voit for the start of 2021.
2. The Yankees’ six-game rotation to open the season is:
Thursday, Apr. 1 vs. Toronto: Gerrit Cole Saturday, Apr. 3 vs. Toronto : Corey Kluber Sunday, Apr. 4 vs. Toronto: Domingo German Monday, Apr. 5 vs. Baltimore: Jordan Montgomery Tuesday, Apr. 6 vs. Baltimore: Gerrit Cole Wednesday, Apr. 7 vs. Baltimore: Jameson Taillon
Every game against the Blue Jays and Rays is a big deal. They are the Yankees’ divisional competition. Games against them will be the difference between playing in a one-game playoff or not. Whether it’s April 4 or September 4, or Game 3 or Game 130 they should be treated the same. Unfortunately, that viewpoint isn’t shared by the team I root for.
3. “With Jamo, we feel like he’s in such a good spot physically,” Aaron Boone said. “We just want to be mindful of building these guys up properly.”
Boone rarely makes sense, and that answers as to why Taillon is pitching in the sixth game of the season makes no sense at all.
“I’m totally on board with it,” Taillon said. “We’ve discussed not putting a hard innings limit on me.”
Of course Taillon says he’s on board with it. What else is he going to say? “I completely disagree with the idiotic strategy my new team is implementing.” That’s what he should have said, but I don’t expect Taillon to go full J.A. Happ on us before he has even pitched a real game for his new team.
4. If Taillon doesn’t think there’s a hard innings limit on him, he must not be the brightest bulb. The Yankees have the hardest of innings limits on him, whether or not they have told him or will ever tell him. I mean they’re holding him back three days because they think that will make a difference in protecting a two-time Tommy John recipient. The only thing that can protect Taillon’s right elbow is to never throw a baseball. Like any pitcher, Taillon can get hurt any time he throws a baseball overhand. The strategy should be to get as much out of him as you can before he potentially breaks down again. Not try to pitch him the least amount possible.
5. Deivi Garcia lost the competition to be the fifth starter, though it was only a competition in name since he was never going to win it, no matter how well he pitched in spring training.
“We continue to be really excited about Deivi and the strides that he’s continued to make in his craft,” Boone said. “The message to him that I tried to convey was, ‘Stay ready, we’re going to need you. You’re going to be a big part of this. Make sure you’re handling your business down there as far as putting yourself in line to be the guy we go to.”
Boone is so excited about Garcia that he only wanted him to pitch the first inning of Game 2 of the 2020 ALDS before going to Happ to ruin the season. What Boone should have said was:
“The message to him that I tried to convey was, ‘Listen, it’s nothing you did, we kept German despite being a scumbag, so we have to have him on the major league roster or it will look even worse that we kept someone who did what German did.”
6. After losing Britton and Wilson, spring training wouldn’t have been complete without the Yankees losing an expected everyday starter before Opening Day. Voit will begin the season on the injured list after tearing the meniscus in his left knee and needing surgery. As of Saturday, Voit was expected to perform no baseball activities for three weeks and then rejoin the Yankees in May. That seems like a very generous timeline given the Yankees’ handling of injuries since the start of 2019.
Voit has been a sneaky injured player as a Yankee. All the attention (and rightfully so) goes to the injuries suffered by Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Hicks, but Voit has also had his issues. In 2019, he got hurt unnecessarily going for two in London against the Red Sox and was hitting .280/.393/.509 at the time. He missed two weeks, came back for two-and-a-half weeks and then missed a month. For the last month of 2019, he hit .200/.319/.338 and was left off the postseason roster. Now he’s going to miss at least one month of this season and most likely closer to two (or even more) months.
7. The Voit injury opened the door for Jay Bruce to make the team and play first base every day. Bruce will now have at least a month of real games to prove he isn’t finished as a major leaguer. He will give the Yankees some lineup balance as a left-handed hitter and maybe the magic of putting on the pinstripes will do for Bruce what it has done for so many other former star players trying to save their career. I want Bruce and Dietrich on the team over Mike Tauchman and Tyler Wade, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen if Voit didn’t get hurt. There’s still a chance Wade won’t make the Opening Day roster though I think that chance is small. Like as small as Boone not batting Hicks third in the lineup.
8. With Voit out and Bruce in, this is the lineup I would use:
DJ LeMahieu, 2B Aaron Judge, RF Gleyber Torres, SS Giancarlo Stanton, DH Clint Frazier, LF Aaron Hicks, CF Gary Sanchez, C Jay Bruce, 1B Gio Urshela, 3B
This is the lineup Boone will use:
DJ LeMahieu, 2B Aaron Judge, RF Aaron Hicks, CF Giancarlo Stanton, DH Jay Bruce, 1B Gleyber Torres, SS Clint Frazier, LF Gary Sanchez, C Gio Urshela, 3B
9. Unfortunately, Hicks is going to bat third. Boone already said that weeks ago. The Yankees think Hicks is Bernie Williams, so he’s going to continue to be treated like he’s Number 51, and not a guy with a .734 career OPS. And it would be very Boone to bat Bruce ahead of Torres, Frazier and Sanchez. For Bruce to go from not making the team before Voit’s injury to batting ahead of those three is exactly the kind of decision Boone makes. We’re talking about the same manager who would use Miguel Andujar to pinch hit in the ninth inning of a game with the game on the line in 2020 and then send him down after the game, and the same manager who used Mike Ford as a pinch hitter in a postseason elimination game instead of Frazier or Sanchez. The same Ford who wasn’t good enough to be on the major league roster in September.
10. This is it. The last Yankees Thoughts of spring training. The next Yankees Thoughts will be a week from today after the Yankees have played their first three games and first series of 2021. The weather doesn’t look promising for Thursday, but if there’s Yankees baseball on Thursday, it will be 174 days since their 2020 season-ending loss to the Rays in Game 5 of the ALDS. I’m ready for what should be a seventh-month grind to begin. Yankees Thoughts will be posted after each of the Yankees’ 52 regular-season series in 2021 and after each postseason game.
The Yankees couldn’t get through the remainder of spring training without an injury, losing Justin Wilson.
The Yankees couldn’t get through the remainder of spring training without an injury. On Monday, reliever Justin Wilson went down with an apparent shoulder injury as the Yankees are now down two elite relievers to open the season.
There’s two weeks until Opening Day. Injuries are what worries me most about the 2021 Yankees.
There’s two weeks until Opening Day. That’s exciting because it means real, meaningful baseball is also back. It’s also worrisome because it means two weeks in which the Yankees can suffer even more injuries. Injuries are what worries me most about the 2021 Yankees.
There’s only two weeks left until Opening Day. It seems like the Yankees’ remaining questions have been figured out, or at least they should be figured out by now.
Two weeks. That’s it. Two weeks until Opening Day.
1. We are past the point of spring training baseball being exciting because it’s baseball. It’s time for the regular season to start. Two more weeks of games for the Yankees to potentially suffer more injuries isn’t ideal. I would be astonished if the Yankees went the rest of March without an injury. That’s just what I have come to expect for the third straight season marred by injuries.
2. There were three “competitions” coming into spring training. They were the fifth spot in the rotation, the last bench spot and the last bullpen spot. The Yankees have wanted Domingo German to win the fifth spot in the rotation, they have wanted Mike Tauchman to be the last man on the bench and they have wanted to give the last bullpen spot to either Michael King or Nick Nelson. With two weeks to go, there’s now some good clarity on the three roster battles.
3. The Yankees have gotten what they wanted entering spring training and that’s scumbag German pitching well, so they have a built-in excuse for sending Deivi Garcia down to begin the season. The Yankees were always going to put German in the rotation to start the season. They didn’t keep him around after his actions and they didn’t sit through his suspension and deal with the public criticism and backlash to not pitch him at the major league level. He has pitched very well in spring training, but I don’t know how anyone could be rooting for him to succeed. I want him to fail and fail miserably. I want him to give up six earned runs in the first inning of his starts and have the offense overcome it, so the team doesn’t lose. I don’t how anyone could think differently.
4. There might not only be one bench spot now. The Yankees played Gio Urshela at shortstop this week, and that means maybe they are thinking of not carrying Tyler Wade on the Opening Day roster. I’m all for this. Once upon a time I was a big Wade believer (2017-18) because the Yankees made him out to be their version of Ben Zobrist. The only difference being that Zobrist actually hit major league pitching. A great glove can only go so far, and when you have a career .575 OPS, that glove better be the best glove in the history of gloves. There has always been the idea Wade would hit with consistent playing time, but in his limited playing time, he hasn’t done nearly enough (since he hasn’t really done anything) to earn extended playing time. He’s been as close to an automatic out in the lineup as one can be in the majors and continue to be in the majors. He’s basically been the Yankees’ version of not having enough players for a co-ed softball game in Central Park in which the last spot in the order is then an automatic out.
5. The Yankees’ willingness to play Urshela at short is very bad news for Wade. The one thing Wade had going for him was that he was the team’s only option to play shortstop in the event of a Gleyber Torres day off or Torres injury (knocking on wood). If Urshela can play short than Wade has no business being on the team. No business at all. Give that roster spot to someone who can actually do something other than roll over a ground ball to the right side.
6. All along it’s been sort of a given that Wade would be on the bench with Kyle Higashioka and Brett Gardner. If the Yankees are seriously considering not carrying Wade, that means there are two bench spots available. To me, Mike Tauchman shouldn’t be one of those spots. He’s not good enough (he’s not good at all, outside of a six-week run in his entire career), and he’s a left-handed hitter who plays good defense. That sounds like Gardner (minus the ability to get the occasional big hit). Why have two Gardners on the team? It wouldn’t make sense to. Miguel Andujar is injured, so he’s out. Thairo Estrada could be a possibility, but he hasn’t done anything this spring to stand out. That leaves Derek Dietrich and Jay Bruce, and I think the Yankees are thinking about keeping them both.
7. Dietrich can play the outfield and the infield, while Bruce can play the outfield and first base. LeMahieu can play first, second and third. Torres can play short and second. Urshela can play third, second and short. Dietrich can play first, second, third and the corner outfields. Bruce can play the corner outfields and first. The Yankees are more than covered in the event of an emergency or injury. Dietrich and Bruce give the team legitimate major league bats when regulars get days off, and Aaron Boone will probably start giving days off in the third game of the season. (That wasn’t a joke. The third game will be the team’s first back-to-back and the second game of five game in five days.) No one wants to see Wade playing whenever Torres or LeMahieu need days off.
8. The Zack Britton injury opened an additional bullpen spot. The Yankees are going to have 13 position players and 13 pitchers. Five spots go to the rotation, leaving eight relievers. Aroldis Chapman, Chad Green, Darren O’Day and Justin Wilson are obvious, leaving four spots. Jonathan Loaisiga and Luis Cessa will get two of those spots, leaving two more. The final two spots come down to Michael King, Nick Nelson, Albert Abreu and Lucas Luetge. Whether or not Abreu has an option remaining will determine his roster fate. If he does, he goes to the alternate site for Opening Day. If he doesn’t, I think he makes the team. The Yankees paid Brian McCann $5.5 million to play for the Astros and beat them in Game 6 of the 2017 ALCS, and received Abreu in return. It would be nice if Abreu amounted to something.
9. I don’t want King on the Opening Day. He was awful last season in every role he appeared in and he should have to earn his way up in 2021. Nelson was also bad in 2020, outside of his first career appearance, but I liked him and his stuff much more than King. I want Luetge on the team. A 33-year-old, left-handed journeyman who last appeared in the majors in 2015 (he pitched in one game that season for Oakland) and who has struck out 13 in 6 1/3 scoreless innings this spring? Give me that guy.
10. This is the 26-man roster I would go into Opening Day with:
Gary Sanchez Luke Voit DJ LeMahieu Gio Urshela Gleyber Torres Clint Frazier Aaron Hicks Aaron Judge Giancarlo Stanton Kyle Higashioka Brett Gardner Jay Bruce Derek Dietrich Gerrit Cole Corey Kluber Jameson Taillon Jordan Montgomery Deivi Garcia Aroldis Chapman Chad Green Darren O’Day Justin Wilson Jonathan Loaisiga Luis Cessa Lucas Luetge Nick Nelson
That’s the roster I would go with. In reality, you can remove Garcia for German, and if Abreu doesn’t have an option remaining, you can probably remove Nelson or Luetge for him. It still seems like the Yankees will take Wade and Tauchman over Dietrich and Bruce, and I won’t believe they aren’t going to until they don’t, but it would be a mistake to pick the two clearly lesser talented players.
