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.

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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!

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!