Today is May 15. April 1 was 45 days ago. April 1 was the day Giancarlo Stanton went on the injured list with a biceps strain. Somehow between April 1 and now, Stanton developed a mysterious shoulder injury, a rather serious injury since it’s now kept him out of the lineup for over a month, and no one seems to know what it is or when he’ll return.

Stanton told reporters he hurt himself swinging at a 3-1 pitch during his third at-bat on March 31. He winced and wiggled his arm after the swing, but thought it might be a cramp so he remained in the game. The following day, he said he hoped for a “speedy” recovery.

“I don’t like it at all,” Stanton said on April 1. “I just worked for six weeks to get here, plus the offseason. I’d much rather this would have popped in spring training, but it’s where we’re at. I don’t have to start from scratch when I come back, but I’ve just got to build everything up and make sure everything is ready to go when I’m back.”

Yet another injured Yankee at the time, and yet another injured Yankee, who initially thought he would be out for the minimal injured list time of 10 days and wouldn’t have to build completely back up.

“In the middle of the game, you’ve got your adrenaline pumping,” Stanton said. “You want to stay out there. Once you’ve settled down and get undressed and showered, that’s when your gauges are a little better. Things start tightening up if they’re not right.”

At the time, the Yankees were without Aaron Hicks and Didi Gregorius in the lineup. Stanton would also be joined by Miguel Andujar on the injured list that day, and four of the nine regular everyday players would be missing after three games.

“Especially how last year went, a bunch of us were down,” Stanton said. “We didn’t really have our full squad the whole year. All that goes into it, especially where we’re at now. It’s unfortunate right now. I guess it’s better to be in the beginning than the end of the year.”

Aaron Boone said Stanton would be completely shut down for 10 days before beginning to work his way back.

“Hopefully we get him back at some point this month,” Boone said.

Just like the situation with Hicks, Aaron Boone was fooled into thinking the injury would be nothing more than a minor thing. On April 2, Jon Heyman reported the “Yankees are hopeful Stanton can be back in three weeks.”

On April 9, it was reported Stanton might hit off a tee the following day (April 10) or the day after that (April 11).

Five days later, on April 14, Stanton said his rehab for his left biceps strain is “on track,” but was unsure of when he would return, while also saying he stills feels the strain “a little bit.” He took swings the day before (April 13) for the second time since suffering the injury though had yet to swing at 100 percent. Asked if he would need a rehab game, he said he wouldn’t.

“At this point, I wouldn’t need one,” Stanton said. “But if I’m out three or four weeks, I probably should.”

The Yankees were in Anaheim on April 22 in the middle of a nine-game, 10-day West Coast trip when they announced Stanton was now dealing with a shoulder issue and would see a specialist in Southern California. He would receive a cortisone shot in his shoulder that day. The biceps injury had healed and now there was a shoulder injury to deal with.

“He’s had some shoulder stuff in the past,” Boone said in Anaheim. “I don’t know if it’s a little bit of a result of that. We figured now while he’s down coming from this, let’s just make sure we treat this the best we can so it doesn’t become a lingering issue if we can help it.”

Stanton had a shoulder injury with the Marlins back in 2013, but that was six years ago. For Boone to hint it could be related to that and then say he doesn’t want this to be a lingering issue, wouldn’t a six-year-old shoulder injury popping up be the exact definition of a “lingering issue”?

“He has had some residual stuff with his shoulder,” Boone said. “He got a shot, here a couple of days ago. So he is in Day 2 or 3 of not swinging.”

Stanton would remain in Southern California to work with a rehab specialist, while the team went on to San Francisco for a three-game weekend series. Stanton would then rejoin the team in Arizona the following week.

“We’ve got to let the shot settle, and that’s probably another day or two of no swinging,” Boone said. “Then he should be able to ramp up pretty quick and start swinging when we get to Arizona.”

On May 6, five days after the team had left Arizona, Stanton spoke to the media for the first time since the shoulder issue was reported and gave the vaguest of answers in regards to the mysterious injury.

“Just give it some extra time,” Stanton said. “The biceps blowing out, the whole arm had to get strength to build with each other. Just give it more time.”

Stanton had clearly been informed of the Yankees’ new media strategy of not giving any sense of a target return date after the debacle that began last July with Aaron Judge’s wrist injury and continued this season with various missed timetables and missed diagnosis.

“I don’t know,” Stanton said in reference to a timetable for his return. “Start swinging again and then go from there.”

Clearly annoyed with the questions, Stanton continued to be vague.

“Just going to ramp it up and see how it goes,” Stanton said. “So there’s no major update for you guys.”

The same “ramp it up” Boone spoked about 11 days earlier? When asked another time in a different way to try to pull an answer from him, Stanton didn’t budge.

“No major update for you guys,” Stanton said. “Hit tomorrow, then go from there.”

Stanton did begin to hit, and on May 11, Boone offered an update.

“Reports are it went pretty well yesterday,” Boone said. “He hit a fair amount.”

This Monday, on May 13, Stanton took live at-bats for the first time and was going to do the same on Tuesday. He’s at the Yankees’ Player Development complex in Tampa hitting off live pitching and performing defensive drills. Brian Cashman said Stanton was “progressing” while Boone gave the weirdest injury update of all time to MLB.com.

“Just not quite right,” Boone said regarding Stanton’s shoulder. “I don’t know the exact diagnosis of it. He’s through the biceps injury, but there has just been that lingering shoulder stuff that he’s trying to get knocked out. Basically, it’s just coming back from that now and ramping up.”

Another “ramping up” reference! Boone continued and said there’s no tear in his shoulder though that doesn’t mean there isn’t one given the Yankees’ diagnosis of their players this season.

“No, it’s just … whatever,” Boone said. “I mean, guys have different stuff going on with their … and he’s got … I don’t know what exactly is going on in there other than it’s obviously not exactly right or else he would have been back a bit ago.”

A “whatever”? Is that the official diagnosis for the left shoulder injury of a player owed $270 million, who originally went on the injured list with a biceps issue?

“Moving in the right direction,” Boone continued. “I think he had like nine at-bats yesterday and more of the same today, doing hsi defensive work and running. So I feel like hopefully he’s moving to really start to get some at-bats and we can start thinking about getting him back.”

Pressed for a more detailed answer, Boone was asked if this whole situation was unusual.

“Right, and he doesn’t have a perfect shoulder by any means,” Boone said. “He’s dealt with varying degreees of just a dead period or some soreness in there and whatnot. As far as a diagnosis of what exactly it is, I don’t have it for you.”

The manager of the New York Yankees has been without his highest-paid player for exactly a month and a half at this point and hasn’t been informed of the player’s injury? An injury which popped up despite the player already being on the injured list for a different injury, and the different injury originally had a timetable of an April return.

This Boone update came a day after the Yankees put Miguel Andujar back on the injured list for the labrum tear they said he was ready to play with earlier this month, and now he made need surgery on it. Boone was hesitant to give any real insight or information into the injury and certainly wasn’t going to offer a timetable after saying back on April 1 he thought Stanton could be back sometime in April. It’s understandable given how Boone and the Yankees completely botched Aaron Judge’s wrist injury timetable last season, botched Hicks’s spring training injury this season, were uninformed about Luis Severino’s lat problem, sat Gary Sanchez for a leg issue and then let him enter a game only to them put him on the injured list and let Clint Frazier play the remaining three innings of a game before putting him on the injured list. The Yankees might never offer a timetable on a player again following this season’s embarrassment.

No one knows when Stanton will actually be back. He’s played in three of the team’s 40 games, and has yet to play in a rehab game, which he originally said he wouldn’t need way back on April 14.

This whole situation is confusing, but when it comes to the 2019 Yankees, it’s certainly not surprising.

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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!

There was a time in the late 90s when I would only see David Cone start for the Yankees. No matter the season, there was a long stretch of consecutive games when my dad, my brother, my uncle and I would make our trips to Yankee Stadium and Cone would be that game’s starting pitcher. But in the late 90s, there was no one better you would want to see start a game for the Yankees.

The streak got so ridiculous when, as a 12-year-old, in May of 1999, I was invited by a friend to make the trek to Fenway Park with his family for a Yankees-Red Sox game. Pedro Martinez would be starting for the Red Sox that night in the middle of his ridiculous 23-4, 2.07 ERA Cy Young-winning season. Starting for the Yankees? Cone, of course. That game happened to be the night Joe Torre returned from his battle with cancer and the Boston crowd welcomed back Torre as if he we were one of their own. It was the exact opposite reaction I witnessed from the first-base line seven years later when Johnny Damon returned to Fenway Park.

I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood as a Yankees fan. Sure, when I attended my first game as a four-year-old August 11, 1991 (the first game of a doubleheader against Detroit), the Yankees were in the middle of a 91-loss season and a postseason drought. But by the time I was able to fully understand what was going on on the field, the Yankees had created a dynasty. Cone was part of that dynasty and for many of those years, I only saw him pitch in person. Like I said, I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood as a Yankees fan.

I was highly anticipating the publication of Cone’s book Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher and Grand Central Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy to review.

From a Yankees fan’s interest, the book details his trade to the Yankees in 1996 and decision to re-sign with the team prior to 1997; his relationships with George Steinbrenner, Joe Torre and Mel Stottlemyre; his impression of Derek Jeter as a rookie and a Yankee; the difference between pitching to Joe Girardi and Jorge Posada; his confrontation with David Wells which led to one punch being thrown and the friendship between the two that led to them staying in their own hotel on road trips for extracurricular reasons; how his mother’s dog biting him created the emergence of El Duque; an intricate look at his July 18, 1999 perfect game; his struggles in 2000 which forced him to the bullpen for the postseason, and how he handled pitching to players like Barry Bonds, Cal Ripken Jr., Manny Ramirez and Tony Gwynn.

To me, the most surprising news in the book (aside from the time a stomach ache led to an accident on the mound in the middle of a minor-league start) was that Bobby Valentine asked Cone if he would be the Red Sox pitching coach for the 2012 season. Selfishly, I’m happy Cone didn’t leave the broadcast booth to take Valentine up on his offer because his absence would have created an irreplaceable void during Yankees games (and also the whole helping the Red Sox thing). But I’m sure Cone doesn’t regret leaving broadcasting to be part of a 93-loss disaster.

That one story did make me think about Cone as a coach in the majors. Now having listened to him as an analyst all these seasons on YES and seeing how he has embraced the analytics and data revolution in baseball, while also maintaining the game is played by humans, I have often wondered how he would be as a pitching coach. On a larger scale, if the Yankees were going to hire a manager with zero experience coaching or managing at any level, I wish they had gone with Cone rather than giving Yankees fans Aaron Boone. The difference in the TV analysis from Boone on ESPN to Cone on YES is the equivalent to having Mike Tauchman or Shane Robinson in right field instead of having Aaron Judge there, and I think Boone’s time on TV is evident in his in-game management, and I feel it would be the same for Cone. Cone wouldn’t have sent Luis Severino back out to the mound for the fourth inning in Game 3 of the ALDS and wouldn’t have followed that up by bringing Lance Lynn in with the bases loaded and no outs. And he certainly wouldn’t have let CC Sabathia go through the Red Sox’ lineup for a second time with the season on the line and then defended his decision by saying he wanted Sabathia to face the 9-hitter which is why he let him face the rest of the team. Unfortunately, we’ll likely never know how Cone would be as Yankees manager because he’s probably too outspoken and too much of his own person to serve as a dugout puppet. That just means we get to keep listening to Cone in the broadcast booth, and that’s certainly not a bad thing.

I feel bad for baseball fans who watch their team on a nightly basis and don’t have Cone to comment on the games. After reading about his identity crisis to find life after pitching and finally realizing broadcasting could fill that void, a man who was once arguably the best in the world at pitching at times, is now inarguably the best in the world at being an analyst.

If you were a David Cone fan when he pitched or are a David Cone fan now that he’s a broadcaster or are a Yankees fan or a fan of the intricacies of pitching or simply a baseball fan then you need to read Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher.

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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!

Tommy Kahnle made the Yankees’ Opening Day roster because he was out of options. That’s it. Not because he was worthy of a spot on the 25-man roster, but because he had one chance left with the Yankees to figure it out and they were going to give him that chance rather than designate him for assignment and possibly watch him figure it out with another organization.

In Kahnle’s first appearance of the season, he walked three in an inning of work, while also striking out two, showing the two extremes of his abilities and a continued lack of consistency. After a pair of scoreless appearances, on April 10 in Houston, he got knocked around by the same Astros team which sent his career into a downward spiral. Two earned runs on four hits, including a home run, in an eventual 8-6 loss and Kahnle’s early-season line looked like the 2017 version of Kahnle was gone and never coming back: 4 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 4 BB, 5 K, 1 HR, 4.50 ERA, 2.000 WHIP.

Where was the guy who struck out 96 in 62 2/3 innings in 2017? Where was the guy who became Joe Girardi’s go-to high-leverage guy during the 2017 postseason with Dellin Betances struggling, jumping both Chad Green and David Robertson in the pecking order? Where was the guy who pitched 11 scoreless innings and allowed only four baserunners in the 2017 playoffs before his ALCS Game 7 meltdown?

The last time we had seen the dominant Kahnle was in Game 5 of the 2017 ALCS, three nights before he would allow three insurance runs to the Astros in 1 1/3 innings as the Yankees’ season ended. It was that Game 7 appearance against the Astros which seemingly ruined Kahnle.

After allowing an opposite field home run to Jose Altuve, he allowed back-to-back singles to Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel. He was tired and ineffective, but Girardi kept him in the game and still didn’t have anyone warming up in the bullpen. One would think in Game 7, someone should always be warming as the next man up, never wanting the game to get too far out of reach. But not Girardi. Evan Gattis struck out and Girardi decided to double down on his decision to stick with Kahnle in what was yet another critical second-guess situation.

The Yankees were paying Brian McCann to play against them in the ALCS, so when he lined a two-run double down the right-field line to score Correa and Gurriel and give the Astros a 4-0 lead, the Yankees were paying for their own demise. Kahnle, who has the ability to throw 97, had inexplicably thrown 25 changeups in 27 pitches and gave up three runs, and Girardi either didn’t notice or failed to think it was a telling sign that the overworked Kahnle couldn’t trust his fastball. After the double, Girardi finally took Kahnle out.

Following that game, Kahnle pitched himself off the 2018 Yankees in mid-April with a 6.14 ERA. He came back at the end of May and put four men on in 2/3 of an inning, allowing two earned runs and two days later he was gone again. He rejoined the Yankees for one appearance in the disastrous four-game sweep in Boston, but became a mainstay in the bullpen from August 16 through the end of the regular season, despite pitching to a 6.75 ERA and 1.650 WHIP in 15 appearances over the last two months of the season. He was unsurprisingly left off the postseason roster.

Kahnle finished the 2018 season with 24 appearances for the Yankees, a 6.56 ERA, 1.629 WHIP, and .811 OPS against him with eight of his 12 inherited runners scored. His velocity had diminished and his fastball-changeup combination was no longer unhittable without the necessary velocity separation. Shoulder tendinitis and an abundance of Red Bull was the diagnosis, though I couldn’t help but think he had been ruined in the 2017 postseason, pitching in seven of the team’s 13 games, with five of those seven appearances for multiple innings. Kahnle had faced 39 batters and thrown 147 pitches in the highest of leverage situations over 18 days, and his decision to not throw his fastball in Game 7 of the ALCS was a clear sign something was wrong and that sign lingered through all of 2018.

I wasn’t happy, to put it kindly, when Aaron Boone started this season by using Kahnle as if it were still 2017, completely disregarding the way he had pitched since Game 7 of the 2017 ALCS. I understood the idea of seeing what he has to know if he will last as a Yankee, but with nearly the entire team injured and the threat of two other teams in the division this season, letting Kahnle sink or swim in non mop-up situations and in winnable games didn’t seem like the best idea. But this is Boone we’re talking about, and the best ideas are rarely utilized.

Kahnle was shaky to begin the season and even in April, he was testing my health. For nearly a month now, he has rewarded Boone’s faith in him, looking more like his 2017 self, with 11 straight scoreless appearances and nine straight no-hit innings. With Green experiencing a similar fall from success and being sent to Triple-A, Zack Britton walking the park and Betances hurt, Kahnle has worked his way back up the bullpen picking order, sitting aside Adam Ottavino as the only two non-closer trustworthy options this season.

It’s good to have Tommy Kahnle — the 2017 version — back. I missed him and the Yankees’ bullpen missed him.

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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!