“Just dealing with some crankiness,” Aaron Boone said rather nonchalantly about Aaron Judge on Feb. 18, 2020. “I guess a little soreness in the shoulder.”
That was the start of spring training five years ago.
“I feel like it’s a pretty minor thing,” Boone said of Judge back then. “Probably in the next couple days, start ramping him back up.”
Judge showed up to spring training with a nagging injury from the past season.
“We did put him through a battery of tests,” Boone said. “He had the MRI.”
“It was kind of what his shoulder has always been,” Boone said in regard to the MRI results, which made it seem like Judge’s shoulder hasn’t always been in the best of conditions.
“It probably started a couple weeks ago, when I first got down here,” Judge said. “I’ve been hitting since early November, and working out since early November. Once I got down here, hit on the field, hitting outside I just felt a little soreness up in the shoulder.
“Nothing alarming, nothing that I was like, ‘Hey, we need to really check this out,” Judge continued. “So I said, ‘We got plenty of time going into spring training. Let’s take it slow these next couple days, make sure everything’s right, and then kind of go from there.”
“I don’t anticipate it will delay the start of the season,” Boone said. “We will treat it very conservatively.”
Not even two weeks later on March 1, Boone told YES that Judge is going through “testing” to find out why his shoulder is still bothering him. The injury Boone described as “minor” and the one Judge thought didn’t need to be checked out had not progressed in 12 days.
Two days later, Brian Cashman referred to the injury as “pec area” after it had originally been called a shoulder injury.
“They are optimistic that it’s a muscle, but it’s premature,” Cashman said. “I know he feels much better and optimistic.”
Later that week, Boone said the injury “shows signs of healing” even though no one seemed to know if it was a shoulder injury or pec injury or muscle injury.
“I wouldn’t say [surgery] is off the table,” Boone said about the unknown injury, but you wouldn’t want to go to that right now especially if the bone is healing.”
Suddenly, it was bone-related.
Finally, two weeks later on March 20, the Yankees announced that in addition to Judge dealing with a fractured rib, he was also suffering from a collapsed lung. It took 31 days from Judge’s shoulder “crankiness” for the Yankees to announce a complete diagnosis.
Judge suffered the injuries diving for a ball in September 2019 and somehow it went undiagnosed for six months. This came after the ‘Next Man Up’ season of 2019 when the Yankees completely overhauled their entire medical and training staff. Here we are five years later and not much has changed with injuries still being handled and diagnosed with Google searches and WebMD visits.
On top of the odd approach to diagnosing and treating injuries, the Yankees’ continued lack of care for creating depth on their roster has compounded the issue that has been a staple of Cashman’s roster building for a decade.
It’s unfortunate Giancarlo Stanton continues to deal with injuries to both elbows that he dealt with last season, which went untreated from the end of the World Series until the start of spring training. It’s not unfortunate Stanton is injured again, since Cashman himself said a little more than a year ago getting hurt “seems to be part of his game.” But did Cashman prepare for the inevitable Stanton injury? Of course not! Why would he? Why build roster depth and invest in proven major-league talent when you can take a chance on Austin Wells being the hitter he was from the end of April until the end of August and not the hitter he was in March, April, September and October? There’s no need to spend anymore when you can pray Anthony Volpe finally takes a step forward after 1,290 plate appearances. There’s no need to do anything when you’re banking on Paul Goldschmidt to turn back the clock a couple of years, DJ LeMahieu to turn it back five years and for Jasson Dominguez to be a generational talent. (Well, so much for a LeMahieu revival as he was injured more than a week ago and no strategy or timetable for his return have been given.)
“Dealing with it at the end of last year, I thought we were in a good place,” Cashman said of Stanton’s elbow problems. “Three weeks before camp it came up.”
Except it didn’t come up three weeks before camp. It came up last year, like you just said. Guess what else came up last year? An elbow injury to Gerrit Cole that kept him out for the first half of the season.
The Yankees know Cole’s age. They know his decreased strikeout numbers and velocity. They know what they saw on those MRI results a year ago. And they still took him back after he opted out. Maybe the Yankees were always going to take him back if he opted out, or maybe they took him back to keep as many names as they could in their effort to entice Juan Soto to re-sign. No matter the reason, it was a regrettable decision in real time, and now that Cole is going to be out until the middle of the 2026 season, it looks like idiotic.
Last year when Cole went down, Luis Gil won the job to replace him in the rotation. The oft-injured Gil hadn’t pitched in the majors in two years, but was awesome in his first full season at age 26, winning Rookie of the Year (despite leading the league in walks). Between injuries and performance, Gil’s stock would never be higher, so it made sense for everyone to agree putting him in a deal for one year of Kyle Tucker was worth it. The Yankees balked at the Cubs’ ask of Gil and kept him. He’s now hurt and expected to miss half of the season.
“Thankfully, as long we handle it right, we’ll get him back sometime in the summer,” Cashman said of Gil.
Not a whole lot of trust in thinking the Yankees will handle Gil’s lat injury properly. Six years ago, Luis Severino went down with a lat injury in spring training. The Yankees let him start to ramp up before doing an MRI to see how his injury was progressing and he was re-injured. Cashman said in hindsight the team should have imaged Severino again. Apparently, Cashman won’t let that happen again with Gil.
“Being a starter he has minimum of six weeks no throw, Cashman said. “They’ll re-image, re-MRI it during that rest period.”
That’s good. But it’s not all good, as Cashman then decided to get flexible with the six-week no-throw period that has been recited countlessly of late.
“Is it six weeks, is it seven weeks, is it eight weeks?” Cashman asked as if he were playing “How Old Are You Now?” after singing “Happy Birthday”.
“You’re talking about three months you’re not going to see him,” Cashman said. “That’s unfortunate, but that’s also part of the existence of pitching.”
Yes, that is the existence of pitching, and that’s why when you have the opportunity to trade it for a superstar bat in its prime, like Tucker, you do it.
“You can never have enough [pitching],” Cashman said, “and hopefully we have what we need.”
I’m going to go out on a limb and say Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt, Marcus Stroman and either Carlos Carrasco or Will Warren isn’t all that you will need. Fried has a history of elbow injuries, Rodon has made 30-plus starts in two of his 10 seasons, Schmidt already had a back issue this spring after missing half of last year with a lat injury, Stroman pitched to a 5.88 ERA and put 131 baserunners on in 75 innings over his last 16 starts last season, Carrasco has a 5.02 ERA in 547 1/3 innings since the start of 2019 and Warren put 44 baserunners on in 22 2/3 innings with a 10.32 ERA last season.
This isn’t pessimism, this is realism. Everything written to this point has been fact, either a quote said by a Yankees employee or a stat produced by a Yankees player. If it paints a dark picture of where the Yankees stand with a little more than two weeks until Opening Day it’s because it is a dark picture. The trustworthy part of the Yankees’ lineup is Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm. The trustworthy part of their rotation is less than that. At this rate, Devin Williams and Luke Weaver shouldn’t be allowed to throw another pitch in spring training.
The Yankees’ win total has plummeted from 92.5. to 88.5. Despite all of these issues, I still like the over. Despite all of their issues, I still think this Yankees team is a playoff team. It’s not because I think they still have a well-made roster without Cole for the entire season, without Gil for half of it and without Stanton until who knows when. It’s not because I believe in Volpe’s bat or think Goldschmidt will experience an MVP-like resurgence because he puts on the pinstripes or because I think either Oswaldo Cabrera or Oswald Peraza will become a trusted, everyday major leaguer. No, it’s because the American League isn’t very good.
For years now, the Yankees have operated under the idea of why use our vast financial resources and unrivaled revenue to build the best possible roster when the other 14 teams in the AL aren’t building the best possible rosters they can? The Yankees know they don’t have to be the best team in the AL to consider their season a success. They just have to be better than nine teams in the AL. Even with all of these injuries, they still are.
Good enough to make the playoffs? Yes. Good enough to win the World Series? Not without an inordinate amount of luck. But that’s good enough for the Yankees since that’s what they believe is needed to win in October anyway.
Last modified: Mar 10, 2025
