Gerrit Cole has been the biggest bright spot for the Yankees so far. (John Minchillo, AP)
After a little more than a month of baseball, the Yankees have some serious concerns as the last place club begins a three-game weekend road series with the division-leading Rays.
The Bombers are coming off two straight wins over the Guardians at Yankee Stadium, but those victories were hardly easy following a four-game losing streak and a 2-5 road trip to Minnesota and Texas. With a 17-15 overall record, an injured list in the double-digits, three inconsistent replacement starters, and a middle-of-the-pack offense dependent on fill-ins, the Yankees are far from where they want or expected to be entering their showdown with Tampa Bay, which is an major league-best 26-6 after starting the year 13-0.
“It doesn’t change the urgency of the day if they were .500 or 30 games ahead,” Aaron Boone said of the Rays earlier this week. “We gotta play well. If we play well over the long haul of the season, we’ll be in a good place at the end.”
Brian Cashman delivered a similar message Wednesday during a long scrum. “Don’t count us out,” the general manager said. “Don’t give up on us.”
Cashman noted that the Yankees are missing some elite players right now, including Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Luis Severino and Carlos Rodon. The exec said that “getting healthy” is key to a turnaround “because right now, “the team we’re currently running out there’s not the team we actually anticipated, but that happens.”
But Cashman assembled the “alternative choices” the Yankees are leaning on, and the team had concerns entering spring training that were independent of health, including depth, left field and the offense, among other areas. Injuries have emphasized those worries, not excused them.
Boone and Cashman are correct when they stress that it’s still early in the season and that ground can be gained, starting this weekend at The Trop. But it’s also flawed to think that a clean bill of health — if it ever comes — is going to solve all of the Yankees’ problems.
THE INJURED
The Yankees’ IL includes two former MVPs, three-fifths of their projected season-opening rotation, four high-leverage relievers, their starting third baseman and then some. And that’s prior to status updates on Harrison Bader and Oswald Peraza, who both got hurt on Wednesday.
The Yankees hope Judge will be back from a hip strain after the Rays series, while Stanton’s return from a hamstring injury isn’t imminent. The same goes for Josh Donaldson. Frankie Montas (shoulder surgery) won’t make an impact until the end of the year, if at all, while Rodon’s timeline remains unclear thanks to a nagging back issue. Severino (lat) will throw a live session in Tampa on Friday.
Lou Trivino just underwent Tommy John surgery, while Scott Effross is in the early stages of his recovery from the procedure. The earliest Jonathan Loaisiga could return from a bone spur operation is August, while the Yankees hope to have Tommy Kahnle back by the end of this month.
“We’re patching holes the best we can in this time of year and hoping and counting on people to step up,” Cashman said, adding that it’s difficult to make significant trades at this point in the season.
THE ROTATION
With Montas, Severino and Rodon — the Yankees’ only notable offseason newcomer — all on the mend, the team has had to rely on Domingo German, Clarke Schmidt and Jhony Brito. The trio has been unpredictable at best, recording a 5.21 ERA over 19 starts.
Still, the rotation’s 4.07 ERA ranked 11th in baseball entering Thursday, while its 3.0 Wins Above Replacement ranked seventh, per FanGraphs. Gerrit Cole has a lot to do with that, as the Yankees’ ace has sparked some early Cy Young chatter with a 5-0 record, 1.35 ERA and 1.9 fWAR, the best mark in the American League.
“He’s done such a good job of just controlling every situation,” Boone said Tuesday after Cole grinded through his seventh start. “Nothing’s speeding up at all out there. He’s just really in control of settling himself and just continuing to go execute the next pitch.”
Nestor Cortes has mostly pitched well, too, though his ERA inflated to 4.91 after the Rangers tagged him for seven earned runs his last time out. Boone said the lefty battled strep throat recently, which may have impacted that start and pushed his next outing to Monday.
THE OFFENSE
The Yankees have scored four runs in each of their last two games, which is a lot for them lately. They haven’t scored more than that since April 26, and they’ve scored fewer than four runs in 14 of their last 20 games.
Willie Calhoun and Jake Bauers, two players who were non-roster invitees in spring training, came up clutch for the Yankees on Tuesday and Wednesday with three total homers, but the offense is mediocre or worse in several major offensive categories. Entering Thursday, FanGraphs had the Yankees ranked 20th in slugging; 21st in WAR; 22nd in BB%; 23rd in runs, wOBA and wRC+; 24th in RBI; 26th in average; 28th in on-base percentage; and 30th in BABIP.
Missing Judge and Stanton hurts. But lineup woes date back to last October, and the Yankees didn’t make any upgrades over the winter despite a glaring hole in left field, a position that’s netted a wRC+ of 30, easily the worst in baseball thanks to poor performances from Aaron Hicks and Oswaldo Cabrera, among others. That’s not the only position the Yankees need more production from, but it was their most obvious need over the offseason.
“We had a lot of conversations that there was some optimism if things went a certain way, but it didn’t play out that way,” Cashman said when asked why the Yankees’ offseason essentially ended after re-signing Judge and adding Rodon, even though Hal Steinbrenner said there was work to be done. “I know, right now, that we’d be in a worse position if we did make those [deals] because they weren’t good deals.”
Again, Cashman didn’t sound hopeful about a major trade this early in the season. Getting Judge and, later, Stanton back will provide some offense, but there’s not much more of that on the IL. Donaldson hasn’t hit since becoming a Yankee, and Bader — who just came off the IL before getting banged up Wednesday — has been roughly league average for his career, though that’s certainly better than what the Yankees have been.
Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres and speedy rookie Anthony Volpe have had varying levels of success this season, but the Yankees need more than just them right now.
THE BULLPEN
Despite the absence of four high-leverage relievers, the Yankees’ bullpen has been excellent.
The group’s 2.77 ERA was the best in baseball entering Thursday’s off day, thanks in part to sub-3.00 performances from Wandy Peralta and Jimmy Cordero and sub-2.00 ERAs from Ron Marinaccio, Michael King and Ian Hamilton.
“One thing we’ve seen is two or three guys, maybe in a way a little bit unexpected — the bullpen’s done a really nice job for us,” Boone said after revealing Trivino’s need for Tommy John surgery. “So it has allowed us to find out about some guys that are earning more and more meaningful roles.”
However, Clay Holmes has been unreliable in the ninth inning. He had two rough outings during the Guardians series, and he owns a 4.50 ERA and two blown saves. Boone was heavily criticized for using the closer in those close games, but the skipper has expressed unwavering faith in Holmes and chalked the messy outings up to some fluky plays that occurred. But Holmes has struggled since last July after seizing the Yankees’ closing gig with a long scoreless streak early last season.
“Obviously, we got to get him to where he’s the Clay we know,” Boone said Wednesday, “but he’s a lot closer to that than, I think, the noise.”
THE DEFENSE
The Yankees won the American League’s Team Defense Award last season. This year, they’ve been middle of the road when it comes to basic stats like errors, double plays turned and stolen bases allowed. The same goes for UZR.
But other telling metrics, such as Defensive Runs Saved, Outs Above Average and Def, rate them as a top-10 defensive team, per FanGraphs. Getting Judge, Donaldson and Bader healthy should improve all of those numbers.
THE OUTLOOK
The Yankees have dug themselves a nice hole to begin the season, but it’s only early May and the team is above .500 despite everything that has gone wrong. There’s been some positives, too — namely Cole, Volpe and the pen.
This team can still contend for a playoff spot — or more, as Cashman suggested — especially if some big names recover from injuries. But the road ahead won’t be easy, either.
For one, the AL East is a gauntlet. The Rays present a poorly timed test this weekend, and the young Orioles are the only other AL team that’s reached 20 wins. The Blue Jays have shown they can bop with the best of them, and the Red Sox — predicted basement dwellers — have played better since a 5-8 start.
“We know we need to play better than we have here over this last week,” Boone said Tuesday, “but that’s the focus regardless of whatever anyone else in our division is doing.”
There are also the Yankees’ non-health issues. The team needs another bat, and uncertainty surrounding injured rotation pieces could call for another starter. But the organization depleted a lot of its minor league depth at last year’s trade deadline, which Cashman “wished” had “gone better” after numerous IL stints.
“It’s more of a challenge at the upper levels because of more recent trade activity we’ve had,” Cashman said of the Yankees’ farm. “But we certainly have, I think, a strong minor league system that has continued to produce valuable assets that other teams want.”
The GM also implied that the team could deal from its surplus of major league infielders, though options vary in terms of desirability and the quality of return they’d fetch. For now, however, “We’ve got what we’ve got,” Cashman said, “and we’re gonna go with what we’ve got unless something can be obtained elsewhere that makes sense.”
In the meantime, the Yankees are communicating conviction in themselves.
“We know there’s going to be stretches in the season when it’s not real easy, whether it’s around injuries, whether it’s around we got some guys scuffling,” Boone said. “Whatever it may be, those things are part of it. We’re confident as a group that we’re going to be a good team.”
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Originally published at Tribune News Service