How Worried Should We Be About the Yankees?
No club has been hit worse by injuries this spring than the Bronx Bombers. Is the championship window for Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole closing fast?
Hi friends-
I’m writing to you from a seat 38L, 34,000 feet over the Pacific just east of Sitka, Alaska. I’m on my way to Tokyo for the Japan Series featuring the Dodgers and Cubs, and you can follow my journey in the Substack app if you haven’t downloaded it already!
But as we have another 9 hours or so before landing at Haneda, I thought I’d take a looksie at the team giving its fans the most agita at the moment: the New York Yankees.
Here’s where things stand: after getting blown out of the World Series last October by the Dodgers, Yankees’ architect Brian Cashman took a sledgehammer to the club’s talented-but-sloppy roster this past off-season, letting first baseman Anthony Rizzo, second baseman Gleyber Torres, and left fielder Alex Verdugo all leave in free agency, and trading the guy who gave up the walk-off grand slam to Freddie Freeman in the 10th inning of game 1 that set the tone for the entire series.
While the Dodgers will open in Tokyo with roughly the same starting nine the club fielded last season during game 2 of the World Series, the Yankees’ opening day lineup will feature new faces at first, second, left, and also right field—after they lost Juan Soto to their cross borough rivals, the New York Mets.
Turning over a talented-but-flawed team isn’t a disaster on its face. Torres caught on with the Tigers on a reasonable one-year deal; Rizzo and Verdugo have not yet been able to find jobs with new teams. I actually thought the Yanks did well in re-loading over the winter, signing starting pitcher Max Fried and trading for center fielder/first baseman Cody Bellinger and superstar closer Devin Williams. Their offense was always going to be worse without Soto—as he’s the second coming of Ted Williams—so focusing on run prevention by adding Fried and Williams to an already strong pitching staff felt like a smart pivot.
Then came the spring injuries.
First, starter Luis Gil—my second-favorite pitching success story from last year after the Astros’ Ronel Blanco—went down with a lat strain that will cost him months. Then, we learned that DH Giancarlo Stanton has “severe” tennis elbow in BOTH elbows, which might be bad enough to require season-ending surgeries. (Do NOT look up what “severe tennis elbow surgery” entails if you’ve just eaten).
But the most crushing news came Monday, when the club announced that ace and future first ballot Hall of Famer Gerrit Cole will miss all of 2025 and part of 2026 after undergoing Tommy John surgery on his mangled pitching elbow.
The writing may have been on the wall for Cole as a) he dealt with a pitching arm problem that cost him a chunk of last season and b) the dude is 34-years-old and had thrown 1954 superlative big league innings without blowing out. (This is the equivalent of putting 400,000 miles on a car without needing an engine or transmission replacement). Cole is, to put it mildly, built different.
So without Cole, Gil, and (probably, let’s be honest) Stanton for months or all of the 2025 season: where do the Yankees go from here? And do they still have a chance to repeat as American League champions?