TAMPA — This was a week ago at LECOM Park in Bradenton where the Yankees were in the process of dismantling a seemingly overmatched Pirates team, 12-3, and a couple of scouts were discussing the 2025 prospects for Aaron Boone’s boys in the aftermath of the Juan Soto defection.
“I give [Brian] Cashman a lot of credit,” said one of the scouts. “He pivoted brilliantly after losing Soto and with the additions of [Paul] Goldschmidt, Devin Williams, Max Fried and [Cody] Bellinger they’re a better team than they were last year with Soto.”
“I don’t disagree,” the other scout said, “but we’re talking spring training and on paper here. Let’s face it, when it’s all said and done, injuries decide who’s gonna win. Look at Atlanta last year. They were the best team in the National League, but where were they going when [Ronald] Acuna and [Spencer] Strider went down for the season right out of the gate? You just never know.”
Indeed, the next day the Yankees revealed that defending Rookie of the Year and 15-game winner Luis Gil would be shut down for at least six weeks with a high-grade lat strain in his shoulder. Three days later, the Yankees announced perpetually injured DJ LeMahieu would be sidelined indefinitely with a calf strain suffered in his second spring training at-bat, and then last Thursday Cashman glumly announced that Giancarlo Stanton had received a second round of platelet-rich plasma injections for his ailing elbows and will likely be out for months.
And then Friday came the ominous news that Gerrit Cole has been having tests on his cranky elbow and when he said he was looking for second opinions its sounding like this may be a potential season-ending situation. So all of a sudden, the Yankees are looking at being without their titular ace in Cole, Gil, their most effective starter from last year, their designated hitter who had seven homers and 16 RBI in 14 postseason games, and the veteran they had hoped could make a comeback and win the third base job and hit leadoff. The Yankee team that came into camp with only one question mark — who’s on third — now has a myriad of them: Who’s gonna DH? Who’s gonna be the fifth starter? Who’s the leadoff hitter — Austin Wells really? Is third base settled with Oswaldo Cabrera? And lastly this one, which has arisen these first two weeks of spring training: How long before they concede Jasson Dominguez can’t play left field and has to move to center?
Word is Cashman is on the hunt for another (preferably right-handed) bat for either third base or DH — but not either the Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado or lingering free agent J.D. Martinez. His lieutenants believe the bat (or bats) may already be here in the persons of Ben Rice, Spencer Jones and Everson Pereira, all of whom are having strong springs and giving hints they are ready to contribute on the major league level. The 6-6, Jones has been especially impressive with his greatly modified swing that was necessitated by a most discouraging ’24 season at Double-A Somerset in which he led the Eastern League with 200 strikeouts. He’ll start the season at Triple-A but the Yankee brain trust think he’s ready to bust out and fulfill the vast potential they’ve held for him.
It’s kind of the same for Rice who after that spectacular three home run game against the Red Sox last July 6, struggled mightily the rest of the way, winding up at .171. He, too, has made adjustments, winning praise from Boone who said “I like where his bat is at” the other day. Conceivably if another DH bat is not acquired by the end of spring, it sounds like Boone would not be afraid to go with a platoon of the lefty-swinging Rice and the right-handed Pereira, who has yet to play in the field this spring because he’s recovering from Tommy John surgery but has also swung the bat well.
As for the starting rotation void the result of Gil’s injury, and the possibility that Cole may also now miss significant time, it would probably be inaccurate to suggest the Yankees are now glad they were unable to trade Marcus Stroman. They would have still liked to unload his salary and they hope privately that Will Warren will finally step up and live up to his ranking as the perennial top pitching prospect. The 25-year-old righty had a horrible ’24, getting battered in three of his four August starts last year after being called up from Triple-A. This spring Warren has shown a greatly improved changeup and in his first three outings allowed only one run in eight innings and struck out 11.
While the Yankee spring training injuries have been frustrating for Boone, they are so far neither devastating (as the Braves were last year) nor unexpected, especially in the case of LeMahieu and Stanton. (That of course could change if Cole is deemed to have a serious elbow injury.) If nothing else, they have provided opportunity for the homegrown core of Jones, Rice, Pereira and Warren to step up and lessen the pressure for Cashman to go outside for replacements.
If the injuries can just stop right here, Boone can go out about the business of getting Dominguez out of left field and figuring out who is leadoff hitter is.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Last week it was revealed that Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition filed Jan. 8 by the family of Pete Rose to have the all-time hit man posthumously removed from baseball’s permanent ineligible list. It would not surprise me, now that Rose is deceased — as well as Fay Vincent, the person who prosecuted him for gambling on baseball and fought vigorously through the years to keep his ban intact — for Manfred to finally lift his ban and essentially turn the matter over to the Hall of Fame. After all, it was the Hall’s board of directors that decreed in 1991 (which would have been Rose’s first year on the Baseball Writers’ Association ballot) that players on the permanent ineligible list were also ineligible for the Hall of Fame. Coincidentally, also last week, President Trump announced he was planning to pardon Rose for his 1990 felony conviction for tax evasion. Mind you, Rose’s felony conviction had nothing to do with his suspension from baseball. Assuming Manfred does remove Rose from the permanent ineligible list, however, it no way assures his election to the Hall of Feme. For one thing, it would still be up to the Hall’s board of directors to decide whether to make him eligible and if they did, he would still have to go through an election, presumably with the Classic Baseball Era committee that considers players from the period prior to 1980. That ballot does not come up until 2027. And as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who got almost no support in their first year on the Contemporary Era ballot, can attest, there’s just no way of telling how the Hall of Famers themselves (who comprise the bulk of those Era committees) will view a baseball miscreant like Rose, especially considering betting on baseball is now legal, even in the ballparks on your phone, and MLB is in bed with these various gambling outlets. At least in Rose’s case that, unlike Bonds and Clemens, he never cheated the game.