You know what the Yankees are supposed to do now that they’ve lost their ace, Gerrit Cole, for the season? They’re supposed to figure it out. It is what strong organizations are supposed to do, especially at these prices. The Yankees just lost Cole, absolutely. You know how many regular-season starts the Mets got last season out of their ace, Kodai Senga? One more than the Yankees are going to get out of their ace this season. Nobody would suggest Senga is Cole. But you’re ace is your ace.
And the Mets didn’t have Max Fried behind Senga. The Yankees had to think when they got Fried that they had enough starting pitching, at long last. Now they don’t. Again.
You know the reason why the Yankees have spent a combined total of half-a-billion dollars on Fried and on Cole before that? It’s because they never seem to have enough starting pitching. The last great starter their farm system produced was Andy Pettitte. The closest they’ve come since Pettitte is Luis Severino and who knows what’s going to happen with Luis Gil, who was originally signed by the Twins.
It’s why the Yankees hope that Clarke Schmidt continues to improve, and hope a young guy like Will Warren gets a full shot. But then everybody hopes this is a year when the Yankees actually get younger all over the field without just talking about doing that; do that with Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm up the middle and Oswaldo Cabrera getting his own full shot at third and, if Jasson Dominguez isn’t ready (they still haven’t decided if he is), maybe even Everson Pereira in center, with Cody Bellinger moving to left.
All Yankee fans know the drill, it’s always World Series or bust with them, even when they don’t make the Series the way they just did. But I frankly don’t know how anybody could have made the Yankees some sort of lock to make it back, even with Cole and even with what we saw from the rest of the American League last season. There were still too many question marks and holes on this team once they arrived in Tampa, starting with the massive one left by Juan Soto.
Who in this world thought DJ LeMahieu was going to be a viable option at third after what we’ve seen at the back end of his too-long contract? Who thought Giancarlo Stanton, once again a postseason star, was ready to play a full season for the first time since 2021? In the last three seasons alone, Stanton has missed nearly a full season of games, that number coming in hot at 161.
And as for Cole? He sure has been a total star here, and not just because he finally won a Cy Young; has been the kind of ace for which the Yankees paid as big as they did and when he did help pitch them to the World Series, something he was hired to do. And when he got to the Series he was terrific in Game 1, even though his performance on the road has largely been forgotten because of Freddie Freeman: Six innings, four hits, one run against that Dodgers lineup. And was cruising in Game 5 until the roof caved in on him and everybody else.
But come on. His right elbow was an accident waiting to happen. He has been a power pitcher for a long time, consistently gunning it up there, in terms of miles per hour, into the high 90s. But guys like that break down eventually. They just do. He had the elbow scare last season and didn’t pitch until June. It is probably why he took about five minutes to opt back in to the rest of his Yankee contract last winter when he had the opportunity to become a free agent again. A Scott Boras client doing something like that a year after a Cy Young? Come on, and get real, too.
Maybe Cole, as much of a warrior as he has been, was righteously worried that he might not pass a physical with a new team, and that what had happened to someone like Jacob deGrom was about to happen to him. Now it has. He is gone until 2026 and the Yankees are where they are.
Brian Cashman has to figure it out now. They all do. Cashman can’t be shocked by Cole, can’t be shocked by Stanton, can’t possibly be surprised that LeMahieu is hurt again. Cashman went after Paul Goldschmidt and Bellinger and Fried in the offseason, spending a bunch of the money he saved on Soto on Fried. Cashman also made the decision, at least for now, not to put Kyle Tucker ahead of Aaron Judge and at No. 2 in the order. Maybe Judge will be gangbusters again without Soto. Or not.
“[Cole’s injury] is not a death sentence for us by any means,” Aaron Boone has said.
And should not be. Ronald Acuna Jr. played 49 games for the Braves last season, Michael Harris II played 110, Austin Riley played 110, Sean Murphy played 72. Ozzie Albies came up one game short of 100. Spencer Strider made two more starts for them than Cole will make for the Yankees. You know what the Braves did? They figured it out and made the playoffs, even if the team was a shell of itself by the time it did. They were even without Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale by then.
The Yankees always make the postseason, and believe they are one of the model organizations of their sport, and if you don’t believe that, just ask them. So they’ve been hit now, and hard. Welcome to the world. Look at what happened to the Dodgers’ starting rotation last year. They needed a bullpen game when they were down 2-1 to the Padres to save their season.
The Dodgers figured it out. The Yankees need to do the same.