Yankees' lineup disappearing, and foes aren't fearing what's left
Aaron Judge of the Yankees strikes out in the fifth inning against the Twins at Yankee Stadium on April 14. Credit: Jim McIsaac
The Yankees put another player on the injured list about an hour before Monday night’s game against Cleveland at Yankee Stadium. That player, you’ve probably heard by now, is Aaron Judge.
Judge joins 12 of his teammates on the IL. That No. 99 was No. 13 is certainly unlucky for the Yankees, who are trying to head off a free-fall without their captain and best player.
The Yankees went into Monday at 15-14, tied for last place in the AL East with Boston, both eight games behind the rampaging Rays. Judge will miss the Yankees’ first meeting with Tampa Bay this weekend.
The Yankees had lost three in a row and seven of 10, and were coming off a 15-2 defeat to the Texas Rangers. Their lineup is without the injured Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Harrison Bader and Josh Donaldson.
Of Judge, manager Aaron Boone said: “I think we've known that it's a minor thing . . . The injury is minor, but we're playing the long game here.”
Judge, with a right hip sprain suffered on a slide on Thursday, is eligible to return May 8. Bader could be activated this week.
But Stanton is months away and Donaldson has looked like a done player for most of his time with the Yankees, so it doesn’t seem to matter much when he’ll be back.
Even with Judge, the bottom five in the Yankees' order was a daily nightmare. Now? Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre might have a more imposing batting order.
You can say that injuries are unpredictable, that they are no one’s fault. But that the Yankees started the season short in the hitting department — and were counting on oft-injured and oft-unproductive players to carry their offense — was entirely predictable.
Stanton is an IL stint waiting to happen. The Yankees were hoping and praying for a bounce-back season from Donaldson; how’s that working out? And remember that Judge, who turned 31 on Wednesday, has not always been able to stay injury-free.
Bader’s oblique strain is the kind of slow-healing injury that gives fans fits because it takes soooo long to heal. When Bader returns, he will immediately slot in as one of the Yankees’ top four or five hitters, not a depth piece to lengthen the lineup.
What’s missing from this Yankees team as currently constructed is any sense that the lineup was long, even before all the injuries.
General manager Brian Cashman, who did not return a call Monday, rolled the dice going into the season with a top-heavy lineup and an extremely suspect bench.
The current backup crew of Franchy Cordero, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks and Isiah Kiner-Falefa were batting a combined .184 going into Monday.
IKF can play a competent centerfield (for which the Yankees have taken multiple bows)? Great. He still has the offensive game of a light-hitting shortstop.
The young trio of Anthony Volpe, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza — all of whom might one day turn into fine hitters — were batting a combined .204.
After the Yankees signed Judge to his franchise-record nine-year, $360 million contract just before Christmas, no other major-league hitters were added to the roster.
Andrew Benintendi, who impressed the Yankees last summer before he broke his wrist and missed the playoffs, could have filled the Yankees’ gaping leftfield hole. But he agreed to a five-year, $75 million deal with the White Sox in early January.
Matt Carpenter, who Cashman shrewdly picked off the scrap heap last season, went to San Diego for one year and $6.5 million.
Those are the kinds of lefthanded hitters you sign to lengthen your lineup.
But instead, the Yankees inked the likes of Rafael Ortega and Calhoun and Cordero and Jake Bauers, the latter of whom who was called up Saturday in a desperate attempt to provide punch and injured his knee crashing into the leftfield fence to make a spectacular catch in Arlington, Texas, in his first inning of play.
The only luck the Yankees seem to have right now is bad. Judge going on the IL after trying like heck to avoid it is the latest, and most painful, example.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.