Yankees will start the season with plenty of injury issues to overcome

TAMPA, Fla. — While managing the Orioles in 2014, Buck Showalter uttered a phrase he had used before and would use again when talking about some of the issues facing his club as it started that year’s postseason.

“People don't care about your problems,” Showalter said. “Most of them are glad you've got 'em.”

And the defending American League champion Yankees, as they’re set to take the Stadium field Thursday for the season opener?

They sure got ‘em.

Injuries are a part of pretty much every team’s spring training — “you hold your breath every [expletive] day,” one rival manager muttered to Newsday early in the Grapefruit League season — but the Yankees got hit harder than most during camp.

It starts, of course, with their ace,  2023 American League Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole, undergoing season-ending Tommy John surgery on March 11. It will cost him all of this season and a decent chunk of his 2026 season.

Less than two weeks before Cole’s surgery came the news that last year’s AL Rookie of the Year, Luis Gil, would miss the first three months of the season — at a minimum — because of a high-grade right lat strain.

Giancarlo Stanton, the offense’s leader during the Yankees' postseason run to their first World Series appearance since 2009, showed up for camp with tendon issues in not one but both of his elbows (the Yankees called it “tennis elbow”).

Surgery, general manager Brian Cashman said, is a “last resort” option for Stanton but can’t be ruled out. He received three rounds of PRP injections in a two-week stretch during camp and ended  spring training seemingly not a great deal closer to resuming baseball activities, let alone being ready to play in a major league game (the Yankees are still in the market for a righthanded hitter).

Though it wasn't unexpected, given his recent injury history, DJ LeMahieu went down early in camp with a calf injury. The Yankees had hoped he would be an option at third base this season and at worst would be a platoon option with Oswaldo Cabrera.

Righty relievers Jake Cousins and Scott Effross, both expected to be part of what should be one of the best bullpens in the game, started the season on the injured list.

And on it went.

But as Showalter alluded and the Yankees acknowledge, the season starts regardless, with the first of 162 games to come on Thursday.

“That’s major-league sports,” Aaron Boone said shortly after the announcement of Cole’s surgery, although he just as easily could have been talking about injuries in general. “Unfortunately, it’s part of the game.”

The rotation, even with the losses of Cole and Gil, isn’t in bad shape, with Max Fried, signed to a $218 million deal over the winter, followed by, in some order, Marcus Stroman, Carlos Rodon, Clarke Schmidt and either righty prospect Will Warren or veteran righty Carlos Carraso (who had a major-league out clause in his contract if he wasn’t added to the 26-man roster).

But organizational depth in starting pitching, a concern even before Cole and Gil were injured, is thin at best.

“We can’t afford too many more,” Cashman said of hits to the rotation, among the reasons he spent the rest of spring training looking for starting pitching fortifications in the market (and will continue to do so).

As for the offense, the biggest question is how the lineup will fare without Juan Soto, who, along with Aaron Judge, formed the game’s most feared 2-3 lineup combination.

“There was nothing like it,” one rival AL bench coach said shortly after Soto signed his record 15-year, $765 million deal with the Mets (the Yankees offered $760 million over 16 years). “You literally sat in the dugout with the thought, ‘When are those two coming up again?’ Sometimes it seemed like they were coming up every freakin' inning. You couldn’t get away from it.”

Judge causes that kind of fear, but only individually. For their offense to thrive, the Yankees are banking on new first baseman Paul Goldschmidt showing he has something left from what made him a seven-time All-Star and Cody Bellinger, whose smooth lefty swing appears a perfect Stadium fit, recapturing the form that allowed him to earn 2019 National League MVP honors with the Dodgers (four of his five seasons since then have been subpar).

Additionally, second-year catcher Austin Wells and third-year shortstop Anthony Volpe need to take further steps in their offensive development and the Yankees hope hyped rookie Jasson Dominguez can produce more runs than he gives up while continuing to learn leftfield on the fly.

“I don’t think any one of us here are sitting here thinking, ‘Soto’s gone, the Yankees are going to stink now,’ ” Blue Jays righthander Chris Bassitt, who went 2-0 with a 0.73 ERA in two starts against the Yankees last season, said with a smile early in spring training. “The pieces that they added . . . They’re still a contender and they’re going to be a really, really good baseball team.”

Good enough, certainly, in an overall weak American League to win their share of games and contend for the AL East title they won a year ago.

But already with a far different team than the one the Yankees thought they’d start the year with.