Yankees' and Mets' injuries have made spring a cruel season
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman at George M. Steinbrenner Field on Feb. 11, 2025. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
JUPITER, Fla.
Can’t anybody here stay in this game?
To put a 21st century spin on Casey Stengel’s famous quote about the woeful ’62 Mets, it’s a question worth asking now that New York’s baseball teams are crumbling before our very eyes.
A hopeful winter on both sides of the RFK Bridge has turned into a spring (training) of discontent. With Opening Day roughly 2 1⁄2 weeks away, injuries are piling up at an alarming rate. Making matters worse, it’s hard to determine just how broken these $300 million rosters truly are, with timetables difficult to pin down.
And talk about your Black Sundays. In Port St. Lucie, at Clover Park, the Mets revealed that Francisco Alvarez, their slugging young catcher, is out for six to eight weeks and needs surgery to repair a fractured hamate bone in his left hand. Shortly afterward, about 30 miles south on I-95 at Roger Dean Stadium, general manager Brian Cashman said he’s “prepared for the worst” regarding Gerrit Cole’s elbow scare as the Yankees await further evaluation of their $324 million ace.
“Pitching is very brittle, and that’s just in general,” Cashman said before the Yankees’ 6-5 loss to the Cardinals. “And then in his specific case, he had a breakdown last spring, somewhere around this time. And now we’re dealing with another situation which is obviously now more concerning because it’s now the second episode.”
The Yankees are in worse trouble than their Flushing rivals and Cole is Exhibit A, with elbow surgery a looming possibility that he didn’t try to dismiss when talking about the injury Saturday morning. If Cole needs a UCL repair, that would wipe out all of this season along with most of next, and he’d be closing fast on 36 at the end of that lengthy rehab. The Cole window to end the Yankees’ 15-year championship drought would be slipping further downward.
“He’s walked this line already,” Cashman said, referring to the elbow issue that cost Cole 2 1⁄2 months last season. “So I think he’s mentally more prepared to deal with it because he’s already dealt with it once before, and that’s even the worst-case scenario. It’s less of an emotional shock this year and now more about what needs to be done here. What’s the best route for him and us.”
It would be bad enough if the Yankees were just dealing with Cole inching toward elbow oblivion. But Giancarlo Stanton remains in limbo with “severe” tendinitis in both elbows and Luis Gil is lost for at least three months because of a lat muscle strain. We’re never really sure where the perpetually injured DJ LeMahieu belongs on this list, considering he’s become more of a pinstriped ghost.
To sum up, that’s one Cy Young Award winner, a former MVP and a Rookie of the Year all subtracted from the ’24 World Series team. That’s already a lot to overcome, especially for a $305 million roster with title aspirations.
“We don’t think like that,” said Jazz Chisholm Jr., who homered Sunday. “We think about having a winning attitude and telling the young guys to remember that you’re never down and out. Now you’ll have a chance to be part of a big-league team.”
The Yankees’ lineup Sunday reflected that. At first glance, it was what you expected for a Grapefruit League game that took place nearly four hours from Tampa: Ben Rice leading off, with Jasson Dominguez, J.C. Escarra, Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza all in prominent spots. But none of those were road filler. They all could be counted on to be impact players, maybe even for Opening Day. And certainly over the course of a long season unless Cashman can import some upgrades by the end of this month.
“The job doesn’t stop,” he said. “It’s always a fluid situation with health, performance levels rising and falling, and injuries.”
The Mets, with a $325 million payroll, feel their Bronx neighbors’ pain. Within the first two weeks of spring training, they lost two members of their rotation, No. 2 starter Sean Manaea (oblique strain) and No. 4 starter Frankie Montas (lat muscle strain). For a rotation that was mostly built on the cheap, those were two costly hits, as Manaea returned on a three-year, $75 million deal and Montas received a two-year, $34 million contract.
Those shouldn’t be crippling injuries, as Manaea is expected back by late April and the Mets should be fine replacing the middling Montas through Memorial Day. Of greater concern is the loss of Alvarez’s dangerous bat for a lineup he referred to as “the best in baseball” and the mysterious case of Brandon Nimmo’s aching right knee, which required a gel injection that has sidelined him indefinitely.
Nimmo started slowly in spring training because of a nagging case of plantar fasciitis that he rehabbed all winter. Now, with the knee problem, he’s had only two plate appearances. That’s worrisome for a player who relies on his legs as much as Nimmo, who is expected to be the Mets’ cleanup hitter, protecting Pete Alonso against righty starters.
An MRI showed no structural damage, so the Mets remain confident about Nimmo.
“We’re still shooting for Opening Day,” manager Carlos Mendoza said.
It can’t get here fast enough. This already has been a torturous spring training for the Yankees and Mets, with too much pain mixed in with what amounts to nothing more than practice. You can’t win a World Series in March, but with this rate of attrition, the New Yorkers can feel as if they’re losing one.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
