From Bryan Hoch:
The Yankees got a glimpse of life without Juan Soto during a rough home series against the Dodgers earlier this month, when the outfielder missed three games with a sore right forearm. They can only hope his current absence will be shorter in duration.
With Soto watching from the bench, his injured right hand hidden by the pocket of a hooded sweatshirt, New York lost for the 10th time in 13 games. Nestor Cortes allowed three early runs before the bullpen opened the floodgates, with the Bombers falling 9-3 to the Blue Jays on Saturday afternoon at Rogers Centre.
“It’s easy when we have our best stuff,” Cortes said. “These are the starts that you’ve got to get through, control damage as much as possible and get ready for the next one.”
Soto was scratched from the lineup about 20 minutes before the scheduled first pitch with what the club announced as a bruised right hand, sustained on a slide into home plate on Friday evening.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said that X-rays taken on Saturday came back clean, but Soto might not return to the lineup for Sunday’s series finale and could have further testing performed during Monday’s off-day in New York.
This dude came here as a fucking iron man, and since he’s been here, he’s already had two weird ass injuries. I don’t even know what to think about this hand injury. No breakage is a good thing, of course, but that his hand swelled up so much that he couldn’t swing a bat the next day? That he has his hand wrapped up (see the featured image)? That is spooky as fuck. This team sucks on offense WITH Soto, what the fuck are they going to do WITHOUT him?
Meanwhile, I get that Nestor didn’t have it today, and that’s fair enough, honestly, but why are ALL OF THEIR STARTERS not having it all at fucking once?! Could ONE of these fucking guys pitch a simple fucking clean game for a fucking change? Nothing crazy, but how about, oh, I don’t know, not putting the Yankees in a hole in the first fucking inning of every goddamn game?!
And Cole NORMALLY struggles with Toronto, so I can already imagine how shitty this final game is going to be.
Meanwhile, after a good game, nearly every hitter went back to sucking except for Ben Rice, Aaron Judge, and Austin Wells. DJ LeMahieu, after two games of hitting the ball harder, was once again a groundball machine, and Verdugo and Gleyber were just pathetic.
There is no one good on the team right now except for Aaron Judge, which, well, is pretty darn similar to the last two seasons, really.
The funny thing is – this same team was awesome, the best in the majors, for more than a third of the season.
Then they become one of the worst. The only significant injury was Stanton (at least for now, getting Rizzo out of the line-up was a plus).
It’s the same pitchers and the same hitters – only now instead of being great, they’re terrible.
Not slightly worse – from best to (roughly speaking) worst. Not some improving and others tailing off, but the whole team – from best to (roughly speaking) worst.
Well, okay, everybody except 2 of the 3 superstars.
What the hell is that?
Cole better be Cole.
Well, it’s worth noting that of the games that either Soto and Judge have missed, they’ve now lost 4 of the 5, so those guys missing ANY time is oddly significant! Also, I would consider the Clarke Schmidt and Martian injuries to be significant ones, as was the Loaisiga one, plus the Effross setback injury that kept him from being ready to start the season. Definitely The Martian, though. I think he was a key piece of their plan for this season, as the idea was likely to call him up if he forced his way on to the team, while also serving as a key replacement in case of inevitable injuries.
I’d add Schmidt, agreed.
(Obviously Dominguez is a big deal, but we can leave him out, as he wasn’t there being great and then there being wretched. He could have helped, and I can’t wait for that to actually happen, of course.)
But Schmidt and Stanton didn’t make everyone performing well suddenly perform badly. It seem so unlikely.
“unlikely”
That it happened in 2022 can be read 2 ways: either we’ve seen it, so there’s some hidden logic to why that’s still relevant to this team, with a somewhat different roster, OR having it happen once was already crazy improbably, twice would be orders of magnitude more improbably.
In 2022, didn’t they suddenly get a number of key injuries after a shocking, unyankee period of zero injuries in the first half?
The offense sliding makes sense, as it was always pretty much Judge and Soto and hoping one other guy has a good day. But the pitching going from elite to putrid is really odd. And it’s not really injury related, everyone is experiencing the most brutal regression to the mean – yes, losing Schmidt/Poteet was an issue, but Cole is back and also sucking.
As Don noted the other day, the second game back from an injury is usually the toughest, since you don’t have the adrenaline pumping from the first start. So I’m willing to give Cole a mulligan on his second start. If he sucks today, then, well, that will be concerning.
And yes, everyone losing it all at once is just mind-boggling. I am now starting to be a bit suspicious about perhaps MLB fucking with the ball again. Look at some of the guys who had gotten off to great starts who have been rocked recently – Gil, of course, but also Tanner Houck, Seth Lugo, Grayson Rodriguez, Shota Imanaga. If you had told me before the season that all of those guys (plus Nestor and Rodon) would struggle, I would have said, “Okay, I can believe it” (which is why I wanted the Yankees to get another starter) so perhaps after deadening the ball, Manfred has decided to UNdeaden it, and these guys are reverting to what they would be like without a dead ball.
Brian, that actually makes a lot of sense.
Unfortunately, I’m not at all sure this pitching staff is built to adjust to that.
I recall seeing something about balls in Cleveland traveling further than elsewhere, I wonder if they were the test park and the MLB put those balls into play.
Or, perhaps even worse than the MLB fucking with the ball is the idea that they are not and just producing very inconsistent batches of balls. I’m honestly not sure which is worse.
The Yankees had four catchers heading into this past offseason.
Two of them are having good seasons. They’re not the two currently on the Yankees.
Rortvedt 1.2 bWAR
Higgy 1.0 bWAR
Trevy 0.6 bWAR
Wells 0.5 bWAR
IKF Would have the 3rd best OPS on the team.
Bader has a 1.5 bWAR. It’s kind of fucking nuts.
Juan Soto said he may get an MRI or CT scan on his right hand tomorrow. He felt pain and weakness while swinging in BP yesterday. Said it feels better today, though. The Yankees haven’t posted their lineup yet.
That he feels better today is very good news. The scary shit likely wouldn’t improve in a day, ya know?
Bickford got DFAed. I think that hook was too quick, but whatever, it probably won’t matter. Josh Maciejewski is back.
That they are giving Soto every chance to start today suggests he’s not hurt that badly, if they think he might actually play today.
One the one hand, yes. On the other hand, they seem to be possessed of a truly rare level of idiocy on matters of health (and not only), so who knows?