Jersey Guy Sports

340 - Yankees injuries and poorly played games are piling up

• Don Signorino

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0:00 | 21:59

One-hit losses will do that thing where they don’t just beat you, they make you question everything. That’s where we’re at with the New York Yankees right now: five losses in six games, a lineup that goes quiet for long stretches, and late leads that feel like they’re borrowed time. I talk through why this slide is happening so fast, and why it’s not enough to wave it away as “just May.”

I dig into the two patterns behind the recent mess: comatose hitting and bullpen disasters. The one-run game record tells a story, and it’s not a lucky-break story. I get into what the Yankees aren’t doing at the plate, from poor situational hitting to too many regulars performing well below even their own career standards. When only a few bats are producing, every mistake becomes louder and every close game becomes a coin flip.

Then I hit the injury pileup and what it does to the big picture. Max Fried’s elbow soreness, Giancarlo Stanton’s stalled return, Jason Dominguez missing weeks, Caballero on the IL, and the uncertainty of Gerrit Cole coming back strong from Tommy John rehab all change what this team can realistically be in the short term. I also give Paul Goldschmidt his flowers, then get blunt about tougher roster calls, including concerns about Anthony Volpe and whether Spencer Jones should be used to bring back real help.

If you care about where the Yankees are headed, subscribe, share this with a friend who’s spiraling too, and leave a quick review so more fans find the show. What’s the one move you’d make first to stop the bleeding?

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Welcome And Rough Stretch

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Jersey Guy forethought moment joined Nick Ranger and Walker Straw Knight. And I'm your host, Don. I want to thank you for listening. Today I will be discussing the New York Yankees' injuries and poorly played games are piling up as they rack up yet another ugly one-hit loss to the Orioles. Let's go ahead and get started. Baseball's a long season. Thank God, right? If you're a Yankee fan, because this recent stretch has been rough in a few ways. Maybe just 10 days ago, the Yankees were looking like the best team in the American League. And I think if you asked most people, even those that are not Yankee fans, you'd say, yeah, you know what? I think the Yanks do look early on like they're the class of the American League. But fast forward 10 days to today, and the Yankees are now reeling as we sit here on May 14th. They suddenly have a rash of injuries. In addition, they've started to play really, really poorly. And also their elite quote-unquote starting pitching has suddenly started to look a little less elite, even though that hasn't been terrible. The Yanks have now lost five of their last six games. Many of those five were in terrible, ridiculous fashion. The losses generally fell into, I'd say, two categories. One would be like comatose hitting, like yesterday's one-hit loss to the birds. And the other category would be the bullpen disaster, right? Where we continue to blow leads late where we have leads and just, you know, excruciating walk-off losses. That's basically been the five losses in the last six games. Yesterday's fell into the comatose hitting category. We got a single solitary hit, one hit off the Orioles. I mean, come on. We used to just dominate and clean up the Orioles forever. It's been like 10 years since we've had any kind of challenge from this team. And now we lost two of three to the Orioles, and yesterday's game was just a joke. Really, really poor hitting, right? It's it's tough. Yeah, and in the bullpen disasters, which we, you know, sort of categorized here on previous podcasts, and it's a tough thing. The Yankees bullpen is an unmitigated disaster. It absolutely is terrible, terrible, terrible. And it has to be addressed. And I don't know if we can even wait to the trade deadline. We continue to blow games left and right. We don't have a real closer with Badnar. The vol is awful. Cashman has built a terrible, terrible bullpen, and it's continuing to cost us games. And since it's only May, while this is not the worst thing, you know, it does serve as a reminder that this current Yankee team is not a championship team as currently built. There has to be moves made to improve this team. And people keep saying, yeah, well, at the trade deadline, we'll see what we do. We're gonna have to see how this how this plays out because the team, as constituted, may not have enough to even trade for the you know team players that we need to improve. There's too many broken parts to this team. Cashman has put together an awful team, again, you know, and he says awful as the Yankees are in second place, you know, they're not in first place anymore. The Rays have overtaken them, but you know, awful is too strong a word. But to an objective observer, if you were to talk about a playoff caliber team, I don't think this is a good playoff caliber team at all. Now, we've had in addition to you know other issues, mostly in the bullpen, but we also need a catcher. We need a third baseman. We might need a center fielder. Like these are not small things. An entire bullpen, a catcher, a third baseman, a center fielder. That's a lot of big parts, right? In addition to the bad situational hitting that continues to haunt this team, which it does, again, not shortening your swing, not moving a runner, continuing to swing big no matter what the count is. We have general underperformance. And that means that as bad as some of these players are, they're underperforming even those standards. Now, Judge is not obviously a bad performer. He's an elite generational player. Even he is at, I don't know, what is he today? 265, 268, something like that. He's well under his career batting average. He's got some homers, some ribbies, but he is his same, you know, can't hit in the clutch person as he's always been. You know, he is Mr. First Inning, though, let me tell you, he's the king of the first inning. First inning, he's hitting hits, homers, this and that. It's great. Anything in entire game, though, it's the same story as the rest of his career. But outside of all that, he's only hitting 268. So he's got to get warmed up, get back to around 300. His career average, I think, is in the upper 280s or something, maybe 290. Other people that are poor for their career and playing even poorer, I guess we can start with Grisham. He's a 215 career hitter, if you didn't know that. 215 is what Grisham's career batting average is. And he's hitting only 175 this year. I mean, he's had again some big hits similar to last year, but his batting average and general play are not good enough to sustain that anymore. The occasional big hit, big homer, is very helpful, but 175 cannot make it in this league. It's certainly not a championship caliber, you know, level. So you have Grisham at 175. You have Jazz Chisholm hitting a paltry 203 and just looking extremely awful. It's hard to look any worse than Chisholm has looked. He doesn't have the lowest average on the team, amazingly, a 203. There's two or three others below him, shockingly, but he looks the worst at the plate. He's missing balls left and right. Oh my god. And by the way, he's about a 244 career hitter. Austin Wells. The bane of my existence, him involving. But Wells is hitting 180, looks absolutely awful, continues to look terrible, continues to be the single person now, birthrighted to this position, you know, gets the catcher on scholarship, as they say. Why is he still here? He is at 180. He is a career 219 hitter. So you have a bunch of these people that, as bad as their career hitting is, they're even worse this year. Ryan McMahon hitting 196. You know, there was a little spurt where he looked like he was doing a little better, but he's back to looking terrible. He's a career 237 hitter and only hitting 196. So you have Judge in 260s, Grisham at 175, Chisholm hitting 203, Wells hitting 180, and McMahon hitting 196. And those last four, none of them have career averages that are any good. So as bad as they are in their career, they're much worse this year. So you have general underperformance contributing to this lethargic Yankees offense. We continue to have a handful of hitters pull all the weight in most situations, and occasionally Judge does it. Certainly Ben Rice almost always does it. Cody Bellinger continues to be a bright spot on this team. You know, and you have a few others. You know, Caballero has hit in spots and done pretty well, and every now and then you have Bellinger, or not Bellinger, and you have Goldsmith contributing and a few others. Rosario stepped in and done really well at hitting at times. So there have been some bright spots, but those few people have to carry the team every time because this continued malaise and underperformance of some of the team, you know, four or five people. The bullpen continues to blow leads as we talked about. I'm not going to go into that again, but everyone who's seen the Yankee games recently knows the bullpen is awful. The Yankees are three and nine in one run games so far. Here we are on May 14th. That is tied for dead last in Major League Baseball in one run games. Then again, with the bullpen, that does not surprise, right? Because you think that if it's a close game, the bullpen will eventually give it up, and mostly they have been. Now, in addition to some bad play recently, the Yanks are really hurting with injuries. And I want to talk about injuries now because it's not nothing. I don't want the Yanks to use it as an excuse, but certainly we've gone from being mostly healthy outside of long-term injuries in spring training to now several injury concerns. So here we are on May 14th. Just yesterday, Max Fried was diagnosed with some kind of arm injury. They're calling it left elbow posterior soreness. He's apparently going to be examined by a doctor and undergo imaging in New York on Thursday. He looked absolutely terrible pitching Wednesday. He kept falling off the mound. His accuracy was terrible. Let's hope he doesn't need another Tommy John surgery. That would be a Yankee nightmare if Freed needs Tommy John surgery. As we were here in May, if he needs Tommy John surgery, he would miss the rest of this year and probably most of next year. And that would be just a friggin' disaster. So we'll have to see. We'll have to hope for the best and see what Freed does. He's that's a big deal for the Yankees. So you have Freed. You have Stanton, who continues to have hamstring issues. Again, he barely ran at all. He almost walked around the bases all season this year and then got hurt somehow with some kind of weird hamstring issue. Apparently, the recent update from Stanton is that his latest MRI results did not provide the necessary clearance for him to resume running. Never mind being ready to return. It is another continuing, ongoing issue for Jean-Carlers and his entire career, especially on the Yankees, has been marred by injuries every single year. He has been on the IL at least once with the Yankees. Almost every year he has been on the IL, more than once with the Yankees. And that's just a terrible track record. Jason Dominguez is currently on the IL. He has a low-grade left AC joint sprain. He had a brief concussion scare or two following that collision that he had against the left field wall. He ran basically at full speed, jumped, made a really nice catch, crashed really hard into the wall, and apparently hurt his shoulder. He's expected to miss, you know, quote unquote, a few more weeks of playing time. When the Yankees say that, you never know how the hell long it's going to take. He received some kind of shot in his left shoulder a couple days ago. I'm not encouraged for a quick return for Jason Dominguez, unfortunately. Caballero, as we know, has a fractured middle finger. He's on the 10-day IL. He swears he's coming back right at the end of that, which I hope, hope, hope. Because, you know, I do not want to see any more Volpey's fat face at shortstop anymore. So Caballero is on the I. He's Tommy John rehab is proceeding. We should expect, you know, Garrett Cole back in June. But how Cole will return, and how long, I guess, it is until Cole is 100%, is to be determined. And also, you know, he's not young. He's not 26, right? Garricole is 35 years old, and he just had Tommy John surgery. We're all just expecting him to come back and be Tom and be, you know, Cole, but we don't know this, right? I mean, there have been recent, many recent good stories of people rehabbing from Tom and John, some from multiple, and being very good. And maybe Cole will do that, but it's hard to have full confidence that that will actually be the case. So, you know, we're all assuming the best, but you know, he's still not back, and we still don't know how long it will be, and if it will be, that he will be the old Garrett Cole. And lastly, I would say Rodon. And while he doesn't qualify as being out on the injured list, he was out most of the year. He's just back, and he didn't look very good, in my opinion, in his first start. And he also kind of looked out of shape, by the way. You know, and I don't know if that contributed to it. Last year, he actually looked in much better shape. You know, this year he's about to look in very frumpy and I don't know, out of shape and threw the ball poorly in my mind in his first start back. So, you know, there's that's a lot of injuries, you know. Let's quick recap of that is Max Fried out with an arm injury, hopefully not Tommy John. We're gonna know shortly. Stanton is still out, Jason Dominguez, Caballero, and Cole. And Rodon is sort of back, right? Freed, Stanton, the Martian, Caballero, and Cole. That is not nothing, right? Now, while that's a lot of injuries, I don't want the Yankees to start using that as a crutch, right? The Yankees need new players on this team, right? They ran it back with the same players as last year. And last year we were not very good. We made the playoffs and got crushed by Toronto because of certain needs. And we haven't really addressed many of those needs at all. And we're gonna see as the year progresses what additional changes are needed. But I don't want the Yankees saying, oh yeah, well, this the reason this year was bad was all the injuries. That's not the reason if we don't win anything this year. The reason is the team needs to be constructed in better fashion. The reason is Gersham hitting 175, Chisholm hitting 203, Wells hitting 180, McMahon hitting 196, even Judge hitting 260. These are not injured players, these are healthy players performing well, well below expectations, right? So you have that. You have a bullpen. That is terrible, right? Those are not injuries. That's just performing terribly. There's no one in the bullpen that's injured. It's just a poor bullpen, right? So, yes, we have a lot of injuries. That is not an insignificant list, but it's important to remember that that is part of an issue with the Yankees that involves other things as well. Now, other quick bits before I get out of here, I want to talk real quickly about a few other things with the Yanks. I wanted to give Paul Goldschmidt a shout out because you know what? Goldschmidt is good, and I think he goes completely underrecognized and under the radar amongst all the other Yankees because he just comes in there every day and does his job, right? And if people don't know who he is, he has been a player for 16 years. He has he is a career 288 hitter. So he's almost a 290 career hitter for 16 seasons. And in today's day and age, I can't tell you how excellent, excellent that is. He has one of the most valuable player awards, he's a gold glove defender at first base. He continues, even at this age, to impress offensively and defensively. I mean, he's a really, really good player, even at this age, and I and I'm very, very, very impressed with Goldschmidt. And there's nothing negative you can say about him. He saves people runs digging things out at the first base, plays an excellent defensive first base. My daughter gets a kick of how he runs when he runs around the bases. I don't know what it is. He kind of holds his arms close to him, but I don't know why I thought of that now. But I I I I've been thinking about how good he is lately. And you know, he had another leadoff homer the other day, and he he sits on the bench a lot because Rice is the everyday first baseman. So it's even harder for someone, you know, to not play every day, but still do well when you do play. And he even accomplishes that at a very high level. So shout out, kudos to Paul Goldschmidt and someone that is a very valuable piece of the New York Yankees. Other bits and bites. Volpey's first game back was poor. No shock, you know, to Jersey guy here. He struck out in a big spot, as I mentioned. He made an error already on a friggin' really easy bouncer in his very first game back. He's already got one error. Obviously, long-term is the key, right? And I keep preaching that whether he does really good in a week or two or really bad in a week or two, that you have to understand Volpe's career. He's played almost 500 career Major League Baseball games, and he's a terrible hitter. He's a career 222 hitter. He's a terrible defender. I don't care what you guys come at me with as far as this or that. Watch him play defense. He's terrible. And it is what it is, right? But, you know, it just I don't know what we can do. I don't know if we can trade him. I don't know if anybody wants him, but he is really young. You know, maybe there's a chance somehow he improves. I think we've seen enough of him to know what he is. I don't think he's gonna be much better than what he is. Maybe there's a chance he can start to hit better. We're gonna have to see. But Anthony Volpe just in my mind is not a good baseball player out of the occasional, outside of the occasional blips that we see, right? We, you know, he's he's had certain spans and big moments in his career. And again, we talked on the last podcast about how that's what's remembered. But unfortunately, his first game back was poor, and that's what I expected. But, you know, again, whether it's poor or whether he looks great in a week or two, you have to step back and keep that 10,000-foot view focus on what he really is. I have another hot take on someone else. I think we just need to trade Spencer Jones at this point. We have not seen enough of him to know what he can and can't do in the major leagues, but he's about to be 25 years old. He certainly strikes out way too much. He doesn't look fixable. Every year for the last three years in the minors, we've heard he's got great power and great potential, but he strikes out. And every year it doesn't improve. And in the minors, he's continuing to strike out at about a 35% clip. In the majors, it's been higher than that. He strikes out multiple times every game. You know, I don't see a spot for him. I really don't. I mean, we're gonna have to see if there's someplace to put him, but he looks at this point like he needs to just be trade bait. You know, this team needs to improve in a lot of ways. Maybe we use him as a way to, you know, get a better some kind of ace closer or, you know, an actual catcher that doesn't suck balls or something, right? I I think he needs to be part of some trade package that brings us back a real return that can help us in the 2026 season. And lastly, the Yankees starting pitching I want to touch on. That's the other thing. And that is it's been really great to start the season, but most recently it's been just okay. I would say not dominant. We've had some pretty good starts, you know. Certainly Weathers came back and pitched a great game until the bullpen blew it. But most of the starts have just been in the okay to mediocre to poor range, right? And Warren was okay, and then we had, you know, other folks just being okay. Fried is not look great recently, may or may not have something to do with the arm issue. We're gonna have to see. But then the Yankees starting pitching, which was such a strength with such depth, is suddenly, you know, in peril here with Cole not back yet, Rodon not looking great, Freed possibly going on the IL, and the other pitchers not looking spectacular. So we will keep an eye on the starting pitching and hope that it rebounds to the levels that we hope. And certainly getting Garrett Cole back, we expect to be a significant, significant boost to our starting rotation. So can't wait till he gets back. Anyway, the Yanks start a series against the New York Mets on Friday, and let's hope they wake up in time for that because everyone enjoys the Yankee Mets series. And in the recent years, it always seems like we seem to be catching the Mets at always the wrong time. And here we go again, where the Yanks are playing about their worst baseball of the year, and the Mets who have sucked all year are suddenly are showing some life and playing better. So it is a bad time to catch them, but let's hope you know we can wake up and and do some damage this this weekend. And that's it. That's going to do it for the podcast. Thank you for listening to Jersey Guy Sports. Please subscribe to the podcast. Tell your friends all about it. Keep listening. I'll be back soon with some more sports book. Thanks for that.

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Don Signorino

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