DJ LeMahieu Archives - River Avenue Blues

Update: DJ LeMahieu exits Sunday’s game with right knee inflammation

April 28, 2019 by Mike

7:33pm ET: LeMahieu will get an MRI and see an orthopedist tomorrow, Aaron Boone announced following the game. It looks like a deep bruise but they want to make sure that’s it.

5:45pm ET: LeMahieu has right knee inflammation, the Yankees announced. X-rays came back negative. Hopefully he’ll be able to return to action following the off-day tomorrow.

5:06pm ET: DJ LeMahieu was removed from this afternoon’s game in the third inning with a possible injury. He walked off the field gingerly following the bottom of the second and was slow going down the dugout steps. LeMahieu fouled a pitch into his knee two days ago.

I’ve honestly lost count of how many Yankees are on the injured list right now. I think it’s 13? At least 12, I know that much. Among those injured Yankees are three infielders (Miguel Andujar, Didi Gregorius, Troy Tulowitzki), and three outfielders (Aaron Hicks, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton). Geez.

LeMahieu had a single and a fly out earlier in the game, not to mention several fairly routine defensive plays, and he seemed to be moving okay until the end of the second inning. With a sizeable lead and an off-day tomorrow, hopefully this is just precautionary. Stay tuned for updates.

Should LeMahieu miss time, the Yankees already have Thairo Estrada on the big league roster, and the recently signed Brad Miller in Triple-A as an obvious call-up candidate. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. We’ll see.

DJ LeMahieu’s Weird Batted Ball Profile

April 14, 2019 by Matt Imbrogno

With literally half the projected Opening Day lineup on the Injured List, it’s been a struggle for the Yankees to find consistent performance from their hitters. Emerging from the pack has been infielder DJ LeMahieu. Predictably, he’s shined with the glove, whether at second or third. On offense, he entered Saturday’s action hitting .439/.489/.561, good for a .448 wOBA and a 186 wRC+. He’s done it, as evidenced by the .122 ISO, with little power, though, which led me to remark the other night that a flyball to deep center was probably the deepest ball he’s hit all year. Regardless, what he’s doing has worked, so let’s take a look.

The first thing that sticks out is the .500 (!) BABIP. Per FanGraphs, that’s second highest in baseball, behind Tim Anderson’s insane .581 (!!) BABIP to start the year. The gap between DJLM in second and Elvis Andrus in third (.475) is higher than the gap between LeMahieu and Anderson. That’s obviously not sustainable, even for a high BABIP guy like LeMahieu (career .345 BABIP). Maybe he’s just hitting the ball really hard, right? That shows up in his profile, but even that’s a bit strange. His LD% is up, but so are his FB% and IFFB%, two things that would likely kill BABIP. Let’s check out Statcast and see what we can find.

My initial hunch about LeMahieu not hitting the ball too far appears to be correct. Among players with at least 30 batted ball events, he ranks 88th out of 171 in average distance at 174 feet. His max–375′–has him in 148th place. While it’s nice to have my ideas confirmed, it doesn’t tell us a whole lot about that high BABIP. Is he stinging the ball? It appears that he is. He’s got 21 balls hit at 95+ MPH, good for 12th in the league. His percentage of hard hit balls (95+MPH) has him even higher at 6th place: 58.3%. His 92.5 average exit velocity puts him in the top 30 of MLB (28th place) as well, though his max exit velocity of 107.2 puts him 112th. So, basically, he hits the ball very hard, very often, but just not at the upper reaches of velocity and without hitting the ball all too far. It doesn’t seem, as a high BABIP sometimes suggests (or always suggests, according to broadcasters who still can’t grasp even the most basic of advanced stats…), that LeMahieu is getting overly lucky, even with those fly ball/IFFB increases. According to Statcast, his xWOBA is .367. There’s a pretty big difference between that and his actual wOBA, but .367 is still a damn good number–especially for someone as good in the field as he is–and, to me at least, suggests he’s just squaring things up right now, not running into a bunch of seeing-eye singles or dying quails.

I was skeptical of the LeMahieu signing, but so far, I’ve been flat out wrong about it. I’m glad to be, frankly, given how badly the Yankees need their healthy players to step up. DJLM is not going to keep this up all year, of course, but it’s nice to ride this hard contact wave while it’s happening.

Repeating past mistakes have come back to haunt the Yankees

April 5, 2019 by Derek Albin

It took six games for Troy Tulowitzki to wind up on the injured list. Banking on him to be the stopgap shortstop while Didi Gregorius recovers from Tommy John surgery was a high risk decision from the get go, and it’s already come back to bite the Yankees. I feel bad for Tulowitzki; his return could have been a feel-good story this season (and maybe still could). For a team in contention, it was never a good idea to count a player absent from the majors since 2017. It doesn’t matter how he looked in his offseason workouts.

Gambling on Tulowitzki was a move straight out of the 2013 and 2014 playbook. Those were highly forgettable Yankees teams that somehow finished above .500 while missing the playoffs. The likes of Travis Hafner, Vernon Wells, Brian Roberts, Kevin Youkilis, and Ichiro Suzuki were counted on as regulars. All of those players were either past their primes, injury prone, or both. Tulowitzki fits that mold.

Some of the aforementioned players actually got off to good starts in pinstripes. I recall Hafner and Wells raking early on. Pronk had a 198 wRC+ in the first month of 2013. Wells posted a 150 wRC+ during the same period. Things went (steeply) downhill from there. Others like Youkilis and Roberts never contributed much at all, and didn’t even last on the roster all season. Ichiro hit well when he was acquired in 2012, but was surprisingly signed a two-year deal thereafter.

Tulowitzki never really got a chance to show any semblance of his old self. Maybe he’ll be back much sooner than we anticipate, but it’s easy to be skeptical of his belief that it’s a relatively minor calf injury. At this point, as Mike noted, the Yankees have exhausted just about all of their depth, so they actually need him back. And that gets us back to the point: it’s a problem that the Yankees relied on Tulowitzki to be their starting shortstop.

DJ LeMahieu was ostensibly the contingency plan for Tulowitzki. It’s not that he’s a bad fallback, but rather, the issue is that it forces Gleyber Torres to spend less time learning a fairly new position, second base. Torres is capable of playing short, but if the Yankees have any intention of retaining Didi Gregorius, it would make sense to give Torres as many reps at the keystone as possible. That means having a more tenable shortstop during Gregorius’s absence would have been ideal.

This injury serves as yet another reminder that the Yankees passed on Manny Machado this past winter. I know, I know, you’re all tired of hearing about that. I’d rather not discuss it either. But what choice do we have? Sure, Machado could have become another one of the team’s walking wounded. However, that would have came as a surprise, unlike Tulowitzki.

It’s a rare opportunity to acquire a young superstar in the prime of their career for only money. The team could regret the decision for years to come. You think they regret letting Robinson Cano walk in favor of Brian Roberts? There were some dark years before the team finally found Starlin Castro and ultimately Gleyber. And sure, you can say that the Yankees had better internal options now as compared to Cano’s walk year, with Andujar and Gregorius on the left side of the infield. But who knows how Gregorius, and now Andujar, return from their injuries. It’s better to acquire as much high floor talent as possible and sort things out later if everyone is healthy at the same time. Instead, the Yankees went for the cheap low floor option with a low probability of significant contribution.

Four things we’ve learned about the 2019 Yankees one week into the season

April 4, 2019 by Mike

The season is six days old and already we know one thing for certain about the 2019 Yankees: They stink. The stinkiness is probably only temporarily, but yeah, they stink. Losing two of three to the Orioles (!) and Tigers (!!) at home (!!!) while scoring no more than three runs in four of the six games is pretty ugly. It’s not quite the worst possible start to the season, but it’s close.

Six games in and there are some other things we’ve learned about the 2019 Yankees beyond their apparent inability to beat bad teams at home. It can be tricky to figure out what’s real and what’s not one week into the new year. Other times the meaningful stuff can be plainly obvious. Here are four things we’ve learned about the Yankees across their first six games of the new season.

They’ve exhausted their depth

The Yankees have already had so many injuries this season that I don’t know where they’d turn next should another player go down. I really don’t. That is especially true on the position player side. CC Sabathia could be back in next week and that means Jonathan Loaisiga will be stashed in Triple-A as an up-and-down arm. Chance Adams and Joe Harvey are also shuttle candidates.

On the position player side though, geez, the Yankees are pretty much tapped out. They’ve exhausted almost all their 40-man roster depth. Adding players to the 40-man is not necessarily a problem with Didi Gregorius, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Ben Heller available as 60-day injured list candidates. I’m referring to the caliber of player in line to be called up. It ain’t good. Look at who would be the next man up with another injury:

Catcher: Kyle Higashioka
Infield: Thairo Estrada following a lost season or Gio Urshela
Outfield: Billy Burns?

For what it’s worth, Mark Feinsand says Estrada is being recalled to replace Troy Tulowitzki. Tulowitzki will become the 11th Yankee on the injury list later today. What if Greg Bird feels something in his ankle again? Or James Paxton or Masahiro Tanaka go on their annual two-week breather? The injury problem might get worse. Other than Tulowitzki, the guys you’d expect to get hurt haven’t gotten hurt yet.

After six games and seven days, injuries are the story of the season for the Yankees. They’ve lost core players for long stretches of time. They’ve had to call up Clint Frazier, a player deemed in need of Triple-A at-bats, and Tyler Wade, a player deemed not good enough for the Opening Day roster, and there’s not much depth remaining behind them with Triple-A Scranton. Hopefully the injuries pass and the Yankees stay afloat. Right now, we already know they’re stretched very thing.

They need outside help

This ties into the previous point. The Yankees can not sit around waiting for their injured guys to get healthy. Aaron Hicks still has not resumed baseball activities and Miguel Andujar is potentially looking at season-ending surgery. Even if he avoids the knife, Andujar’s best case scenario is being weeks away from rejoining the Yankees. Tulowitzki? Wouldn’t surprise me if we don’t see him again this year.

The last few games have shown there are only so many Mike Tauchman and Tyler Wade at-bats one team can take. Trading for an infielder already feels imperative. Someone to take over a position full-time and push Wade to the bench. Todd Frazier? Asdrubal Cabrera? Starlin Castro? There are some rental salary dump candidates sitting on the market. The Blue Jays are already trading guys (Kendrys Morales, Kevin Pillar). Maybe other teams are willing to move players.

Point is, the Yankees have been hit exceptionally hard by injuries, and many of their top position players are a long ways from returning. Sticking with the in-house replacements is a viable option, sure, but it’s not a good one. The longer the Yankees wait for their guys to return without adding help, the more likely it is they’ll tumble in the standings and face a big uphill climb later this summer. That is apparent six games into the year.

Ottavino is the Moment of Truth™ reliever

This guy’s cool too. (Jim McIsaac/Getty)

Even with bigger names and higher priced pitchers in the bullpen, it is clear the Yankees have identified Adam Ottavino as the guy they want on the mound in the game’s biggest situations. Ottavino has appeared in four of six games so far and in all four games he entered into what can be considered the highest leverage moment. A recap:

March 28th: Runner on second, two outs, Yankees up four in the sixth.
March 30th: Runner on first, two outs, Yankees down one in the sixth.
April 1st: Start of eighth with Nick Castellanos and Miguel Cabrera due up, Yankees up two.
April 2nd: Start of eighth with Castellanos and Cabrera due up, score tied.

The Yankees beat up on the Orioles pretty good on Opening Day, so that March 28th appearance wasn’t super high-leverage, but it was the only time in the game it felt like the O’s had something going. Look at those last two games though. Aaron Boone matched Ottavino up against the other team’s best hitters in the late innings of a close game. Textbook relief ace stuff.

With Dellin Betances sidelined, I assumed Zack Britton would take over the eighth inning almost by default. He’s the former shutdown closer and he signed the big contract over the winter, and the Yankees sure do love set bullpen roles. Instead, Ottavino is penciled in as the high-leverage guy, either in a mid-inning fireman role or matching up against the other team’s top hitters. The rest of the bullpen falls in place around him.

I imagine Betances will reclaim the eighth inning role once he returns and is back up to speed. When he’s right, he’s someone the Yankees can throw out there against any three hitters in a close game. That will free Ottavino up for fireman/matchup work earlier in the game. Until then, he is the interim relief ace. The team’s intentions with Ottavino are no mystery after only four appearances.

LeMahieu’s going to be just fine at third base

I had a feeling this would be the case. LeMahieu has excellent defensive tools (hands, range, arms) and he’s a smart, instinctual player. The only thing he lacks at third base is experience. Even without it, LeMahieu has looked very natural at the hot corner in the early going. He’s made good plays coming in on weak grounders and also going both right and left. It’s hard to tell he’s new to the position, isn’t it?

Andujar’s injury means LeMahieu will be The Man at third base for the foreseeable future. It’ll be at least a few weeks. Hopefully Andujar’s shoulder responds well to treatment and rehab and he can avoid season-ending surgery. Even if he does, he’s going to miss several weeks, and the Yankees have a quality third base replacement in LeMahieu. Defensively, he can more than handle it. LeMahieu’s already shown he’s an asset at the hot corner.

Yankeemetrics: Orioles Deja Vu (March 28-31)

April 1, 2019 by Katie Sharp

March 28: The Legend of Luke
One down, 161 to go. For the second year in a row, the Yankees kicked off their schedule with a win, 7-2 over the Orioles. It marked the first time in more than a decade they’ve had back-to-back season-opening victories, since winning four in a row from 2005-08. The seven runs scored were their most in a win on Opening Day since 2007 when they beat the Rays 9-5.

Luke Voit got the party started early with a three-run first-inning dinger, crushing an 87 mph hanging slider 428 feet into the centerfield seats. Last year he struggled to drive breaking pitches, posting an average exit velocity of just 88 mph while whiffing on 40 percent on those offerings. He saw 217 curves and sliders in 2018, and cranked just one of them out of the park.

Thursday’s home run gave him 15 homers in his first 40 regular-season games with the Yankees — a 162-game pace of 61 homers. He added another RBI when was plunked with the bases loaded in the fifth. #FunFact alert! Voit is the third Yankee cleanup hitter with at least four RBI on Opening Day, joining Alex Rodriguez (2006) and Yogi Berra (1956).

Masahiro Tanaka, making his fourth career Opening Day start (the most by a Japanese-born pitcher), was solid and efficient in his 83-pitch outing, allowing two runs (one earned) while striking out five and walking none in 5 2/3 innings.

He earned our Obscure Yankeemetric of the game for that effort, becoming one of three Yankee Opening Day starters to give up no more than one earned run with at least five strikeouts and no walks. The others: Catfish Hunter (1977) and Mel Stottlemyre (1968).

March 30: Too little, too late
There will be no perfect season in the Bronx. Bummer. Cold bats and sloppy defense are a good recipe for a loss, and the Yankees followed that script to near perfection on Saturday afternoon in 5-3 defeat.

Despite putting 16 runners on base, the Yankees scored only three runs. As frustrating as the team’s situational hitting was last year, they produced that poor combo — more than 15 baserunners and three or fewer runs in a game just once (5-3 loss to Braves on July 2).

The newcomers provided most of the highlights as DJ LeMahieu got his first hit and RBI as a Yankee, Troy Tulowitzki smoked his first home run in pinstripes and James Paxton had a strong debut on the mound.

Paxton showed off his impressive fastball in holding the Orioles to two runs (one earned) on four hits with five punchouts in 5 2/3 innings. He kept the pitch away from the heart of the zone, getting a bunch of called strikes on the edges with the four-seamer while also elevating his heater for swinging strikes.

Last year Paxton ranked ninth among starters (min. 500 pitches) with a 25.6 percent swing-and-miss rate on his four-seam fastball — and he matched that number on Saturday as the Orioles swung at 32 of his four-seamers and whiffed eight times (25.0%).

Tulowitzki’s longball was a rare 358-foot opposite field solo shot in the ninth inning. Tulo has plenty of pop — he is one of seven players in MLB history with at least 200 homers as a shortstop — but most of that has been pull-side power in recent years: 45 of his 48 homers from 2015-17 went to left field.

March 31: Rinse, repeat, RISPFail
With a chance to salvage a series win against the Orioles on Sunday afternoon, the Yankees again failed miserably in clutch situations and suffered another disappointing loss, 7-5. This is the second straight season they dropped an early-season series at the Stadium against the Orioles.

Over the last two seasons, they are 2-5 vs the Orioles in April and 11-4 vs them in May thru September. The Yankees are also 5-7 at home vs the Orioles since the start of last season, the only team they have faced at least five times and have a losing record against in the Bronx.

In losing the final two games, the Yankees went 5-for-21 with runners in scoring position and stranded a combined 25 baserunners (11 on Saturday and 14 on Sunday). It was their most in a two-game span since June 12-13, 2017 when the also left 25 guys on base in the first two games of a series against the Angels. They actually split those two contests, so to find the last time the Yankees stranded 25-plus men in a two-game stretch and lost both games, you have to go back nearly three years to April 15-16, 2016 against the Mariners. Gross.

One player who has avoided the RISP-fail plague to start the season is DJ LeMahieu, who had two hits and an RBI for the second straight day. That effort earned him our Obscure Yankeemetric of the game, becoming part of an eclectic group of six players to have two-plus hits and at least one RBI in each of their first two games with the Yankees. The other five legendary names: John Olerud (2004), Don Slaught (1988), Hector Lopez (1959), Joe DiMaggio (1936) and Pat Collins (1926).

Giving up three homers to the O’s didn’t help the winning cause, either, as J.A. Happ was tagged for two of those longballs and Stephen Tarpley coughed up his first career homer as a major-leaguer. In 69 2/3 innings with the Yankees (including playoffs), Happ has given up 13 homers, or a rate of 1.68 per nine innings pitched. If he posted that over an entire season, it would be the second-highest homer rate by a Yankee pitcher that qualified for the ERA title (highest is 1.77 by Masahiro Tanaka in 2017).

Update: Yankees finalize 2019 Opening Day roster

March 24, 2019 by Mike

Sunday: Tyler Wade was optioned to Triple-A Scranton earlier today, the Yankees announced, clearing the way for new pickup Mike Tauchman to make the roster. Also, Aaron Boone told Coley Harvey that Stephen Tarpley will be in the bullpen, so between that and yesterday’s news, the pitching staff is set. Boone confirmed to Bryan Hoch that the updated roster below will in fact be the Opening Day roster.

Saturday: Although the official announcement will not come until Thursday morning, the Yankees have more or less finalized their 2019 Opening Day roster. Clint Frazier was sent to minor league camp Friday, taking him out of the running for the final bench spot, and George King reports Domingo German will be the 13th pitcher on the Opening Day roster.

Based on that, here is the 25-man Opening Day roster the Yankees will take into the regular season:

CATCHERS (2)
Austin Romine
Gary Sanchez

INFIELDERS (6)
3B Miguel Andujar
1B Greg Bird
IF DJ LeMahieu
2B/SS Gleyber Torres
SS Troy Tulowitzki
1B Luke Voit

OUTFIELDERS (4)
CF Brett Gardner
RF Aaron Judge
LF Giancarlo Stanton
~~UTIL Tyler Wade~~ OF Mike Tauchman

STARTERS (5)
~~RHP Luis Cessa~~ RHP Domingo German
LHP J.A. Happ
LHP James Paxton
RHP Masahiro Tanaka
LHP CC Sabathia (five-game suspension)

RELIEVERS (8)
LHP Zack Britton
LHP Aroldis Chapman
~~RHP Domingo German~~ RHP Luis Cessa
RHP Chad Green
RHP Jonathan Holder
RHP Tommy Kahnle
RHP Adam Ottavino
LHP Stephen Tarpley

The Yankees will also have seven — seven! — players open the 2019 regular season on the injured list. The seven: Dellin Betances (shoulder), Jacoby Ellsbury (hip), Didi Gregorius (Tommy John surgery), Ben Heller (Tommy John surgery), Aaron Hicks (back), Jordan Montgomery (Tommy John surgery), and Luis Severino (shoulder). Sabathia (knee) will become the eighth once his suspension ends.

At this point, the only spots still maybe up for grabs are Bird’s and Tarpley’s. Bird is supposedly fine but he has not played since taking a pitch to the elbow Wednesday. Given his history, I worry this will be something that lingers and forces him to be replaced on the Opening Day roster. Tarpley could be swapped out for someone like Gio Gonzalez or Jonathan Loaisiga, but nah, he’s pretty much a lock.

The Yankees have eight more big league Spring Training roster cuts to make: Nestor Cortes, Francisco Diaz, Raynel Espinal, Estevan Florial, Gio Gonzalez, David Hale, Jonathan Loaisiga, and Jorge Saez. Florial will miss the next few weeks as he recovers from his broken wrist. Those cuts will happen soon (duh).

An updated look at the Yankees’ projected 2019 Opening Day roster as the injuries continue to mount

March 21, 2019 by Mike

One week from today the Yankees will open the 2019 regular season at home against the Orioles. Masahiro Tanaka will be on the mound that day, not Luis Severino, because Severino suffered a shoulder injury earlier this month. That has been the story of Spring Training thus far. Injury after injury after injury.

The Yankees came into Spring Training with a 25-man roster that was fairly set. The last two bullpen spots and the final bench spot were up for grabs, and even then it was kinda easy to see who would get those spots. Now? Now injuries have created a few openings, openings the Yankees are still working to address. They have a week to figure it out.

So, with Yankees far from full strength going into the regular season, let’s take an updated look at the current state of the projected Opening Day roster. At this point, some Opening Day roster spots are being awarded almost by default.

Injured List (8)

Might as well start here. We know with certainty eight players — eight! — will be unavailable at the start of the regular season due to injury. Several of these injuries were known coming into Spring Training. Others popped up in recent weeks. These eight players combined for +18.4 WAR last year:

Dellin Betances (shoulder)
Jacoby Ellsbury (hip surgery)
Didi Gregorius (Tommy John surgery)
Ben Heller (Tommy John Surgery)
Aaron Hicks (back)
Jordan Montgomery (Tommy John surgery)
CC Sabathia (knee, heart)
Luis Severino (shoulder)

The Yankees have not yet put these players on the injured list because they can’t. The 10-day IL doesn’t open until Monday. The 60-day IL has been open for a few weeks now, but the Yankees haven’t needed a 40-man roster spot yet, so there’s no reason to 60-day IL anyone. Montgomery and Gregorius figure to be the first two to go on the 60-day IL when 40-man space is needed.

It sounds like Hicks will be back a week into the regular season. Sabathia is expected back in mid-April and Severino in early-May. Everyone else is a little up in the air at this point, though Betances isn’t expected to be out too long. Ellsbury, Heller, Gregorius, and Montgomery are longer term injuries. We won’t see them for a while.

The Roster Locks (21)

After the injured dudes, the next logical place to go is the roster locks. I count 21 players who will assuredly be on the the Opening Day roster. There are no questions about these guys:

Position Players (11): Miguel Andujar, Brett Gardner, Aaron Judge, DJ LeMahieu, Austin Romine, Gary Sanchez, Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, Troy Tulowitzki, Luke Voit, Tyler Wade
Pitchers (10): Zack Britton, Luis Cessa, Aroldis Chapman, Chad Green, J.A. Happ, Jonathan Holder, Tommy Kahnle, Masahiro Tanaka, Adam Ottavino, James Paxton

I am comfortable calling Cessa, Kahnle, and Wade roster locks at this point. Cessa and Kahnle are both out of minor league options and they came into the spring as Opening Day roster favorites, and they’ve done nothing to pitch their way off the roster. Cessa in particular has been lights out. Add in the pitching injuries and yeah, Cessa and Kahnle will be on the roster.

On more than one occasion this spring Aaron Boone has indicated Wade’s versatility gives him a leg up on a bench spot. Add in the Yankees playing him in center field as soon as it became clear Hicks would not be ready for Opening Day, and we’ve got two pretty good signs Wade has made the roster, assuming yesterday’s hip tightness truly is nothing (fingers crossed). He’s the de facto fourth outfielder until Hicks returns, and, as an added bonus, he can play the infield as well. Wade’s a lock.

The Near Lock (1)

Assuming the Yankees again go with the eight-man bullpen/three-man bench roster construction, they have one more position player spot to fill. Realistically, there are three candidates for that roster spot: Greg Bird, Clint Frazier, and non-roster invitee Billy Burns. I’d rank their chances of making the Opening Day roster like so:

Greg Bird
(huge gap)
Billy Burns
(tiny gap)
Clint Frazier

Frazier has not had a good spring (.140/.220/.233) and Boone has said he needs regular at-bats after missing so much time last season. The Yankees could give him those at-bats at the big league level given the Hicks injury, but it seems unlikely given his Grapefruit League showing. I have Burns ever so slightly ahead of Frazier because I think the Yankees are more willing to let Burns sit on the bench as the fourth outfielder than Frazier. Burns on the bench with Frazier getting regular at-bats in Triple-A seem much more likely than vice versa.

Anyway, that is all moot because Bird is a damn near lock for the Opening Day roster thanks to the Hicks injury, as long as yesterday’s pitch to the elbow is nothing (again, fingers crossed). The Yankees love Bird and there are DH at-bats open now with Stanton set to play left field. Bird can take those at-bats. Another lefty bat in the lineup would be welcome, for sure. With Wade set to be the fourth outfielder, the Yankees can put both Bird and Voit in the lineup, and they sound excited about that scenario. Bird’s on the roster, I believe.

“I look at as we have two impact players,” Boone said to Randy Miller earlier this week. “Bird has been a different guy this year. He’s been the guy we’ve been waiting on. He looks that part right now (with) his at-bats. But Luke has come in and picked up where he left off last year. Both guys are controlling the strike zone. Both guys are impacting the ball. Both guys have done everything we could have hoped for. So now moving forward, we haven’t necessarily revealed anything, but now there’s a scenario where both of them can certainly factor in on a regular basis for at least early in the season.”

The Gio vs. German Spot (1)

I am working under the assumption Sabathia will serve his five-game suspension on Opening Day. That makes the most sense. The Yankees could get the suspension out of the way early, then use Sabathia’s injured list stint to recall a recently optioned player. I thought Domingo German would be that recently optioned player before the Betances injury. I’m not so sure now.

With Betances hurt and Cessa needed in the rotation right out of the gate, the Yankees are a little shorthanded in the bullpen, and carrying German on the Opening Day roster as a long man seems likely to me. If he’s needed in long relief at some point during Sabathia’s suspension, the Yankees will use him and call up someone else (Jonathan Loaisiga?) to be the interim fifth starter. If he’s not needed in long relief, he then becomes the fifth starter.

Loaisiga’s hasn’t had a good spring (11 runs in 12 innings) and pitching coach Larry Rothschild recently said it’s big league rotation or Triple-A for Johnny Lasagna. They’re going to develop him as a starter and not use him out of the bullpen even though I think a bullpen role shouldn’t be ruled out. Loaisiga has a long and scary injury history, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get whatever you can out of him before he gets hurt again. Harsh, but that’s the business.

With Loaisiga pitching himself out of the rotation conversation, there are three potential candidates to wrestle that fifth starter/swingman spot from German: David Hale, Drew Hutchison, and the recently signed Gio Gonzalez. Nestor Cortes isn’t a serious Opening Day roster candidate and Chance Adams has already been sent to minor league camp. That doesn’t mean the Yankees can’t carry Adams on the Opening Day roster. It just seems unlikely.

Hale and Hutchison have been fine this spring. They haven’t been mentioned as Opening Day roster candidates at all and I think — and I think the Yankees think — German is flat out better than both of them. Hale and Hutchison are break glass in case of emergency guys. You call them up when you have no one else. Even with all the pitching injuries, the Yankees are thankfully not at that point yet. They’re out, so it’s German vs. Gio.

Gonzalez reported to camp two days ago and he’s thrown upwards of 80 pitches on his own, so his arm is stretched out. “I don’t think I am far away at all,” he said to Kristie Ackert. “I have been staying with my routine. In my last (simulated game), I pitched Monday, 88 pitches, five innings. I am trying to keep up with baseball, at least I am doing my routine and sticking to my guns. I’ll be ready to go. Hopefully I’ll be in a game pretty soon.”

Brian Cashman hedged a bit, saying the Yankees are looking forward to getting a look at Gonzalez up close the next few weeks. He has an April 20th opt-out date and it sounds like the Yankees want to take their time evaluating him. If push comes to shove and injuries force their hand, sure, they’ll carry Gio on Opening Day. It does not sound like that’s the plan. It sounds like Gonzalez is Plan B with German being Plan A.

Had he signed over the winter and reported to Spring Training with everyone else, this would definitely be Gonzalez’s roster spot. That’s not what happened though. He signed late and, even though he’s stretch out to 80 or so pitches, he’s probably not where he needs to be with his feel for his stuff or his command. That gives German the edge. I think he’s on the roster as a long reliever who moves into the fifth starter’s spot when the time comes.

The Final Pitching Spot (1)

Sabathia’s suspension means the Yankees have to play with a 24-man roster. A three-man bench equals 12 pitcher spots during the suspension, and we have ten locks plus German, leaving one open spot. Once Sabathia’s suspension ends and the Yankees go back to 13 pitches, either German slots in as the fifth starter and a reliever gets called up, or German remains in the bullpen and a starter gets called up. Point is, there’s one open pitching spot.

Sticking with players who remain in big league camp, the Yankees have ten candidates for that final pitching spot. Sure, they could also bring back someone who’s already been sent out (Adams?), but it does seem unlikely. The ten candidates:

On the 40-man roster (2): Jonathan Loaisiga, Stephen Tarpley
Not on the 40-man roster (8): Rex Brothers, Nestor Cortes, Danny Coulombe, Phil Diehl, Raynel Espinal, Gio Gonzalez, David Hale, Drew Hutchison

We’ve already ruled out Gonzalez, Hale, and Hutchison as serious Opening Day roster candidates earlier in this post. Also, Loaisiga is a big league rotation or bust guy, so, for our purposes, it’s bust. He’s in Triple-A. Brothers has eight walks in 5.1 innings this spring after walking 44 in 40.2 minor league innings last year. I think we can cross him off the list. Espinal had a visa issue and reported to camp late, and has thrown one (1) Grapefruit League inning. He falls into that “he won’t be fully ready for Opening Day” group, similar to Gio.

That leaves four candidates: Cortes, Coulombe, Diehl, and Tarpley. Pretty easy to see where this is going, right? It’ll be Tarpley. He’s already on the 40-man roster and he impressed the Yankees enough last September to get a spot on the ALDS roster. Also, Tarpley’s had a very nice spring, chucking ten scoreless innings. That won’t hurt his cause. Diehl’s been impressive at times this spring but he’s barely pitched above Single-A. Cortes? Coulombe? I have no reason to believe they are ahead of Tarpley in the bullpen pecking order. Tarpley it is.

The Projected Roster (24+1)

That is 24 active players plus one suspended Sabathia. Again, once the five-game suspension ends, Sabathia goes directly on the injured list and the Yankees call up another pitcher to get back to a normal three-man bench/eight-man bullpen arrangement. Injures have really stretched the Yankees thin already. Sheesh. Anyway, after all that, here’s the projected Opening Day roster:

Catchers	Infielders	Outfielders	Rotation	Bullpen
Gary Sanchez	1B Greg Bird	LF Giancarlo Stanton	Masahiro Tanaka	CL Aroldis Chapman
Austin Romine	1B Luke Voit	CF Brett Gardner	James Paxton	SU Zack Britton
	2B Gleyber Torres	RF Aaron Judge	J.A. Happ	SU Chad Green
	SS Troy Tulowitzki	UTIL Tyler Wade	Luis Cessa	SU Adam Ottavino
	3B Miguel Andujar			MR Jonathan Holder
	IF DJ LeMahieu			MR Tommy Kahnle
				MR Stephen Tarpley
				SWG Domingo German

That is 24 active players plus one suspended player (Sabathia) plus seven other players on the injured list (Betances, Ellsbury, Gregorius, Heller, Hicks, Montgomery, Severino). Once Sabathia’s suspension ends, he becomes the eighth (!) player on the injured list, and the Yankees get their 25th roster spot back. Presumably it goes to a pitcher seeing how they’ve rarely employed a seven-man bullpen the last two years or so.

Bird’s elbow could throw a wrench into the roster situation. If he’s unable to go Opening Day, the Yankees would have little choice but to carry Burns or Frazier as the extra outfielder, with LeMahieu moving into the everyday lineup (Andujar to DH?) and Wade taking over as the full-time backup infielder. Hopefully Bird’s elbow (and Wade’s hips) is a-okay and he’ll be fine come Opening Day.

The injuries have eliminated several position battles. With a healthy Severino, it’s German vs. Tarpley for one spot. With Hicks healthy, it’s Bird vs. Wade for one spot. The injuries answered some questions and everything kinda falls into place. I don’t think we can completely rule out Gio beating out German, though it would surprise me. It really seems like the Yankees want to get an extended look at Gonzalez in minor league games first.

Hopefully everyone stays healthy these next seven days and the Yankees can go into the regular season with that roster. That is almost certainly the best 24+1 unit they could put together right now. Once Sabathia goes on the injured list, the Yankees get the 25th roster spot back. Once Hicks returns, they’ll have to drop another position player. Worry about that later though. Those are questions the Yankees will answer when the time comes and not a minute sooner.