August 4th, 2023: Rizzo, Germán, Rest of 2023, Mailbag

Updated ZiPS projections are out and the Yankees managed to decrease their postseason odds from 21.3% to 18.0% at the trade deadline. The 3.3 percentage point decrease is the third largest in baseball behind the Mariners (5.9 percentage points) and Mets (9.4 percentage points). The decrease is not because the Yankees added bad players in Keynan Middleton and Spencer Howard. It’s the result of all the other teams in the Wild Card race (Angels, Blue Jays, etc.) getting better. So it goes. Let’s get to today’s post.

1. A bad week in a bad season. Sometimes it’s just not your season. Sometimes your franchise player runs into a wall, your top offseason addition misses half the year, your veteran hitters all decline at once, and your rookie shortstop underwhelms. Bad seasons happen and every once in a while your number comes up, and you have one. We’re fortunate they happen so infrequently around these parts.

I can handle a bad season, but this week the season became a farce. I don’t know where to begin so I might as well start at the beginning. Monday afternoon Josh Donaldson went through a full pregame workout at Yankee Stadium. Donaldson, who has been on the injured list with a Grade 2+ right calf strain since July 16th, took ground balls and really got after it. Here’s video. He was moving around well there, no? Donaldson also took batting practice and hit several homers.

“Better than I expected to,” Donaldson told Greg Joyce when asked how he felt, adding “I kind of just was told I was going on the (60-day injured list). I wasn’t in the conversation for that.”

First of all, read the room, Josh. You’re on the 60-day injured list because you’re no longer good and no one wants you around, so the Yankees used the injury as an opportunity to make you go away. I suspect Donaldson knows that though. He’s an agitator and I think he went through that workout to show everyone he’s healthy(-ish) even though he can’t be activated until Sept. 15th.

A few hours later Domingo Germán, Monday night’s scheduled starter, was scratched with what the Yankees called armpit discomfort. Okay, fine, a starter had to be scratched. It happens. But a few hours later Germán jogged out of the bullpen and spun five scoreless innings. The Yankees said he was unable to play catch Sunday and would see a doctor, then there he was, pitching in Monday’s game and pitching well.

“We just didn’t feel like we could risk sending him out there, and then if we had to pull the plug in the first inning or something, (it would have) put us in a tough situation,” Aaron Boone told Joyce. “... Just in his normal catch, he couldn’t go through his catch play. But then when they went through all his testing and strength tests, by the end of the night, he was feeling good.”

A popular conspiracy theory is the Yankees were discussing a Germán trade, so they scratched him, and when those talks fell apart, the Yankees put him in the game. Nice theory and all, but teams don’t make up injuries for that. Trade partners (and players!) don’t like it when you lie about injuries, and why would you fake an injury and potentially tank Germán’s trade stock?

Tuesday, the day after the Donaldson and Germán fiascos, was the trade deadline, and we all know how that went. The Yankees neither bought nor sold. They didn’t solve their problems in the present and they didn’t set themselves up better in the future. They just did nothing. And, as bad as the deadline was, it is somehow the least dumb thing the Yankees did this week.

The coup de grâce came Thursday afternoon when the Yankees announced Anthony Rizzo was placed on the injured list with post-concussion symptoms. He will be evaluated week-to-week. Boone said the injury traces back to the collision with Fernando Tatis Jr. on May 28th. They let Rizzo play through a “likely concussion” – Boone’s words – for 10 weeks. And it’s not like Rizzo was good either. The guy has been the worst hitter in baseball the last two months!

“You wake up some days feeling not very good. Some days, you feel better. That’s kind of normal throughout the year. It was more walking back and saying, ‘Man, I don’t understand how I missed that pitch.’ I would swing at a pitch middle-away, and I thought it was three feet off the plate. Things like that really started making me concerned,” Rizzo told Bryan Hoch. “Everything that they talked about basically came back with a silver lining, that I’m not crazy for walking back to the dugout consistently thinking, ‘Man, how did I miss that pitch?’ It came back saying I’m moving a lot slower than the normal person’s reaction time would be, and that’s definitely alarming, especially for what we do for a living.”

Boone said Rizzo complained of fogginess following Sunday’s game in Baltimore. Despite that, he played Monday and Tuesday – completely insane! – and it wasn’t until Thursday that he was put on the injured list. For what it’s worth, Rizzo passed the league-mandated concussion protocol on May 28th, but did the Yankees really not think to get him checked out these last few weeks? They just accepted that he was perfectly healthy while playing as poorly as he did?

“Just been complaining a little bit the last few days of some fogginess, so we ran him through a battery of tests, neurological stuff, and it kinda showed up and came back as some cognitive impairment,” Boone told Andrew Crane. “So he’s gonna be shut down right now, and hopefully with the treatment he’s getting, we’ll start to see some improvements.”

So, in the span of four days, the Yankees a) had a player go through a full pregame workout six weeks before he’s eligible to come off the 60-day injured list, b) used a starter out of the bullpen after scratching him from the start with an injury a few hours earlier, c) did nothing at the trade deadline, and d) placed a player on the injured list with post-concussion symptoms that date back to a collision in May. One of these things on its own is bad. But all four? In one week?

At best, Donaldson has healed much more quickly than expected. At worst, Donaldson set out to embarrass the Yankees by working out in front of the media (so everyone would find out about it) long before he could be activated. I think the Yankees are oblivious more than unable to feel embarrassed – how else do you explain letting Randy Levine speak publicly a few times a year? – but props to Donaldson for trying.

As for Germán, I think that’s a case of good ol’ fashioned incompetence. He had some minor soreness, the Yankees played it safe and scratched him, then after he was cleared by the doctor and began to feel better in the afternoon, the Yankees put Germán on the mound because that’s what a stupid team thinks a smart team would do. Sometimes the dumbest answer is correct.

The Rizzo thing is inexcusable. It took them 10 weeks to discover a “likely concussion,” and, because that’s not bad enough, they let Rizzo play Monday and Tuesday after he complained about fogginess Sunday. “I feel kinda foggy.” “Huh, weird. Anyway you’re batting third tonight.” It’s a family blog but I’m going to do a curse: what the fuck is going on???

This is not normal behavior. This is something – somethings, plural – I would expect from the Wilpon era Mets, not the Yankees. Questions about basic competency are arising. Is there an adult in the room? Doesn’t seem like it. I can do it. I’m willing to sit in on meetings and be the person who says “that guy looks hurt, you should check on him” or “that’s a bad idea, don’t do that.” My rate is $450,000 a year plus expenses, and I would save them millions (and a lot of embarrassment).

Every so often you have a Murphy’s Law season and things just don’t go your way, but I think the Yankees are way beyond that now. The Germán thing was impossibly stupid, Donaldson went on the field and essentially made a mockery of the training staff and coaches (and front office), and Rizzo played two months with a brain injury before the Yankees acted. In-between the Yankees slept through the trade deadline. They’re broken. These things shouldn’t happen.

This season has become a farce and I can not possibly fathom how Hal Steinbrenner can look at all this and think it’s okay. Looking at this purely as a business owner, Hal’s $295M team might finish in last place, his $40M first base investment played through a concussion, and his injured players are going through workouts and playing anyway. How do you look at this team and think yeah, we’re well run. Everything’s on the up and up. There are alarm bells going off everywhere.

I try to be rational (I know I fail often) but the Yankees have to clean house after this season. I don’t think that’s an irrational take. I don’t expect every single move to work out and I don’t expect a flawless team. That’s unrealistic. But there have been too many bad moves and player misevaluations the last few years, and now things have devolved into mishandled injuries and players doing things to make the team look bad. This is disqualifying.

I do not trust Hal and Levine to conduct a thorough and proper search for a new head of baseball operations – there’s a chance they hire the first person they see on ESPN or MLB Network (I’m not even joking, look at the manager and hitting coach) – but this week is the final straw. The Yankees now appear incompetent and negligent, and they lie about everything. They are beyond repair with the current regime. It’s time to start anew. The organization is rotten.

2. Germán done for 2023. Wednesday afternoon the Yankees announced Domingo Germán has left the team to seek inpatient treatment for alcohol abuse. He will not pitch again this season. Brian Cashman said Germán has battled alcohol addiction in the past and added there was an incident Tuesday that led to him being placed on the restricted list.

“I’m not going to go through the details of it,” Cashman told Bryan Hoch and Gary Phillips. “Certainly it’s a very serious issue that affects way too many people, unfortunately. Hopefully the steps that are being taken today will really benefit him for the remaining part of his life, because it’s a very serious problem that you have to address head on. These treatment places are significant steps, hopefully towards helping him get the tools to solve it. I’m just worried right now for the person and the immediate family.”

As for the incident, Lindsey Adler (subs. req’d) has the details. Kinda feels like this was a last straw moment for Germán as a Yankee, but I guess we’ll see. From Adler:

(Sources) said that Germán appeared intoxicated when he arrived at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday and was soon involved in confrontations with teammates and manager Aaron Boone. He flipped over a couch in the clubhouse, smashed at least one television, and was held for a period of time in the facility’s “nap room” while being monitored by team security.

…

The team, in an effort to get Germán to contain the situation, briefly sent him into a sauna in an attempt to sweat out the alcohol, according to people who were present. Eventually, Germán was held in the team’s nap room while his teammates prepared for Tuesday night’s game. Team security was stationed outside of the room while Germán recuperated.

I don’t have anything to say about Germán specifically other than I hope he and his family and everyone involved gets the help they need. Alcoholism is a nasty, nasty disease that hurts many people beyond the addict. This is not like getting a tooth pulled where you can get treated when it’s convenient. When an addict is willing to get help, that’s when they should go get help, because they may feel differently tomorrow. Waiting until the offseason was not an option for Germán.

"In some way, this goes back years. I think all of us probably have someone in our life that we can relate to that it's always an ongoing battle,” Boone told Hoch. “... My takeaway of all of it is, it's just sad. I hope and pray that he gets the right kind of help that truly gets him going in the right direction for the rest of his life."

(I know I ranted about the Yankees being incompetent earlier, but a player seeking help for alcohol abuse is a separate matter. There is no blame to assign here.)

As for the on-field impact, Nestor Cortes did not throw his scheduled rehab start Wednesday night. It was supposed to be his third and final rehab start. Instead, he will be activated and slide into Germán’s rotation spot Saturday. Cortes will be limited to 60 pitches or so, so Jhony Brito might hang around as a long man for a little bit. Then again, the Yankees have to send someone down to make room for Cortes, and Brito’s the obvious candidate. We’ll see.

Cashman said the Yankees did not know about Germán until it was too late on trade deadline day, so they couldn’t go out and get a replacement starter. I’m not sure I believe him. The Yankees have needed a left fielder since like 2021. They didn’t address that long-standing need at the deadline, but they would have gotten a starter (in this market) to replace Germán if only they had known in time? Sure sure.

Germán has not pitched well lately – 33 runs and 10 home runs allowed in his last seven starts and 36.2 innings even with the perfect game – but losing pitching depth is never good. Cortes slides into Germán’s rotation spot and Brito and Randy Vásquez remain the top depth options in Triple-A. Nothing really changes on that front. That has been the rotation situation all year as guys come and go, and it will continue.

3. What I want to see the rest of 2023. The trade deadline has passed and the Yankees did a whole bunch of nothing, no offense to Keynan Middleton and Spencer Howard. It’s hard not to be down on the Yankees – they’re 9-14 in their last 23 games – both in the short and long-term, yet I still watch every night because I’m a sucker and I love baseball.

I’ll be honest with you though, I’m struggling to pay attention a lot of nights. When Brandon Lowe hit that two-run home run against Jhony Brito in the first inning Monday, I felt nothing. That’s when I knew my expectations were low for the rest of the season, and that was before the trade deadline. Been a rough week, folks.

I’m still going to watch though, every single night, and there are some things I want to see from the Yankees the rest of this season. Things that will increase my enjoyment this year and things that will improve my outlook for the future. The veteran lineup staples getting hot would be nice. Carlos Rodón remembering how to miss bats would be another.

Here, in no particular order, are some things I hope to see as the Yankees enter the final eight weeks of their season.

Win some games, you dingbats

I may feel apathetic now, but string a few wins together and claw up the Wild Card standings, and I’ll get invested again. The last two nights were fun, right? Wins are cool. One thing I’ve come to understand with age is you’re not a bad fan if you don’t enjoy watching your team and you check out for a bit. Some people boo, some people blog angry, and some people just stop paying attention. Whatever works.

The Yankees are 2.5 games behind the third Wild Card spot with two teams ahead of them. Five of the six postseason spots will go to the Orioles and Rays, Astros and Rangers, and the AL Central winner. The Yankees must finish ahead of the Angels, Blue Jays, Mariners, Red Sox, and the AL Central runner-up. In terms of what needs to happen, it’s all nice and simple.

The postseason odds are down to 23.7% even with these last two wins. Eight weeks to play is a lot of weeks, but the Yankees have a lot of work ahead of them in those eight weeks. If we say it’ll take 90 wins to get to the postseason, they have to go 33-20 the rest of the way to get there. That’s a 101-win pace for two months. Eh.

Still, winning games is always appreciated, as is hanging around the postseason race. Yeah, in the big picture it might be best for the Yankees to really crash down the stretch, which would give them a better 2024 draft pick and also force ownership and the front office to reckon with the state of the team, but I don’t want to watch the Yankees crash. I want to watch wins.

Extend the winning season streak

On that note, the winning season streak is in jeopardy. The Yankees are 57-52 overall and 21-27 in their last 48 games, and 86-76 in their last 162 games, postseason included. Playing .500 ball is no guarantee these days, and they must go 25-32 the rest of the way to finish with a winning record for the 31st straight season. Their last losing season was 1992 (76-86).

This is the second longest winning season streak in history behind the 1926-64 Yankees and, again, I know crashing and burning and finishing under .500 might be the best thing long-term, but I don’t want to watch losses, and I think the winning season streak is a cool thing. I hope it continues. (I mean, if the Yankees have to go 77-85 rather than 82-80 for the higher-ups to change the way they operate, they’re screwed either way.)

Cole winning the Cy Young

Gerrit Cole is having the best season by a Yankees pitcher since … Mike Mussina in 2001? Maybe David Cone or Andy Pettitte in 1997? Wednesday’s two-run, seven-inning effort nudged Cole up to +5.0 WAR on the season, putting him on pace for a +7.5 WAR season. Only 15 times has a Yankees pitcher had a +7 WAR season. Mussina was the last to do it (+7.1 WAR in 2001).

Here is the MLB pitching WAR leaderboard entering Thursday:

The gap between No. 1 and No. 2 is the same as the gap between No. 2 and 34. Cole leads the American League with a 2.64 ERA and with 143.1 innings (8.1 more than anyone else). Imagine if he got to face the Yankees? I’m not even being a smart ass. Cole is having this season despite making zero starts against a Yankees offense that ranks near the bottom of the league in just about every important category.

The Yankees have not had a Cy Young winner since Roger Clemens in 2001. Before him it was Ron Guidry in 1978. There have been a few close calls in recent years (Cole was the runner-up to Robbie Ray in 2021, Luis Severino was third behind Corey Kluber and Chris Sale in 2017, CC Sabathia was third behind Felix Hernandez and David Price in 2010, etc.) but no Cy Youngs since 2001. Cole the best active pitcher without a Cy Young and I badly want him to win it this year. He’s been incredible.

Volpe finally figures things out

I say “finally” like the kid’s a third year big leaguer or something. Shows how impatient I am. Point is, we’re now into August and we’re still waiting for Anthony Volpe to put it together and establish himself as an above-average player. He had a spurt in April and the post-chicken parm hot streak in June, and that’s really it. Otherwise we’ve sat through a lot of strikeouts and empty at-bats, even by rookie standards.

Volpe had three hits Wednesday night, including a home run, and he had the game-winning hit Thursday. Hopefully that wasn’t an “Anthony Rizzo goes 4-for-4 with a homer against the Royals” moment, and is a sign Volpe is about to go on a nice two-month run to finish the season. He’s young and still has a lot of stuff to figure out and holes to close in his game. Volpe figuring things out would be a great way to cap an otherwise forgettable season.

Play some kids, please

Once again, the Yankees have an opportunity to play Oswald Peraza every single day, and they are not doing it. Rizzo is on a week-to-week basis and the Yankees could easily put Peraza at third and DJ LeMahieu at first base moving forward, but no. They're going to give at-bats to Jake Bauers, who’s been good, but will he be a Yankee one year from today? I bet no. Peraza is up to 154 games in Triple-A. Let’s get this show on the road already.

Also, Greg Allen and Billy McKinney each had nice moments earlier this year, but they don’t have a future with the Yankees. Let’s get Estevan Florial up here*. The excuse earlier this season was the Yankees didn’t want to call him up only to have to put him on waivers when someone came off the injured list, and that no longer applies. The only position players on the injured list are Josh Donaldson and Jose Trevino, and they’re not coming back. Florial can stay for good.

* Florial was placed on the Triple-A injured list earlier this week. He’s banged up after taking a pitch to the elbow. Conor Foley says Florial has been shagging fly balls and all that, so it can’t be too bad. Whenever he gets healthy, call him up.

On the pitching side, Domingo Germán won’t return this season and Severino has pitched poorly enough to get moved to the bullpen. It would not be difficult to find starts for Randy Vásquez, the same way it would not be difficult to find infield at-bats for Peraza or left field playing time for Florial. The Yankees just have to stop making excuses and do it. The guys on the team aren’t getting it done and it’s okay to try other options. Let’s see some young, live bodies these next two months.

Mailbag Questions of the Week

It’s not often a mailbag question winds up in the Content Graveyard, but it happened this week. I answered a question about Dallas Keuchel, who exercised an opt out clause with the Twins the other day. He was all set to hit the market, then Joe Ryan landed on the injured list with a groin strain and Minnesota added Keuchel to their roster. He never became a free agent. So much for that. Now for the rest of this week’s mailbag.

Brian asks: Should Judge hit leadoff? If teams are going to (correctly) pitch around him, does it make sense to bat him first in hopes of sparking a first inning rally?

Since returning from the injured list Aaron Judge is 5-for-18 (.278) with seven walks (.480 OBP) and boy, he’s just missed some pitches. It seems like his timing is off juuust enough that these balls are hit to the warning track rather than halfway up the bleachers. Judge looks good at the plate. The dinger barrage hasn’t arrived yet but you can tell it’s coming.

The Yankees hit Judge leadoff regularly last September because he’s their best hitter and they wanted to get him the most at-bats while the offense was struggling. The downside – and this was a glaring problem in the first few postseason games – is he didn’t hit with many runners on base. Nine of his 11 homers in September were solo shots, and solo homers will only take you so far. Batting leadoff gives Judge more at-bats, though he hits with fewer runners on base.

I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here. The only wrong answer is batting him lower than third. Bat him leadoff and there’s a greater chance Judge gets that one last at-bat in the ninth inning. Also, it would give the guys behind him three chances to drive him in rather than two, but that only applies in the first inning. He’s not guaranteed to leadoff an inning every time.

I say leave Judge in the No. 2 spot. He’ll get plenty of at-bats there and putting Gleyber Torres or the somewhat resurgent DJ LeMahieu in the leadoff spot would ensure Judge hits with a runner on base 33%-ish of the time. Batting Judge third is probably too low just because there aren’t enough good hitters to put in front of him. Leadoff or second, either works for me.

Tim asks: Now that Pereira has been in AAA for a few weeks, how do his baseball savant stats look? The one highlight of Cash’s press conference was mentioning his name as potential call ups later this year.

After the trade deadline Brian Cashman specifically mentioned Everson Pereira as someone who could come up and help the Yankees down the stretch. Entering play Thursday, Pereira was hitting .337/.370/.593 (133 wRC+) with five homers in 20 Triple-A games. He had also driven in 25 runs. RBI aren’t the best way to evaluate a hitter, but 25 RBI in 20 games is an awful lot.

The under-the-hood numbers on Pereira aren’t quite as flashy. It’s only 20 games and he was just promoted, so it’s not the end of the world, but there are a few red flags, moreso in his swing decisions than his contact quality. Here are the numbers, and I’m going to add Estevan Florial in here as well since we’re talking about Triple-A outfielders:

Pereira has hit the ball harder than Florial in general, but Florial has the higher barrel rate (i.e. contact most conducive to extra-base damage) because 35.5% of his batted balls are in the ideal 10-30 degree launch angle range. Pereira’s at 27.9% (Triple-A average is 29.9%). To put it another way, Florial has a 36.6% ground ball rate compared to Pereira’s 44.3%.

More importantly, Pereira’s plate discipline numbers are downright bad. A 26/3 K/BB is not good, especially with the automated strike zone inflating walks, plus he’s chasing a lot and his swinging strike rate (whiffs per total pitches) and contact rate (contact per swing) are below the league average. Florial has high whiff and low contact rates too, though he doesn’t chase as much and will take walks.

Of course, Florial is in his third year at Triple-A and Pereira has only been there a month, but that’s kinda the point, right? Pereira just got there and needs time to improve his approach and discipline because, I gotta say, an 18.5% swinging strike rate and a 30.1% chase rate in Triple-A has a chance to be capital-U Ugly in the big leagues. The slash line is great. There’s a lot more that goes into a promotion than a good slash line though.

Maybe Pereira gets really locked in with his swing decisions these next few weeks and becomes a call up option. For now, I think he needs more time in Triple-A, and that’s fine. He just got there and he’s only 22. You’re getting contact and strikeout issues either way, so at this point, I think Florial is the outfielder to call up. The Yankees shouldn’t change Pereira’s development timeline just because they failed to get a left fielder at the deadline. He’s not suddenly more MLB-ready.

Ray asks: The Yankees have 57M in bad salaries (Stanton, DJ, Rizzo) based on luxury tax numbers. Not that this will happen, but if the Yankees pull a Cohen and pay most of those salaries, does the portion they pay count against the luxury tax? As an example, they agree to pay $15 million/yr of Stanton’s. How does that work?

Yep, that money the Yankees pay them to play elsewhere counts against the luxury tax payroll. Paying down $15M per year on Giancarlo Stanton would saddle the Yankees with a $15M luxury tax hit rather than his full $22M, so they’d save $7M against the luxury tax payroll. In these cases though, the luxury tax charge is the actual dollars paid out in a given year. Let’s say the Yankees agree to pay $60M of Stanton’s salary from 2024-27, but pay it out like this:

• 2024: $20M
• 2025: $5M
• 2027: $30M
• 2028: $5M

The Yankees would be hit with a $20M luxury tax charge in 2025, a $5M charge in 2025, a $30M charge in 2027, and a $5M charge in 2028. It wouldn’t be a flat $15M per year. The Angels' payouts in the Vernon Wells trade were structured in such a way that his second year had a $0 luxury tax hit* for the Yankees, so they weren’t on the hook for anything when they released him.

* We incorrectly wrote at the time that the Yankees would get a $2M credit toward the luxury tax payroll in 2014 because the Angels were paying more ($20M) than Wells’ luxury tax hit ($18M), but it doesn’t work like that. There is no such thing as a luxury tax credit. The player just counts as $0 in those cases. We were still learning the luxury tax ropes in 2013.

George asks: I share your frustration with the Yankees' pitiful trade deadline 'moves". Other than booing at games, is there anything the average fan could do, to send a message to management? Is it basically stop buying tickets and merchandise, or is it all pointless?

Options are limited. You can stop buying tickets, but for everyone who does that, there are 10 others lined up behind that person to buy that ticket. These are the Yankees, not the Rays. I don’t know how many people would have to cancel their YES Network subscription to make a big enough dent in the bottom line that the Yankees alter course, but the answer is: a lot. Probably more than is realistic. Teams are pretty well insulated against poor attendance and poor ratings these days. If it goes on long enough, they’ll notice, but that is no quick fix as a fan. I don’t have a good answer. My best advice is to do what makes you happy. If you want to go to a Yankees game, go enjoy a Yankees game. There is no good way for fans to hold Hal Steinbrenner or whoever else accountable. The system is designed that way.

Eric asks: Will Aaron Judge ask for a trade this offseason? if I was Judge I would remind Hal of his promise to do more and if he fails to do so ask for a trade to a team that will and not waste his best years with an organization that knows nothing about baseball.

I doubt it. Maybe a few years down the line (maybe) but not this offseason. There is no official mechanism in place to request a trade, though it could become a huge distraction, and Judge could force his way out. That’s what Nolan Arenado did to escape the Rockies. He publicly feuded with ownership and the situation became untenable. Judge doesn’t strike me as the type to do that. I think he’s privately seething over this season and the lack of moves, but Judge doesn’t seem like someone who will go public with his unhappiness.

(Send your requests for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com. The random Yankee series is on hiatus, but feel free to send in requests for when it returns.)