TAMPA — This was every week in the past at LECOM Park in Bradenton the place the Yankees had been within the means of dismantling a seemingly overmatched Pirates staff, 12-3, and a few scouts had been discussing the 2025 prospects for Aaron Boone’s boys within the aftermath of the Juan Soto defection.
“I give [Brian] Cashman a lot of credit,” mentioned one of many scouts. “He pivoted brilliantly after losing Soto and with the additions of [Paul] Goldschmidt, Devin Williams, Max Fried and [Cody] Bellinger they’re a better team than they were last year with Soto.”
“I don’t disagree,” the opposite scout mentioned, “but we’re talking spring training and on paper here. Let’s face it, when it’s all said and done, injuries decide who’s gonna win. Look at Atlanta last year. They were the best team in the National League, but where were they going when [Ronald] Acuna and [Spencer] Strider went down for the season right out of the gate? You just never know.”
Certainly, the subsequent day the Yankees revealed that defending Rookie of the Yr and 15-game winner Luis Gil could be shut down for at the very least six weeks with a high-grade lat pressure in his shoulder. Three days later, the Yankees introduced perpetually injured DJ LeMahieu could be sidelined indefinitely with a calf pressure suffered in his second spring coaching at-bat, after which final Thursday Cashman glumly introduced that Giancarlo Stanton had acquired a second spherical of platelet-rich plasma injections for his ailing elbows and can possible be out for months.
Phrase is Cashman is on the hunt for an additional (ideally right-handed) bat for both third base or DH — however not both the Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado or lingering free agent J.D. Martinez. His lieutenants consider the bat (or bats) could already be right here within the individuals of Ben Rice, Spencer Jones and Everson Pereira, all of whom are having robust springs and giving hints they’re able to contribute on the main league stage. The 6-6, Jones has been particularly spectacular together with his vastly modified swing that was necessitated by a most discouraging ’24 season at Double-A Somerset through which he led the Jap League with 200 strikeouts. He’ll begin the season at Triple-A however the Yankee mind belief assume he’s able to bust out and fulfill the huge potential they’ve held for him.
It’s form of the identical for Rice who after that spectacular three dwelling run recreation towards the Pink Sox final July 6, struggled mightily the remainder of the best way, winding up at .171. He, too, has made changes, profitable reward from Boone who mentioned “I like where his bat is at” the opposite day. Conceivably if one other DH bat is just not acquired by the top of spring, it feels like Boone wouldn’t be afraid to go together with a platoon of the lefty-swinging Rice and the right-handed Pereira, who has but to play within the subject this spring as a result of he’s recovering from Tommy John surgical procedure however has additionally swung the bat nicely.
As for the beginning rotation void the results of Gil’s damage, and the chance that Cole might also now miss important time, it could in all probability be inaccurate to recommend the Yankees at the moment are glad they had been unable to commerce Marcus Stroman. They’d have nonetheless favored to unload his wage they usually hope privately that Will Warren will lastly step up and dwell as much as his rating because the perennial high pitching prospect. The 25-year-old righty had a horrible ’24, getting battered in three of his 4 August begins final 12 months after being referred to as up from Triple-A. This spring Warren has proven a vastly improved changeup and in his first three outings allowed just one run in eight innings and struck out 11.
Whereas the Yankee spring coaching accidents have been irritating for Boone, they’re to this point neither devastating (because the Braves had been final 12 months) nor surprising, particularly within the case of LeMahieu and Stanton. (That in fact might change if Cole is deemed to have a severe elbow damage.) If nothing else, they’ve offered alternative for the homegrown core of Jones, Rice, Pereira and Warren to step up and reduce the stress for Cashman to go exterior for replacements.
If the accidents can simply cease proper right here, Boone can exit concerning the enterprise of getting Dominguez out of left subject and determining who’s leadoff hitter is.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
Final week it was revealed that Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred is contemplating a petition filed Jan. 8 by the household of Pete Rose to have the all-time hit man posthumously faraway from baseball’s everlasting ineligible record. It could not shock me, now that Rose is deceased — in addition to Fay Vincent, the one who prosecuted him for playing on baseball and fought vigorously by way of the years to maintain his ban intact — for Manfred to lastly carry his ban and basically flip the matter over to the Corridor of Fame. In any case, it was the Corridor’s board of administrators that decreed in 1991 (which might have been Rose’s first 12 months on the Baseball Writers’ Affiliation poll) that gamers on the everlasting ineligible record had been additionally ineligible for the Corridor of Fame. Coincidentally, additionally final week, President Trump introduced he was planning to pardon Rose for his 1990 felony conviction for tax evasion. Thoughts you, Rose’s felony conviction had nothing to do together with his suspension from baseball. Assuming Manfred does take away Rose from the everlasting ineligible record, nevertheless, it no means assures his election to the Corridor of Fame. For one factor, it could nonetheless be as much as the Corridor’s board of administrators to resolve whether or not to make him eligible and in the event that they did, he would nonetheless need to undergo an election, presumably with the Traditional Baseball Period committee that considers gamers from the interval previous to 1980. That poll doesn’t come up till 2027. And as Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, who acquired nearly no assist of their first 12 months on the Up to date Period poll, can attest, there’s simply no means of telling how the Corridor of Famers themselves (who comprise the majority of these Period committees) will view a baseball miscreant like Rose, particularly contemplating betting on baseball is now authorized, even within the ballparks in your cellphone, and MLB is in mattress with these varied playing retailers. Not less than in Rose’s case that, not like Bonds and Clemens, he by no means cheated the sport.
Initially Revealed: March 8, 2025 at 10:30 AM EST
