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Dellin Betances to begin regular season on injured list with shoulder inflammation

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(Presswire)

Add another injured Yankee to the list. Brian Cashman announced today that Dellin Betances will begin the regular season on the injured list with an impingement and inflammation in his shoulder. He had an MRI earlier today and was given anti-inflammatories. Cashman called it a “time out” more than a complete shutdown like Luis Severino, but he didn’t give a timetable for Dellin’s return.

Here’s what Cashman about the Betances injury (via Brendan Kuty):

“It’s like he’s working against himself, is what we think he’s doing now. He’s trying to force things through and it’s causing more inflammation and it’s preventing him from being fully loose and engaged and we need to call time out. It’s as simple as that. We feel it’s resolvable. Our worry is only that we don’t have him from the beginning. There’s not a worry past that. Unfortunately, since Opening Day is coming, there’s always that feeling that everything has to be perfect or everybody has to be ready to go or in play. We’ve been around long enough to know it doesn’t have to be that way and it shouldn’t be that way. What we need to do is make sure we have him right.”

Betances, 31 this weekend, reported to Spring Training a few days late following the birth of his son, and he’s been playing catch-up ever since. He is typically a slow starter velocity-wise but it has been way down this month — his six fastballs in his most recent outing checked in at 89, 88, 89, 90, 92, and 90 mph — and the Yankees finally got him to admit he doesn’t feel quite right.

A shoulder injury is never good news and Betances did miss time with a shoulder problem in the minors way back in the day. If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the Yankees have plenty of depth in the bullpen. Zack Britton, Adam Ottavino, and Chad Green is a pretty darn good setup trio ahead of closer Aroldis Chapman. I imagine Stephen Tarpley’s chances of making the team just went way up.

The Yankees have held contract extension talks with several players in recent weeks and Betances, an impending free agent, is reportedly among them. My guess is those talks will be put on hold now. The Yankees presumably want to see Betances healthy and throwing like himself before committing multiple years and eight-figures to a soon-to-be 31-year-old reliever.

With this news, the Yankees will now have four members of their projected Opening Day roster start the season on the injured list: Betances (shoulder), Severino (shoulder), CC Sabathia (knee), and Aaron Hicks (back). Good grief. Sabathia and Hicks are expected back relatively soon. Severino is looking at an early-May return and who knows with Betances right now.

Estevan Florial fractures right wrist crashing into outfield wall

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(Presswire)

Estevan Florial suffered a non-displaced fracture in his right wrist after crashing into the outfield wall during today’s game, the Yankees announced. They did not give a timetable for his return. Florial will undergo more tests Monday and I imagine we’ll learn more then.

For what it’s worth, George Springer missed two months with a non-displaced wrist fracture after being hit by a pitch in 2015. He was hit on July 1st and didn’t return to the lineup until September 1st. I guess the Springer injury tells us two months is a ballpark estimate for Florial’s return? Sucks. Here’s the play:

Florial, 21, was having an excellent Grapefruit League season (.355/.429/.516 in 35 plate appearances) and was slated to open the regular season at either High-A Tampa or Double-A Trenton. He missed seven weeks after having surgery to remove the hamate bone in the same wrist last year.

The injury doesn’t mean much for the Yankees at the MLB level. Florial was not a realistic candidate to make the Opening Day roster despite Aaron Hicks’ back injury, and the odds were against him playing in the big leagues this year. The injury does mean Florial will lose development time, which is not ideal given his pitch recognition issues.

Depending on his timetable, Florial’s injury could impact the Yankees at the trade deadline. He is their top prospect and would presumably be a trade chip to land a high-end starter or whatever else the Yankees need. Hopefully Florial will be back in action well before then. Either way, what a bummer. Florial was having a great spring.

The contingency plan for Aaron Hicks

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(Presswire)

Opening day is roughly two weeks away and the Yankees might not have their regular starting center fielder for it. Back problems have held Aaron Hicks out of camp for a little more than a week now. Even though he’s indicated that he’s not worried about his readiness for the start of the season, it’s fair to wonder with time running out. It seems like there’s been talk of Hicks getting back into action every day now, only to be pushed back. The latest is that he just received a cortisone shot on Monday.

It’s fine and astute to be cautious at this junction of the year. It’s also reasonable to ponder what would happen if he’s not ready to go by the end of the month. If healthy, the team’s position players were all but set, aside from the first base competition. If Hicks proves not to be ready by opening day, there would have to be a reshuffle.

Here’s how the dominoes could fall without Hicks: Brett Gardner would become the regular center fielder, which in turn leaves a left field vacancy. Giancarlo Stanton could take over in that corner, but that would leave the designated hitter role open. Give that job to Miguel Andujar, and third base is available. Let DJ LeMahieu take over the hot corner, and a bench spot opens up. Who gets it? It depends on how the club plans to replace Hicks’s playing time.

Without Hicks, the Yankees have only three true outfielders slated to make the 25-man roster. Tyler Wade, the apparent favorite for the final bench spot, has some experience out there. Even though the team is working him in the outfield corners this spring, they still might want an extra primary outfielder. That could be Clint Frazier, though it would only make sense if he were to play daily. That means he’d probably rotate with Stanton in left field and at DH, which would bump Andujar and LeMahieu back to their original roles.

A problem with going the Frazier route is that he hasn’t performed well in Grapefruit League play. Not that we should make a big deal of spring training stats, but it might behoove him to spend some extra time in Triple-A to get back up to speed. Shaking off the rust in Scranton wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Jacoby Ellsbury doesn’t appear to be an option even though he’s joining the team in a few days. If he reports this weekend as anticipated, he’d only have ten days or so to be ready for big league action. Ellsbury’s going to open the season on the injured list barring something unforeseen.

If the Yankees are comfortable not having a true fourth outfielder, perhaps they’d reconsider the idea of rostering both Luke Voit and Greg Bird. They’ve made it clear that under normal circumstances it doesn’t make sense to keep both of them, but maybe losing Hicks changes things. In this scenario, Stanton would play the outfield regularly while Voit and Bird are both in the lineup at first base and DH.

The only other 40-man roster position players are Kyle Higashioka and Thairo Estrada. Neither make sense to replace Hicks for the short run. There’s no need for a third catcher nor another infielder.

Would the Yankees entertain a non-roster player? Billy Burns, Matt Lipka, and Estevan Florial are the current in-house options with the major league team this month. Florial has been awesome in camp and will need to be added to the 40-man eventually, but there’s no need to rush him. Burns and Lipka don’t offer much more than a warm body, which probably keeps them from traveling north. Alternatively, depending on Hicks’s status over the next week or two, the Yankees can monitor other team’s NRIs with opt out dates approaching. There are even some mildly interesting free agents out there, should this back problem linger.

If I had to rank the possibilities of potential replacement, I’d go as follows:

  1. Bird/Voit
  2. Frazier
  3. Burns/Lipka
  4. Free agent/Poach another team’s NRI
  5. Higashioka/Estrada
  6. Ellsbury
  7. Florial

I lean toward Bird/Voit because they both could gain regular playing time, and it would give the team more time to make a decision on what to do with the two of them. If Frazier wasn’t returning from such a difficult situation, he’d easily be my top choice.

Hopefully this roster speculation is much ado about nothing. I’m sure the last thing Hicks wants to do is spend any time on the injured list. He has a reputation of being somewhat brittle, though he did manage a career high 137 games played last season. Regardless of how this plays out, it’s most important to get him back to full strength without taking any shortcuts.

Update: Luis Severino shut down two weeks with rotator cuff inflammation

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(Presswire)

3:52pm ET: Severino has rotator cuff inflammation, Boone said following this afternoon’s game. He’ll receive an injection and anti-inflammatory medication, and will be shut down two weeks. “The MRI looked pretty good … Sounds like shoulder is pretty clean,” Boone said. That’s a relief. Still, Severino being shut down two weeks means he is “highly unlikely” to be ready for Opening Day, Boone said.

2:25pm ET: During the in-game interview on YES, Aaron Boone said Severino felt something toward the back of his shoulder, near his lat, while warming up. Tests are scheduled for later today and Boone didn’t have anything more to add.

1:11pm ET: Well, so much for the Yankees staying healthy in Spring Training. Luis Severino was a late scratch from this afternoon’s scheduled Grapefruit League debut with right shoulder discomfort, the Yankees announced. He will be further evaluated this afternoon. Severino did warm up before the game, so it was a very late scratch.

The Yankees brought Severino along slowly this spring after his big workload the last two years (407.2 innings), and after Severino admitted he was fatigued down the stretch late last year. “When you are at the finish line and you feel like you need a little bit more than five days to be ready, you know that something’s going on,” he said a few weeks ago.

Severino is the Yankees best pitcher and he’s one of the best young pitchers in the game, plus the Yankees just gave him a four-year extension, so of course they’re going to play it safe with him. I have to think the slightest twinge would’ve resulted in a scratch and an evaluation. Whatever this is, hopefully it’s minor.

CC Sabathia will not be ready for Opening Day as he works his way back from offseason knee and heart surgery, so the Yankees are already down one projected starter. Severino not being able to make the ceremonial Opening Day start is no big deal. Missing an extended period of time would be devastating though. He is a true difference-maker.

Dallas Keuchel remains a free agent and speculation about a match with the Yankees is inevitable. I think it’s way too premature for that. First, let’s see what the tests say about Severino. Second, would the Yankees be okay with a big payroll addition like that? Keuchel would undoubtedly push them into the second luxury tax tier and result in stiffer penalties.

Jon Heyman says the Yankees have had Gio Gonzalez on their radar throughout the offseason, and my guess is the Yankees would go for a lower cost fill-in starter like him than Keuchel should they bring someone in. After Keuchel and Gonzalez, the best free agent starter is probably James Shields. Yeesh.

Jacoby Ellsbury keeps moving further out of the picture for the Yankees

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(Presswire)

In a sad way, the news was completely unsurprising. Aaron Boone announced yesterday that Jacoby Ellsbury’s hip surgery rehab has been slowed by another ailment (plantar fasciitis), and that he is quite a bit behind the other position players this spring. Opening Day was always questionable. Now it’s a near certainty Ellsbury will not be ready when the regular season begins.

At this point Ellsbury getting hurt or his rehab taking longer than expected is not surprising news. That has been par for the course for a few years now. What is surprising is that he will stay home in Arizona for the next few weeks rather than report with the other position players on Monday. He’s going to continue his rehab at home and join the team sometime in March.

“It didn’t make sense for him to come out here at this point,” said Brian Cashman to Dan Martin yesterday. “Once he’s able to run and move forward from there, he’ll be here.”

Teams typically bring their rehabbing players — especially players rehabbing from a major surgery like Ellsbury — to camp so they can monitor and assist with their rehab. Jordan Montgomery and Didi Gregorius are with the Yankees as they rehab their new elbow ligaments, for example, and they’re months away from returning to game action. Ellsbury stays home, however.

For all intents and purposes, Ellsbury staying in Arizona won’t change anything. He’s still going to do his rehab work and prepare for the season. He’ll just do it at home rather than with the Yankees. Symbolically, Ellsbury staying home is about as fitting as it gets right now. He is the third highest paid player on the team and he is a non-factor, and has been for a while now.

The Yankees have played 19 postseason games during the Ellsbury era and Ellsbury has started four of them. Aaron Hicks deservingly replaced him as the starting center fielder in 2017 and now it’s not even clear a healthy Ellsbury would fit on the bench as the fourth (really fifth) outfielder. Remember when he hit cleanup for a few weeks early in 2017? That feels like a lifetime ago.

There are two years and approximately $47.5M remaining on Ellsbury contract. We’ve spent the last few weeks (last few years, really) discussing hypothetical bad contract-for-bad contract trades that never felt all that realistic or likely. There has been some trade interest in Ellsbury, sure, but a deal with this framework is always a long shot. I see two possible outcomes:

  1. The Yankees release Ellsbury.
  2. The Yankees find a bad contract-for-bad contract trade partner.

Those are listed in order of what I think is most likely to happen. I know there’s some name recognition here, but the fact of the matter is Ellsbury is now 35 years old, he lost his job two years ago, and he’s a speed guy coming back from major hip surgery. What kinda contract would Ellsbury have received as a free agent this winter? He probably would’ve received no offers and been forced into retirement.

Between the ongoing injuries and his drop down the depth chart, Ellsbury has never seemed more out of the picture than right now. He’s not healthy, and even if he were healthy, the Yankees don’t have an obvious need for him. He is the Yankees’ version of the Blue Jays’ version of Troy Tulowitzki. Toronto owed Tulowitzki a lot of money but had no place for him. They could either grit their teeth and stick with him, or they could release him. They released him.

In Ellsbury’s case, the Yankees will recoup salary through insurance — the “recoup 75% of Ellsbury’s salary through insurance and not reinvest it in the team” grift last year didn’t get enough attention — and, as long as that is the case, he will remain in the organization. The Yankees will stash him on the injured list and collect the insurance money as long as possible. And when it is no longer possible, he could be cut loose.

Within the last few years we’ve seen several teams release players with multiple years and big dollars remaining on their contracts. Tulowitzki, Pablo Sandoval, Carl Crawford, Jose Reyes, Hector Olivera, etc. The Yankees themselves released Alex Rodriguez with roughly $28M and one year plus two months remaining on his contract. Teams are increasingly willing to turn the page on bad contracts, including the Yankees.

Ellsbury is so far out of the picture right now that he’s not in Spring Training while rehabbing an injury — when’s the last time you heard a general manager say, “It didn’t make sense for him to come out here at this point,” about a rehabbing player in the spring? — and unless there’s a barrage of outfield injuries, it’s difficult to see where he fits once he is healthy. He’s part of the team but not actually part of the team.

His wallet will be fine, though I feel bad for Ellsbury the person because the injuries are never-ending and it sure seems like baseball is being taken away from him. It is his livelihood and his passion, and I don’t doubt that he wants to get back on the field and play. The injuries are preventing that and it’s possible he’ll never play again like Crawford and Olivera and A-Rod. A release could mean the end.

For the Yankees, the Ellsbury contract never made sense. He simply wasn’t a $20M per year player when they signed him, and that’s on them. Don’t blame Ellsbury for saying yes to that deal. To their credit, the Yankees haven’t let Ellsbury stand in the way of anything on the field. When Hicks broke out, he got the center field job. When there were better postseason lineup options, Ellsbury rode the bench. Now he’s just hurt and the Yankees won’t even bother to bring him to camp.

Letting Ellsbury stay home for a few weeks is kinda weird and also perfectly representative of his status in the organization right now. Out of sight, out of mind. He’s not needed. Let him do his own thing, and should he ever heal up and be ready to play, only then will the Yankees will figure what to do next. My hunch is that will be an unceremonious Tulowitzki-style release. This has been building for a while now and it feels closer to happening than ever.

Mike King shut down for three weeks with elbow injury

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(Jason Farmer/Scranton Times-Tribune)

Didn’t take long for the Yankees to suffer their first spring injury. At his start-of-spring press conference this afternoon, Aaron Boone announced righty pitching prospect Mike King has been shut down for three weeks with a stress reaction in his elbow. He’ll be reevaluated again after the three weeks and they’ll take it from there.

I ranked the 23-year-old King as the ninth best prospect in the system last week. Boone said King felt something in his elbow during a bullpen session last week, so they sent him for tests, which showed the stress reaction. He’ll be behind this spring and it seems to me he’ll have to start the regular season on the disabled list.

The Yankees acquired King from the Marlins in a minor trade last offseason and he blew up last year, throwing 161.1 innings with a 1.79 ERA (2.76 FIP). Boone mentioned him as a depth option at some point for the coming season, which seems to indicate the elbow injury isn’t that serious, but we’ll see. Elbow issues are not to be taken lightly.

At this point Domingo German, Jonathan Loaisiga, Chance Adams, and Luis Cessa are the top depth starter options in whatever order. With King out of the picture for the time being, guys like Drew Hutchison and David Hale become a little more important.

Injury Updates: Didi Gregorius, Gary Sanchez

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(Presswire)

Pitchers and catchers report in six days but already several Yankees are in Tampa preparing for the upcoming season. Bryan Hoch has a list. Among them is concussion-free Clint Frazer (video). “It’s been a long road. I’m just happy to be here and ready to go out there and make up for the time that I’ve lost,” he said to Mark Didtler. Here are injury updates on two prominent Yankees.

Gregorius set to begin throwing program

Sir Didi Gregorius is set to begin a throwing program this week, he told Ron Blum. Aaron Boone said the same to Coley Harvey. There is still no firm timetable for his return and Gregorius confirmed he will not return early as a DH. “I want to be back completely. I just want to make sure everything’s all right before I go out there. I haven’t even thought about hitting before everything,” he said.

Gregorius had his Tommy John surgery on October 17th and he resumed baseball activities last month. Specifically, he is taking one-handed swings and fielding grounders. The typical elbow reconstruction throwing program lasts several weeks. They start out at very short distances and gradually stretch it out. Gregorius joked he’ll be ready to return in April but that’s not happening. So far so good with his rehab though. The throwing program is a significant step.

Sanchez will be brought along slowly

Following offseason shoulder surgery, the Yankees will ease Gary Sanchez into things during exhibition play, Boone told Blum. “We may slow play him a little bit the first week of Grapefruit League games,” the skipper said. The Yankees did the same thing with Aaron Judge last year, remember. He had offseason shoulder surgery and sat out the first five Grapefruit League games. The Yankees didn’t want to push him too hard early in camp.

“I’ll be ready for Spring Training,” Sanchez said to Greg Joyce. He has started hitting in the cage, and Bryan Hoch says Gary will catch James Paxton’s bullpen session tomorrow, so it seems his recovery is going well. Sanchez had surgery on his left shoulder, so his throwing should be fine. The left shoulder is his front shoulder when hitting though, the power shoulder, and that’s not something you mess around with. Take it slow with Sanchez now because missing a few games in February and March is preferable to missing games at any point from April through September.