Injuries to Stanton, Gil, and LeMahieu Will Test the Yankees

A cynic would say that Giancarlo Stanton is in midseason form. On Saturday, the Yankees officially announced that the 35-year-old slugger will open the season on the injured list due to recurring issues with both elbows. He’s not the only prominent Yankee who’s out of the picture — or at least doubtful — for the Opening Day roster, as Luis Gil will be sidelined for a good chunk of the season due to a strained latissimus dorsi, and DJ LeMahieu has suffered an apparent left calf strain, with its severity and prognosis to be determined by an MRI on Tuesday.

The most notable injury, if not the most impactful one, is Stanton’s. Two weeks ago, just before the team’s first full-squad workout, manager Aaron Boone said that the slugger was “dealing with some elbow stuff… akin to tennis elbow” in both arms, adding that it was an issue he dealt with last year as well. Tennis elbow, formally known as lateral epicondylitis, is a condition caused by overuse of the muscles and tendons in the elbow, particularly by a repetitive twisting of the wrist (think swinging a tennis racket… or a bat). The tendons that join the forearm muscles on the outside of the elbow suffer microscopic tears and don’t heal fully, leading to irritation and pain. With Stanton having not swung a bat since mid-January due to pain and the risk of exacerbating the problem, and in spite of anti-inflammatory medication, team doctors have moved on to a more aggressive approach. Last week, while traveling to New York for a private matter, Stanton received platelet-rich plasma injections in both arms in order to promote healing.

The injections rule out Stanton for the Yankees’ March 27 opener against the Brewers in New York. Beyond that, his timeline is unclear, but assuming a few weeks of recovery from the PRP shots, a few more to ramp up to full game activity, a rehab assignment, and a couple extra weeks of padding because Stanton isn’t the world’s fastest healer, the math suggests an April return is unlikely. That said, I wouldn’t recommend parsing Aaron Judge’s words — “I want a healthy G in the middle of the season” — too literally just yet.

Regardless, this is a bummer for Stanton and the Yankees. This is his seventh consecutive season with a trip to the IL, though contrary to the impression created by his litany of injuries, this is the first time in his 15-year major league career he’ll open the year on the shelf.

Last year, Stanton played 114 games, his highest total since 2021, and hit .233/.298/.475 with 27 homers, a 116 wRC+, and 0.8 WAR — modest numbers that nonetheless represented a 30-point, 1.4-WAR improvement over his miserable ’23 campaign. He shook himself out of a second-half slump to hit a ridiculous .273/.339/.709 (183 wRC+) with seven homers in 62 postseason plate appearance. He earned ALCS MVP honors for hitting .222/.333/.889 with four homers and seven RBI in five games against the Guardians, and was the only Yankee to hit multiple homers during their World Series loss to the Dodgers.

Stanton didn’t play the outfield at all in 2024 after doing so 38 times in ’22 and 33 times in ’23. Replacing him as a full-time DH could get Judge (who DHed 41 times last year) or 37-year-old first baseman Paul Goldschmidt off their feet without the additional fretting about benching an available and potent Stanton. Instead of an outfield with Jasson Domínguez in left field, Cody Bellinger in center, and Judge in right, the Yankees could DH Judge while playing the defensively adept Trent Grisham in center and Bellinger in right, though Grisham’s 2024 production (.190/.290/.385, 91 wRC+) was a few rungs below Stanton’s level.

The most likely beneficiary of Stanton’s absence isn’t Grisham but Ben Rice, a 26-year-old lefty who spent a good chunk of last summer filling in for the injured Anthony Rizzo at first base. Though he tore up Double- and Triple-A before getting off to a promising start that included a three-homer game against the Red Sox on July 6, Rice hit just .171/.264/.349 (73 wRC+) with seven homers in 178 PA. If he fails to convince the Yankees to bring him north, the most likely replacement from within is 29-year-old non-roster invitee Dominic Smith, a former Top 100 prospect who hit .233/.313/.378 (93 wRC+) in 307 PA last year with the Red Sox and Reds, and who owns a similarly subpar 96 wRC+ and -0.1 WAR for his career.

Here’s a peek at the Yankees’ DH Depth Chart, where they rank 12th based on an estimate of Stanton approximating his playing time from the past two seasons:

If Stanton’s injury turns out to be serious enough for the Yankees to look outside the organization, the free agent market offers an obvious solution in J.D. Martinez. He’s 37, even older than Stanton or LeMahieu, and coming off a mediocre season with the Mets. After signing in late March and debuting in late April, he hit just .235/.320/.406 (108 wRC+) with 16 homers in 495 PA as a full-time DH. He did bash 33 homers and hit for a 135 wRC+ in just 113 games with the Dodgers in 2023, and probably deserved better last year based on his Statcast numbers. Most notably, his 66-point gap between his slugging percentage and .472 xSLG tied Salvador Perez for the second-largest in the majors behind Soto’s 77-point gap, and his 73-mph average bat speed held steady from the second half of 2023 to ’24 based on recently released data.

As for the 36-year-old LeMahieu, he tweaked his left calf while running out a popup in the fourth inning of Saturday’s Grapefruit League game against the Astros. YES Network’s Meredith Marakovits reported that he’s scheduled for an MRI, adding, “He said his calf is still pretty sore today but hopeful it’s a low grade strain.”

LeMahieu is supposed to be in the mix for playing time both at DH and third base, at least if he can show that he’s something more than the desiccated remains of a two-time batting champion. A low-grade strain might only sideline him for a couple of weeks, but he’s got work to do to rebound from a miserable 2024 season bookended by substantial stints on the IL. In March, he fouled a ball off his right foot, suffering a non-displaced fracture that delayed his debut until May 28. He hit a thin .204/.269/.259 (52 wRC+) — that’s five doubles and two homers — in 228 PA before an impingement in his right hip sidelined him for the season in early September. He hasn’t played a postseason game since 2020; he was on the bench for the 2021 AL Wild Card game and was sidelined by a toe injury on his right foot in ’22 as well.

With Gleyber Torres‘ departure, Jazz Chisholm Jr. has shifted from third base to second, leaving LeMahieu, Oswaldo Cabrera, Oswald Peraza, Pablo Reyes, and Jorbit Vivas competing for time at third. Not only is LeMahieu down, but Vivas, a 23-year-old prospect, has been sidelined by a sore right shoulder thus far. The group ranks just 24th on our Third Base Depth Charts, with most of that value coming from solid defense backed by meager offense.

Turning to the rotation, the Yankees could be without Gil for much of the first half — or longer. The 26-year-old righty, who won AL Rookie of the Year honors last year, ended his Friday bullpen session after just five pitches and underwent an MRI that showed a high-grade right lat strain. He’ll be shut down from throwing for at least six weeks. If further testing doesn’t reveal additional problems, and he doesn’t suffer any additional setbacks, he’d need roughly another six weeks to ramp up, so a best-case scenario puts his return to the majors around the start of June.

Alas, that timetable may be too optimistic given the recent history of lat strains among Yankees starters, as the club tends to manage these injuries fairly conservatively. Luis Severino suffered three of them while with the Yankees, in 2019, ’22, and ’23. The 2019 one occurred while he was rehabbing from a rotator cuff strain; he was diagnosed with a Grade 2 strain (gulp) around April 10 and didn’t return until mid-September, making just three regular season starts that season. He missed 10 weeks due to his 2022 lat strain, and then eight weeks due to his ’23 one; both were characterized as low-grade strains. Clarke Schmidt, who suffered a high-grade lat strain last year, missed about 15 weeks.

Gil was one of the Yankees’ real bright spots last year. After missing nearly all of 2022 and ’23 due to Tommy John surgery, he seized the rotation vacancy created by Gerrit Cole’s early-season absence and posted a 3.50 ERA, a 4.14 FIP, and a 26.8% strikeout rate in 151.2 innings. His sharp workload increase — he threw just four competitive innings in 2023, compared to 163 including the minors and the major league postseason in ’24 — always marked him as something of an injury risk going forward, and, well, here we are.

The loss of Gil still leaves the Yankees with five major league-caliber starters in Cole, Schmidt, Max Fried, Carlos Rodón, and Marcus Stroman, though none of them is bulletproof. Cole was limited to 17 starts last year due to nerve inflammation and edema in his right elbow, while Schmidt made just 16 starts due to his lat strain. Fried made 29 starts for the Braves last year and Rodón 32 for the Yankees, but each made just 14 starts due to hamstring and forearm strains in 2023 (plus a blister for Fried). Stroman, who appeared to be the odd man out if the other five pitchers were healthy, made 29 starts last year (and 25 in 2023 with the Cubs) but was the least effective of the Yankees’ regular starters, pitching to a 4.31 ERA and 4.62 FIP in 154.2 innings.

The Yankees spent the winter exploring the possibility of trading the 33-year-old Stroman, who’s making $18 million this year and has an $18 million player option for 2026 that vests with 140 innings pitched. Reportedly, they proposed a Stroman-for-Nolan Arenado trade with the Cardinals, but St. Louis, already lousy with contact-oriented starters and heading into an overhaul, wasn’t interested in taking on Stroman’s contract. Even if they were, Arenado has a full no-trade clause, not to mention $74 million remaining on his contract, though the Cardinals are on the hook for only about $60 million, with the Rockies and deferred money accounting for the gap. That the Yankees are already about $4 million above the top Competitive Balance Tax threshold ($301 million) makes them unlikely to add Arenado or another name-brand player without subtracting Stroman, even if the third baseman were to waive his no-trade.

Of course, the loss of Gil compromises the Yankees’ depth, leaving righties Will Warren and Carlos Carrasco as the next men up. The 25-year-old Warren, a 50 FV prospect who placed 65th on our Top 100 list, was torched for a 10.32 ERA in 22.2 innings with the Yankees last year and posted a 5.91 ERA and 4.63 FIP in 109.2 innings with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, though his sinker/sweeper/changeup/cutter combination is enough to project him as a fourth starter in the making. Carrasco, a non-roster invitee who will turn 38 on March 21, was knocked around to the tune of a 5.64 ERA and 4.93 FIP in 103.2 innings with the Guardians last year. JT Brubaker, a 31-year-old righty acquired from the Pirates last March, suffered three broken ribs last week due to a comebacker; he hasn’t pitched in the majors since 2022 after undergoing Tommy John surgery the following April.

Without Stanton or a reliable third baseman, the Yankees will head towards Opening Day with significant questions about offense from two spots, and without Gil, they don’t have much of a cushion if additional injuries strike the rotation. These losses aren’t enough to compromise the Yankees’ position as AL East favorites, but our Playoff Odds project roughly a six-win gap between them (87.4 wins) and the fifth-place Rays (81.3 wins). They don’t have a huge margin for error, so they’ll have to hope these situations don’t spiral into bigger problems.

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