HEALTH
Now that Spring Training has begun, each of the 30 teams
has a refreshed hope. The Win/Loss
counter is set to 0/0 again. With MLB
considering adding more “qualifying” teams to the playoffs soon, the best
teams should currently expedite their World Series’ goal before sub-.500 teams qualify as playoff teams. Adding failing, undeserving teams will water down the matchups and factor more luck into the odds of winning. Obviously, I completely dislike the new
proposal as I feel failed seasonal teams don’t deserve to be rewarded (a story
for a future blog).
The Yankees are already favored as either the top team or
one of the top teams. Last year, the
Yankees had 30 different players on the Injured List (IL) and they’re already
off to another awful injury trend with James Paxton (who just had back surgery about a week ago) and Luis Severino (who
announced today that he will undergo the infamous Tommy John Surgery). Paxton is expected to be pitching sometime
around June and, now, Severino will not be able to pitch until sometime next
season.
Just like last season, the Yankees do have some reserve
players (in this specific case, pitchers) including Clarke Schmidt and Michael
King (both righties who seem to be the closest rookies to being ready for the big leagues). King is said to be
slightly ahead of Schmidt in terms of reaching the majors first. His two-seam fastball induces many of his
outs via groundballs, which would surely be an advantage if the (superball)
baseball is wound as tightly as it was last season. Additionally, Jordan Montgomery returned at
the end of last season from his Tommy John surgery and should be ready as a starter this
season. By the way, ironically, it was Tommy John who (before his forever-known surgery) was well known to have an awesome groundball-inducing pitch, too! I love his 12-to-6 sinking pitches (envision a pitch going from the 12 of an analog clock to the 6). Other pitchers have been in queue for
more than a year, but none of them have been overwhelming enough, at least at
his point, to enthusiastically qualify, if fans (including me) were the decision-makers. Hopefully, the new crop of
rookies and Montgomery will shine!
As for the NYY’s offense, we will always have to worry about
the 3 big (physically) guys: Gary
Sanchez, Giancarlo Stanton, and Aaron Judge.
Their large, physical structure is seemingly more vulnerable to injuries
(just like a lot of the large-physique players in the game, now and in the past). Adding to their IL chances is the fact that
Sanchez is a catcher and that Judge dives viciously into the ground during his
defense and during his base-stealing efforts.
Even though we’ve already begun showing health issues, the
key for this talented team is to be a lot healthier this season than last and
to not overwhelm our reliance on too many of our reserves. If that improvement is significant enough this
season, then we will certainly be playoff bound, once again. Decent health will definitely help the
Yankees have a very good chance of achieving their 28th World Series
Championship in 2020 with this phenomenal team.
