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 28^th World Series Championship in 2020 with this phenomenal team.