It Just Goes From Bad to Worse for the Yankees This Season

A mostly awful weekend for the Yankees, even though they somehow avoided a sweep by the Brewers on Sunday despite being no-hit for 10-plus innings. Worst of all, there was more horrific injury news which seems to be a never-ending occurrence in the Bronx. Let’s get to it.

The lead item today was supposed to be all about the likely end of Luis Severino’s Yankee career, and I’ll get to that shortly. But silly me to think that when I wrote that section Saturday morning, that wouldn’t be the most newsworthy injury news of the weekend.

Sunday afternoon came the announcement from Aaron Boone that Jasson Dominguez has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his throwing elbow, meaning he will most likely need Tommy John surgery and miss the start of 2024, possibly as much as the first half of the season.

You just shake your head at the injury curse that hangs over this team. I’ve said this before, but there are football teams that go through an entire season with less injuries than the Yankees do on a yearly basis. It’s just stupid at this point and now the one player that had us somewhat excited about next year is out of the mix.

Not only does he lose out on valuable development time this year, but he won’t be able to have a normal spring training and that will most likely mean time in the minors before he eventually gets back to the big club. Really, it makes you sick.

“Crushed for him,” Boone said. “At the same time, he’s a young man and these things resolve themselves. It’s a moment in time in the grand scheme of things, in what we feel like has the chance to be a long, excellent career.”

Anyway, on to what I originally wrote at the top here.

Severino exited Friday night’s game with some sort of injury to his side, went on the injured list Saturday and is done for the season, likely done as a Yankee. What a shame that it had to end this way.

Severino was such a shining light when he first got to the Bronx in August 2015 and made a strong debut against the Red Sox, even though he took the loss in a 2-1 Yankees defeat. In 11 starts that season, he had only one bad one - six runs allowed to a very good Blue Jays team that eventually made it to the AL Championship Series.

His ERA was 2.89, he struck out 8.1 batters per nine innings, and there was no doubt that he was going to be the rare (at least for the Yankees) homegrown starting pitcher who would take the ball every fifth day for years to come.

And through 2018, that’s essentially what he did. Even though CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka were still on the team, Severino became the ace of the staff and in 2017 and 2018 he earned a pair of All-Star invites and finished third and ninth in the AL Cy Young balloting. He made a combined 63 starts, went 33-14 and in 384.2 innings he had a 3.18 ERA, a 1.092 WHIP and averaged 10.5 strikeouts per nine innings with a strikeout to walk ratio of 4.64.

Severino was the guy, and that led Brian Cashman in the offseason before 2019 to sign the power righty to a four-year, $40 million deal. At that time it looked like a bargain based on past performance and future potential because Severino was without question one of the best pitchers in MLB when he put pen to paper on that contract.

And then it all went to hell as injuries ravaged his body. A shoulder issue limited him to three starts in 2019; Tommy John surgery knocked him out for all of 2020 and most of 2021 as he appeared in just four games with no starts; last year he was shut down for two months with a lat injury; and this year the same lat injury delayed his season debut until May 21.

Since signing his contract, Severino has been a shell of the pitcher he once was, a franchise building block that crumbled and caused damage to the foundation of the Yankees. He has made only 40 starts in five years, pitched 209.1 innings, has a 4.47 ERA and a 1.262 WHIP. Numbers that were altered significantly with his nightmarish 2023 season which ends with a 6.65 ERA and a 1.646 WHIP, figures that just boggle the mind.

Severino is a free agent in 2024 and he turns 30 in February. With his injury history his market won’t be robust, but I’m sure there will be some team out there that recognizes that he can still throw in the upper 90s and will believe that they’ll find a solution to why opposing batters lit him up in 2023.

As for the Yankees, there has been scuttlebutt that they should re-sign him to a prove it one-year deal, but I say no way. Both sides need a change, particularly Severino. Bringing him back to New York wouldn’t do anyone any good.

Again, it’s a shame because he’s three-plus years younger than Gerrit Cole who is still, in many ways, the pitcher everyone thought Severino would be at this stage of his career. He could certainly rebound and pitch well for many years if he can ever regain his command and somehow stop getting hurt, but it shouldn’t be with the Yankees.

Here are my observations on the three games against the Brewers.

Sept. 8: Brewers 8, Yankees 2

➤ The game began quite nicely as Severino worked three strong innings and then in the bottom of the third, Dominguez started his second week as a major leaguer the same way he started his first as he hit a two-run homer to give the Yankees the early lead. However, things turned ugly pretty soon after that. Severino gave up a tying two-run homer to Willy Adames in the fourth, and on his second pitch of the fifth, Brice Turang singled and Severino dropped his glove and grabbed his side, wincing in pain.

➤ That ended his night, and as I said above, probably his Yankee career. “I’ve been getting better and my whole body was feeling great,” Severino said. “I was not expecting this.”

➤ Jhony Brito took over and pitched into the seventh, but after a double by Andruw Monasterio, Jonathan Loaisiga came in and gave up his first two earned runs since he returned 13 appearances ago. He gave up RBI singles to William Contreras and Carlos Santana, an RBI double to Adames, and was hurt by some shoddy fielding by Jake Bauers in right and Anthony Volpe at short.

➤ That spurt broke a 2-2 tie and made it 5-2 and any chance the Yankees had of rallying died in the eighth when Greg Weissert got hammered for three runs on five hits, the big blow a two-run single by Monasterio.

➤ As for the Yankees offense, this sure looked familiar. Outside of Dominguez’s home run the Yankees had two other hits - a single by Aaron Judge and a double by Oswald Peraza - against Milwaukee starter Colin Rea and four relievers. Just a lousy night all around which, at least for me, conjured up the reality of what this season has been.

BOX SCORE

Sept. 9: Brewers 9, Yankees 2

➤ Another deplorable day in the Bronx, a total mess of a performance in front of many former Yankee greats on Old Timers’ Day who had to be shaking their heads in disgust, at least those who were still there after a two-hour rain delay at the start. The Yankees honored the 1998 team, arguably the greatest in Yankees history, so yeah, watching the 2023 Yankees had to be mind-numbing for those guys.

➤ There have been countless signature plays this season that have illustrated how fundamentally deficient the Yankees are, and then we got another one in the fourth inning. With Mark Canha on first, Adames hit a ball to right field where Giancarlo Stanton, moving like an ox, couldn’t get it and it went over his head. Many guys with some athleticism would have caught it, but of course, that’s not Stanton. It one-hopped off the wall, and then Stanton allowed it to bounce past him back toward the infield so he had to track it down. When he did, he compounded matters further by missing his cutoff man, Torres. That allowed Canha to keep going and he scored. Here, DJ LeMahieu was in the right spot to back up Torres, but with Adames on his way to third LeMahieu made a God-awful throw that was comically wide of the bag and Adames continued home for a Little League home run and a 2-0 Brewers lead. Yankees baseball, 2023.

➤ For the second day in a row the offense was horrible. After three hits Friday they had two through eight innings Saturday before a fake rally in the ninth produced two singles but no runs. So, the math says that was seven hits in two games. The only Yankee runs came in the fourth when they tied the score at 2-2. Torres walked, Stanton reached on an error which should have been an inning-ending double play. Sometimes you need a little luck. Volpe followed with an RBI single and with the bases loaded, Peraza drove in a run with a groundout.

➤ It was still 2-2 going to the eighth because Michael King put up another strong start, five innings, four hits and a walk, one earned run and nine strikeouts. And Weissert and Wandy Peralta each pitched a scoreless inning. But then the suddenly disastrous Loaisiga got roughed up again. Tyrone Taylor hit his second pitch for a solo homer, and then four straight singles - two of them bloops - and a sacrifice fly scored two more to make it 5-2. Loaisiga began the weekend with a 0.60 ERA and ended it at 3.06. Then in the ninth, Matt Krook and Ron Marinaccio combined for a four-run meltdown as they allowed four walks, two hits, a hit by pitch, and a stolen base. Nice work there.

BOX SCORE

Sept. 10: Yankees 4, Brewers 3 (13)

➤ All we knew throughout this long, long game is that Dominguez was scratched from the lineup with a sore elbow. No one had any idea that it was as serious as it turned out to be. So rather than lamenting that, we had 10 innings in which the Yankees failed to get a hit. Fun times.

➤ After the game, Dominguez said he first told the trainers about feeling pain on Wednesday. And yet he played the next four games. These are the same trainers and medical people who let Anthony Rizzo play with an apparent concussion for more than two months.

➤ The Yankees were pathetic on offense all weekend, but they found a new level of awful against Corbin Burnes who just toyed with them for eight innings. I know Burnes is a terrific pitcher, but my God, what a travesty this was. He set the Yankees down 1-2-3 in seven of his eight innings, the lone outlier being the fifth when he walked two men, the only baserunners he allowed. Then relievers Devin Williams and Abner Uribe kept the no-hitter alive, though Uribe needed an incredible catch by Sal Frelick in right field to rob Volpe of a game-winning double in the 10th.

➤ The Brewers broke the scoreless tie in the 11th, and then Joel Payamps had a chance to complete the first 11-inning no-hitter in MLB history when Oswaldo Cabrera ripped an RBI double to right which drove home free runner Volpe to extend the game.

➤ In the 12th it felt like the Brewers wrapped it up when they scored twice off Nick Ramirez, but in the bottom half Stanton closed his eyes and got lucky, sending one over the wall in right for a tying two-run homer. Hey, I’ll admit it, even when he succeeds I can’t stand him. That’s me, but you can have your own judgment of a player I deem massively overpaid and basically useless.

➤ So it was on to the 13th and some guy named Anthony Misiewicz who I’ve never heard of was on the mound for the Yankees. And amazingly, he pitched a scoreless inning, leaving men on second and third when he got Contreras to tap right back to him for the third out. That set up the dramatic finish when Kyle Higashioka doubled home the winning run.

➤ Before Cabrera’s no-hitter breakup, the Yankees had seven hits through 28.1 innings in this series. They finished the 31 innings with 10 hits.

➤ And because of that offensive misery, we have these notes. Gerrit Cole, who once again was outstanding with seven shutout innings, now has four starts this season with at least five innings pitched, no runs allowed and a no decision on his record. That’s the most in MLB. Cole now has 23 starts with two earned runs or fewer allowed this season which leads MLB and in 12 of those games he either took the loss or had a no decision. The only pitchers in Yankees history with more games of two earned runs or less in a season are Ron Guidry (26 in 1978) and Jack Chesbro (28 in 1904).

BOX SCORE

 ➤ Sept. 11, 2001: It was 1:14 in the morning East Coast time on Sept. 11, 2001 when Tim Salmon of the Angels hit a fly ball off Mariners reliever Arthur Rhodes which left fielder Charles Gipson caught for the final out in yet another Seattle victory. The 5-1 conquest of Anaheim improved the Mariners record to 104-40, and it wrapped up a small Monday schedule of games that had begun on the evening of Sept. 10.

America slept peacefully that night. And then 7 ½ hours, the nation was rocked to its core when hijacked planes slammed into both of the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan, into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and into an open field in Pennsylvania. Our world has never really been the same since.

Life came to a standstill the morning of 9/11/2001, including baseball which sat idle for six days as the country mourned. When baseball took its break, the Yankees were comfortably ahead in the AL East, a 13-game gap on the Red Sox who they had beaten 7-2 on Sunday Night Baseball on Sept. 9 in the Bronx as Tino Martinez hit a three-run homer and Nick Johnson hit a two-run shot to back the pitching of Andy Pettitte.

After a day off Monday, Yankees GM Brian Cashman was making his way from his home in Westchester County to Yankee Stadium, and off in the distance as he was driving on the Major Deegan Expressway, the unmistakable devastation was as clear as the brilliant New York City morning sunshine.

“Like everybody else, I’m in complete and utter disbelief,” Cashman told Buster Olney, then of the New York Times.

As Cashman arrived at Yankee Stadium, he began calling every player and coach to account for their whereabouts, and he also called Kenny Williams, the general manager of the White Sox who were in New York where they were supposed to begin a series against the Yankees that night. Williams said his entire traveling party was safe. Cashman then made sure all Stadium personnel were evacuated and sent home.

“We didn’t wait for anybody,” he told reporters. “The situation was very clear that we were in an emergency state. Like everybody else in the tri-state area, a lot of our people know people in Manhattan and in the Twin Towers. A lot of our people live in Manhattan. The last place they needed to be was here at Yankee Stadium. They needed to be home with their families, and that’s what we did. We were very quick. You walk in the door and the situation was very evident what was necessary to be done. We turned it right back around. We told everyone to go home and be safe and pray.”

In so many years, a Yankees-Red Sox series in the middle of September would have been must-watch TV. In 2023, it’s fourth-place Boston (73-70) hosting last-place New York (71-72) at Fenway Park in four games that essentially mean nothing outside of the usual bragging rights between these two teams and cities. These are weird baseball times, to be sure.

The Red Sox snapped a four-game losing streak Sunday with a 7-3 victory over Baltimore. The day before they pounded out 23 hits yet somehow found a way to lose 13-12. Can you imagine getting 23 hits and losing? The Yankees don’t have 23 hits in their last four games combined.

With these games meaning nothing, there’s not much else you need to know other than the pitching matchups and TV situation which are as follows: Monday at 7:10 on Amazon Prime it’s Clarke Schmidt (4.54 ERA) against Kutter Crawford (4.36); Tuesday at 7:10 it’s Carlos Rodon (6.60) against Nick Pivetta (4.54); Wednesday at 7:10 on Amazon Prime it’s a Yankees unknown against Tanner Houck (5.28); and Thursday at 7:15 on FOX it’s Michael King (2.82) against a Boston unknown.