Hello everyone. I’d say Happy Monday, but given the Yankees never-ending injury situation, there’s not much to be all that pleased about on that front. Welcome to the new members who are receiving their first Pinstripe People newsletter; I hope you enjoy it and will pass it along to other Yankee fans you may know. Just send them this link and they’ll be in. https://salmaiorana.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Just Wondering: Do the Yankees Play Baseball or Football?

Should we even be surprised anymore when it comes to the Yankees and injuries? Really, haven’t we all just grown accustomed to waking up every day checking Twitter or the internet and expecting to read that someone on the Yankees roster has somehow suffered an injury?

Jogging in the outfield, throwing a bullpen session, playing a video game, brushing their teeth. They come in infinite ways for the Yankees and this spring the level of fragility has already reached absurd territory.

For Christ’s sake, here we are in the middle of March and nearly half of the pitching staff, including three-fifths of what was supposed to be the starting rotation, is down and out. There are NFL teams that have shorter injury lists midway through their violent season than the Yankees do right now in spring training.

It’s truly jaw-dropping with the Yankees. We’re still 18 days until the season opener against the Giants and the Yankees are losing guys faster than tree limbs drop their leaves in the fall.

It began with Nestor Cortes hurting his hamstring before the team even reported to camp and putting his availability for the start of the season in jeopardy. Then it was Frankie Montas, who came to the Yankees as damaged goods last summer and remains damaged goods, enough that he had to have shoulder surgery which knocks him out until at least August, maybe later.

And now, the $162 million free agent signing, Carlos Rodon, has come up with muscle soreness in his left forearm so he’s going to be starting the season on the injured list and will be out an undetermined amount of time, but it’s likely to be all of April. That’s just the rotation.

The Yankees also announced that relievers Lou Trivino and Tommy Kahnle are out, too. Trivino has an elbow ligament strain that could keep him sidelined until mid-May and Kahnle is fighting a biceps injury and mid-April is the optimistic outlook. That trade with the A’s to bring in Montas and Trivino last year just keeps getting worse and worse.

Lastly - well, at least at the moment I’m writing this Sunday morning, meaning somewhere out there another Yankee may be getting hurt that we haven’t been told about yet - center fielder Harrison Bader has the dreaded oblique strain so we’re not going to see him until at least the end of April.

I say again, today is March 13. How can a baseball team be this brittle?

There seems to be optimism that Cortes can get back in time for the start of the season and join Gerrit Cole and Luis Severino; his first spring start is supposed to happen in the next week or so. But now Clarke Schmidt and Domingo German, who were supposed to be competing for the fifth spot in the rotation with the other in the spot start/long relief role, are going to be filling the No. 4 and No. 5 roles, assuming they don’t get hurt.

The climb up the ladder leaves no viable insurance on the rungs below them after what went down at last year’s trade deadline. Jordan Montgomery was swapped for Bader. But more damaging is that the Yankees traded away rotation prospects J.P. Sears and Ken Waldichuk to the A’s in the disastrous Montas deal, and Hayden Wesneski to the Cubs for reliever Scott Effross who is out for the season because of Tommy John surgery. Those three were all enjoying solid 2022 seasons in Triple-A and were considered real options to compete for jobs in 2023. Oh, they’ll have jobs this year - in Oakland and Chicago.

What’s left? Deivi Garcia, once considered one of the top prospects in the system but now an underachieving afterthought who struggles to get Triple-A hitters out. And career minor leaguers Jhony Brito, Yoendrys Gomez and Randy Vasquez, with Brito the only one who has spent time as high as Triple-A (15 starts last season).

All spring, rumors have circulated that shortstop Isiah Kiner-Falefa could be a trade chip, especially if Oswald Peraza outright wins the starting job. Gleyber Torres, as I proposed last week, might be another player Brian Cashman could deal in order to bring back pitching help. We’ll see.

“I would say typically trade conversations usually are a bit more serious in the second part of camp than the first part,” Cashman said the other day. “I do know that’s an area of strength (infielders) for this franchise right now in real time. So if somebody is looking for help, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re knocking on our door.”

Maybe it’s too early to panic, but the pitching staff the Yankees will open the season with is certainly questionable, and in a brutally tough AL East, they can’t afford to pitch poorly and get out of the gate slowly.

➤ The Bader injury creates an unwanted situation whereby Aaron Hicks is going to get more playing time than any of us want. Hicks is a natural center fielder, even though he’s not the fielder he once was. He’ll probably get some starts there, and Aaron Judge is definitely going to be out there as he was 78 times in 2022.

One of Boone’s goals was to get Giancarlo Stanton more time in the outfield, but that was supposed to be at the expense of Hicks. Now, if Judge is in center, Stanton can play right and then Hicks would share left field with Oswaldo Cabrera.

There are two other players to watch, though, neither is a great solution. Estevan Florial, who never lived up to his early prospect status because he can’t hit, is out of minor league options. Either he makes the team and plays some center field in Bader’s absence, or he’ll be released. And Rafael Ortega, who played very well for the Cubs in 2021 and then kind of cratered on offense in 2022, is having a good spring and has a chance to make the roster.

➤ The Yankees top two prospects in the system, shortstop Anthony Volpe and outfielder Jasson Dominguez, have certainly generated some excitement down in Tampa. I don’t think either will make the roster, but if they continue to progress the way they have, it won’t be long before we see them in pinstripes, particularly Volpe.

It’s clear that he’s a smooth fielder with a strong arm and would be an upgrade over IKF. And at the plate Volpe has shown gap-to-gap power (two HRs, three doubles), contact skills (8-for-25) and plate discipline (four walks) which has added up to an impressive .433 on-base percentage in the nine games he has played.

The concern, of course, is that the 21-year-old has only 99 Triple-A at bats and the Yankees brass would prefer he start the season at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to gain more experience. Remember, some of the pitchers Volpe has faced in spring training will probably be in the lower minors to start the season, which is why you can’t read too much into impressive spring training stats.

Also, there’s the whole service time manipulation issue. By keeping him in Triple-A for the first few weeks of the season, the Yankees can delay by one year the start of Volpe’s free agency eligibility. It’s a smart move, while at the same time a shitty thing that teams do to their best prospects, but until something changes in the next CBA, teams will keep screwing around with service time.

As for the 20-year-old Dominguez, the youngest player in the major league camp just reached Double-A Somerset late in 2022 (five games, 19 at-bats), so I think it’s highly unlikely he’ll be with the Yankees at any point this season. Still, he has been all kinds of fun this spring with four homers, nine RBI, and a slash line of .429/.500/.1.000 for an OPS of 1.500 in 10 games.

As I said with Volpe, though, Dominguez isn’t facing the type of pitchers he would see in the majors, and maybe not even Triple-A. Two of his homers came against Boston’s Norwith Gudino and Atlanta’s Nolan Kingham who have never pitching in the majors. The other two came against Philadelphia pitchers Ben Bowden and Connor Brogdon who have limited big-league time.

“There’s no doubt, he’s a promising-looking player,” Aaron Boone said. “I’ve been impressed with how at ease he is, how much he seems to enjoy the game and enjoy his teammates. It looks to me like in the batter’s box, the game is moving slow for him. He’s got that in his DNA, that knowledge of the strike zone. He lays off pitches easy and has really good thump from both sides.”

I’ll certainly be hoping to see Volpe, and maybe Dominguez, playing for Scranton when they visit Rochester to play the Red Wings so I can get my first real look at them. The Rail Riders come to town for six games June 13-18 and for six more Aug. 29-Sept. 3. For you Buffalo people, the Rail Riders will be there only once, July 25-30.

Finally, a Clemens vs. Pedro Showdown That Delivered

Once Roger Clemens was traded from the Blue Jays to the Yankees in the spring of 1999, every time there was a possibility that his turn in the rotation came during a series with his original team, the Red Sox, it was going to be a colossal event. Especially if the fates aligned and Pedro Martinez was on the mound for Boston.

That first year, Clemens faced Boston three times in the regular season. He pitched tremendously in a 4-1 victory at Yankee Stadium in May, and not at all tremendously in taking a 4-1 September loss, also in New York. In between, in his return to Fenway in arch enemy pinstripes, he wasn’t sharp in a no-decision that wound up being a 6-5 Yankees loss. None of those games were against Martinez.

But then came the 1999 American League Championship Series, and it was Rah-jah vs. Pedro twice, and the baseball world went on tilt. Game 3 was a tremendous letdown because in front of a vicious, blood-thirsty throng at Fenway that seemed to be more interested in rooting against Clemens than cheering for the Red Sox, Clemens got lit up for five earned runs inside three innings while Martinez pitched seven dominating, scoreless, two-hit innings and Boston romped to a 13-1 victory.

There hadn’t been much to the Clemens vs. Martinez storyline, but that all changed on May 28, 2000 when baseball fans were finally treated to a showdown that lived up to the billing. With the Yankees and Red Sox carrying identical records of 27-19 atop the AL East, the pitchers came together at Yankee Stadium for an ESPN Sunday night game, and it proved to be epic.

For eight innings Clemens and Martinez matched zeroes, prompting Derek Jeter to say afterward, “It was a playoff-type atmosphere. Everyone was pumped up. It may have been one of the best pitcher’s duels I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen one pitcher dominate a game, but, tonight, there were two. It’s not too often a game that’s advertised as a pitcher’s duel actually turns out that way.”

That was a point echoed by David Cone who said, “That was maybe the best dual performance I’ve seen. Two guys going at it on the top of their games, and both potential future Hall of Famers. It was just a great, great game.”

And for as good as it had been during those eight scoreless innings, it came down to a breathtaking finish that did not go the Yankees’ way. Trot Nixon ripped a two-out, two-run homer off Clemens in the top of the ninth for the only runs of the game, and in the bottom half, after loading the bases with two outs against Pedro, New York’s rally died when he induced Tino Martinez to ground out to second as most of the 55,339 fans groaned in unison.

“I enjoyed every little piece of that game,” said Pedro, who in his last three games against the Yankees had struck out 17 in a September 1999 virtuoso performance, dominated them in the ALCS, and then hurled this four-hit shutout while striking out nine. It stretched his scoreless innings streak against the Yankees to 25 and in improving his season record to 8-2, he lowered his ERA to a microscopic 1.05.

“I tip my hat to (Pedro),” said Jeter. “He’s so hard to hit because he throws three pitches and has control of all of them. Even if he’s behind in the count, he can throw his fastball, curve, or changeup for a strike. And when he has runners on base, that’s when he really bears down. That’s why he’s the best pitcher in the game.”

Although he lost, this was an important performance for Clemens as he struck out 13 batters, his high since joining the Yankees, and the 37-year-old looked like the five-time Cy Young Award winner the Yankees thought they had traded for in 1999.

“You want to be in this kind of game,” Clemens said. “It was a fun game to pitch in. The intensity was every bit what it was supposed to be. You want to go out there and throw zeroes. That’s what everybody was hoping for. That’s why all those people were in the stands. I wanted to go more than two or three innings, like I did the last time we were matched up. I wanted to have a good performance.”

Unfortunately for him, the only mistake he made cost him dearly, a fastball that caught too much of the strike zone which Nixon creamed. He had retired the first two batters in the ninth before Jeff Frye singled off Clemens’ glove and that gave Nixon the chance to be the hero.

Way back in the first inning, Nixon had taken a called third strike and to Clemens’ ears and eyes, Nixon questioned umpire Ed Rapuano’s call, a no-no to Clemens, who yelled something at Nixon as he walked toward the dugout.

“He fired me up after the first at-bat,” said Nixon. “I’m not questioning the umpire. I couldn’t have hit it. I just didn’t think he needed to yell. He blurted something; I caught the tail end of it. I guess he yelled, ‘That’s a strike.’ I didn’t think it was. But the umpire called it a strike.”

When asked about the exchange, Clemens said, “I didn’t say anything to Trot. I talk to myself on the mound a lot.”

Nixon – who struck out swinging in the fourth and then tripled in the seventh but was left stranded when Clemens electrified the crowd by whiffing Brian Daubach and Nomar Garciaparra – wasn’t buying it.

“If I get a hit, I’m not going to yell at him,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to show him up at all. I’ve never done that before. I have the greatest amount of respect for Clemens. I have no idea why he did it. I guess I have one year in the big leagues and he has 20. I’ve always beefed him up as one of the best pitchers I’ve faced. I’ve always admired him growing up and in the minor leagues. He’s an intense player, so am I. I guess he can do that, but that kind of fired me up. I don’t know why he did it. It doesn’t matter, though.”