David Lennon: Yankees' wave of pitching injuries exposes Brian Cashman's flawed deadline strategy
How desperate was the Yankees’ pitching situation before Wednesday night’s game against the Astros? Dire enough that the newly-signed Michael Fulmer, DFA’ed by the Angels days ago, was en route to Worcester when he got the emergency call to the Bronx.
Fulmer, the Mets’ first-round draft pick traded for Yoenis Cespedes, is a former Rookie of the Year and All-Star, but that was two UCL repairs ago. Now 33, he’s on his seventh team in the past five seasons, and appeared in only three games for the Angels before being cut loose (for the record, he pitched 3 2⁄3 scoreless innings).
“Just been around the whole country,” Fulmer said Wednesday afternoon, “trying to find a place to stick.”
Lucky for him, the Yankees are basically holding open auditions at the moment, a shocking development for a pitching staff responsible for keeping everyone else afloat for most of this season. And Fulmer, pressed into duty immediately, aced his first test with a perfect eighth inning, starting with a strikeout of potential Triple Crown winner Yordan Alvarez, in the Yankees’ 9-3 victory over the Astros.
“I just want a place where I can try to earn a spot,” Fulmer said afterward. “And obviously results are going to mean the most with that in that situation.”
Results hadn’t been a problem for the Yankees until the past 24 hours, with Tuesday’s rare bullpen collapse followed by the news late Wednesday that Fernando Cruz, placed on the IL before the game with right elbow discomfort, has been diagnosed with a partial tear of his UCL.
With surgery now on table, Cruz is pretty much done for the season and beyond, which is why manager Aaron Boone revealed that Fulmer had the eighth Wednesday, regardless of the score.
“Because we need to do that,” Boone said. “We need to find out about people and see if they can step up in situations.”
Elmer Rodriguez could be one of those people, too. Called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for Wednesday’s spot start, Rodriguez lit up the radar gun — his fastball averaged 97.2 mph with a max of 98.5 — as he powered through six-plus innings. With the fractured state of the Yankees’ staff, and the recent loss of Ryan Weathers, Boone couldn’t have dialed up a better Bronx return for the ultra-hyped rookie.
“Just trusting myself,” Rodriguez said. “Something I’ve been building up since my first couple of starts.”
The Yankees should be fine rotation-wise, as long as Max Fried comes back this weekend with no issues, but this version of Rodriguez could be a huge boost to the October bullpen, which may need some help.
The pitching staff as a whole had boasted MLB’s best ERA (3.24) while doing the heavy lifting for a Judge-less offense, but now that ability is under serious question, due to a rapid-fire series of injuries that general manager Brian Cashman — uncharacteristically — failed to protect himself against at the Aug. 3 trade deadline.
Cashman routinely restocks his pitching shelves for the second-half stretch run, but this year passed on doing so, believing the prices were too high and he had the depth to sustain any body blows along the way. That gamble could prove costly. It’s not the nightmare scenario yet, but the Yankees had reason to worry after the typically airtight Headrick had his worst outing Tuesday night. Headrick allowed three runs in the eighth after not allowing more than a single earned run in any of his previous 67 appearances, the most in the majors. Fortunately, Headrick insisted he was physically fine afterward, and the workload (67 innings) was not an issue for him.
“I trust what we’re doing, I like what we’re doing and I feel good,” Headrick said.
With a sputtering offense, and locked in a tight divisional race, Boone has been forced to use the bullpen early and often. That won’t be changing anytime soon, either. The Yankees entered Wednesday just two games before the Red Sox in the loss column with Boston coming to the Bronx for four games (in three days) this weekend. Boone & Co. were four games behind the first-place Rays, who come to New York for a four-game series (including another doubleheader) in late September.
Boone indicated that Fried could return from his second IL stint (ominously for the same elbow bone bruise) at some point during the Red Sox series, possibly Saturday. But can Fried truly be counted on for the next month — and into October — based on that recurring red flag? Weathers also is a question mark, with what’s been diagnosed as a mild forearm flexor strain, but late September is best-case for him.
Weathers’ injury is a double-whammy. Not only was he a firewall against needing another E-Rod start — Will Warren also appears to be leaking oil over the past month — but the hard-throwing Weathers figured to help bolster for the bullpen for the playoffs. If healthy, he could still assume that role come October, but the Yankees felt much better about their playoff positioning with Weathers taking the ball every fifth day in September.
Clarke Schmidt is expected to shore up the tiring bullpen if he survives his upcoming assignment, and Luis Gil (remember him?) is working as a reliever for the RailRiders. But Fulmer showing up Wednesday was an alarming sign for a Yankees’ staff that had looked invincible only two weeks earlier.
“We’ve definitely had some attrition here,” Boone said.
And trade deadline regret, to be sure.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
