No, they’re not done. But it’s not going to be easy.
The New York Yankees, the closest thing to a pennant favorite in the muddled American League, took about the biggest hit a club could absorb in losing the seemingly superhuman Gerrit Cole to Tommy John surgery.
Cole will be back – probably not until fairly deep into the 2026 season. And the Yankees should return to the playoffs this year – though probably not without some roster enhancements.
A look at the reverberations throughout the Yankees roster, the AL East and the majors as a whole as Cole undergoes reconstructive elbow surgery on Tuesday:
The end of the world as they know it
For a guy with a Cy Young Award on the shelf and a once-record $324 million contract, Cole’s durability and brilliance seemed strangely underappreciated.
It didn’t help that Cole’s much-anticipated Year 1 in the Bronx – coming off a year the Yankees reached Game 6 of the ALCS – was truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic. He made his dozen starts and posted a 2.84 ERA, nudged the Yankees a round in the playoffs before an ALDS loss to Tampa Bay.
What followed were three largely fantastic seasons, during which Cole made three All-Star teams, posted 30 to 33 starts, paired a 1.01 WHIP with 11 strikeouts per nine innings and took home the 2023 Cy Young Award.
The yellow flags began waving one year ago, when an elbow scare knocked Cole out until June. The fatalists among us who figured that was a harbinger for eventual surgery were proven correct.
Even still, Cole dominated once he got his sea legs, posting a 2.67 ERA in his last 13 outings; the Yankees won his first three postseason starts and he handed them a 1-1 tie in Game 1 of the World Series before many, many things went sideways.
It is the kind of production that isn’t fully appreciated until it is gone.
Fall on me
So, who picks up the slack?
It’s a complicated problem, exacerbated by second-year right-hander Luis Gil’s lat injury that will knock him out at least two months. Put it this way: Veteran Marcus Stroman came to camp grousing that he had no rotation spot and at this rate, he’ll be starting on Opening Day.
OK, let’s not weep too much for the Yankees: Their rotation begins with $380 million worth of left-handers coming out of the chute, thanks to their $218 million off-season investment in Max Fried. It’s not that the Yankees are bereft – it’s that they have zero margin for error.
Fried has looked comfortable in pinstripes and ready to take on the next stage of his career. He must live up to it.
Lefty Carlos Rodón’s pattern of good year, bad year has largely continued into his $162 million deal with the Yankees. He must back up a solid 2024 – 32 starts, a 3.96 ERA – with continued good health and production.
Clarke Schmidt is a nice back-end rotation piece; suddenly, he’s the ranking right-hander in the rotation and above all, needs to stay healthy.
Stroman? At this stage of his career, he’s proven effective out of the gate, evidenced by his 2.60 ERA as the Yankees won eight of his first 12 starts in pinstripes; he had a 5.70 ERA in his final 18 appearances and, at 33, does not miss many bats.
The Yankees just might take that in 2025, holding the fort down until Gil returns and forming a mix-and-match at the back end of the rotation with young Will Warren and maybe non-roster invitee Carlos Carrasco, who has had a good spring, to the extent that tells us anything about what Cookie can offer after his 38th birthday next week.
After that?
The cupboard is glaringly bare.
Everybody hurts
And that lack of depth – thinned over the years by trades for Juan Soto and others – is before any other starter feels a twinge or a pull, an inevitable development during a 162-game season.
While nobody roots for a colleague to get hurt, Cole’s departure certainly raised the most eyebrows among rivals, opening the door wider for what should be a five-team AL East dogfight.
Yet everyone has their problems. Grayson Rodriguez’s elbow is barking in Orioles camp, where they were already counting on 41-year-old Charlie Morton to shore up the rotation. Boston, finally a threat after a largely moribund decade, will start the year with Brayan Bello and Kutter Crawford on the injured list, with question marks on Lucas Giolito and Walker Buehler’s ability to consume significant innings.
In today’s game, attrition is inevitable. If nothing else, the Yankees at least know early on that they probably need to delve into the trade market.
Accelerate
Yep, it certainly hurts for a Yankee fan to look back at how close they came to a World Series title with Soto – because now, they could certainly use Michael King and others used to acquire Soto.
But they never stop shooting their shot in the Bronx. The question is, what’s left in the stockpile?
One year ago this week, Dylan Cease was traded to the Padres, proof enough that it’s never too late to add. But the Padres have not yet signaled they’re willing to flip Cease or King and still have a team with pennant aspirations.
The Miami Marlins would likelier draw a bigger haul for 2023 Cy Young winner Sandy Alcántara once he has a first half worth of dominant starts behind him. It’s probably the same case in St. Louis, where resetting has proven elusive, yet the returns for a Sonny Gray or Miles Mikolas would probably be better with a dozen teams, rather than two or three, in the market.
And just what do the Yankees have to deal?
Their farm system has taken hits from trades and injuries and in recent years, they’ve walked away from deals that might include anticipated stars, such as Jasson Dominguez or Anthony Volpe. So they’re probably not trading budding slugger Spencer Jones, and are thin in that mid-range prospect area that might facilitate a deal for a higher-end stopgap.
Tough spot.
Cole’s injury also means they need to start preparing for 2026 now. He’ll likely not return until around next year’s All-Star break; acquiring a starter in their walk year would put them back in the same spot come winter.
But that’s a problem for another time. The Yankees have always worried about tomorrow, tomorrow, if you will. It’s just that today got a whole lot cloudier.