Yankees open season confident depth will lead to success

As the Yankees officially start their 2023 journey Thursday afternoon to what they hope will result in the franchise’s first World Series title since 2009, they’ll do so with a roster far different than the one imagined at the start of spring training.

That is especially true of the rotation, which the Yankees envisioned early in the offseason being fronted by righthander Gerrit Cole and lefthander Carlos Rodon, signed as a free agent to a six-year, $162 million deal. That one-two punch would be followed, in some order, by Luis Severino, Nestor Cortes and Domingo German, the latter taking the spot of Frankie Montas, who underwent a shoulder procedure Feb. 21 that could keep the righthander off a big-league mound the entire year.  

Instead, Rodon and Severino will start the season on the injured list, with the pair being joined there by righty relievers Lou Trivino and Tommy Kahnle, as well as centerfielder Harrison Bader.

Still, the Yankees, coming off a 99-63 2022 season that saw them win the always stacked American League East but fall in a four-game sweep in the ALCS to the eventual World Series champion Astros, feel good about the group they’ll start the year with.

“We're fortunate to have depth and we're fortunate to have guys that I think are going to put us in a position to win some games,” said Cole, who will start Thursday’s opener against the Giants. “Is it the one [roster] that we penciled in before the season? No. But are the guys ready to step up? Yeah. I mean, at any given point during the season, situations like this come about, and it takes everybody on your 40-man roster to contribute, and this is our first opportunity to experience that.”

Aaron Judge, the club’s newly minted captain — the 16th in franchise history and first since Derek Jeter, who retired after the 2014 season — said “we can definitely compete” until the injured start to make their way back. (None of the injuries are expected to be long-term ones but that’s assuming zero setbacks with any of them.)

“We’ve got the players, especially the core group of guys we have,” Judge said. “You always hope that you can [come out of] spring training with this set group that you kind of imagined throughout the offseason . . . but we know that’s not realistic. There's always going to be some bumps in the road, and this is what this team is built for and what the Yankees have done over the past couple years going back to 2019. We’ve got so many good young players and so many guys that we pick up off waivers or trade for, whatever we do, that we’ll be in a good position.”

Judge is coming off a 2022 in which he hit an AL-record 62 homers, breaking the 61-year-old mark set by Roger Maris. The achievement helped the outfielder win MVP honors and, ultimately, score a nine-year, $360 million free-agent contract.

Judge making his Yankees debut as captain — against the Giants, the team he grew up rooting for and was recruited heavily by as a free agent — under every other circumstance would command headline-of-the-day status.

But the announcement Sunday that Anthony Volpe, who grew up an ardent Yankees/Derek Jeter fan in Watchung, New Jersey, had won the shortstop competition shoved all other Opening Day storylines into the background.

Which is fine with Judge, who cited the promising group of young players in the organization as a reason why he believes the Yankees can flourish at the start of the season, even with the injuries.

“We’ve got a lot of good guys, and then I think the organization believing in a young guy like Volpe, and we’ve got quite a few other young guys who will probably help us win a lot of ballgames down the road,” Judge said. “So as a player, that just gets you excited, knowing that ‘hey, the organization wants the best product on the field, no matter the age or who they are.’ And that just excites you as a player.”