After smooth sailing, Yankees now dealing with adversity
Yankees manager Aaron Boone walks to the dugout after a pitching change against the Baltimore Orioles during an MLB baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Longtime big-league manager Buck Showalter – formerly of the Yankees and now, with the Mets – years ago gave the best summation of the adversity every team, good and bad, goes through at some point of a season.
"People don't care about your problems," Showalter, then the manager of the Orioles, said in early October 2014. "Most of them are glad you've got 'em.”
Showalter uttered a form of the phrase many times before that and many times since, including a few weeks back when Mets starting pitchers started dropping like flies.
The Yankees, after coasting much of the early part of this season, are dealing with their own, the latest roster setbacks coming Wednesday when Jonathan Loaisiga was put on the IL with right shoulder inflammation and Giancarlo Stanton landed there with a right calf strain.
“Little bit of adversity for sure,” Gerrit Cole said earlier in the week before channeling Showalter. “Obviously, a tough stretch right now with the amount of games, the doubleheaders, some of the uncontrollable injuries that kind of crept up on us. But a.) nobody’s going to feel sorry for us, b.) everybody goes through patches like this. It could get turned around tomorrow, it could get turned around next week, but as players, you just stay in the middle, take the good with the bad and try to improve from it any way you can.”
Cole spoke Monday after allowing a season-high five runs and seven hits in a season-high eight innings of a 6-4 loss to the Orioles, which was the Yankees’ season-high third straight loss.
The Yankees avoided a fourth straight loss Tuesday night with a come-from-behind 7-6 victory over the Orioles in 11 innings.
The Yankees came into that game already reeling to an extent from the flurry of bad news in the days preceding it – Kyle Higashioka, Joey Gallo and Josh Donaldson hitting the COVID-19 IL, Chad Green lost for the season because of upcoming Tommy John surgery, Aroldis Chapman to the IL because of left Achilles tendinitis and, of course, Donaldson’s incendiary comments to White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson that caused a bench-clearing incident Saturday.
Tuesday brought the pregame news of DJ LeMahieu being a late scratch with left wrist discomfort and in-game news of Stanton departing the contest in the seventh inning with the calf issue.
It didn’t get any better Wednesday with the Stanton and Loaisiga news, the latter of which puts additional strain on a bullpen that has been a significant reason why, entering Wednesday, Yankees’ pitchers had a 3.07 ERA, the second-lowest mark in the American League and the third-lowest in the ajors.
Meanwhile, LeMahieu underwent an MRI Tuesday that came back clean, but he had a cortisone shot in the wrist the same day that kept him out of Wednesday’s starting lineup. The hope is LeMahieu, who did hit some in the cage Tuesday, will be available at some point during the four-game series in St. Petersburg, Fla. against the Rays that starts Thursday night.
Higashioka was activated from the COVID IL Tuesday (he started at catcher Wednesday), and Gallo was activated from it Wednesday (he started at DH).
“As I say, adversity’s coming for you in this game, even in the best of seasons,” Boone said before Wednesday’s game. “You’ve got to be able to weather the storm and have other guys step up in different situations. Sometimes it’s in short spurts, sometimes it’s longer. That’s part of the grind of the 162-game season. We’re prepared to handle that, we look forward to handling that. The season doesn’t stop for anyone.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
