David Lennon: Yankees' wave of pitching injuries exposes Brian Cashman's flawed deadline strategy
Yankees general manager Brian Cashman during a news conference at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 16, 2025. Credit: Ed Murray
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, 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. They boasted MLB’s best ERA (3.24) while doing the heavy lifting for a Judge-less offense that’s been AWOL since the three-time MVP went on the IL with rib stress fracture.
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 re-stocks 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 have reason to worry, and the events of the past 24 hours only deepened that concern. In Tuesday night’s 9-7 loss to the Astros, they blew leads of 3-2, 5-3 and 6-5 as two of their trusted high-leverage relievers, Brent Headrick and Fernando Cruz, were alarmingly ineffective.
The typically airtight Headrick had his worst outing this season, surrendering three runs in the eighth inning 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.
Oddly, Cruz had a similar postgame response Tuesday night after teeing up a tying homer to Jeremy Pena in the sixth, driving up his ERA to 5.93 over his last 16 appearances, including five home runs in 13 2/3 innings. Cruz clearly hadn’t been himself lately, and despite hinting at some fatigue, he wasn’t entirely truthful regarding the questions about his health.
We suspected that Tuesday night when Cruz was spotted leaving the clubhouse escorted by a trainer and it was confirmed Wednesday when the Yankees placed him on the IL with what the team described as “right elbow discomfort.” Despite Cruz’s recent struggles, he still was considered to be in manager Aaron Boone’s circle of trust among the relief corps and now there’s another hole to fill for an indefinite period. Cruz was scheduled for more imaging tests so the Yankees didn’t yet know the full extent of the injury, but Boone was asked if he thought his workload might have played a role.
“That’s always a factor, but it’s impossible to know for sure,” Boone said. “This time of year, fatigue is part of the equation.”
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 ahead of 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.
As for the rotation, the Yankees already had Max Fried and Ryan Weathers on the IL, which necessitated calling up Elmer Rodriguez for Wednesday night’s start against the Astros. Rodriguez was hyped up in spring training as another young gun, but that hasn’t really panned out at the major-league level, where he’s 0-2 with a 4.76 ERA in four starts, averaging a little over four innings due to escalating pitch counts.
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 a disturbing 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.
