Every year during the offseason contending teams stock up on players via free agency and trades and the night before spring training every fan base knows more or less who is going to be on their team. They can look at Fangraphs’ roster resource and see who will be in the rotation and who will be in the lineup and if you are a dedicated enough fan you might look at the page and know that there’s a prospect that’s likely to make the roster that they haven’t accounted for yet.
It is at this point that sportsbooks have the win total over/unders for every team available to bet on and every baseball show, podcast and blog comes out with their division previews where they predict who will be good and who will be bad. These shows are fun because most of the divisions are somewhat up in the air, you could argue that the Phillies will win the NL East because of their rotation or that the Mets will win because of they added Juan Soto to their team that just made the NLCS or the Braves will win because all their best players are coming back after their injuries and with the exception of the NL West there are at least 2 or 3 teams that have a shot of winning their division.
Then spring training comes and starts blowing up predictions one by one. On the first day the manager comes in and starts dropping bombs, you find out the pitcher you thought would take a leap this year hurt his back playing with his kids in January and isn’t throwing yet, another guy “felt some tightness but should be ok” (they won’t be ok) and the guy recovering from Tommy John had a setback and you won’t see him until June at the earliest.
Then the games start and guys are getting scratched with muscle soreness left and right. At first the manager says it’s precautionary, then a week later the update is that they’re “taking it easy”, then before you know it they’re getting a second opinion and finally the news that they’ll miss the start or the entirety of the season. And now the balance of power has shifted in the division.
This is happening right now to a myriad of teams across the league but it seems that the AL East has been especially impacted by the injury bug. In the past weeks several impact players on the three best teams in the division have suffered injuries and are guaranteed to miss the start of the season. No matter who you thought was going to win the division out of the Yankees, Red Sox and Orioles, the roster you thought you were going to get a month ago is not the one that will lineup on opening day.
So the question is which of these teams is most equipped to deal with the injuries they’re facing and win the division.
The Yankees
Gerrit Cole: (Tommy John) – Out for the Season
Luis Gil: (Right Lat Strain) – Out for 3 months
Giancarlo Stanton: (Double tennis elbow??) – No timeline but the word being used is “severe”
DJ Lemahieu: (Left calf strain) – No exact timeline but will likely miss the beginning of the season
Out of all three AL East contenders the Yankees have been hit the hardest. They have suffered a high volume of injuries and those injuries are mostly to guys that are really important to them. Even with these injuries both Fangraphs and the sportsbooks have the Yankees as the favorites to win this division but at this point even one more bit of bad news might change that.
The Yankees’ rotation was supposed to be their greatest strength this season. When they lost Juan Soto to the Mets their big pivot was to sign Max Fried and go from a team that won games based on the strength of their two best hitters to a team that would win games on the strength of their pitching staff.
With Cole and Fried at the top of the rotation the Yankees would have had arguably the best 1-2 punch in all of baseball this season. Luis Gil was coming off a rookie of the year season and they had Rodon, Stroman and Schmidt competing for the last 2 rotation spots. I also saw plenty of Yankees fans and media talking about how great Will Warren was looking. That kind of high end talent mixed with depth is a recipe for a great season.
But things change quickly in spring training and now the Yankees will be without Gerrit Cole for the entire 2025 season and they’ll miss Luis Gil for the first couple months of the year at least. When an ace pitcher goes down and everyone has to slide up a spot in the rotation it creates some problems but when 2 of your top three pitchers are out that creates a lot of problems. Instead of Carlos Rodon being your #4 starter he’s your #2 and instead of Marcus Stroman being an expendable trade piece he is now locked into a rotation spot and instead of Will Warren being a fun triple A depth arm he is now going to be relied upon to start every 5th game for the New York Yankees.
On top of several guys being asked to do more than they can handle, now the Yankees’ margin for error with pitching injuries is already pretty much at zero. If Clarke Schmidt feels back tightness tomorrow then the Yankees’ only in house option would be to roll out 38 year old Carlos Carrasco who had a 5.64 ERA last year.
Now this problem is not entirely without solutions, there are still free agent pitchers available on the market like Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn, if the Yankees signed either of them I’m sure they could eat innings until Luis Gil comes back. Lynn has even floated the idea that he could be a bullpen guy out there so you could sign Lynn, have him start for a few months and then send him the pen when Gil comes back. If the Yankees were to be a bit more urgent they could get active in the trade market. The Marlins still have a few more pitchers they wouldn’t mind parting with and the Cardinals have no real need for either Sonny Gray or Erick Fedde so it’s not like Cashman would have to wait until the trade deadline to get a deal done, last year Dylan Cease was traded the day before the Padres’ season started.
The Yankees are up against the luxury tax threshold and according to some Cashman interviews they are very aware of this so it would appear they are going to do what they can to avoid going over it. At first glance that may appear to rule out some of the more aggressive trades like Alcantara or Gray but there are always creative ways to get around these things. Marcus Stroman makes about the same as Sandy Alcantara, if the deal was Stroman plus prospects for Alcanatara then the Yankees could get cheaper and better at the same time. The trouble there would be that the Yankees might not have sufficient prospect capital to convince the Marlins to trade Sandy AND take Stroman back in the deal but the Marlins have bent over backwards for the Yankees before so we’ll have to see what happens.
Now if you somehow traded Stroman for Alcantara that wouldn’t fix your depth problem but you’d have 2 aces again and it’s easier to stomach the back end of your rotation being made up of free agent scrap pile guys if you have two horses at the top of the rotation.
The pitching injuries would be enough to make Yankees fans nervous for the season but they are dealing with Giancarlo Stanton and his double tennis elbow. This injury is a bit mysterious with words like severe and season threatening floating around in headlines. Earlier this week it was reported he got his third PRP injection and that there was still no timeline. Stanton came out and said he didn’t think he would have to get season ending surgery but that he was dealing with a lot of pain and didn’t know when he would be swinging a bat again so even though there is hope that at some point Stanton may return this year I wouldn’t expect to see him until after the all star break at the very soonest.
This is a big blow to the Yankees lineup as Stanton was supposed to be the second best hitter in the lineup after Aaron Judge and now instead of one of the most prolific power hitters of this generation in the DH spot the Yankees are going to have to rely on a combo of Ben Rice (OPS of .613 last year) and Dom Smith (OPS of .691 while mostly platooning) which is a downgrade to a degree that almost shouldn’t be possible for a contending team.
This Yankees season feels like it rests entirely on the shoulders of Aaron Judge. If he is an MVP then the Yankees could still be in contention for the division, if he gets hurt for any amount of time then the Yankees might have their first losing season since 1992.
I didn’t spend any time discussing the absence of DJ Lemahieu as I view him hitting the IL as something of an addition by subtraction for the Yankees and I wouldn’t blame the Yankees at all if they just told DJ that if he feels even the slightest twinge of soreness to tell them so they can IL him as much as possible. He’s old enough that I’m sure at any given moment something hurts.
The Orioles
Grayson Rodriguez: (Right Elbow Inflammation) – Shutdown, will miss the beginning of the season
Gunnar Henderson: (Intercostal strain) – Has returned to baseball activities
Andrew Kittredge: (Knee) – Will miss the first half of the season at least
Trevor Rogers: (Knee) – Significantly delayed throwing program will miss the start of the season
Coming into the season the Orioles starting rotation was the clear weakness of the team. Every analysis of the Orioles always boils down to “we love the lineup but can they pitch?” and now with Grayson Rodriguez injured to start the season the rotation is even weaker.
Currently Rodriguez has been shut down for the next 7-10 days and is getting treatment for the inflammation. Brandon Hyde recently came out and said that Rodriguez wouldn’t need anymore imaging done and that his throwing program should begin next week. He characterized the throwing program as a “restart” which means that next week Rodriguez will be where he hoped to be in early February.
At this point a restart means that at best he will miss the entire first month of the season and if there are any setbacks along the way then missing May isn’t out of the question either.
What has me and other Orioles fans worried is that this does seem like this whole series of events is the kind of thing that would happen when a player is attempting to avoid Tommy John surgery. The low velocity in his final start, the various injury designations, first he was just “sluggish”, then he has a tricep issue and now it seems like officially something in the elbow. Rodriguez is a flame thrower and it does seem that with guys that can throw 100 mph it’s when not if they’ll have Tommy John.
If it is the case where it’s Tommy John (or any other injury that sidelines Rodriguez for more than what the Orioles are currently expecting) the Orioles ceiling gets dramatically lower. With Rodriguez at the top of the rotation you could dream on him making a leap and being an ace and filling the hole left by Corbin Burnes. Rodriguez and Eflin as a 1-2 punch is a decent duo to lead your rotation, I’d have them somewhere between the 15th and the 20th best starting pitching duo in the league. If that becomes Eflin and Morton as the 1-2 punch or Eflin and Kremer as the 1-2 punch then the Orioles fall quickly to the bottom 5 in the starting pitching duo rankings. (I’ll include my starting pitching duo rankings at the bottom of the blog).
Besides the top of the rotation talent taking a big hit losing Rodriguez will bump everyone up a spot in the rotation and now instead of Cade Povich or Albert Suarez being “great depth” one of those guys will be locked into a rotation spot and the Orioles will have to rely on them to get through the season. The Orioles did that last year and we saw it was hard. I know Wins and Losses are a neanderthal stat but Cade Povich was 3-9 and most of those 9 were games where Povich got hit hard early. He had an ERA of 5.20 and he knocked his ERA down by almost a full point in his start against the White Sox.
I am optimistic that Povich will continue to get better and that he can eventually be a good starting pitcher but there is a big difference between “this guy is fun to watch in spring training” and “we need you to make 30 starts for us”
Suarez was second on the Orioles in innings pitched last year and was genuinely good and I would be shocked if he could do that again, granted I was shocked at how good he was last year so it could be another year of Big Al proving the haters and losers wrong.
I have seen some reports that the Orioles are looking into Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn to add some starting pitching depth for the season and if the Rodriguez injury is a short term problem then either of those 2 would be fine candidates to eat a few innings early in the season but if the Rodriguez injury is serious and the Orioles want a chance at winning the division/ competing for a World Series then they’ll have no choice to be aggressively pursue another pitcher in a trade. I mentioned Sandy in the Yankees section and the Orioles should consider trading for Alcantara as well. Honestly they should be trying to trade for Alcantara even if Rodriguez is healthy but if Rodriguez is out long term and the Orioles don’t get active in the trade market it’s basically a white flag on contending this year.
Gunnar Henderson’s injury is scary not so much because of the seriousness of it but more so in the sense that when everyone talks about the Orioles they are assuming that Gunnar Henderson is going to play almost every day and just the idea that Henderson could miss time is a reminder of how fast things can go south in this league. It had been the stated goal that he could come back after the opening series in Toronto, but Henderson came out and said that it was his plan to be in the opening day lineup so that is an encouraging update. My only concern is that I don’t want Gunnar to play through an injury when he could just wait another week and fully heal it, waiting a week for a fully healthy Gunnar is a trade I would make but the thing about being 23 is that sometimes your body is fine even if you’re not the kindest to it.
Andrew Kittrdige wasn’t the sexiest signing of the offseason but in a bullpen with a lot of streaky arms he would have been a nice consistent presence in the late innings and now the Orioles will be without him until the second half of the season. In his absence Seranthony Dominguez will be relied upon to pitch in high leverage innings and the Orioles saw last year how that can be a double edged sword.
Trevow Rogers being out to start the year doesn’t have much of an impact on the major league team right now but when the Orioles traded for him it felt like the narrative around that trade was that they had 2 and half seasons to get him back to his 2021 form and the first half season was a bust, he’s been hurt this offseason so far and the now the time to make that trade not look like a disaster is running out.
The Red Sox
Lucas Giolito: (Hamstring Strain) – Will start the season on IL
Brayan Bello: (Shoulder inflammation) – Will start the season on IL
Kutter Crawford: (Knee) – Will start the season on IL
Masataka Yoshida: (Shoulder) – Will start the season on the IL
Trevor Story: (Trevor Story) – No timeline
Rafael Devers: (Feelings) – Should be back opening day
Losing one of Giolito, Crawford or Bello would not have been a big deal for the Red Sox as they came into the spring with more starters than could fit on the roster but losing all three could be a significant hurdle for this Red Sox team to overcome.
There is a reason that pitchers get to spring training camp earlier than the other positions and that is because it takes awhile for pitchers to get ramped up and comfortable so all three of these guys missing the entirety of spring training will mean that even if they are due back in the lineup in April/May they’ll have to get ramped up during the season which means they won’t be at their best until even later.
The Red Sox came into the season knowing that there was some risk with the rotation they had built. Crochet has never pitched a full season’s worth of innings, Buehler was one of the worst pitchers in the league last year, Giolito was coming back from missing an entire season, Brayan Bello hasn’t lived up to the extension he signed and Kutter Crawford lead the league in home runs allowed last year. At the same time if things go well for the Sox there is a ton of upside, Crochet could be the best pitcher in baseball, Buehler could look like pre injury self, Giolito could look like the guy that got Cy Young votes three years in a row and Bello could take that step forward that the Red Sox imagined when they paid him. The truth will likely be somewhere in the middle but starting the season with 3 guys on IL feels like things are not off to a great start for this Red Sox rotation.
While those 3 guys are down the Red Sox will lean on Dick Fitts and Quinn Priester. Priester is a former first round pick by the Pirates who got traded to the Red Sox after falling behind the Pirates’ other pitching prospects, he has 94 innings as a Pirate at a 6.46 ERA and 5 innings as a Rex Sock at a 1.80 ERA so the Red Sox are hoping that they keep that positive momentum going and that Priester could really be a guy for them. I remember Dick Fitts being in the Verdugo trade because who could forget that name, I did not remember him being really good in 4 starts for the Sox last season. It is not out of the question that either Fitts or Priester could pitch well enough for the Sox that when the injured guys get back there is a difficult decision about who gets to be in the rotation but both guys are inexperienced enough that a month from now Red Sox fans could be begging for a healthy Kutter Crawford again especially since Fitts and Priester will have their first starts against the Rangers and Orioles.
Ever since the Sox signed Alex Bregman the question of how will everyone fit on this roster has been hovering over them.
It feels like Bregman at third, Kristian Campebll at second and Devers at DH makes the most sense but even if Dever’s is ok with being a DH what do you do with Yoshida who they are paying 18 million dollars this year? You could put Campell in the outfield and have him split time with Abreu and Rafaela but that brings up another difficult question.
Roman Anthony will be on the roster either for opening day or shortly after and there’s a question of where he fits on the roster as well. Who out of Duran, Abreu and Rafaela is getting pushed out of the starting lineup to make room for the number 1 prospect in baseball?
If money wasn’t an issue you’d say move on from Yoshida and either move on from Rafaela or have him move to short and move on from Trevor Story but the Red Sox have all three of those guys on long term deals in the double digit millions so they can’t just cast them off. (Chaim Bloom, congrats on the farm system but man these contracts are awful).
With Yoshida already on the IL and Story battling back issues it may just work out that the Red Sox don’t have to deal with any awkward playing time politics between the young guys and the highly compensated vets blocking them. I think if the Red Sox could dump Story and Yoshida’s contracts for nothing they would.
Coming into spring training I would have considered the Yankees the favorites to win the division followed by the Orioles and then the Red Sox in third. The injuries the Yankees have sustained have been impactful enough that I would now consider both the Red Sox and the Orioles better teams than them. If Grayson Rodriguez’s injury proves to be more serious than previously reported then I think that would make the Red Sox the clear division favorites
As the season goes injuries will continue to shape this division race and it could very well come down to who is willing to be the most aggressive at the trade deadline to revamp their roster.
Starting pitching duo rankings as promised
First here is how I would have ranked all the teams at the start of spring training
And here is how I would rank them based on who is currently healthy
The Dishwasher 
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