NEW YORK — Eight days after watching the Toronto Blue Jays’ raucous celebration on the field and in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, the New York Yankees are still licking their wounds.
Team brass revealed injuries to shortstop Anthony Volpe and left-hander Carlos Rodon and good news about Aaron Judge at an end-of-season press conference Thursday afternoon.
For the 16th consecutive time, the postmortem presser for the Yankees came before the World Series. New York reflected on winning 94 games and lamented not consistently beating East division champion Toronto during the regular season and in a four-game American League Division Series.
“It is tough. It is really difficult to do and it’s easier to talk through or what have you, but actually for those guys in the competition, it’s obviously something that we aspire to do once again and in some cases aspire to do for the first time,” said GM Brian Cashman, who is also senior vice president of the Yankees. “So whether it’s controlling your emotions, whether it’s being at your best at the most important time on any given at-bat, any given pitch and stringing that all together, that is what we continue to fight for and try to find our way through it, and then trying to walk and talk through it after the fact is something we’d like to avoid.”
In a different scenario — one where New York beat the Blue Jays in the division series — the Yankees would have been hosting Game 4 of the ALCS against the Seattle Mariners on this day. But they were outscored 34-19, including 23-8 in the first two games in Toronto. The Yankees fell behind in every game and their 8.47 ERA was the highest in any postseason series in team history.
“They ended up scoring a ton of runs against us in the four games that we played them and just couldn’t keep them off the board and ended up losing the series,” manager Aaron Boone said. “So, it makes it very tough.”
Since beating the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009 for the final title before owner George Steinbrenner’s death in July 2010, the Yankees have made the postseason 12 times but only reached the World Series last season.
The Yankees lost in five games to the Los Angeles Dodgers last October and blew a five-run lead in the deciding game at home when Judge dropped a fly ball in center field and ace Gerrit Cole failed to cover first base.
Motivated by last year’s stumble in the Fall Classic, the Yankees won 35 of their first 55 games and held a seven-game lead atop the AL East. New York was swept during a four-game series in Toronto June 30-July 3 to fall out of the division lead and lost two more games there shortly after the All-Star break.
The Yankees trailed by as many as 6 1/2 games before winning 25 of their final 33 to tie Toronto for the best record in the AL, but faltering in the head-to-head meetings cost them the tiebreaker and home-field advantage in their first postseason encounter with the Blue Jays.
Boone will be back for a ninth season as New York’s fourth manager since 1992, but the Yankees will open the season with three key players on the injured list.
Besides Cole, who will be in the final stages of his rehab from Tommy John surgery on his right elbow, Volpe and Rodon will miss the start of next season.
The Yankees confirmed Volpe underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder, leaving him unable to swing for four months and unable to dive for six months. Cashman conceded the injury impacted the 24-year-old shortstop’s subpar performance while reiterating their belief in Volpe.
“I believe in the player,” Cashman said. “I think we believe in the player. I think the injury probably contributed to the performance season that he wound up having more so than we would have thought.”
Volpe played with an injury most of the season after originally getting hurt making a throw in a game against the Tampa Bay Rays on May 3. He reaggravated it on a play in the field Sept. 7 against Toronto, and the Yankees revealed he underwent two cortisone shots for the ailment.
While Volpe hit 19 homers, he batted .212, the lowest amongst qualified shortstops and also committed a career-high 19 errors. Volpe was batting .233 when he sustained the initial injury, hit .205 (86-for-419) over his final 120 games and went 1-for-15 with 11 strikeouts in the ALDS.
Rodon will begin the fourth season of a six-year $162 contract on the injured list after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left elbow. The procedure was performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache — who also operated on Cole — and the surgery cleaned up some loose bodies and shaved down a bone spur.
After winning 16 games in 2024 following an injury-plagued 2023, Rodon was 18-9 with a 3.09 ERA and 203 strikeouts in 33 starts. Before the Yankees erased a five-run deficit in Game 3 against Toronto, Rodon was shelled for six runs on six hits in 2 1/3 innings.
The good news for the Yankees is that Judge will not need surgery on his right elbow after hurting the flexor tendon July 22. An MRI showed the injury is healing well after the slugger’s throwing was limited for most of the final two-plus months until he began making stronger throws from right field.
Judge hit .331 to win New York’s first batting title in a full season since Bernie Williams in 1998 and slugged 53 homers to go along with 114 RBIs and a major league-best 1.145 OPS.
–Larry Fleisher, Field Level Media
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