Just off the heels of a COVID outbreak, the Yankees have further roster issues. First baseman Luke Voit has been placed on the injured list with a bone bruise in his left knee, the Yankees announced Friday afternoon.
This is the same knee that Voit had surgery on in the spring. The injury sidelined him until May 11. After leading the majors with 22 homers last season, Voit is hitting .241/.328/.370 (94 OPS+) with three homers and 11 RBI in 29 games this season.
On the Yankees as a whole, they are banged up both with pitching and on the position-player side, but let's focus on the latter.
Keep in mind that the Yankees placed outfielder Aaron Judge, catcher Kyle Higashioka and third baseman Gio Urshela on the COVID-19 injured list in light of what happened to get Thursday's scheduled game postponed. Utility man Miguel Andújar and outfielders Clint Frazier and Aaron Hicks are also on the injured list.
That means that among expected starters heading into the season, only D.J. LeMahieu, Giancarlo Stanton, Gary Sánchez and Gleyber Torres are in the lineup Friday night. They are joined by Rougned Odor, Brett Gardner, Chris Gittens, Trey Amburgey and Tim Locastro. I suppose you could argue Gardner was always going to get some starts anyway, but this still looks like a split-squad spring training lineup.
It remains to be seen how long Judge and Urshela will be out, but the short-handed Yankees are eight games back in the AL East and 4 1/2 games out of the second AL wild card. This was a team that entered the season with World Series aspirations.
They enter a huge stretch on the schedule, too, facing the Red Sox eight times and Rays three times out of their next 13 games. The time to make a serious dent in the AL East race is right now.
