What Frankie Montas’ injury means for Yankees’ rotation

If pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training is a time for untethered optimism, then, well, the New York Yankees got about two hours worth. Sure, there was the harmless fun of Aaron Judge taking grounders at first and some tantalizing videos of Gerrit Cole and big-money free agent Carlos Rodón playing catch alongside one another under the Florida sun; exactly the type of thing Yankees fans spent all winter daydreaming about.

But come lunchtime, things had already turned nightmarish.

On Wednesday afternoon, pitching coach Matt Blake informed reporters that the team’s projected No. 5 starter, right-hander Frankie Montas, is set to undergo shoulder surgery that will keep him sidelined until, at soonest, late in the season. Montas, who was acquired from Oakland at last year’s deadline for a gaggle of pitching prospects, struggled after coming to the Bronx, posting a 6.39 ERA in just under 40 innings. And now he might miss an entire year.

But Montas commanded a hefty prospect package for a reason — the stout Dominican hurler had been a well-above-average starter for a while, and was set to play a key role in the Yankees’ rotation this season. His injury raises a number of concerns about the team’s top-heavy pitching outlook for 2023 and serves as a reminder that, like any other team in MLB, another injury or two could devastate New York’s pitching corps, even if Rodón and Cole, two legitimate Cy Young contenders, carve atop the rotation.

Behind that potentially masterful duo is 2022 breakout swag cannon Nestor Cortes, who is already nursing a hamstring issue. But while Cortes has yet to resume running, he has been playing catch and is expected to be ready for Opening Day. Then comes Luis Severino, who enters a season without any serious health question marks for the first time since 2018. But while Sevy threw 102 great innings over 19 starts a year ago, he’s about as unreliable from an injury standpoint as any pitcher in baseball. 

To be fair, every rotation in MLB is “injury prone.” The human body was not designed to heave a baseball 95 mph. Muscles wear, ligaments often tear, and pitchers spend time under the knife and on the shelf. In that sense, the Yankees’ hurlers are no different from those on the 29 other teams.

Alas, the projected rotation that Yankees fans spent two months since Rodón’s presser fantasizing about is already up in flames. Perhaps it’s for the best. No team makes it through a full season with their best-case scenario intact. To get through a season, most good teams have at least eight or nine different pitchers start a game. New York’s pitching depth was always going to be tested, it’s just happening sooner than anyone thought.

And in a most ironic twist, the Yankees pitching depth is thinner than in years past because general manager Brian Cashman dealt away three starters — JP Sears, Ken Waldichuck and Luis Medina — to the A’s for … Montas. That trio, alongside Hayden Wesneski who went to the Cubs for Scott Effross, represented a big chunk of the team’s minor-league pitching depth. It’s depth that, with Montas on the IL, Cortes nursing a hammy and Severino’s recent injury history casting an ominous shadow, presents a soft underbelly for this World Series hopeful.

Now, the most obvious and immediate repercussion of Montas hitting the shelf is that it likely pushes right-hander Domingo Germán into that vacant fifth starter role. Germán, who was suspended for 80 games in 2019 for violating the league’s domestic violence policy, has performed at a league-average level over the past two seasons while battling a number of injuries that have limited him to 32 starts.

That means besides the off-the-field concerns, Germán is just as, if not more, injury prone as the rest of the staff. On a per-start basis, he suffices as a fifth starter on a contending team like the Yankees, but in the event he or another arm goes down, things get dicey pretty quickly.

Without the Sears-Waldichuk-Medina-Wisniewski quartet, the spot-start/depth-filler roles will fall on the shoulders of guys like Clarke Schmidt, Luis Gil, Deivi García and Randy Vasquez, unless the Yankees add another arm from outside the organization. 

The 26-year-old Schmidt started three games in pinstripes a year ago, but did most of his work as a reliever, appearing out of the bullpen 26 times in 2022. He was dependable in those relatively low-leverage outings (3.12 ERA), but struggled in bigger spots toward the end of the year. With a Tommy John repair in his past, the Yankees might be reluctant to yo-yo him between the rotation and the pen all season long.

Gil and García are a pair of flamethrowing Dominicans with big stuff and even bigger injury histories, which might necessitate eventual moves to the bullpen. Gil debuted in 2021 with a few impressive outings, but then struggled early on in 2022 before going down with Tommy John surgery in May. He’s a depth option once he’s done rehabbing. García came up in 2020 as a 21-year-old and held his own, but has gone backward over the past two seasons and didn’t even pitch in the big leagues in 2022.

That leaves Vasquez, who was added to the 40-man roster over the offseason and has taken big steps forward in each of the past two years. In 2022, he tossed over 115 innings across two levels while striking out more than a batter per inning. He sits in the mid 90s with a heater and a hammer curve, but lacks a defined third pitch. Then there’s another layer of depth with guys like Yoendrys Gómez, Matt Krook and Jhony Brito, but those are dice rolls with serious question marks who, in a perfect Yankees season, wouldn’t get a big-league start.

But as Montas’ injury announcement on literally Day 1 of spring training shows, not every season goes to plan. The Yankees know this, too, but their season ultimately could be defined less by how Cole and Rodón perform in their 30-plus starts (if they stay healthy) and more by how many starts fill-in types like Schmidt and Gil and whomever else have racked up by season’s end.

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.

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