Already Hit Hard by Injuries, the Yankees Lose Cody Bellinger

The Yankees have been limping along since losing Aaron Judge to a stress fracture in his right first rib in early June, and they’ve been without Giancarlo Stanton for even longer due to a right calf strain. Now their lineup has suffered another major blow, as Cody Bellinger sustained a Grade 2 left hamstring strain on Saturday and landed on the injured list, a loss that ought to affect how the Yankees approach the August 3 trade deadline.

The 31-year-old Bellinger injured himself during Saturday’s game against the Phillies. While hustling his way into a double on a two-out eighth-inning hit to left-center field off Jonathan Bowlan, he appeared to slow up a bit before sliding into second. He ended up advancing no further, and when the Yankees took the field for the bottom of the eighth, Max Schuemann replaced him in left field.

Bellinger was spotted doing light agility drills on Sunday, but once it was clear to him that he wouldn’t be ready to return within a few days, he suggested an IL stint made sense because he didn’t want his teammates to play while down a man. “I just feel like I won’t be able to put on the cleats for the next four days, at least,” he said on Sunday. “So being short a man for that long, they’ll get a full roster up here and give the guys as much opportunity as they can.”

Alas, hopes that Bellinger would be out only for the 10-day minimum were dashed when he returned to New York for an MRI and was diagnosed with a Grade 2 strain, which is expected to sideline him for four to six weeks. Roughly speaking, that brackets his return somewhere between August 24 and September 7.

That’s a gut punch for the Yankees. At 61-46, they’re just a game and a half out of first place in the AL East and have a 5.5-game lead for the top Wild Card spot, giving them 98.9% playoff odds, but they’re just 25-23 since Judge last played on May 31, with an offense that has dried up:

Through the end of May, the Yankees led all American League teams in scoring by 0.51 runs per game, and in wRC+ by nine points. Since then, they rank 12th in scoring and 13th in wRC+.

Now they’re losing one of their top hitters, albeit one whose own production has fallen off along those lines. Bellinger is batting a solid but unspectacular .259/.350/.420 with 11 homers and 10 stolen bases overall, having dropped from a 142 wRC+ through May to an 88 since the start of June. While his overall 119 wRC+ — exactly matching his career mark — ranks only fourth on the team behind Ben Rice (158), Judge (150), and Paul Goldschmidt (121), Judge has already missed nearly two months and Goldschmidt is a platoon player who has been overexposed against righties due to the team’s injuries; he has a 63 wRC+ in 166 plate appearances against them, compared to a 193 wRC+ in 135 plate appearances against lefties. What’s more, thanks to his outstanding defense in left field (8 FRV and a whopping 19 DRS), Bellinger’s 3.1 WAR ranks second on the team behind Rice (3.2).

As reported on July 17, a recent scan showed that Judge has not healed enough to resume baseball activities yet, thus leaving the Yankees without two All-Star outfielders until at least late August. In the three games they’ve played since Bellinger went down — part of a stretch of five consecutive games facing left-handed starters — they’ve started the righty-swinging Schuemann in left and the switch-hitting Jasson Domínguez in right, with the lefty-swinging Trent Grisham starting two out of three in center. Lefty Spencer Jones, who was called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to take Bellinger’s roster spot, took the other start in center and twice pinch-hit for Schuemann before taking over in left.

Offensively, that group’s current performance leaves something to be desired. After setting career bests with 34 homers, a 129 wRC+, and 3.2 WAR in 2025, the 29-year-old Grisham is hitting for a 101 wRC+ (.216/.319/.389) with 11 homers and 0.8 WAR. Unlike last season, when he absolutely raked against righties, he’s shown a minimal platoon split, with a 98 wRC+ against lefties and 102 against righties. That said, it’s worth noting that the Yankees have protected him to some degree, starting him in just 19 of the team’s 41 games against southpaws, with Bellinger covering 14 starts, Jones five, and Schuemann three.

The 23-year-old Domínguez, who spent most of the first two and a half months of the season at Triple-A, has hit a disappointing .239/.276/.398 (87 wRC+) with six homers and 0.2 WAR in 186 plate appearances, with his walk rate plummeting from 9.6% last year to 3.8% this year while his chase rate has spiked from 30.9% to 36.8%. Where he posted a 63 wRC+ against lefties and a 116 wRC+ against righties last year, he’s reversed that to a 112 wRC+ against lefties and a 71 against righties. Schuemann, a 29-year-old superutilityman acquired from the A’s in February, has hit .212/.358/.394 (119 wRC+) with a 14.8% walk rate, albeit in just 81 plate appearances. Jones, a 25-year-old with 70-grade raw power but serious contact issues, has hit .213/.308/.338 (86 wRC+) while striking out in a whopping 39.6% of his 91 plate appearances.

Domínguez and Jones project to improve at some point. The former was a 55-FV prospect who placed 16th on last year’s preseason Top 100 Prospects list, while the latter is a 45+-FV prospect who was sixth on the Yankees list in March. Still, the current pool of outfielders would have to step up in order to match their rest-of-season projections for league average-ish production; Grisham projects to produce a 112 wRC+ the rest of the way, Domínguez a 106, Jones a 102, and Schuemann a 90. Realistically, the only player on the current roster whom the Yankees can add to the mix is José Caballero, who has spread 12 starts and 18 total appearances across the three outfield positions, but he’s only hit .236/.287/.372 (85 wRC+) and lately has been sharing the shortstop duties with Anthony Volpe.

The next wave of reinforcements at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is a pair of former 45-FV prospects who have yet to pan out. Oswaldo Cabrera, a 27-year-old switch-hitter who’s spent significant stretches with the Yankees since late 2022, owns an 80 wRC+ in 960 major league plate appearances; he has a 102 wRC+ at Triple-A this year. Yanquiel Fernández, a 23-year-old lefty, hit for just a 55 wRC+ in 147 plate appearances for the Rockies last year and has managed a 94 wRC+ this year in Triple-A.

Clearly, the Yankees will need help from outside the organization to bolster their roster in the coming weeks. Their catchers (Austin Wells, J.C. Escarra, and Ali Sánchez) and third basemen (Ryan McMahon and Amed Rosario) landed on my recent Replacement-Level Killers series; this just adds to their shopping list. Unfortunately for them, some of the more desirable outfielders whose names have been batted around as trade candidates in recent weeks play for teams that still have a chance at a Wild Card spot. Trevor Larnach of the Twins has hit for a robust 136 wRC+, but Minnesota — which also has catcher Ryan Jeffers, a logical fit given New York’s needs behind the plate — is 54-54, for example. Lars Nootbaar of the Cardinals has managed a more modest 103 wRC+ for the Cardinals (53-54) since his early-June return from offseason surgery to shave down bones in both heels. Taylor Ward has a 118 wRC+ for the Orioles, who are just 52-56 but play in the same division as the Yankees and have playoff odds of 19.6%.

Not every interesting option plays for a team that’s on the bubble. The Royals’ Lane Thomas has bounced back from a brutal, injury-marred 2025 season to produce a 102 wRC+; his defensive metrics in center field are bad, but he could cover the Yankees’ spacious left field. The Rockies’ Jake McCarthy, who’s in the midst of a breakout season (.296/.338/.497, 113 wRC+) and can play center field as well as both corners, has two years of club control remaining and could line up as a potential replacement for Grisham, a pending free agent. The Reds’ JJ Bleday, who has hit for a 116 wRC+, has two years of control remaining as well, though he’s played his way out of center. As Dan Szymborski pointed out yesterday, the Reds and Yankees line up reasonably well for a bigger trade; he proposed a swap of Volpe for catcher Tyler Stephenson, infield prospect Tyson Lewis, and outfielder Dane Myers, a 30-year-old righty who’s hitting .267/.365/.377 (105 wRC+) as the short half of a center field platoon.

Another team that lines up for a deal with the Yankees is the Dodgers. With Enrique Hernández having just returned from an oblique strain — and with their farm system bursting at the seams, particularly with outfield prospects — the two-time defending champions might be willing to part with 31-year-old righty Alex Call (.246/.355/.314, 94 wRC+) or 28-year-old lefty Ryan Ward (.218/.283/.455, 100 wRC+), both of whom could get pushed off the 40-man roster as pitchers Edwin Díaz, Blake Snell, and (eventually) Tyler Glasnow return from stints on the 60-day injured list.

Lefties, righties, pending free agents and players with years of control — options to bolster the Yankees outfield are out there. The question is how willing general manager Brian Cashman is to dig into the team’s farm system to get them, and perhaps, how much money the team is willing to absorb on longer-term deals. Over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to find out.