Clarke Schmidt’s Injury Adds to the Yankees’ Problems

There’s never a good time to lose a starting pitcher, but doing so when you’ve lost six of your last seven games and have relinquished first place in your division is an especially unwelcome happenstance. This is what the New York Yankees are currently experiencing, as Clarke Schmidt, who was placed on the injured list due to forearm tightness after an early exit from his Thursday start, will likely undergo Tommy John surgery. With a 3.32 ERA, 3.90 FIP, and 1.2 WAR in 14 starts, Schmidt appeared to be headed towards his best season in the majors, but short of a miracle, he’ll now be out until well into the 2026 season at least. Coming just as the offense appeared to be recovering from its June swoon, the Yankees’ trade deadline to-do list may have just gotten a bit longer.

Six weeks ago, the Yankees were in a strong, though not insurmountable, position at the top of the AL East. No fan should start making travel plans based on a seven-game divisional lead in late May, but it’s about as strong a position as a team can hope to have in a good division. In his May 28 start, Schmidt threw six shutout innings en route to a 1-0 victory over the Angels, giving the Yankees that a seven-game lead (their seasonal high-water mark) and a 35-20 overall record. Since then, the Yankees have gone 14-21, losing 11 games in the standings relative to the current first-place team, the Blue Jays.

The disappearance of the offense was a big part of the Yankees’ slump, at least until the last week or so. On the whole, the offense dropped to a .718 OPS in June after posting an .812 OPS through the end of May, a mark that was second only to the Dodgers. Half of the team’s plate appearances in June were made by players with a wRC+ under 90 for the month, including key early-season performers Paul Goldschmidt and Ben Rice, as well as a returning Giancarlo Stanton. The pitching remained solid despite the team’s 13-14 month, with the rotation combining for a 3.19 ERA and a slightly less exciting 3.79 FIP.

During New York’s most recent slide, these roles have reversed. The offense scored at least five runs in all but one of the team’s losses over the last week, a level of run support that even the Rockies or White Sox ought to find sufficient. But Carlos Rodón, Max Fried, and Will Warren all had atrocious outings during the losing streak, while for its part, the bullpen allowed 13 walks and 24 earned runs over 21 innings.

On the morning of May 29, our Depth Chart projections pegged the Yankees with a 92% chance of winning the division and a 98% shot of making the playoffs. Their overall playoff percentage has only dropped to 85%, but their division chances have gotten slashed by more than half, to 37%, with the Blue Jays now being the plurality favorite. ZiPS still has the Yankees as the favorite, but just by a hair, or perhaps a half-skosh:

What’s alarming is just how quickly these probabilities have dropped. It was just last week that I posted the ZiPS midseason standings, and my mean ol’ computer had the Yankees at a comparatively robust 61% chance of winning the division. A drop-off to 38% represents nearly one quarter of a playoff appearance, a shocking shift in less than a week’s worth of games, even with the loss of their no. 3 starter.

A small shopping list for July naturally ought to be a good bit longer now. Losing Gerrit Cole a few weeks before the start of the season was a blow, but the front four of Fried, Rodón, Schmidt, and Warren have made that loss seem, if not consequential, at least survivable. With the loss of Schmidt, we have the Yankees with the 13th-ranked rotation over the rest of the season. Remember, however, that there are certain assumptions baked in, including Luis Gil returning from injury in late July without missing a beat, and basically perfect health from Rodón and Fried. As the Dodgers can attest, we can never be certain a pitcher will remain healthy, and Rodón especially has a difficult injury history. The ZiPS in-season standings model does assume that every pitcher has at least some chance of suffering a serious injury, and with the chance of losing a Fried or Rodón due to injury factored in, the Yankees rotation drops to 18th in the majors.

To illustrate this, I asked ZiPS to give me the rotation projections if every team in baseball went through the rest of the season with the pitchers who we have sixth through 10th on our current depth charts. New York’s Plan B rotation of Cam Schlittler, Ryan Yarbrough, Allan Winans, JT Brubaker, and Brendan Beck would project to rank just 26th when matched up against the other rotations using the same methodology. Naturally, that’s an extreme scenario, and it would require monumentally bad fortune for anything like it to transpire, but it’s a demonstration of the rotation’s depth issues just weeks before the trade deadline.

Speaking of, there don’t appear to be a lot of pitchers available, but the Yankees would be wise to make serious inquiries about the cost of bringing Sandy Alcantara or Zach Eflin to town. They should even be looking at pitchers who are struggling but have decent upside. For example, Zac Gallen has had a lousy season, but he has a strong history, and he looked better against the Giants in his last start than he had since his 13-strikeout outing against the Yankees in April.

The Yankees are usually quite active at addressing the team’s needs when they’re in the playoff hunt. July acquisitions in recent years include Jazz Chisholm Jr., Frankie Montas, Harrison Bader, Andrew Benintendi, Andrew Heaney, Joey Gallo, and Clay Holmes. At the time of those trades, every single one of those players at least partially filled a team concern.

The AL East divisional race looks more like a battle than the parade it appeared to be six weeks ago. The Yankees need some reinforcements, and they need them soon.