Yankees: CC Sabathia placed on the 10-day DL

Last night was a rough one for the Yankees. Not only did they suffer a disappointing 7-3 loss in extra innings, but four players left the game with injuries including CC Sabathia. Today the veteran left-hander was placed on the 10-day DL with right hip soreness.

The injuries just keep piling up for the Yankees and now they’ve lost a key member of their starting rotation. It doesn’t look like CC will be out for long but losing him for any time at all is a big blow because finding a suitable replacement will be difficult.

The Yanks also lost Brandon Dury to the DL but luckily they have Miguel Andujar to fill in. When they lost Aaron Hicks and Greg Bird they had adequate replacements to fill in as well because of the organizational depth they possess with position players. That’s not the same case in the rotation.

Either Luis Cessa or Domingo German will take CC’s next turn in the rotation and neither of those options has yet to really show that they can succeed at the big league level. In Cessa, Yankee fans have watched him struggle over the past two years during his limited time in the big league rotation and German has never made a big league start. German’s the more intriguing option because he has a big arm and he’s coming off an excellent spring, but he’s still not considered to be one the Yankees top prospects.

The guys who are top prospects like Chance Adams and Justus Sheffield could be options at some point later in the season, but after poor spring showings, they still have more developing to do before they get the call.

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Coming into the season the one area the Yankees could ill-afford to have injuries was in the rotation. That’s one of the reasons Brian Cashman assessed the trade market during the offseason despite the fact that they already had a five-man rotation pretty much set in stone.

It seems like every season CC is good for a short DL stint and you hope that’s exactly what this is. After feeling something in his hip in the third inning of last night’s start he said the hip continued to tighten up and he was forced to leave the game after only 58 pitches through four innings.

After the game, he underwent an MRI which came back clean so it seems like the Yankees are just being cautious with the veteran early in the season.

However, if injuries continue to plague him and he misses an extended period of time the Yankees rotation takes a big hit. Losing a veteran presence like CC is not only bad for the rotation but its bad for the team because of the leadership role he has taken on with all the young guys.

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The Yankees are smart to handle this carefully but they better hope that CC can return after the 10-day stint is up. If this team wants to meet their championship aspirations a lot of that is going to depend on how the starting pitching performs and CC is a big part of that.