Yankees: Return dates for injured players still very much unclear

Sunday marked another series loss at home for the Yankees after the White Sox took the rubber game of the three-game set with a 5-2 win. The Yanks have lost all three series in the Bronx so far this season and are now 3-6 at the Stadium and 6-9 overall.

What a brutal start to the season for the Yankees. Injuries have obviously hampered this team as much as any in baseball but for the players who are healthy and on the field they’ve really struggled and haven’t shown any fight at all of late.

On Sunday the Yanks got out to an early 2-0 through three innings but after that, they were shut down by a White Sox team that had one of the worst pitching staffs in baseball last season. They only had one hit after a Gleyebr Torres single in the third and as the gamer progressed the quality of the at-bats only got worse.

After all the injuries they’ve suffered the Yankee lineup isn’t good enough right now to go toe to toe with some of the best offenses in the game. But against a team like the White Sox, they need to be better. Losing the first three home series of the season to them the Orioles and the Tigers, all teams who lost at least 98 games last season is unacceptable.

This was supposed to be an easy April for the Yanks, but instead, it’s been miserable so far. When you factor in the poor play along with all the injuries there’s really no telling when things are going to turn around. I know Aaron Boone continues to be positive with his postgame comments and says the team’s mindset every day is still to beat down the opposition, but talk is cheap and as the losses continue to pile up there needs to be a bigger sense of urgency.

What we’re seeing from the Yankees right now is a team that looks like it’s just going through the motions. They’re not playing with any passion or fire and their overall play has been very sloppy.

I have no doubt that when the reinforcements arrive this Yankees team is going to win a lot of games, but the problem is we have no idea if or when that’s going to happen. Even after the return of CC Sabathia on Saturday the Yanks still lead all of baseball with 11 players on the injured list. So many key contributors are down right now and for many of them, the timetables for their returns are unknown.

Based on some of the latest reports it looks like the player on the injured list who is most likely to return next is Gary Sanchez. Sanchez went on the 10-day IL on Friday (retroactive to April 11th) with a calf strain but said that he felt good enough to avoid the IL and doesn’t think he’ll be out longer than the 10 days. Considering the lower leg issues he had last season the Yankees will probably ease him back slowly past the 10 days but he could return during the team’s upcoming west coast trip starting on the 22nd in Anaheim.

Losing Sanchez was obviously another massive blow to the Yankees offense because he had gotten off to such a strong start. He looked like the Sanchez of 2016-17 and was really stepping up batting in the cleanup spot after Stanton and Andujar went down. Getting him back within the next week or two would be huge because as we’ve seen before he can single-handily carry his team to a win with his bat.

After Sanchez hopefully returns soon there’s a chance Giancarlo Stanton won’t be far behind. When he was placed on the IL with a biceps strain back on April 1st a return at the end of the month seemed like a possibility, but now an early May return looks more likely. Stanton has begun swinging off a tee and hitting soft toss, but he’s reportedly still feeling some discomfort and hasn’t been able to start taking BP as of yet.

As for the rest of the injured players, it could be much longer before we see any of them back on the field. Troy Tulowitzki also has a calf strain that forced him to the DL on April 3rd but given his recent injury history, there’s no telling when we might see him return.

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Luis Severino is still a couple of months away from a potential return after straining his lat while rehabbing his shoulder injury and Dellin Betances is out for at least another 6 or 7 weeks. GM Brian Cashman revealed on Friday that Betances also suffered another setback after throwing a bullpen earlier in the week. As much as the offense is in desperate need of some help you could argue that nobody on the team is missed more than Sevy and Dellin right now after the struggles the pitching staff had this past week.

Miguel Andujar has made strides in the right direction as he recovers from a small labrum tear but he’s still a ways away from a return and season-ending surgery is still on the table. Thank goodness the Yankees signed D.J. LeMahieu this offseason because if they hadn’t we’d probably be seeing Tyler Wade in the everyday lineup.

Aaron Hicks has yet to face live pitching since going down on March 1st with a back issue that was clearly a lot worse than he or the Yankees initially let on. Hicks is reportedly feeling a lot better but he still has to go through what will basically be another spring training once he’s cleared for game action so it could be another month before we see him back atop the Yankees lineup.