Yankees: Domingo German Says He’s Leaving the Team on His Instagram Story

According to his Instagram story, Yankees pitcher Domingo German is retiring from baseball.

It’s almost Saturday, which means New York Yankees fans are due for their weekly dosage of bad news.

Two Saturdays ago, Masahiro Tanaka was hit in the head with a line drive and taken to the hospital. Though he’s now OK, he’ll miss the start of the 2020 season. Last Saturday, Aroldis Chapman tested positive for COVID-19 and is now away from the team “indefinitely.” Now? Another pitcher is out, but it’s for completely different reasons.

Yankees starter Domingo German, who is currently serving a suspension for violating the MLB’s domestic violence policy, says he has “left baseball,” according to his Instagram story.

Why’s this weird? He’s 27 years old and coming off a career year in his first full campaign as a starter. He went 18-4 with a 4.01 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in 27 games (24 starts), striking out 153 batters over 143 innings.

German was set to miss the entire truncated 60-game season because of the suspension, which has been ongoing since last season (he served 18 games of the 81-game punishment), but the league OK’ed his activation for the postseason, shortening it to 78.

Before officially announcing his retirement (?), German posted a cryptic message on Instagram, which translates to this:

Entirely not sure what the means, but it seems he’s feeling some sort of estrangement with the organization. Remember he tricked us all with that weird picture on Instagram, only for us to later find out it was his brother? Something seems to be going on that hasn’t been disclosed to the public … perhaps that goes without saying.

So now? The Bronx Bombers are down another starter, though this won’t hurt as much since German wouldn’t have been ready to go until the postseason. All that matters for the pitching staff is that Tanaka takes his time to recover before returning to full game speed and that Jordan Montgomery and Clarke Schmidt (or someone else) can step up for the back end of the rotation.

Nonetheless, we wish German the best.