Yankees: Aaron Boone’s comments on Clarke Schmidt promotion are the final straw

Why won’t the Yankees bring up Clarke Schmidt during a weekend in which they are playing five games?

The New York Yankees will play five games from Friday-Sunday against the New York Mets featuring doubleheaders to both kick off and finish the weekend. That’s already an excessive slate, especially when you consider they’ll finish the season playing 35 games in 33 days.

But the worst part of it all is Gerrit Cole and Masahiro Tanaka won’t be able to pitch until Monday after this week’s series against the Atlanta Braves was crammed into a doubleheader on Wednesday because of a Tuesday night postponement.

So, with limited options already and James Paxton on the injured list, reinforcements have to be on the way, right? Clarke Schmidt finally has to make his MLB, right? According to manager Aaron Boone, he “wouldn’t expect” that to happen.

The problem is, the Yankees already do need to find pitching for both games on Sunday. Right now, Jordan Montgomery is expected to start the first game of Friday’s doubleheader and you have to assume JA Happ will pitch the second (or at least start on Saturday), so where does that leave the Bombers for the rest of the weekend?

You can’t bullpen all the games! Granted, Friday’s and Sunday’s games will only be seven innings in length, but if history tells us anything, Boone isn’t going to let the starters go the distance even if they have the opportunity to do so.

One other option is to have Jonathan Loaisiga start one of the seven-inning contests, but he’s proven to be at his best in higher-leverage one-inning outings. A spot start from him is doable, but it’s not helpful for his development as a pitcher. Maybe you just try and get through one game throwing Jonathan Holder, Nick Nelson and Luis Cessa.

Perhaps Boone is just keeping everyone on their toes, though. If Schmidt is throwing one-inning outings at the Alternate Site, does that mean the Yankees are preparing to call him up and use him as a reliever? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe f … yeah, you remember the quote from The Departed.

That’s how we feel right now. Five straight losses. No Cole or Tanaka this weekend. No concrete answers for how we’ll handle a pitching staff that’s been fumbling over itself for 10 days now.

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