Yankees: DJ LeMahieu nightmare scenario should keep fans up at night

The Yankees need DJ LeMahieu back, but … will they get him back?

Since everything that can go wrong has gone wrong for the Yankees in 2020, we figured we’d have to be the ones to give life to the concern that’s been gnawing at us for weeks: Don’t take DJ LeMahieu’s return for granted.

Since a very early inflection point in the 2019 season, LeMahieu has been not only a trusted part of this strong offense, but the linchpin that holds the entire attack together, both in practice and symbolically.

LeMahieu’s poise at the plate is so drastically different from the mashers behind him, and so stylistically important in setting up their excellence, that without him, the journey is much easier for any opponent. This clearly manifests itself beyond the box score, too. Although there’s no scientific proof of mojo (yet!), the Yanks were treading water without Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton in 2020 until LeMahieu went down, too; a catastrophic sequence of injuries bounded down the rest of the roster in the wake of that freak accident, and the Yanks’ record is 7-14 since that day.

We know the Yankees need him back. We think the Yankees know it, too. But with every day that goes by without a peep on the extension front, the worry increases that the team somehow views him as an expendable hitting machine, and could be on the verge of another careless Didi Gregorius decision.

Gregorius, treated as faceless this offseason instead of as the spark behind the 2017 title run, was easily discarded, and presumably wasn’t in the Yankees’ plans whatsoever the second October ended. Though it was theoretically difficult to find space for him in the infield, even on a one-year deal, that proposition became much easier when the season began. LeMahieu and Gleyber Torres both went down, and the idea of Gregorius began looking like a heart-eyes emoji compared to Tyler Wade and Jordy Mercer.

Plus, there’s Didi the man in this equation, too. He was a person who appeared to contribute to the general vibes in the locker room quite a bit, whether they be overtly positive or nose-to-the-grindstone necessary. LeMahieu certainly does that, too, leading with stone-faced silence. He’s one of the few Yankees we can trust.

If he’s removed from the equation, any semblance of steadiness is all but gone in the Bronx, during a period that should not be a full transition by any means.

It seems like LeMahieu likes to be a Yankee, and it certainly seems like he means a whole bunch to the franchise. But the clock continues to tick, and we haven’t seen anything declarative from the front office whatsoever about his status moving forward.

It could be typical midseason silence, or it could be the eerie, knowing kind that preceded Didi’s departure, where everyone involved was too scared to admit they were about to make an error in judgment.

Perhaps LeMahieu (gasps) just doesn’t want to stay? After all the turmoil of 2020, he could yearn for greener pastures. As a season that should’ve ended on top meanders towards the trash can to let a little spittle go, we can’t help but envision this sequence of nightmares.

And if no one’s going to comment on the situation, all we have left are negative thoughts, and the feeling that we’ve seen this movie before.

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