3 difficult roster decisions Yankees must address ASAP

Time for a phantom IL stint?

There's no way to remove Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu or Giancarlo Stanton from the roster entirely, but in a month where the Yankees have sunk to the bottom of the league offensively, the perpetrators haven't been the random patchwork fill-ins. Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun and Jake Bauers have been more than competent; it's the team's supposed stars who are dragging the entire roster down.

It's possible there's an explanation for all three issues. Stanton came back quicker than expected for a marquee road series at Dodger Stadium. Was he ready? Or was somebody who wanted star power in LA pulling the strings? Rizzo got bonked on the head by Fernando Tatis Jr. and immediately stopped hitting. It's not hard to draw a line between cause and effect. LeMahieu? No one wants to admit it, but his exit velocities are declining as the season progresses (while his strikeouts rise). His toe issue last season may be contributing to his demise, but it might also just be the aging curve.

Rizzo and LeMahieu both seem primed to spend some time on the injured list, for issues that are varying degrees of ghostly (again, Rizzo's head/neck got clobbered and LeMahieu is clearly laboring). The Yankees don't want to lose any of their current subs. Theoretically, losing another veteran bat while Judge is down would be a massive issue but, again, the veteran bats are the anchor dragging this lineup down, at the moment. Losing one or two couldn't possibly make the league-worst Yankees any worse. It's probably time to make a move.