Sunday morning was a tough one for the New York Yankees. The schedule required them to play the rubber game of their three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles at 11:35 in the morning, a time slot designed for streaming on the Roku Channel.
But even before that early first pitch, the slumping Yankees who, despite have won two of their last three prior to Sunday have still dropped seven of their previous nine, were forced to make a troubling announcement about one of their starting pitchers.
Yankees Go Down Yet Another Pitcher
Lefthander Ryan Yarbrough has been a pleasant surprise for the Yankees this season. The 33-year-old, eight-year veteran was picked up by New York toward the end of Spring Training and signed to a relatively economical one-year, $2 million contract.
In eight starts, Yarbrough has put together a 3-1 record and quite respectable 3.83 in 30 innings pitched. He has clearly felt more comfortable in the starter’s role than coming out of the bullpen, where he has a shakier 4.11 ERA in 15 1/3 innings over eight appearances.
Overall, however, Yarbrough has been a stabilizing factor on an injury-riddled pitching staff that has been without 2023 Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole all year with Tommy John surgery, as well as last season’s Rookie of the Year Luis Gil who is anticipated to return in July, but has yet to make an appearance due to a severe lat muscle strain suffered in the preseason.
Those two starters have been just the most prominent names on a lengthy list of injured hurlers. Now, on Sunday morning, the Yankees announced that Yarbrough has joined the walking wounded in the Bronx.
The 2014 Seattle Mariners fourth-round draft pick was placed on the 15-day injured list with what the team characterized as a right oblique muscle strain. Career minor-leaguer Allan Winans got the call-up to take Yarbrough’s spot in the rotation and is expected to get the start Monday when the Yankees travel to Cincinnati to face the Reds.
The start will be only the ninth in the big leagues for Winans in his eight-year professional career. In his previous eight, all for the Atlanta Braves in 2022 and 2023, Winans compiled a 1-4 record and 7.29 ERA.
Slumping Bombers Must Face Top MLB Mound Prospect
The Yankees’ unfortunate announcement comes two days before the slumping American League East leaders are set to face one of baseball’s highest-ranking pitching prospects, Cincinnati’s Chase Burns, who is scheduled to make his MLB debut just under a year since the Reds made him their first-round draft pick, No. 2 overall, out of Wake Forest.
Ranked as the No. 11 prospect in the game by MLB Pipeline, and the third-ranked pitcher behind only Bubba Chandler of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Philadelphia Phillies’ Andrew Painter. But as of Tuesday, Burns will become the first to get his promotion to a Major League roster.
“Trying to figure out when the time is right is always the toughest part. You never know for sure when a guy’s ready,” Reds general manager Brad Meador said of the decision to give Burns his big league debut against the Yankees, as quoted by ESPN.com. “But he’s obviously pitched as well as you could possibly hope in the first year of professional baseball, and he seems to be getting stronger.”
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