July 31st, 2020: Schedule, Kahnle, Happ, Sanchez, Gardner, Torres, Ford, Chapman, Montgomery, Tanaka, Mailbag

The season is a week old but it doesn't feel like it. What a year this week has been. The Yankees are 4-1 (10.8-2.7) and they will play their first home game at Yankee Stadium later tonight, two days after they were originally scheduled to play their first game in the Bronx. "We’re drinking out of a fire hose right now on all this stuff," Brian Cashman said earlier this week. Let's get to today's thoughts.

1. Revised schedule. One week into the season and we've already reached the "make the schedule up as we go" portion of COVID-19 ball. Not sure what else MLB could do though. The Marlins and Phillies were shut down following last weekend's outbreak -- absolutely the right decision, of course -- and the Nationals, Orioles, and Yankees were caught up in it. "We had nothing to do with Miami and our schedule got wrecked," Gerrit Cole said earlier this week. Rather than leave those teams idle, MLB sent the Yankees to Baltimore for two games this week. If your schedule is going to be upended like the Yankees, Washington DC to Philadelphia to Baltimore is about as easy as travel gets in the East region other than the Bronx to Flushing. "We just took a nice little weekend trip to Philly to check out the Four Seasons. It kinda feels like backyard baseball. Just show up and see who our opponent is," Aaron Judge said earlier this week. The Yankees had to approve the schedule changes and the players want to play, so they gave the thumbs up and MLB made the switch. "We were given some options on what we possibly could do. Obviously we want to play ... We felt like we didn’t want to take 3-4 days off. There is an opportunity to go to Baltimore to play. That is what we wanted to do and that is what we decided," union representative Zack Britton said the other day. The Orioles games do not replace the originally scheduled Phillies games. The plan -- this is not final yet because things are still up in the air with the Marlins and Phillies -- calls for the Yankees to play the Phillies next week rather than go back to Baltimore. MLB wants to swap this week's originally scheduled Phillies series with next week's Orioles series. So it'll look like this:

The original Aug. 6th game with the Rays would be made up as part of a doubleheader at some point next weekend in Tampa, and I assume the third Orioles game would be made up as part of a doubleheader when they play again later this season (Sept. 4th to 6th in Baltimore and Sept. 10th to 13th in Yankee Stadium). The Phillies were supposed to play the Marlins next week and the Yankees were supposed to play the Orioles. Since the Yankees will play the Phillies instead, the Marlins can play the Orioles to make up the series they missed this week, assuming everyone is actually cleared to play, which is hardly a given. "I have no directive from anywhere right now and I’m sure the league probably doesn’t even know how next week is going to unfold. Our focus is here and now," Aaron Boone said last night. Long story short, the Yankees were a bystander in the Marlins outbreak and their schedule had to be revised so the league could lock the Marlins and Phillies down. And since MLB insists on playing as many of the 60 games as possible, it makes sense to schedule the makeup games as soon as possible, because who knows what things will look like in a few weeks? The Marlins outbreak is the most serious outbreak to date but it's not the only one. The Royals have quietly had eight players land on the COVID-19 list since the start of Summer Camp, including former Yankee Chance Adams, and tonight's Brewers vs. Cardinals game has been postponed because St. Louis has positive tests. The Blue Jays, Brewers, Cardinals, Marlins, Nationals, and Phillies are all postponed tonight due to COVID-19. That's 20% of the league. We're one week in. Jeff Passan says MLB is ramping up safety protocols, including requiring every team to travel with a compliance officer who ensures the rules are followed, and my hope is the Marlins outbreak is the result of one or two dummies doing something they weren't supposed to do rather than a result of the protocols being insufficient. I badly want baseball to work. That this all happened a week into the season doesn't exactly fill me with confidence though. "It’s been crazy but we always stayed ready. That’s been our mindset. We knew it wasn’t going to be a normal year. It’s nothing we’re not prepared for," Judge said.

2. Week 1 thoughts. Couple quick general thoughts after the first week, in no particular order. One, the Tommy Kahnle situation is ominous. Kahnle was not available last night -- that's why Jonathan Loaisiga pitched the eighth inning with a one-run lead -- and after the game Aaron Boone said "we'll have more on that tomorrow." That's never good. Aroldis Chapman is out with COVID-19 and losing Kahnle on top of that would really take a bite out of the bullpen. Zack Britton, Adam Ottavino, and Chad Green is still a really great 1-2-3 punch at the end of games, but those middle innings are a little dicier now. Loaisiga and I guess Jonathan Holder suddenly become more important. Fingers crossed it's a minor issue for Kahnle. Two, I regret to inform you J.A. Happ is still bad. Four runs in four innings against that Orioles lineup is both both very bad and annoyingly in line with what he did against Baltimore last season (17 runs in 22.1 innings). In a short 60-game season, I hope the Yankees have a real short leash with Happ. Another clunker or two and I say put him in the bullpen and call up Clarke Schmidt. No need to continue putzing around with the sunk cost when you might have a Ferrari in the garage. Three, Brett Gardner and Gary Sanchez are a combined 0-for-26 with 17 strikeouts through five games. Not great! There's always a few guys who come out of the gate slow, just like there's always a few guys who start ablaze. It's five games! Guys have five bad games all the time, but when those five games happen at the beginning of the season, they get magnified. In like a week those two will be red hot and Giancarlo Stanton will be swinging over every slider. That's baseball. Glad the Yankees have kept winning even with those two dragging the offense down. Four, I love that Boone went to Ottavino in the fifth inning last night. Happ stinks and the top of the lineup was coming up for the third time, and rain was on the way. Ottavino was the best option to get those three righty batters and protect the one-run lead so it became an official game, and that's exactly what happened. The game resuming after the delay was kinda unexpected given the radar, though that doesn't change anything. I loved the strategy. Boone didn't try to get Happ through the fifth inning to get him a win and he didn't go to a lesser reliever because the fifth inning isn't Ottavino's usual inning. Ottavino was the best reliever for the situation and that's who was brought in. And five, sounds like the Yankees avoided disaster with Gleyber Torres. He took a pitch to the right elbow last night -- Torres turned into the pitch as he checked his swing -- and later left the game. X-rays came back negative and Torres said the swelling quickly subsided, and he might be able to play tonight. If he misses any time, a) one of my bold predictions is toast, and b) I'd love to see the Yankees put Gio Urshela at shortstop and Miguel Andujar at third base in the interim. I think Urshela could handle short on a temporary basis and five plate appearances through five games ain't enough for Andujar. He needs to play more and this is an opportunity to get him in the lineup, albeit via some positional musical chairs.

3. Ford as an opener. The season is five games old and we've kinda sorta seen how the Yankees will use their (temporary) seven-man bench. Miguel Andujar will platoon with Brett Gardner in left field. Tyler Wade is the late inning defensive replacement at second base (DJ LeMahieu slides over to first). Mike Ford will pinch-hit and get the occasional spot start against righties. Thairo Estrada, Kyle Higashioka, and Mike Tauchman will play infrequently and Chris Iannetta will never play, apparently. The Yankees have not suffered any position player injuries (knock on wood) and the starting lineup is pretty locked in, so yeah, the bench guys don't play much. One way to use the bench a little more is employing Ford as an offensive "opener." On the days LeMahieu sits, which might be somewhat frequent early in the season after he missed most of Summer Camp, the Yankees could put Ford in the starting lineup as the left fielder and bat him leadoff. That way he gets an at-bat in the top of the first and maybe socks a dinger or simply reaches base, at which point Gardner enters as the pinch-runner and takes over in left field. If Ford doesn't reach base, so be it. Gardner then comes in to play defense. This only works on the road because you can't play Ford in left field in the top of the first, though the Yankees are tentatively scheduled to play seven of their next 10 games on the road, so that's fine. The Yankees would lose Ford as a pinch-hitting option late in the game, but they would still have Andujar and LeMahieu on the bench, and it's not like there are many guys in the lineup who need to be removed for a pinch-hitter. Rather than save Ford for a potential high-leverage at-bat that may never come, the Yankees could get him a guaranteed at-bat to begin the game. Same basic idea as using Chad Green as an opener. You can ensure he faces the top of the lineup now or hope the stars align and he faces them later. It seems like LeMahieu won't sit too often now, but, when he does, using Ford as an offensive opener is not the worst idea in the world. The bench is deep but underutilized and this is a way to give him a chance to contribute. "There’s nowhere I’d rather be, I can tell you that. Obviously (I'd like) a situation where the playing time might be a little bit better here and there, but this is where I want to be. This is who I grew up loving, and to be able to walk into that clubhouse with the caliber of players we have and learn from them," Ford said earlier this week.

4. Pitcher injuries piling up. The rash of pitching injuries I think we were all worried about following the shutdown has arrived. The Yankees have avoided it thus far (Tommy Kahnle situation pending) but other teams have not. Here's a complete list of pitchers who've been placed on the injured list with non-COVID-19 injuries since Opening Day:

• Astros: Joe Biagini (shoulder), Justin Verlander (forearm)
• Blue Jays: Chase Anderson (oblique)
• Cubs: Brad Wieck (hamstring)
• Dodgers: Alex Wood (shoulder)
• Pirates: Kyle Crick (shoulder), Clay Holmes (forearm)
• Rangers: Corey Kluber (shoulder), Jose Leclerc (shoulder)
• Reds: Matt Bowman (elbow), Robert Stephenson (back)
• Rockies: Scott Oberg (back)
• Royals: Roster Griffin (forearm), Mike Montgomery (lat)
• Tigers: Dario Agrazal (forearm)
• Twins: Jake Odorizzi (intercostal)
• White Sox: Jimmy Lambert (forearm), Reynaldo Lopez (shoulder)

I didn't include Ken Giles (forearm) and Miles Mikolas (forearm) because their injuries date back a bit. Giles had elbow trouble last year and Mikolas was having elbow problems in Spring Training. Still, that's 18 pitchers landing on the injured list since Opening Day, most with arm injuries. For comparison's sake, I count only four -- four! -- pitchers who landed on the injured list with a new injury in the first week last season. I count seven in the first week of 2018. "It's all around baseball. It's everywhere. I'm hoping we learned a  lesson by this. It couldn't be helped because of the coronavirus, but I'm just hoping we don't see any more injuries around the league, especially on our team," Astros manager Dusty Baker, whose team has been particularly hard hit (Chris Devenski and Ryan Pressly are day-to-day with elbow trouble as well), said during a conference call earlier this week. (There was a game earlier this week in which the Astros had seven relievers available and the seven combined for 17 days of service time). It's impossible to know whether any of these injuries are a direct result of the weird Spring Training, shutdown, Summer Camp sequence of events. Pitchers get hurt, it's what they do, but it's worrisome so many pitchers are going down with arm injuries -- potentially career-altering arm injuries -- a week into the new season. There was no playbook for the shutdown. Pitching coaches couldn't go to their mentor for advice because nothing like this has ever happened before. Hopefully this first rash of injuries is the only rash of injuries. Eighteen pitchers landing on the injured list each week would be disastrous short and long-term.

5. Possible rule changes. The schedule is not the only thing MLB and the MLBPA are open to changing on the fly to navigate the pandemic. The two sides have either discussed or agreed to a few rule changes in recent days. Here are the details.

Seven-inning doubleheaders

According to Jeff Passan, MLB and the MLBPA have agreed to play two seven-inning games during doubleheaders starting tomorrow. The rule is for this season and this season only. Both sides expect a bunch of doubleheaders as the schedule gets rearranged around COVID-19 outbreaks (man, what a sentence). Based on what we know about COVID-19, transmission on the field during a game is unlikely but not impossible, though there are all the people behind the scenes who make baseball happen that will now spend less time inside at the ballpark during a pandemic. The MLBPA is mostly concerned about health, and cutting four innings off a doubleheader equals less wear and tear. Minor league doubleheaders have featured two seven-inning games basically forever, but it's never been done in MLB. In this bastard season, I'm totally fine with it. I don't love it but I'll live. Seven-inning games with expanded rosters will equal an awful lot of bullpen games (groan), and because games will be shorter, the chances of an upset increase. So be it.

MLBPA wants to extend 30-man roster period

The 30-man roster is scheduled to become a 28-man roster next Thursday and the 28-man roster will become a 26-man roster two weeks after that. Britt Ghiroli reports the MLBPA will ask MLB to extend the 30-man roster period beyond next Thursday. Their argument is it will help keep players healthy (see: all the pitching injuries) and also help clubs manage any COVID-19 issues that arise. Given what we've seen over the last week, expecting teams to get by with a normal 26-man roster at any point this season seems insane, taxi squad or no taxi squad. The Marlins lost three players to positive tests prior to Sunday's game and the Nationals lost Juan Soto to a positive test on Opening Day. Stuff like that is going to happen all year and expanded rosters will ensure teams have enough players to, you know, play. I have no idea whether MLB will go for this -- the owners don't want to pay those extra players -- but it really seems like something that should happen. Go with a 30-man roster all year. It's only four extra roster spots but they go a long way.  

New sign-stealing punishment

MLB and the MLBPA have reached an agreement allowing commissioner Rob Manfred to suspend players who steal signs electronically without pay or service time, according to Evan Drellich (subs. req'd). The union can appeal any suspension, of course, but there's no precedent and Manfred will be starting from scratch. This is important because there was no mechanism in place to suspend 2017 Astros or 2018 Red Sox players. Manfred could have suspended them, but because MLB and the MLBPA never agreed on how to handle those matters, they may have been overturned on appeal. The video room will be locked down and monitored going forward, and video feeds available to players will have limited angles. This is all well and good, but as long as there are sports, people will cheat. Spitballs, performance-enhancing drugs, electronic sign-stealing, on and on we could go. I'm glad MLB is (finally) cracking down on sign-stealing, but the next cheating crisis is never too far away.

6. Rapid fire thoughts. An Aroldis Chapman non-update: "He is doing well," Brian Cashman said earlier this week. That's about all he can say given the privacy guidelines. Based on his Instagram, Chapman has spent his quarantine period lifting weights 24/7, so he must be feeling pretty good. He still has to clear the protocol and then get back into game shape -- Chapman did not appear in a game during Summer Camp -- so you gotta figure he's at least two weeks away, probably longer ... Jordan Montgomery will make his season debut tonight and Masahiro Tanaka will come off the injured list to make his season debut tomorrow, so the Yankees have two roster moves coming. Tommy Kahnle going on the injured list would clear a spot for Montgomery tonight, otherwise demoting Brooks Kriske and Nick Nelson is easy enough. They were called up as extra arms last weekend, when James Paxton's short start taxed the bullpen, and the most recent call up is usually first in line for a demotion. Kriske threw the ninth inning in Wednesday's blowout win and I'm pretty sure Nelson has not even warmed up in his week as a big leaguer. One of those two figures to be the roster move for Tanaka tomorrow and which one could very well come down to whether one of them pitches tonight ... Baseball America (subs. req'd) released their midseason top 30 Yankees prospects list earlier this week. There are two differences between this list and their preseason top 30 list. One, this one includes the three 2020 draftees: Austin Wells (No. 6 between Oswald Peraza and Anthony Volpe), Beck Way (No. 16 between Estevan Florial and T.J. Sikkema), and Trevor Hauver (No. 28 between Josh Smith and Raimfer Salinas). And two, Nelson jumped over Maikol Escotto and stayed on the list at No. 30. The midseason top 30 list mostly got me thinking about prospect rankings next year, after the lost minor league season. How do we evaluate players and rearrange the rankings? The alternate site is off-limits to scouts, so no one is getting eyes on these players, and the vast majority of players are stuck at home. Prospect ranking is an inexact science but the people who do it for a living are much, much better at it now than they were years ago. The lost season may lead to a big disconnect between perception and reality. Guys may have made big improvements (or regressed significant) this year and we won't know it until well into 2021. We won't have to start from scratch and learn about this players all over again, but it'll be close. When it comes to prospects, a lot can change in one year. A lot.

Mailbag Questions of the Week

Renato asks: Hey Mike, I was wondering if you could have a look at Cole's stuff from the first couple of games. It seems as though his spin rate is a bit down and he's not getting swinging strikes on his fastball (at least not to the same level as before). What do you think? 

Gerrit Cole's fastball whiffs-per-swing rate is down through two starts. It's at 22.0% right now after 37.6% last year and 29.7% the year before. The MLB average on four-seamers is 21.8% dating back to last Opening Day. That 37.6% is extraordinary for a starter and Cole may never do it again. Still, you'd expect him to be closer to 30% than league average.

The other characteristics of Cole's fastball are in line with last season. Average velocity is good (96.5 mph vs. 97.1 mph), average spin rate is good (2,515 rpm vs. 2,530 rpm), and spin efficiency is good (98.4% vs. 97.1%). Cole's maximum velocity is down (98.6 mph vs. 101.4 mph), though he wasn't throwing his hardest until July last year, after he had 100+ innings under his belt. He hit 100 mph in only two of his first eight starts last season.

For now, I see Cole's missing fastball whiffs as an annoying thing more than a cause for concern. It's been two starts and this is a weird year. Cole hasn't been razor sharp but the important fastball characteristics are there. This isn't James Paxton, who's missing 4 mph and throwing from a different arm slot. I'm going to keep an eye on this but I'm a long way from panic so soon after Summer Camp.

John asks: I was looking at career WAR leaders and noticed something incredible. If you look at the active WAR leaderboard, there are two players in the top 10 who aren't active anymore in Kinsler and Pedroia. Removing them slides Brett Gardner into the top 10 of active MLB players for WAR. That is just incredible to me and I don't think many people (especially outside of NYY fandom) get how good he has been. What's his legacy when he retires? What are the odds 11 gets a spot in monument park with a plaque or even retired number? How much more respect does he deserve around the league and fans?

Gardner is definitely underrated among non-Yankees fans. I have no doubt about that. His WAR is surprising because so much of his game revolves around things that are not always easy to see. He's an elite baserunner even though everyone complains when he doesn't steal on the first pitch. He's so good and reliable defensively that it's easy to take his glove for granted. He wears pitchers down and is good for a double-digit walk rate year in and year out. Last year's 28 homers aside, Gardner's been more of a 15-20 homer and 15-20 steal guy the last half-decade or so, and that doesn't really jump off the page.

I don't think No. 11 will be retired nor do I think it should be. Gardner's been a very good and very productive Yankee who helped win (at least) one World Series, but he was never the best player on the team, nor the second or third best for that matter (I suppose he was the second best player on the 2013 team, but we don't like to talk about that year). As good as he's been, Gardner's slotted in as more of a top complementary player than a centerpiece. Giving him a plaque but not retiring No. 11 seems reasonable. In recent years the Yankees dedicated plaques for Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Willie Randolph, and the late Mel Stottlemyre without retiring their numbers. Gardner fits in nicely with that group.

Jonathan asks: If the Marlins outbreak spreads and the season is cut down, what happens to the draft order? I assume there is no precedent for this but what do you think will happen? Could it be some type of lottery maybe? 

The March agreement includes language about modifying the draft order in the event of a short season. It actually applies right now, even if the 60-game season is completed:

In the event that each Club plays less than 81 regular season games in 2020, the Office of the Commissioner shall have the right, after conferring in good faith with the MLBPA, to modify the Draft order.

The easiest solution is using combined 2019-20 records to set the draft order. I'd be okay with a lottery too. MLB could put the 14 non-postseason teams in the lottery, then slot the other 16 teams behind them in the order in which they're eliminated from the postseason. 

Properly weighting the lottery is the tricky part. If the draft order is set after the season, you won't have to discourage tanking because the standings are already final, but there is a chance the lottery would become permanent. The bet here is MLB uses combined 2019-20 records to set the 2021 draft order if this season is completed. If not, all bets are off.

(Send your requests for Tuesday's random Yankee series and questions for Friday's mailbag to RABmailbag at gmail dot com.)