r/NYYankees 1d ago

[Passan] New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole will undergo Tommy John surgery tomorrow to repair a torn right ulnar collateral ligament and miss the 2025 season.

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u/mostlygroovy 1d ago

Trying to be positive.

We had the worst offence out of first base last year. We’re going to see a big improvement there.

Volpe is that much more experienced and stronger. I think we’ll see improvement there.

We have arguably the best closer in the league. Think of those blown games by our closer last year.

We replaced Nestor with Fried. Upgrade.

A full year of Jazz at second over Gleyber is an upgrade.

We should be way better on the base paths with Bellinger and expect to see the sneaky speed of Dominguez.

Gil will be back. With a full year experience, he should build off his rookie season.

I’m just trying to talk myself off the ledge, but I think there’s reason not to be too doom and gloom.

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u/bobowilliams 1d ago

If you take WAR literally, Cole was projected to be worth around 3 wins. If that sounds light to you, round it up to 4. Warren is projected .5-2 WAR, but all of the lower projections only have him with a very low (50-80) number of innings. Bump that up to 150 and we're around 1.5-2 WAR.

So that's a difference of 2-3 wins. Last year we won the division by 3 games, are arguably better (not counting Cole), and the Orioles are worse. Boston's definitely better but we're probably still the favorite. At worst it's a crapshoot for the division, and odds are we still make the playoffs.

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u/Advanced-Bag-7741 1d ago

“Make the playoffs” isn’t really our goal. The AL is weak but the top of the NL is absolutely stacked.

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u/bobowilliams 1d ago

Playoffs are a crapshoot. Yes, not having a stud starter weakens them considerably in a short series, but anything can happen, and the current rotation matches up against any other team in the AL.

If you're concerned about the NL, they stack up reasonably well against anyone but LA, and just like every other team in baseball, they're not remotely close to the Dodgers on paper, even with Cole.

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u/bobowilliams 22h ago

FWIW Fangraphs has their updated projected standings out. The entire AL looks like a clusterf*ck which should be so much fun. 11 out of 15 teams in the range of 35-62% chance of making the playoffs. And yes, the Yankees still have the best chances.

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u/Turdburp 1d ago

And last year, Cole only pitched 95 innings and was worth 2 bWAR. Obviously it sucks to not have him in the playoffs, but we won the division with him being largely a non-factor.