Humpty Dumpty

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Baseball is insane.

I really mean that.

This generation of new wave genius front office executives and their minions are the definition of insanity – for it’s been said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The stupefying number of injuries this spring training, especially to pitchers, is proof positive. Baseball is doing the same thing over and over again and suffering the consequences.

Gerrit Cole’s shredded right elbow is the latest evidence of the new way not working.

The Yankees and Cole are awaiting the formality of a second opinion, but as Jim Bowden reported Sunday night, Tommy John surgery has been recommended for Cole so the Yankees’ season is officially turned upside down.

“I’m prepared for the worst, but we’ll see how it works out.’’ Brian Cashman told reporters earlier in the day.

Cashman might want to prepare to trade for another starter. So much for Max Fried being the No. 2 starter; he is now the ace and Marcus Stroman is the No. 3 starter at this point. What a mess.

Good old Humpty had a great fall off the wall, but you should have seen his velo and spin rate and sweeper on the way down …

It’s not working out too well Cash, and the cavalcade of significant injuries the Yankees have already been hit with this spring. In addition to the $324 million man Cole going down, Giancarlo Stanton ($325 million) is suffering from double elbow tendinitis and appears headed to double surgery. Stanton can’t run, can’t play the field and now has two bad elbows. I’ve been covering baseball and other pro sports since 1977 and I have never heard of anyone having double elbow tendinitis. Then there is the reigning Rookie of the Year, right-hander Luis Gil, who is out for months with a high-grade lat strain. The lat is a stabilizer. Not good. Not to mention DJ LeMahieu’s calf strain that he suffered in his spring debut. Even feel-good story reliever Tyler Matzek, who looked like he was going to be a valuable bullpen piece, is out after he suffered an oblique strain.

It is a Yankee House of Cards collapsing under the physical weight of playing baseball. All these injuries are not the result of running into a wall or running into a teammate or being hit by a pitch, they all occurred doing “baseball activities.’’

Who knew that baseball would be so hazardous to the health of baseball players – but that is the Humpty Dumpty baseball world the analytical based front offices have created in this modern age.

And we all know what happened to HD.

Good old Humpty had a great fall off the wall, but you should have seen his velo and spin rate and sweeper on the way down … and now the Nerds can’t put him back together again.

One longtime major league pitching coach told BallNine, “High lat strains, oblique injuries, flexor tendon sprains, quad pulls – and we have 150 years to look back on and figure things out –  and we come up with new injuries every day! So much for all the new training techniques.’’

Just across town from the Yankees, or in the case of spring training, just across the state from Tampa to Port St. Lucie, the Mets are dealing with significant injuries as well with starting pitchers Frankie Montas (shoulder) and Sean Manaea (oblique) down and out – and on Sunday the Mets announced young catcher Francisco Alvarez will miss at least two months due to a fractured hamate bone in his left hand, his catching hand, an injury that popped up (yes, that is a launch angle reference) while taking live batting practice on Saturday, otherwise known as a batter facing a pitcher. You know, more baseball. Last year Alvarez tore a tendon in his left thumb running the bases. He slipped.

Part of being a successful baseball player is posting.

The overall baseball injury list is pretty much endless, just scroll through MLB Trade Rumors on X and you will see that Angels infielder Luis Rengifo is out for opening day because of a hamstring injury; Dodgers right-hander Michael Grove just underwent season-ending shoulder surgery; Orioles right-hander Grayson Rodriguez is shut down with elbow inflammation while teammate Andrew Kittredge underwent a procedure on his knee; Brewers left-hander Thomas Pantone was shut down due to a torn flexor tendon; Twins right-hander Erasmo Ramirez has tears in his teres minor and lat muscles; the Red Sox’ Brayan Bello will start the season on the injured list with shoulder soreness; Mr. Baseball Shohei Ohtani is still not going to pitch for a while and the list goes on and on and on – I only went back 23 hours on X to see all that.

The oblique and lat injuries are piling up like cord wood. Same with Tommy John surgeries. In addition, Seattle right-hander George Kirby was just shut down with shoulder inflammation.

So to be clear, the Yankees are not the only team falling apart at the (baseball) seams, it’s an epidemic throughout the game and it is only getting worse. The geniuses in the front offices (at least I always read they are geniuses) can’t fix it even though they spew their empty promises that their teams will be the gold standard when it comes to keeping their players healthy.

Remember all the hoopla around the Yankees and Brian Cashman’s hiring of “performance coach” Eric Cressey to oversee their training and strength/conditioning departments after the 2019 season when the Yankees set a major league record with 30 players on the injured list? Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake served as pitching coordinator for Cressey Sports Performance.

The front offices talk a good game. The owners follow along like lemmings hitting up the ATM machine before going off the cliff.

I’ve made the point often here, but it is worth making again. The new era geniuses got rid of so many experienced coaches along the way and have essentially built a new world baseball order focused on velocity, spin and metrics and not baseball.

The coaches who learned under previous generations of experts were put out to pasture creating a path for the newbies to take over the care and building of building pitching staffs and placing those pitchers on the wall, a la Humpty Dumpty.

Pitching to contact, not throwing 100 percent on every pitch, changing speeds to change the batter’s timing, a lot of the old ways have been lost. The violent recoil of the new velocity-based release points are creating trouble in different ways. There also is too much off-season throwing on all levels.

Someone made a good point to me the other day when they mentioned, “Hey why doesn’t baseball rely on the same methods that worked for some of the game’s greatest pitchers, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, different generations of aces? They all managed to pretty much stay healthy?”

Good point. Add my friend Hall of Famer Jim Kaat to that list.

Suddenly, the coaching knowledge that kept players healthy was not important even though the lessons of legendary pitching coach Johnny Sain are timeless – and the same goes for the likes of Leo Mazzone and pitching coaches like that.

I get it, I’m an old man yelling at clouds, but these old coaches of the past helped create lightning and thunder from the clouds – but now their thoughts do not matter anymore. They are kept away from the game and certainly from the bullpens.

The way I see it, the baby and the bath water were thrown out together and here we are in Injury Hell. Teams like the Dodgers have essentially built two starting rotations because they have the money to do it, and they also have lived through losing a rotation. Young, successful pitchers are the greatest commodity in the game. Keeping them healthy should be Job No. 1.

Experienced coaches knew what they were doing and I really got to thinking about their value – and bear with me here – when I was reading a story from Yankee Magazine by Lee McColgan who wrote a book called A House Restored about the tragedies and triumphs of saving a 1702 New England Colonial. McColgan wrote about the value and strength of wood he got from antique window frames that “had come from old growth forests,’’ he noted. “Tightly clustered together the trees had grown slowly, competing for water, nutrients and sunlight. That struggle made the wood dense, less prone to rot than trees that shoot up quickly from clear-cut ground, as in modern industrial forestry.’’

That’s how I look at the veteran coaches, scouts and managers who have been cast aside by the new wave, those experienced baseball men are old growth baseball, if you will, now replaced by metric readers that shoot up quickly from industrial warehouse baseball complexes. Old growth ways taught young pitchers how to compete.

Baseball should utilize and honor it’s “old growth’’ knowledge and “old growth’’ ways of producing pitchers and keeping position players heathy.

The first piece of general advice I would offer is that all players should sprint more than they do now. That comes from performance coaches I trust like New Jersey based Sal Marinello, who has 35 years experience.

Stanton can’t run a lick and gets double elbow tendinitis from what he calls “Bat Adjustments’’; something is really wrong with the game.

And here we are, the spring of 2025 and baseball is suffering from an injury crisis. Years ago while covering the game, I don’t remember hearing about oblique and lat injuries like today. And Tommy John surgery was not nearly as prevalent as it is today. I don’t blame the pitchers for searching for velo, spin and sweepers, that is how they get paid and if Gerrit Cole never pitches another game in his life, he’s got his $324 million to fall back on – but I’m certain Cole will do what he has to do to come back just as Jacob deGrom, two Tommy John surgeries later, is still trying to come back to the Rangers after the Rangers signed deGrom to that five-year $185 million contract before the 2023 season.

Now I consider the Rangers one of the better baseball organizations out there, but since signing that deal the Rangers have gotten exactly nine starts and two wins from deGrom. There are three years to go on the deal, deGrom has to pick it up, if he can stay healthy.

Walker Buehler battled back from two Tommy John surgeries and got the final three outs for the Dodgers last year in the World Series. He is now being counted heavily on by the Red Sox after signing as a free agent for one year at $21 million with incentives.

Yankee fans are distraught over injures and the team still has a lot of spring training ahead. What baseball leadership is doing is not working, it is not sustainable and they need to be held accountable.

When is an owner going to stand up and say, what the heck are we doing?

Again and again, Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put Humpty together again.