Joe Girardi caught his former team at the right time in Tuesday night’s Bronx homecoming. With six players still on the shelf due to COVID-19, and even the replacements getting banged up, the Yankees have been in disarray at the most pivotal point of their season.
When the bottom half of the Yankees’ lineup consists of Rob Brantly, Greg Allen, Tyler Wade and the newly-recalled Estevan Florial — DJ LeMahieu was a very late scratch because of stomach issues (he tested negative) — this group wasn’t quite the intimidating crew Girardi had been used to seeing. Or even managing a few years back, during his own Bronx tenure.
“It’s a tough break with COVID and the injuries that they’ve had,” Girardi said before the game, speaking from the top step of the visitors dugout. “But I also look at they put up nine runs Sunday night, too. It’s a different type of roster. There’s more speed to it, and they’ll probably do a little bit more differently. But it’s an offense that’s capable of scoring a lot of runs and I don’t take that for granted.”
Girardi also can sympathize with what Aaron Boone is going through — and has reason to fear more uncertainty ahead, based on his own team’s reluctance to get vaccinated. The Phillies had to play without Alec Bohm, who remained on the COVID-19 list after being pulled from a July 10 game at Fenway Park for testing positive, and Tuesday was the first start for ace Aaron Nola since he had been placed in quarantine for contact tracing from that same weekend series against the Red Sox.
Nola has been outspoken about resisting the vaccine, calling it a “personal decision,” and the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday that roughly half of the Phillies’ 26-man roster also had declined the shot. What that means going forward is anyone’s guess. But with the hyper-contagious Delta variant spreading to an alarming degree nationwide, the risk of infection — especially among the unvaccinated — seems to be increasing exponentially.
Girardi earned a reputation for being sort of a control freak in pinstripes, but his hands are pretty much tied in this case. Despite Rob Manfred’s obvious preference to mandate league-wide vaccinations, the Players Association won’t sign off on such a measure, and that leaves this season’s completion far from guaranteed.
With the trade deadline only 10 days away, some division races could be less about the players these teams add than the ones they potentially lose to the covid-related IL. While that’s been true since baseball returned last summer as the pandemic raged, it would be a mistake to think the sport is beyond such a threat, and Girardi realizes that as much as anyone.
The resurgent Phillies had won 10 of 14 heading into Tuesdays’ series opener — tying the White Sox for the most wins this month — to close within 2 1/2 games of the first-place Mets in the NL East. But the Phillies remain one of only seven teams that haven’t reached the 85% vaccination threshold, and that makes Girardi uneasy as he attempts to stay in contention through the pandemic.
“It’s really strange,” Girardi said. “Just when you think you can let your guard down, it pops up. Alec Bohm gets pulled from the game Saturday, and now all of a sudden we’re scrambling, because our Sunday starter [Nola] is a close contact and we lose two relievers and it’s like, OK, how are we getting through the game on Sunday?”
When the first half concluded that July 11 in Boston, Girardi felt he could exhale — “Because I knew I didn’t have to worry about Covid for three or four days,” he said — but the All-Star break provided only temporary relief.
“It was nice,” Girardi added, “but just when you think you’re getting your team on a roll, it seems like something pops up and you have to deal with it.”
The Yankees have been plagued by a number of positives despite being among the 85 percenters, with a few of the infections happening to vaccinated personnel — or “breakthrough cases” as they are known.
Fortunately, the majority have not caused severe illness, but Boone indicated Tuesday that Aaron Judge, Gio Urshela and Kyle Higashioka were not close to returning.
Revenge motives aside, Girardi’s primary focus is on the other New York team, and the Mets are right with the Phillies, below the 85% mark. The Mets’ recent run of bad luck has been more of the conventional sort, with Jacob deGrom (forearm tightness) and Francisco Lindor (oblique strain) on the shelf for non-virus ailments. But Girardi sees the potential for plenty of issues ahead as teams head into the second half.
“We’re not sure how pitching is going to handle a full season after only having 60 games,” Girardi said. “You’re trying to be careful, but you’re also trying to win games, so there’s some things you have to overcome this year that you don’t necessarily have to do in regular years. But you just do the best you can.”
From that perspective, Girardi was glad not to be wearing pinstripes Tuesday night.
