The New York Yankees, since the end of the season, have been addressing issues that affected the club last season, and that includes the number of injuries that plagued the clubs last year. The number of injuries and days missed from the field were unprecedented last year. Thirty players were injured during the season with 39 separate incidences. As the season progressed and the injuries mounted, fans began to wonder what was wrong with the training staff that is responsible for strength and conditioning. As pressure mounted on General Manager Brian Cashman to answer these questions, he said they always continue to address any gaps, mistakes, or deficiencies in any of our processes.
It appears that they have addressed the situation, first by hiring a new training and conditioning coach. They will employ Eric Cressey to oversee their training and conditioning. This according to a report from The Athletic. Last year’s strength and conditioning coach Matt Krause was recently fired, as reported earlier by the New York Post. Cressey is somewhat of a star in athletic performance circles.
He has worked with other teams and with pitchers like the New York Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, the Washington Nationals Max Scherzer, and the Cleveland Indians Cory Kluber, who is now a Texas Ranger. Cressey co-founded Cressey Sports Performance, which has facilities in Massachusetts and Florida. According to reports, Cressey will be allowed to continue his work with other teams but will oversee everything that has to do with training and conditioning of the Yankee players.
The New York Yankees made even more moves:
In another significant move, the Yankees have replaced long-time head athletic trainer Steve Donohue, and have promoted his assistant Trainer Michael Schuk, who has been with the training staff for the last six years. Donohue had been a head trainer since the legendary trainer Gene Monahan retired after the 2011 season. “Stevey” Donohue was not fired but will take on an essential consulting role. Donohue formerly worked with the minor leagues since 1979 and moved to the major league team in 1986. As to the circumstance of the individual player’s injuries, it’s difficult to quantify how much responsibility any club’s strength and conditioning coach should be assigned. But after evaluating the situation, management saw the need for changes.
The Yankees are doing everything possible to assure a season that can take the team to another World Championship after winning 100 or more games in the past two seasons. These changes to the medical staff should hopefully lessen player’s days away from the team that reached a high of 2,433 days lost to the Injuries list last season. In addition to these changes, they have also hired Matt Blake as the new pitching coach, replacing Larry Rothschild.
Blake is something of a “pitching guru,” he was also the founder of Elite Pitching Development and the pitching coordinator at Cressey Sports Performance. In one of the most significant moves, this offseason is that Hal Steinbrenner opened his wallet, and got the Yankees the big prize in one of the best pitchers in baseball, in Gerrit Cole. Cole is a modern pitcher who pitches to analytics and is interested in the newest technologies that affect pitching, lifestyle, and nutrition. The Blake, Cole, and Cressey mix should be very beneficial to the Yankees and all of the players going forward.