The New York Yankees have a serious issue in the outfield, currently dealing with a number of injuries to starting players. Outfielders Aaron Hicks, Giancarlo Stanton, Clint Frazier, and Ryan LaMarre are all out with individual issues.
Stanton is dealing with a groin injury, Frazier has neck stiffness, LaMarre pulled his hamstring in Corey Kluber’s no-hitter on Wednesday, and Hicks has a significant wrist injury that could keep them out for the remainder of the 2021 season.
Prior to Hicks going down, he was batting .194 over 108 at-bats, including 21 hits and four homers. Aaron was undoubtedly struggling to get going, sitting with a 0.1 WAR and 23.8% strikeout rate, his highest since his 2014 season.
Skipper Aaron Boone was optimistic that he wouldn’t miss the entire year, but the seven-year contract the Yankee signed Hicks to in 2019 is seeming to have backfired tremendously.
“Let’s get through the surgery and see what they say about it, about a potential timeline, and if that puts any point at the end of the season in play or not, probably too early to speculate on that,†Boone said.
“But it’s going to be a while.â€
The Yankees might have to bite another bullet with Hicks’ contract:
Hicks is on a seven-year, $70 million deal and is only in the third year of his extension. Having been injured significantly for two of the three years on the contract, the Yankees are stuck with another player who simply can’t stay on the field. They don’t have an out until after the 2025 season when he is 35 years old, making this deal looked extremely premature.
“I think it just started to become now a consistent issue for him,†Boone said. “Who knows when this thing first happened, whether it’s been months, whether it’s been years. Every now and then, something would flair up on him, but it usually went away. This time, it’s continued to linger. I don’t think he’s in a lot of pain but he definitely feels it when he’s swinging. It doesn’t allow him to swing the bat the way he needs to swing the bat.
In his absence, the Yankees have been forced to utilize Miguel Andujar, Brett Gardner, and Tyler Wade as a reserve option. Andujar has looked solid as of late, though, hitting .222 over the past seven games, but only has a small sample size of 36 at bats.