About the Off-Season: Excitement Is In The Air- Sort Of

About the Off-Season: Excitement Is In The Air- Sort Of

By Tim Kabel

February 15, 2026

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The 2026 Major League Baseball season is getting closer. Spring training is underway for the Yankees. The first game will be on February 20^th against the Baltimore Orioles. That is five days from today. There have already been stories from Spring Training that are getting fans excited.

Gerrit Cole is already throwing off a mound and indicated that he may pitch in a game before the end of Spring Training. Youngsters Ben Hess and Carlos Lagrange among others have caused a stir with their pitching performances. All these things are interesting, exciting, and very good news.

However, don't get too excited. These are the Yankees. Remember when you were a kid and you looked out the window and the whole yard was covered with snow? You knew you weren't going to have school that day. You would run downstairs, wolf down some breakfast, bundle up and go out for a day of sledding. Just as you were about to cross the threshold, you would come to a screeching halt. Your mother would be standing there shaking her head sadly and blocking your path. She would then tell you that you had the sniffles two weeks earlier and you couldn't go outside because you might catch a cold.

The prospects of fun and excitement went out the window and you had to trudge back up to your room to read a book.

Let's apply that scenario to the excitement Yankees fans are having reading these stories about Spring Training. Brian Cashman functions as the mother in this scenario. He, Aaron Boone, and all the other people in charge will find a way to put the brakes on any excitement or fun we might derive out of Spring Training.

Gerrit Cole may actually pitch in a game before the end of March. He will then be monitored, probed, poked, and scrutinized ad nauseum. I understand completely that you have to be careful with an athlete who is coming back from an injury. Prudence is much more than my aunt's name. It is a good way to run things, especially for a sports organization and even more so with high-priced athletes coming back from an injury. We are not likely to see Gerrit Cole in an actual game that means anything until sometime in May.

The same concept applies to the young pitchers. Carlos Lagrange could come out and pitch nothing but scoreless innings in Spring Training. He could strike out every batter he faces. He would still probably start the season in AA. Does he have the potential to make it to the Major Leagues this season? It seems that he does. Will he? Who knows.

The thing that is frustrating about the Yankees as an organization from a fan’s point of view is the fact that they are bipolar in their approach to injuries. Either they are overly cautious and coddle a player to the point of preventing them from taking the field when they are capable of doing so or they ignore an injury and allow the athlete to work through it to the detriment of the team and the athlete in question.

For example, Anthony Volpe played a significant portion of the 2025 season with an injury to his shoulder. The Yankees never said anything about it until the end of the season. Aaron Boone went so far as to say that he didn't think the injury affected Volpe’s play. Brian Cashman disagreed with him. The fact that Volpe required surgery immediately after the season ended and will be out for at least a month because of that surgery indicates that it probably did affect him. Yet, he was in the lineup every day. If there was a way for Aaron Boone to write his name in the lineup twice, he would have done it.

Remember Anthony Rizzo? A few years ago, he suffered a concussion that had lingering effects. He was not the same player after that. The Yankees denied the existence of an injury and continued to put Rizzo out there until he was eventually shut down. 

To be clear, I think the Yankees should take injuries very seriously and they should be cautious when it comes to the health and well-being of their players. It is smart baseball, and it is also the right thing to do. Yet, it seems that the Yankees either go too far and become overly cautious or ignore the injury altogether, resulting in poor play and potentially greater injury to the player.

The Yankees need to adopt a consistent and common-sense approach to injuries. Unfortunately, with the Yankees these days, common sense does not seem to be too common.