Perspectives: Injuries, 3b, Books, and Winning

by Paul Semendinger

July 6, 2025

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The following is from ESPN.com and in this piece comes more news from the same team that has mishandled a host of other injury concerns for many years:

"Schmidt said he had been dealing with elbow soreness since his start on June 4, which delayed recovery between his next five outings. On Friday, Boone said the concern level had not reached a level high enough to warrant tests."

I have to wonder, when there is a pitcher who has a history of arm troubles, when it does become necessary to take precautions enough to have the test. You have a pitcher who has been injured a lot. He says his arm isn't right. That's not a high enough level to warrant tests?

Maybe the tests would prove nothing, but isn't always better to be safe than sorry? Isn't this especially true with a pitcher with Clarke Schmidt's injury history?

Also, to be fair, maybe the injury wasn't fixable once he had pain. Maybe. But still, get the tests. Take all precautions.

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If I owned a baseball franchise, I'd build up my pitcher's arms, from the lowest level of the minor leagues to be able to handle MLB workloads.

I would love someone to do an in-depth study of pitcher injuries since it was decided (somewhere) that 100 pitches was the limit. It seems that the number was just a guess, a nice round number, but that there isn't much proof that sticking to 100 pitches prevents injuries. It seems pitchers are getting hurt all the time.

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Then, this from TheAthletic.com:

The New York Yankees did not plan on Jazz Chisholm Jr. being their everyday third baseman. That is fully evidenced by what Chisholm did in his offseason preparation for the 2025 season.

After the Yankees’ 12-5 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday, Chisholm told The Athletic that he “only worked at second base” in his offseason drills. Chisholm said the Yankees explicitly told him he would be their second baseman, which is where he began the season before switching to third base.

Of the 36 third basemen who’ve played at least 190 innings this season, Chisholm’s minus-two outs above average ranks 25th. But of the 28 second basemen with at least 250 innings at the position, Chisholm’s three outs above average ranks sixth. It makes one wonder: Why are the Yankees playing Chisholm out of position when the numbers clearly show a major difference in production?

“Everybody knows I’m a second baseman,” Chisholm said.

And yet, the Yankees try to claim Jazz Chisholm is a third baseman. Over the winter the Yankees never addressed third base. That forced them to put Jazz there for the second season in a row, a position that even the team knows isn't where he should be.

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At what point do the leaders of this organization get called on the carpet for any of this?

The manager is secure in his job. The general manager too.

Is there any accountability with the Yankees?

As I have said, a lot, we're talking about the Yankees here. This is not a second division club. The Yankees are the sport's most legendary franchise.

There is, and has to be, an expectation for better.

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I would love Hal Steinbrenner to explain to the team's loyal fans how this kind of losing is acceptable.

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Yankees Most Games Managed Without A World Series Championship

1. Aaron Boone 1,121

2. Clark Griffith 807 (Highlanders)

3. Buck Showalter 582

4. Bill Donovan 465 (Highlanders)

5. Lou Piniella 324

   
   

   I just created that chart. I know so many say that George Steinbrenner was the owner that wouldn't tolerate losing. And that's true, but going back to the very beginning of the franchise, no owner ever let a manager manage as long as Aaron Boone without delivering a championship. This was true even before the Yankees (Highlanders) were any good.

   
   

Also of note, Clark Griffith, at least, had experience before coming to the Highlanders. Two years previous to joining the team in, he led the White Sox to a first place finish. Aaron Boone came to the Yankees without ever being a manager or a coach - anywhere. From the start, if the objective was winning a championship, the move to hire Aaron Boone made no sense.

More - Note that the managers who had the longest tenures without winning since 1920 served under George Steinbrenner. The Yankees, throughout their history, and especially since 1920, expect championships.

For whatever reason, Aaron Boone has been granted the longest (by far) opportunity to win.

And he hasn't.

There is also very little (if any) evidence that Boone has grown in any way as a manager.

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Moving on to other thoughts:

In the fall, I will be teaching an elective course for first year students at Ramapo College on appreciating and understanding baseball. I am developing this course from the ground up. It will not be "Basket Weaving 101" or some simple class where one can easily earn an A. I am making the class rigorous, but fun. There will be work to do.

Along those lines, I would like the students to read a great baseball novel. And that has proven to be a challenge.

Before reading ahead, please know there are some spoiler alerts for the novels I briefly discuss below.

My first choice was The Natural a book I read decades ago and enjoyed. As I re-read this over the last weeks with a critical eye for 18 and 19 year-olds, I determined, for a host of reasons, that the book wasn't really appropriate. I know this will get some people's ire (and I really don't feel like debating the topic), but the Roy Hobbs in the novel is largely often unlikeable. There isn't a woman in the novel who he meets without immediately fondling, whether his actions are welcome or not. I'm not going to be the professor who makes his students read that. If other classes require that type of stuff, that's fine, but not me.

In short, I liked the book, but a lot less than when I first read it. I love the movie. In my experience, books are almost always better than the movies. But, to me, this is not the case for The Natural.

In the movie Roy Hobbs is a very likeable person. And I love the movie's ending. As I have written before, I wish the movie was titled A Natural: A Movie Based On A Novel (or some such thing) so people wouldn't take such a hard stand against the way the book and movie are different. The book and the movie are both worth investing time in, but the movie, for me, is far superior.

Next, I went to Shoeless Joe (the book that Field of Dreams is based on). Again, this text wasn't all that appropriate. Ray likes to describe his wife's tongue, often, and he also tells about some of his actions with her. That wasn't the deal breaker, it's all handled a bit more tastefully than in The Natural. The deal breaker though involved a scene with the main character and his twin brother and a ruler. I'm not requiring my students to read about that. (If you read the book, you might remember the scene.) Shoeless Joe is also a good book, but, amazingly, the movie is also better, especially, again, the ending. There's a line in the movie that's not even in the book. It's the line that makes the movie such a classic. That line is not found in the book - and because it's not there, the book's final punch lacks some bite. The movie people took a good story and made it better.

I'm now on my third attempt to find a great baseball novel that I can feel comfortable requiring students to read. I'll share my progress in a future article.

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What I will also do is read excerpts from the novels as a way to expose the difference between books and film. We'll look at these critically, especially the different endings of The Natural.

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In regard to the Yankees. I am now tired, after many years, of showing their flaws and poor decision making. In many ways, the organization is no longer one that deserves the respect it has. The team, absolutely, and certainly, does not have winning a World Series as its primary goal. I've documented that a million times here. The team accepts poor play, poor leadership, poor decision making, and the like.

It's a shame.

As for me, I am done caring about the 2025 Yankees. This is not a championship roster. It's not managed by a quality manager. The owner and the GM are absent. It's obvious that they don't care. For the Yankees, good enough is good enough, and right now they aren't even good.

As a result, since they don't care, I won't either. I'll watch the games to see baseball, but with no expectations or hope in seeing my team win. In short, unless big changes are made, the Yankees won't win. This is Hal Steinbrenner's legacy. Brian Cashman's too. They had a ton of opportunities to build a championship team - and yet they never did.

What a shame.