Yankees' Didi Gregorius to Have Tommy John Surgery and May Miss Much of 2019

Yankees’ Didi Gregorius to Have Tommy John Surgery and May Miss Much of 2019

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Yankees shortstop Didi Gregorius will have Tommy John surgery on his right elbow after injuring himself during the American League division series.CreditCreditChang W. Lee/The New York Times

By Billy Witz

Oct. 12, 2018

The winter shopping list of Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman grew longer on Friday when the team learned that shortstop Didi Gregorius needed Tommy John surgery on his throwing arm.

Gregorius is expected to miss a large portion of next season. He is believed to have torn a ligament in his right elbow while making a throw home from shallow left field in Game 2 of their American League division series against the Boston Red Sox.

The hole in the Yankees’ lineup — Gregorius batted third and played superb defense most of the season — will probably intensify expectations that the Yankees will pursue infielder Manny Machado, an impending free agent now with the Dodgers.

“How do we react to this situation?” Cashman said at a news conference Friday. “We’ll either stay with what we got or we can pursue something stronger. We’re too early in the process to have any of the strategies mapped up.”

The Yankees are comfortable moving second baseman Gleyber Torres to shortstop, but then they would need a replacement at that position. If the Yankees signed Machado, the prize of this year’s free-agent class, he could play shortstop until Gregorius returned and then move to third to replace Miguel Andujar.

News of Gregorius’s surgery was revealed by a team spokesman near the end of Manager Aaron Boone’s 30-minute news conference on Friday at Yankee Stadium.

Cashman followed Boone to the stage and over a sometimes-rambling 40 minutes said that he would try to trade pitcher Sonny Gray — who was demoted to the bullpen and booed frequently at home — and that C. C. Sabathia, an impending free agent, had arthroscopic knee surgery on Friday.

Left unsaid was how financially aggressively the Yankees would be this winter.

They could have close to $60 million (if they decline outfielder Brett Gardner’s option) coming off the payroll, which was their lowest since 2004. The Yankees, after a mandate from the owner Hal Steinbrenner, stayed under the luxury tax threshold ($197 million) for the first time. “Mission accomplished,” Cashman said.

The Yankees set that goal because it would save them as much as 30 percent on each dollar they exceed the tax in 2019, apparently in anticipation of what for years has been shaping up to be an enticing free-agent class, headed by Machado and Bryce Harper, and including a pitcher the Yankees have targeted, the left-hander Patrick Corbin.

But Cashman said that Steinbrenner was not inclined “to line the pockets” of teams who qualify for revenue from the luxury tax pool. (However, the Yankees — of their own volition — have paid the Houston Astros $11 million over the last two years for taking catcher Brian McCann off their hands.)

Steinbrenner, in an interview on ESPN radio later Friday, was typically vague.

“As far as going over the threshold, that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it,” he told the Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay. Steinbrenner added: “We’re going to leave no stone unturned. Every single option that comes across my desk we’re going to be considering.”

The Yankees will hold their organizational meetings this month, and next month Cashman will have a firmer sense of the trade and free-agent landscape at the general managers’ meetings next month. By then, the Yankees will have a better idea of what to expect from Gregorius, who is to have surgery next week.

Cashman said that he was not sure when Gregorius would return, but that he expected it to be sometime next season. Pitchers generally take 12 to 14 months to recover from the operation. Position players can sometimes recover in less time, though catcher Kyle Higashioka, who had Tommy John surgery in 2013, returned in a little less than 15 months.

Boone dismissed the possibility that Gregorius might return much earlier in the designated hitter’s role, saying there would not be much time between when he could swing a bat and when he could throw.

Replacing Gregorius, 28, will not be easy. The team’s strongest left-handed hitter, he had his best season this year, hitting 27 home runs, driving in 86 runs, stealing 10 bases and posting a .829 on-base-plus-slugging percentage while playing terrific defense. He committed just six errors.

As bad as the news of his injury was for the Yankees, it could be even more costly for Gregorius, who is due to become a free agent after next season.

Cashman said that Gregorius had a tear in his elbow ligament when the Yankees acquired him in a trade with Arizona nearly four years ago but that it was asymptomatic.

Gregorius seemed to tear it further in the seventh inning of Game 2 of the A.L.D.S. when he fielded an Ian Kinsler liner off the Green Monster at Fenway Park and threw home too late to catch Mitch Moreland. Gregorius saw a trainer after the game and played the final two of the series, but he uncharacteristically bounced two throws, forcing first baseman Luke Voit to scoop them up.

In retrospect, that play in Game 2 marked the beginning of the end for the Yankees. They managed to win, 6-2, but lost the next two at Yankee Stadium. Boone said on Friday that the one decision he regretted was leaving Luis Severino on the mound too long in Game 3, which turned into a 16-1 rout. But he said he believed that sticking with Sabathia in the third inning of Game 4, when the Red Sox built a 3-0 lead, was a defensible move that just did not work out.

Cashman’s assessment was that the Red Sox, who won 108 games in the regular season to finish atop the American League East, were simply the better team.

“They were better in the marathon,” he said. “We had a chance to change that, and be better in the sprint, but three of our starters had their hat handed to them, and our hitters went south. Got to credit them for what they were able to accomplish. We had our shot and we didn’t take advantage of it.”