Around the middle of January 2021, the Yankees made their most notable move of the offseason that started after a loss in Game 5 of the Division Series to the Tampa Bay Rays.
In a fairly quiet offseason following a pandemic season, the Yankees re-signed DJ LeMahieu to a six-year, $90 million contract, opting to stretch out the contract for luxury tax reasons.
Back then it was a no-brainer given what LeMahieu’s first two seasons looked like. After a down year with the Rockies, the Yankees signed him to a two-year, $24 million deal in Jan. 2019 during an offseason when fans desired Manny Machado and Bryce Harper.
The deal was a relative bargain and shortly after the Yankees made the new contract official and retained the versatile infielder Rockies owner Dick Monfort said losing LeMahieu was a mistake.
So far three years into the deal LeMahieu’s numbers are somewhat pedestrian, some of which can be attributed to a right foot injury he sustained in Aug. 2022 and now with news of the same foot being injured with about a week to go before the season opener, it is a valid question to wonder about LeMahieu’s status for opening day and think this is the kind of thing that may impact him all season.
If the latter is true, it continues a statistical trend. LeMahieu was the runner up to former White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson in the 2019 batting race and then won the 2020 batting title with a stellar .364 average.
Since those first two standout seasons, LeMahieu is a .258 hitter and his average has gone down in that span from .268 in 2021, .261 in 2022 and .243 last season. As a result his slugging has dropped from over .500 to somewhere in the high-300s in the past three seasons.
The Yankees for their part are describing it as a significant bone bruise or contusion on his foot, the same foot that saw him miss the 2022 playoffs because of toe inflammation. It was an injury so drastic that it altered his numbers in a significant way.
LeMahieu batted .292 with 11 homers and 42 RBIs in the first 105 games but then hit .167 with one homer and four RBIs in 30 games from Aug. 3 to the point where the pain was too much for him to play through.
I’m not going to have him playing through anything initially [to start the season],” manager Aaron Boone told reporters in Tampa. “Because I feel like that’s where you start compensating and you start putting other parts of the body, and in that foot even, in jeopardy.
“And I’ve been clear with DJ on that. So we’ll be treating it, he’s doing significantly better than he was yesterday and the day before, so that’s all good, and we’ll kind of reevaluate it here, probably going into the night game [Wednesday] and see where we’re at.”
Where the Yankees are at is another concern in a year when they lost Gerrit Cole for at least the first month and are banking on Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton, Carlos Rodon bouncing back from sub-par performances that were related to injuries along with the same thing from Nestor Cortes, who went from All-Star feel good story to a struggling left-hander with a hurt shoulder.
Conversely to the concerns about LeMahieu’s foot is the timing. A bruise this time of year is significantly better than a broken toe sustained in August which is what happened in 2022 and derailed LeMahieu’s season and was a litany of frustrations in an emotional month that saw the Yankees’ big division lead get threatened.
“He’s doing significantly better than he was [Sunday] and the day before. So that’s all good. We’ll kind of re-evaluate it here probably going into the [Wednesday] night game or [Thursday] and see where we’re at.”
In the meantime, if the Yankees must place him on the injured list for the start of what they hope is a rebound season, they will. The idea is LeMahieu’s stint on the injured list will be a short stay and he will be productive enough once the injury disappears.