THE 2023 YANKEES ARE SIMPLY CURSED!

Seriously. Michael Kay just said if the Yankees can pull out a victory in the second of two games against the Red Sox, the Yankees will be tied for last place in the AL East. Is that what we are striving for these days? Not being last? It is that bad. We have reached rock bottom. We just need to cruise into the October and move on. There is nothing else to do because the 2023 Yankees are simply cursed.

As a friend shared with me in text message Tuesday afternoon, "It is not safe to wear a New York uniform." And I know he was referring to more than just the Yankees. Just in the last couple of days, The New York Football Giants got blanked 40-0 on national television by the Dallas Cowboys, The New York Jets quarterback and future hall of famer Aaron Rodgers tore his Achilles in less than five minutes into Monday's game against the Buffalo Bills and we lost our favorite Martian, Jasson Dominguez to a UCL tear, requiring season ending surgery. The phrase "out for the season" is likely the most common phrase used to describe the New York Yankees this year. 

In fact, the Yankees lost 4 impact players to season-ending injuries in a week. Guys like Luis Severino, and Jonathan Loaisiga just joined the IL and are listed as out for the season status, but they are part of a laundry list of players who won't see beyond the dugout until next spring. You can see the entire roster of Yankee IL players here. 

Aaron Boone sounded off his frustration with the latest injury to Loaisiga who has chronically visited the IL over the last several seasons. “Every season has been interrupted,” Boone said after the Yankees’ 3-2 victory over the Red Sox in Game 1 of their doubleheader. “When he’s going well, it’s as good as there is because he’s efficient, he’s got great stuff, he can get both handed out, he can go one-plus [innings] for you, he can fill any role, whether it’s closing out a game or in the biggest spots. When he’s going good, I don’t know if there’s much better in the league, frankly. But his seasons have been interrupted pretty much every year,” reported NJ.com.

But if not him, you can go down the laundry list of IL offenders and get more and more frustrated. Are the Yankees actually made of glass? It seems like when you hustle you pay dearly as we saw with Aaron Judge in the early part of the season. Then there are those who visit the IL every season consistently, quite frankly Anthony Rizzo is an offender there as well. 

I have to say, this season, above all of the others has been the worst for the Yankees. Unless something changes with their strength and conditioning, or whatever is causing this curse, the Yankees are doomed. You can blame the front office for many things, but injuries fall on bad luck, not being fit enough to sustain innings across a long season, athletes overextending themselves, poor conditioning, we can keep going. An athlete's body sustains a lot of impact night after night on the field, flight after flight, and many sleeps in different places and spaces. Unless there is good recovery protocols and opportunities to maintain healthy routines, injuries are more prone to happen. Seems fixable, but why isn't the team listening?

--Suzie Pinstripe
BYB Senior Managing Editor
Twitter: @suzieprof