Nick Johnson Could Miss Next Three Months
Via Wallace Matthews –
Yankees designated hitter Nick Johnson is unlikely to return to action before the first week of June and could be out until August.
Johnson’s sore right wrist may require surgery to remove inflamed tissue, GM Brian Cashman said. The surgery would keep him out four to six weeks on top of the month he already is expected to miss.
Cashman said Johnson got a cortisone shot in the wrist last weekend in Boston, but it will not be known for a couple of weeks if that treatment was effective.
If not, then Johnson is headed under the knife for at least the third time in his injury-plagued career.
“It’s my intention to learn if [the shot] worked as soon as possible,” Cashman said before Saturday’s win over the Twins. “If not, then we want to go right to the surgery. When healthy, we know what this guy can do, but he can’t do anything for us right now.”
The Yankees signed Johnson to a one-year, $5.5 million deal after failing to come to terms with Johnny Damon, whose No. 2 spot in the lineup Johnson was expected to fill.
$5.5 million for one year of Nick Johnson versus $8 million for one year of Johnny Damon. For a savings of $2.5 million, Cashman really made the wrong call on this one.
cashman should take some of the blame but doesn’t damon and/or boras deserve a share of the blame as well? didn’t cashman make him an offer that was well over the 5.5 million given to johnson or the 8 million the tigers gave him?
Would Damon have accepted the role as DH? Or would he have taken OF time from Brett Gardner? Couldn’t anticpate the injury to Granderson at the same time before the season.
Yanks can fill DH from within. In fact, it should help keep A-Rod, Jeter and Posada fresher for the 2nd half.
“Nick Johnson Could Miss Next Three Months” or he could be back in 3 weeks.
Perfect example of seeing life as glass half full or half empty.
Yanks lead the majors in just about every offensive category, I wouldn’t sweat it too much.
throwstrikes wrote:
throwstrikes wrote:
Mix in the fact that it is widely known (and well emphasized by me here *several* times) that just because Johnny Damon signed with the Tigers for $8M/1 year does not mean the Yankees were able to sign him for those identical terms and you’ve got a pretty good synopsis of the quality of analysis around here. Lots of glass half full and distortion of facts. Yawn.
While the Nicky J injury was always around the corner, I will not trust Matthews’ analysis or reporting. He goes to the extremes to get the negative news out, his Yankee blog for ESPNNY is pathetic.
On the Joe West comments he wrote “The GMs of Yanks and Sox are to blame for the slow pace of games, because of their emphasis on hitters who take pitches and high OBP” i am paraphrasing ofcourse.
There is no surity that Damon would last the season too, we can evaluate this move end of the season, but with our OF injuries, he could have played more LF or CF and gotten injured too.
I was glad that they tried to get away from old cranky players like Damon and Matsui. Nicky J was maybe not the right person for the go youth strategy, but cant fault cash$$ on what he was trying to do.
In a winter full of blunders signing Nick Johnson was Cashman’s biggest. Why would a team built to play in October sign a player
who was built to be on the disabled list in October. Being on the DL is as much a part of Johnson’s game as his OBP. One quote attributed to Cashman, “he’d be a $15 million a year player if he didn’t have this history of injuries”, that’s like saying, Pena would be the most valuable prospect in baseball if he hit like Albert Pujois. The Yanks will need to start shopping fo a DH as soon as teams that have fallen out of it start shopping talent.
Joseph M wrote:
Not really… They could rotate players in and out of the DH spot. It’s relatively easy to find a DH.
Why is it that everyone, I’m thinking everyone but I could be wrong, on this page knew we were going to get this from Nick Johnson yet our GM, who is around this team way more than we are, had no clue and made this signing? This is yet another Cashman fiasco!!
Because the evaluation of the signing of Nick Johnson is such that, if he only plays half the season, as long as he produces his typical career production, the marginal value produced is roughly equal to the amount that he was signed for. If he had played 100-120 games, he would’ve been a bargain.
mondoas wrote:
If that’s the case, shouldn’t our GM get the benefit of the doubt?
I look at it this way – and it may not be the same way as others, or even correct, but, it’s how I see it…
Damon, true to his form (in the past) was going to the team who paid him the most money. He didn’t care “where” as long as he’s getting paid. And, since he signed with the Tigers for $8 million, it’s very safe to assume that was the best offer that he got this off-season.
The Yankees, instead of going after Damon (or Matsui) for their DH in 2010 went for Nick Johnson at $5.5 million.
Would Damon have accepted $8 million at the same time the Yankees offered Johnson $5.5 million? Probably not. But, there was not a slew of teams knocking on Johnson’s door when he signed. And, even if you lost Johnson to another team, because you waited on Damon to shake out, it’s not the end of the world because he’s injury-prone and doesn’t play a position in the field that could help the Yankees when he’s not DHing. (Tex doesn’t miss much time at 1B or need a lot of days off.)
So, why not hold/pass on signing Johnson and then when you see Damon has to settle for $8 million make him an offer?
I’m 99% certain that, if Damon had an $8 million offer from the Tigers to play LF and a $8 million offer from the Yankees to DH and play some time in the OF, he’d come back to New York. Who wants to be around Detroit when you’re “off” from being at the ballpark? There’s much more happening in New York, etc.
And, what if Damon does opt for Motown? THEN you take a flier on someone like Nick Johnson.
But, the Yankees – AND CASHMAN – were so wet to get Damon out of town that they JUMPED at Nick Johnson and signed him. And, that was the mistake here, IMHO.
Steve Lombardi wrote:
It’s a mistake only in hindsight. And even that’s debatable, as the Yanks haven’t missed a beat on offense, and I don’t see Damon offering more defensively than Gardner and Granderson.
Raf wrote:
Actually, it’s not only a mistake in hindsight. The biggest risk factor in signing Johnson was his injury history. Given that Johnson has been put on the DL and that his injured status could never have been deemed a remote eventuality, there’s no way one could claim “hindsight” here. We may not have known Johnson would be injured but we certainly had a right to expect that he may become injured. Where’s the hindsight?
Further, I don’t see how it’s instructive to say that the Yankees haven’t missed a beat on offense irrespective of Johnson’s injury. Given a three-month window of regular AB’s for Marcus Thames, clearly, the Yankees are now in a position where their offense can be adversely affected.
Accepting that Johnson’s OBP skill-set was an ideal fit for the team on paper, it doesn’t change the fact that the Yankees would’ve been better off with Damon over Johnson simply because there’s more value in 140 games of Damon than 50 games of Johnson and 110 games of replacement-level players.
@ Steve Lombardi:
Steve, I completely agree with every single word you wrote above. The “risk” of losing Johnson to another team seemed remote to me and, frankly, had he been signed by another club, the odds still favored Damon returning to the Yankees, even at the end of a long, protracted and acrimonious contract negotiation.
Johnson was a good idea on paper based on his skill-set but the practical application of this idea had a high risk of failure given his injury history. All those that said he would stay healthy because he was DH’ing obviously didn’t know that much about Johnson. The poor guy is simply incapable of staying healthy and it has never been about the stress that fielding put on his body.
Evan3457 wrote:
Considering the fact that he’s only played even 100 games four times in an eight-year career heading into this year, this line of thinking never made much sense to me.
No GM’s goal should be to try and recoup value from a ballplayer based on a minimum number of games. The goal should be to add players that have a combination of skills and a likelihood of achieving maximum value from those skills. Johnson’s sitting at 0.1 WAR for 2010.
Since the odds are that we won’t see him again until July at the earliest — and I’d personally bet he doesn’t play another game for the Yanks in 2010 — then the signing was not only ill-conceived but unsuccessful. Fortunately the Yankees have better players on which they can fall back on but Johnson is as big a bust as one could’ve reasonably expected.
we’re going to really pay for this terrible move this yr. going to cost some prospects because they will def need a bat soon
Looks like “could” just became “is”.
MJ Recanati wrote:
It’s hindsight in that at the time Johnson was signed Damon had no intention of taking a pay cut or DH’ing.
The Yanks are leading the majors in runs, avg, obp, slg, as they were last year. If they’ve missed Damon they haven’t shown it. There is a bit more flexibility with the roster than you give credit, as the Yanks are loaded with players that can DH, or if they choose they can go out the organization to find a DH, which is probably the easiest position to fill.
Jake1 wrote:
Depends on what you mean by “really pay.” It will cost little to nothing for the Yanks to find a DH if they decide to go outside of the organization.
@ Steve Lombardi:
That’s a great analysis of the signing. Nice work!