Why DJ LeMahieu, young Yankees infielders may hold the key to the team’s 2023 season

TAMPA — The gang got back together on Sunday morning. Anthony Rizzo beamed as he embraced Aaron Judge inside the Yankees clubhouse at George M. Steinbrenner Field. Isiah Kiner-Falefa unsheathed plastic-wrapped bats from a brown box and bantered with Gleyber Torres. Josh Donaldson fist-bumped security guards as he sauntered toward his locker.

If it looked the same, if it felt like the sequel to a praiseworthy campaign with a dispiriting ending, that was the point. For better or worse, the Yankees are running the 2022 season back.

“This is a group of guys,” Rizzo said in the afternoon, as position players reported to camp, “who are all really familiar with each other.”

Any assessment of the Yankees’ offseason depends on your perspective. You could argue the club undertook significant financial risk to retain a budding franchise icon while making additional maneuvers to improve one of baseball’s best teams in 2022. Owner Hal Steinbrenner forked over $360 million to bring back Judge, bestowing the captaincy upon him after his superlative, 62 home run walk year, and then doled out another $162 million to add starter Carlos Rodón to an excellent pitching staff.

You could also argue the Yankees made costly but merely cosmetic changes to a group that has collided with its October ceiling for six consecutive seasons. The lineup contains the same features (admirable patience, prodigious power) and bugs (an imbalance toward strikeout-prone, right-handed hitters) as years past. Despite all the spending, Steinbrenner and the front office of Brian Cashman did not find upgrades at the offensive sinkholes of third base and left field.

These two perspectives underscore the dilemma with this iteration of the Yankees, a franchise that has not reached the World Series since 2009. The team has been quite good for some time now. It has also been bedeviled by a familiar set of deficiencies. In order to be an optimist, in order to believe this group will be the one that ends this miniaturized drought, you must believe the roster contains answers to the problems posed by the pessimist. You have to believe DJ LeMahieu can stay healthy. And you have to believe the young position players — Oswald Peraza, Oswaldo Cabrera, and, eventually, Anthony Volpe — can invigorate the offense while aiding the defense.

These, really, are the questions at the heart of the 2023 Yankees. To surpass Houston and conquer the American League, the club will rely on contributions from players who were either too injured or too inexperienced to matter last year when the Astros swept the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

So a crowd formed around LeMahieu on Sunday morning in Tampa. A broken bone in his toe kept him out of last year’s postseason. He opted against surgery this winter, but he said he would make concessions to his age in 2023. He will turn 35 in July. He indicated he would dedicate more time to maintaining his health rather than taxing himself between games. “I can’t just go out and take 1,000 swings every day, or 1,000 ground balls, and call it a day,” LeMahieu said. “I really have to make sure that I’m physically ready to go every single day for the whole season.”

Manager Aaron Boone lamented LeMahieu’s absence as 2022 drifted toward its conclusion. When the Yankees embarked on a three-city road trip in early August, LeMahieu was sporting a .392 on-base percentage with an .819 OPS. During the trip, he revealed discomfort in his right big toe. A battery of testing, a prescription of rest and a series of cortisone shots did not fix the ailment. He posted a .400 OPS in his final 21 games and sat out October.

Boone maintained dialogue with LeMahieu during the winter. The manager heard optimism from the infielder as the offseason progressed. LeMahieu, who will bounce around the infield if healthy, said he could play with no restrictions this spring.

“Look, it’s something we’ve still got to be mindful of and pay attention to,” Boone said. “But certainly encouraged with where he’s at.”

With the young infielders this spring, the range of outcomes is wide. Peraza, a 22-year-old who ranked No. 75 on Keith Law’s most recent prospect list, could displace Kiner-Falefa as the team’s primary shortstop. He could also begin the season in the minors, splitting time at the position with Volpe, Law’s No. 8 prospect, who will turn 22 in April. The situation could be solved if Cashman finds a suitable trade proposition involving either Kiner-Falefa or Torres, the second baseman.

A bevy of All-Star shortstops have reached free agency in the past two winters. With Volpe and Peraza rising through the minors, the Yankees stayed out of the bidding. The club now must decide how to foam the runway for their arrival. Peraza impressed Boone during his 18-game cameo last season. The roster logjam prevents him from making definitive statements about how the team will proceed. “All of our shortstops will play more than one position this spring,” Boone said.

Boone declined to delve too deeply into what Peraza needed to do to start on Opening Day.

“I view this as a situation that could change throughout the season,” Boone said. “The guy there on Opening Day may not be there on day 10.”

Here is where the optimist’s vision of the 2023 Yankees takes shape. The team, from this perspective, will feature all the pillars of last season, plus the steadiness of LeMahieu and the boost from the kids. The Yankees like their odds. And so, it appears, do the projection systems. Baseball Prospectus projected the Yankees as the best team in baseball, expected to win 98 games and reach the postseason 97 percent of the time. FanGraphs was less enthusiastic, pegging the team at 89 victories — still enough to lead the division.

The pessimist would note the projection systems adored the Yankees last year, too. And still, the same flaws proved decisive in October.

The Yankees, of course, are optimists. Every team feels hopeful in February. This one has more reason to hope than most. The foundation looks formidable. And the reinforcements — a healthy LeMahieu putting the ball in play in October, a group of youngsters making plays under pressure — are there. As the gang from 2022 reassembles for 2023, these will be the issues worth monitoring, to see if the ending to this sequel will be different.

(Top photo of DJ LeMahieu: Jeff Curry / USA Today)