The Yankees played a man short Saturday night against the Astros at Yankee Stadium, when outfielder Cameron Maybin was unavailable with a Grade 2 strained left calf that will land him on the injured list Sunday.
The Yankees went to 12 pitchers the day before Aaron Judge came off the IL on Friday night, which is one less than they like to carry. So they will replace Maybin with a pitcher, but wanted to wait to determine who.
“We are going to wait where we are at based on where we are through today,’’ Aaron Boone said before his club extended a season-high winning streak to eight with a 7-5 victory over the Astros. “We will see what our needs are going into [Sunday].’’
Jonathan Holder, Adam Ottavino and Zack Britton were used Saturday with the latter two having worked twice in the past two games.
The Yankees would like to get back to 13 hurlers and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre’s right-handed reliever Joe Harvey is a candidate. Harvey last pitched an inning on Friday night for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Chance Adams, was scheduled to start for SWB on Saturday night but was scratched, so he could be promoted to work out of the bullpen.
Boone speculated Maybin, who suffered the injury Friday night playing left field and left the game after scoring on Gary Sanchez’s home run in the third inning of a 4-1 Yankees victory, could be out for six weeks but admitted, “I don’t want to [give] an exact [time], but it will be a pretty fair amount of time.’’
Losing Maybin will hurt the Yankees because he filled in very well after being acquired from the Indians. In 42 games, the right-handed hitting Maybin batted .314 with five homers, 14 RBIs and a .391 on-base percentage.
Had the Yankees wanted to replace Maybin with an outfielder, their choices were Mike Tauchman and Clint Frazier, but that doesn’t seem to be the way they will go.
Maybin is the fifth Yankee this season to miss time with a calf injury.