Yankees pitcher Marcus Stroman suffered a setback in his path back to the big club while recovering from a knee injury, the team’s skipper said Sunday.
Aaron Boone delivered the news to reporters before Sunday’s game against the Athletics in West Sacramento, CA. As ESPN reported, Boone said that Stroman experienced “discomfort” in his left knee on Friday while throwing batting practice at the Yankees’ spring training facility in Tampa.
“He’s gotten a lot of treatments on it and stuff,” Boone said (h/t ESPN). “It just can’t kind of get over that final hump to really allow him to get to that next level on the mound. We’ll try and continue to get our arms around it and try and make sure we get that out of there.”
Stroman wound up on the injured list April 13 after a short outing against the San Francisco Giants in which he gave up five runs on four hits and three walks in just two-thirds of an inning pitched. The disastrous outing ballooned his ERA on the young season to over 11.
Team doctors diagnosed him as having knee inflammation and gave him a cortisone shot in the affected joint.
The rehab setback marks the latest struggle for Stroman in his awkward tenure with the Yankees. After being demoted to the bullpen late last season, general manager Brian Cashman tried to trade him all winter in an attempt to get his $18 million off the books — to no avail.
Injuries to Gerrit Cole and Luis Gil during spring training, however, forced the Yankees to bring Stroman back into the rotation — only for his knee injury to develop three weeks into the 2025 season.
Though Max Fried and Carlos Rodón have emerged as a solid one-two punch atop the Yankee rotation, the rest of the starting staff has been average at best. Young hurlers Will Warren and Clarke Schmidt both have ERAs over four, and last week, the Yankees cut Carlos Carrasco, who pitched to a 5.96 ERA in eight total appearances.
