New York Yankees starting pitchers not named Max Fried have had a disappointing 2025 season thus far, and that’s especially the case after Marcus Stroman’s disaster outing in an eventual 9-1 loss to the San Francisco Giants on Friday. Have a look, if you dare, at Stroman’s line for the night:
All five runs came before Stroman had recorded an out, and the majority of them came on this swing by Jung Hoo Lee for his first homer of the season:
Stroman didn’t even make it out of the top of the first before he was relieved by Ryan Yarbrough. As Yankees manager Aaron Boone explained after the game, Stroman was dealing with knee discomfort:
Very likely that played a role in his struggles. Even so, after that effort Stroman’s ERA for the season now stands at 11.57 after three starts. No matter how early it is in a season, it’s difficult to go into a start with an ERA of 7.27 and then in said start see that already sky-scraping ERA vault upwards by more than four runs. Stroman, though, managed such a feat on Friday in the Bronx. No one should form lasting judgments off a sample of 9 1/3 innings, but it’s been an inauspicious three turns in the rotation for Stroman coming off a spring training in which he pointedly recoiled from the idea of pitching out of the bullpen this season. Truth be told, if not for injuries to Gerrit Cole (Tommy John surgery, out for the season), Luis Gil (lat strain, likely out until June), and Clarke Schmidt (rotator-cuff tendinitis, should be back soon) then Stroman might indeed be working in relief.
Speaking of Stroman’s struggles and the injury-riddled Yankee rotation, marquee offseason addition Max Fried is the only Yankee starter passing muster right now. The lefty Fried, fresh off signing a $218 million free-agent contract with the pinstripers, has pitched to a 1.56 ERA with an FIP of 2.17 and 21 strikeouts against three unintentional walks in 17 1/3 innings this season. The rest of the Yankee rotation — Carlos Rodón, Carlos Carrasco, Stroman, and Will Warren — have combined for an ERA of 6.95 and an FIP of 5.45 with 44 strikeouts and 24 walks in a combined 45 1/3 innings. That’s how the Yankees have gotten off to a somewhat middling start — they’re now 7-6 on the season — despite having one of MLB’s best offenses thus far.
To state the obvious, they’ll need to get better results from their starting pitchers not named Fried if they’re going to prevail again in the tough American League East. Stroman’s brief and ugly start against the Giants on Friday night serves as an acute reminder of that fact.
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