The Yankees have well over 100 home runs sitting on the injured list. That group is populated with All-Stars, a rookie of the year and an MVP. It's got an ace _ Luis Severino _ and both an infield and an outfield. And frankly, the All-Injured Yankees team would probably do pretty well on the field � if they were healthy, that is.
So it's a little funny that, day after day, week after week, Aaron Boone is presented with a growingly urgent question: Will D.J. LeMahieu lose playing time when, say, Didi Gregorius comes back? And certainly, the Yankees could ill afford to sit ... um ... Gio Urshela.
The Yankees _ the healthy remnant _ improbably find themselves in first place at 38-20 after taking two of three games from the Red Sox this past weekend thanks to a cast of supporting characters who have flourished in the limelight. It seems impossible, really, that a team that lost Giancarlo Stanton (38 homers last season), Aaron Judge (27), and Miguel Andujar (27) already has 93 home runs this year, among the top in baseball. But that's exactly what's happened, and it's epitomized the "next man up" philosophy that Boone preached time and time again. At one point, the Yankees had 17 players on the injured list _ they now have 13 _ and yet, "it's been fun," Boone said during an April road trip.
