After grossly overpaying for the Miami Marlins in 2017 ($1.2 billion), Bruce Sherman is now systematically destroying them.

As if Fisher’s stripped down A’s aren’t a big enough eye sore for baseball as a lame duck franchise in Oakland, now you have Sherman, under-financed from the get-go in Miami, turning the Marlins into another attendance-challenged dumpster fire, further embarrassing the game. It was bad enough Fisher ran off Kim Ng as Marlins GM last winter after she’d literally traded the Marlins into the postseason with a series of inspired deals — and replaced her with Peter Bendix, a sabermetrics computer nerd out of the Rays organization. He signed only one free agent — greatly diminished shortstop Tim Anderson – and otherwise made no effort to improve the team. Now Sherman is allowing Bendix to undo Ng’s good work, starting with the ill-conceived trade of the Marlins’ best player and top gate attraction, two-time batting champ Luis Arraez, to San Diego for three far away prospects of questionable potential and Korean reliever Woo-Suk Go, to whom the Padres gave a two-year, $4.5 million contract last winter but so far proved quite hittable in Double-A.

It’s going to take at least three years before Bendix’s first trade can be properly assessed — that’s how far away the two main prospects — outfielder Dillon Head (a speedster who hit .267 with 19 strikeouts and 15 walks in Rookie League and A ball last year) and Nathan Martorella (a marginal lefty DH-type) — are from the big leagues. When you consider that Ng traded an All-Star caliber starting pitcher in Pablo Lopez for Arraez a year ago, the return from the Padres for him hardly seems close to equal value and the scouts and execs I talked to all say it was a fleecing for the Padres. Incredibly, Bendix said he had to make the trade when he did because he didn’t think such a good deal would be there if he waited until later in the season.

Now that’s naivety of an over-his-skis analytics nerd. Sherman hired Bendix because he wanted the Marlins to emulate the Rays model under Stu Sternberg on the other side of the state in which they’ve been able to consistently field competitive teams with the lowest payrolls in the industry. What Sherman doesn’t seem to understand is that Rays GM Erik Neander may rely heavy on analytics, but he also gives equal or more value to scouts who’ve been responsible for the many trades that have kept Tampa Bay competitive.

And it probably says everything about Bendix that nobody was ever quite sure what he did with the Rays and that no one has been hired to replace him.

Right now the morale in Miami is the lowest in baseball. The day after the Arraez trade, the Marlins lost 20-4 to — ironically — Fisher’s A’s, while Arraez became the first player in Padres history to have four hits in his debut. Marlins manager Skip Schumaker could see this coming after Sherman forced Ng out. He was Ng’s hire and rewarded her faith by winning NL Manager of the Year honors last year. But he asked Sherman to remove the option for 2025 off his contract, making him a free agent after the season if he isn’t (probably) fired first.

The shame in Miami is that the Marlins play in one of the most aesthetically beautiful ballparks in baseball but are averaging the 29th fewest fans per game (12,700) while taking in $60 million in revenue sharing as the sell-off of their highest salaried players continues this summer. It is baseball’s shame that theirs is the only professional sports franchise in Miami that doesn’t draw.

As a sparse crowd headed into LoanDepot Park Friday night to watch the Marlins face the Philadelphia Phillies, a handful of disgruntled Miami fans remained on the outskirts of the ballpark, protesting the Arraez trade and yelling passionately in hopes their message would be heard. “We are only a few here but the majority of fans are disgusted,” said Luis De Armas, a decades-long Marlins fan and the organizer of Friday’s protest. “We want to continue coming to the games but not when it remains a losing club. All because of an owner who promised us one thing and did something else.”

It’s just too bad Jorge Mas, the Cuban billionaire businessman who owns the Major League Soccer Inter Miami and playing to sellout crowds after signing Lionel Messi, could not have bought the Marlins back in 2017. Mas tried, reportedly offering as much $1.17 billion for them, and would have been the perfect owner for the Marlins. But Major League Baseball and previous Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria wanted Derek Jeter to have an ownership share in a franchise and when Jeter’s group fell way short on the money, they arranged a marriage between him and Sherman to make that happen.

In retrospect, that was one of Rob Manfred’s most regrettable decisions, right up there with letting Fisher move the A’s from a Top 10 TV market to the 39th in Las Vegas.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

A tip of the hat to the Brewers’ Willy Adames who called his game-winning home run last Tuesday against the Royals. The Brewers were trailing 5-3 when Adames was kneeling in the on-deck circle with two Brewer runners on base in the ninth inning. As he later explained it, the fans in the box seats started needling him. “They told me they wanted me to hit a three-run homer,” he said, to which Adames responded, “OK, I got you!” and then proceeded to hit an 83-mph curve ball from Royals closer James McArthur over the fence. “That was really priceless,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy. … On Tuesday Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras suffered a double whammy when he was struck by the bat of the Mets’ J.D. Martinez and suffered a broken left arm as well as being charged with catcher’s interference. You may have heard, catcher’s interference, which used to be a rare occurrence, has now become an epidemic. From 2010-2018 the average catcher’s interference calls in a year was 35. In 2002 there were nine catcher’s interference calls. In 2022 there were 74 and last year 97. This year as of Friday there had already been 32. The reason for this is that catchers are crouching closer to the batters in order to better frame pitches. Pitch framing is one of the tenets of the new analytics, but it would seem it’s now getting dangerous. Robo umps can’t come soon enough.

This will mark the fifth straight year since signing that record extension that Trout will miss a substantial part of the season, with injuries to his calf, back and hand, after playing at least 157 games in each of his seasons from 2013-2016. In other words, if ever there was a surer bet to make good on an expensive 10-year contract into his late 30s, it was Trout.

But as we all now know, painfully too well, these contracts of nine or more years never work out, and now it is the Yankees, facing a showdown with Scott Boras on Juan Soto at the end of the year, looking at Trout and coming to grips with having to saddle themselves with an even bigger record-breaking contract, very likely involving $100 million or more wasted money at the end.

Right now Soto, at 25, looks like as sure a bet as Trout did at 27 when he signed his extension: He’s played 150 or more games in each of his full seasons since his rookie year in 2018, consistently had more walks than strikeouts, three times led the league in OBP and if the voting was held right now he’s the likely American League MVP. On the other hand, he’s not the defensive player Trout was. Nor does he have Trout’s speed, and likely will be mostly a DH by the time he’s 30.

In the last couple of years, the baseball owners and their more analytically-inclined GMs have shied away from contracts of more than five years, especially for free agents from other teams, and it will be interesting to see what kind of bidding war Boras can conjure up for Soto, especially if Steve Cohen elects to make Pete Alonso his top priority this offseason. The fact is, there is only one team in baseball that needs to sign Soto and that’s the Yankees.

So it probably won’t make much difference for Hal Steinbrenner to review the four most expensive contracts in baseball history after Trout’s, especially since two of them are his. But it’s a good guess the other owners have taken notice.

No. 2 is Bryce Harper (13 year, $330 million) who so far has been worth every penny of it for the Phillies, leading them to the postseason in each of the last two years and winning National League MVP honors in 2021. But a bum shoulder has already forced Harper to switch to first base and it cannot be ignored that, at 31, he still has seven more years and a total of $170 million left on the contract.

No. 3 Giancarlo Stanton (13 year, $325 million) is Hal’s guy (thanks to the misguided 2017 trade with Derek Jeter and the Marlins) who missed nearly 100 games with injuries in 2022-23 and hit .191 last year. Don’t remind Hal he’s got Stanton for three more years after this one for a total of $86 million.

No. 4 Manny Machado (11 year, $350 million) has been a huge disappointment for the Padres after finishing second in the NL MVP voting in 2022. They were counting on him to lead them to the postseason last year. Instead he was mediocre and they finished out of the money. This year he’s so far been even more mediocre (.250/.306/.403, 5 HR) and he’s got nine more years on the contract to age 41 and a total of $270 million.

But the all-time winner for stupidity remains Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year, $275 million contract by the Yankees. Remember how A-Rod had opted out of what was already the richest contract in baseball history (10 year, $252 million) in 2007 and instead of celebrating their good fortune, the Yankees took him back and gave him a raise, maintaining at the time they could recoup a lot of that money by marketing him as the “clean” all-time home run champion as he pursued Barry Bonds record. We all know how that worked out.

Certainly Hal knows the risks of these contracts of upwards of $300 million. In December 2022, he tried hard to hold the line at eight years for Aaron Judge because of his history of injuries but in the end gave him a ninth to keep him from going to the Giants. At the time, the Yankee brass privately conceded they’d be fortunate to get 5-6 years of MVP-caliber productivity from Judge.

So far into the contract, Judge missed nearly 60 games last year with a foot injury and was hitting .200 going into the weekend this year.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

It says a lot about the character of Jose Abreu that after a standout major league career, as well as being a respected team leader, he agreed to a possibly unprecedented demotion last week to the Astros’ spring training complex. The 37-year-old Abreu, in the second year of a $58.5 million contract, is off to an awful start, .099 with just one extra base hit, but could have insisted to be kept on the Astros roster to work out his hitting difficulties in the majors. But as Astros GM Dana Brown said: “Jose Abreu is an outstanding human being. He is unselfish and he’s a teammate’s guy.” … The Nationals last week placed Joey Gallo on the injured list with a shoulder sprain, but you have to wonder if he’ll ever be back. Gallo is hitting .122 with a .311 slugging pct., and leading the majors with 43 strikeouts. It’s a continuation for one of the worst hitters in major league history. In 10 seasons with five different clubs, Gallo has a .195 average with 1,233 strikeouts in 2,720 at bats. All that’s kept in the majors is his 201 home runs. … It’s nice to see the Babe Ruth museum in Baltimore making a comeback after so many years of irrelevancy, starting with the revival of the prestigious Babe Ruth Sultan of Swat crown that was first awarded in 1956 to Mickey Mantle by the Maryland Professional Baseball Players Association at their annual banquet, but ceased being presented in 1998. Last week at Oriole Park, the award was revived and presented to the Yankees’ Aaron Judge by Joe DiBlasi, the corporate consultant for the museum. “We chose Judge for very natural reasons related to the Babe,” DiBlasi said, “breaking Roger Maris’ record. According to DiBlasi, there are plans underway to revive the Baltimore winter baseball banquet as well in conjunction with the Babe Ruth Museum which is housed at 216 Emery St. in Baltimore, the Babe’s birthplace, and the Sultan of Swat award is now going back to being a regular thing.

All we know is the Yankees went into this weekend’s series against the Brewers with the third best record in the American League despite having zero contribution from Gerrit Cole and almost next-to-zero from Aaron Judge. Even before Cole went down in mid-March with inflammation and edema in his pitching elbow, the skinny on the Yankees was that, with Juan Soto added to the middle of the lineup, they were going to be as offensively potent as any team in baseball but had major questions about their starting pitching.

Instead it’s been just the opposite.

If you’re looking for a Yankee MVP so far this season, my nomination would be the pitching coach, Matt Blake. The Yankees’ pitching, particularly the Cole-less rotation has been superb. All five starters, Nestor Cortes, Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman, Clarke Schmidt and the Dominican rookie Luis Gil have been remarkably consistent, all with ERAs under 4.00, and solid starts almost every time out. The Yankees’ 2.95 team ERA ranks second in the majors and more than anything else it has been the Yankees’ starters who have kept them on the heels of the Orioles in the AL East while they await the offense, particularly Judge, to start doing their part.

It seems almost unfathomable a month into the season that Judge would be hitting .178 with four homers and 13 RBI (plus grounding into a team-leading seven double plays). He insists he’s not hurt and we have to believe him, but at the same time he’s clearly not been right. And while Soto’s been everything the Yankees had hoped for, it is still Judge who makes the offense go.

“It’s a long season and I’ve had seasons where I’ve started off worse than this in my career,” Judge said last week. “I’ve also had seasons where I started out hot and then you always hit a rough spot where you hit .150 in a whole month. You just gotta keep working, gotta keep improving and we’ll get out of it.”

The Yankees so far been averaging 4.31 runs per game, barely below the major league average of 4.35 and as of Friday were tied with the Marlins for the most grounded into double plays (30). There are concerns aplenty about the lineup beyond Judge.

For the first two weeks, Anthony Volpe, with his revised flattened swing, appeared to be really coming into his own, hitting the ball to all fields and batting .375 as of April 10 when the Yankees elected to move him into the leadoff spot. Since then his average plummeted 75 points and you have to wonder if the move, and the responsibilities that come with it, was too soon, and the Yankees might be better suited using Alex Verdugo, who doesn’t have Volpe’s speed but gets walks and sees a lot of pitches, at the top of the order.

In any case, they had to do something about the leadoff spot where Gleyber Torres (.192, 0 HR, 2 RBI) had been a mess. With 49 homers the previous two seasons leading up to his free agent walk year, Torres had been one of the most productive second basemen in the AL. But the fact the Yankees have made no overtures to extend him has seemingly affected him mentally. He needs to relax, which, of course, would be a lot easier if Judge and the rest of the Yankee offense can get it together.

Heightening the Yankees’ offensive woes has been the loss of DJ LeMahieu, whose return from recurring foot issues now appears weeks away again, rather than days. Without LeMahieu, his third base replacement, Oswaldo Cabrera, who was hitting .303 on April 21 before only getting one hit in the four games against Oakland at the end of the homestand last week, was supposed to be the Yankee backup at third, short, second and first base. They really don’t have any suitable infield backups, either on the major league roster or at Triple-A, and that’s a real problem.

Otherwise, the Yankees aren’t getting a whole lot out of the catching spot where rookie Austin Wells, who’s supposed to be an offense-first catcher, has gotten off to a horrendous start — and first base where Anthony Rizzo, 34, has at least stayed healthy but with limited (3 HR, 11 RBI) production.

So a month into the season this is where the Yankees are: Holding their own in the AL East on the strength of their pitching, but in a nervous waiting game for their best player “to come out of it.”

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

It’s apparently been decreed by the MLB poohbahs that Hunter Wendelstedt will receive some sort of discipline for erroneously tossing Aaron Boone out of last Monday’s Yankee game against the A’s over heckling the umpire received from — not Boone — but rather a fan behind home plate. We’ll probably never know what that discipline is because MLB never seems to do much of anything to its umpires for bad performance. Wendelstedt is one of a half-dozen umpires — Angel Hernandez, C.B. Bucknor, Brian O’Nora, Doug Eddings and Laz Diaz are the others — who consistently rank at the bottom of MLB’s rating system every year and yet they go on, year after year, embarrassing the game with their poor performance, which makes you wonder what’s the purpose of a rating system if there are no consequences for the umpires who consistently rank at the bottom? Baseball umpires are like Supreme Court justices. They can’t be fired and they can’t be demoted. It seems every other week Hernandez is embarrassing the game with his horrendous pitch calling behind the plate, but the MLB hierarchy merely shrug. It’s an age-old problem for baseball and a puzzlement that it’s never been fixed. If players get sent back to the minors or released for poor performance, why can’t umpires? …Congratulations to Dusty Baker for being the recipient of Baseball Digest’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He couldn’t be more deserving and is now in some heavy company with the previous winners Willie Mays, Vin Scully and Joe Torre. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence (right?) that Baker’s former team, the Astros, who he directed to three division titles and two World Series in the last four years, are currently wallowing in last place in the AL West with the fourth worst record in baseball. … It’s too early to say if this is going to be a season of epic batting futility but going into the weekend, the collective MLB batting average was .240, with five teams hitting .220 or worse, most notably the White Sox, who have been routinely fielding a lineup of at least six players hitting under .200. According to the Elias Bureau, the last time the collective major league batting average was .240 or lower was 1968 (at .237).

Stearns talked about Mendoza’s “consistency, positivity” and the team’s “energy” which just seemed to evolve, adding “that’s really tough to manufacture from a front office perspective.”

He was right about all of that, but I’m sure Stearns is also privately quite pleased at how his subtle, low budget “Milwaukee Brewers-like” offseason maneuverings are already paying big dividends, at the same time as some in-house talent discoveries could potentially alter the modest 85-win expectations of the owner, Steve Cohen. Mind you, this Mets team has demonstrated plenty of warts so far with some mind-numbing sloppy fielding at times and their catchers are 0-for-25 throwing out base runners going into the weekend. But they were tied with the Braves for the second-most (7) comeback wins in the majors and their overall 3.15 team ERA was sixth in the majors while their bullpen had the most strikeouts and had yielded the fifth fewest runs.

Indeed, it is the Mets’ pitching which has changed the outlook, not just for this year, but for 2025 and beyond, and the loss of Kodai Senga until June at the earliest with a shoulder strain has not been felt.

Faced with a luxury tax payroll of $340 million that included nearly $50 million in “dead money” from the contracts of Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and James McCann, Stearns was limited in what he could do last winter to address the Mets’ needs and chose to work around the edges, filling out the starting rotation behind Senga and Jose Quintana by signing Luis Severino for $13 million, Sean Manaea for two-years, $28 million and acquiring Adrian Houser from the Brewers along with backup outfielder Tyrone Taylor.

After a rough first outing against the Brewers on March 30, Severino proceeded to reel off three straight stellar starts in which he yielded a total of just two earned runs and looked every bit the top-of-the-rotation starter he was with the Yankees before being felled by all the injuries. Manaea and Houser have been OK — about what you expect from back-of-the-rotation starters — but the real stalwart so far has been Jose Butto, who after bouncing back and forth as a spot starter from Triple-A last year, struck out 15 over 12 innings in his first two starts.

“The only way you’re getting out [of paying luxury tax every year] is you have to have a good farm system,” Cohen said earlier this spring. He was looking ahead and referring specifically to the high cost of starting pitching. But if Butto is real, as scouts, Met operatives, and even former manager Buck Showalter insist he is, and Severino stays dominant, and top prospect Christian Scott continues on the fast track for delivery midseason, the Mets could suddenly have the deepest rotation, quality wise, in the NL East.

Another “find” this spring has been the righty reliever Reed Garrett, who struck out 17 in his first four outings and has looked like a totally different pitcher than last year when he was roughed up for 11 runs over 17 innings in nine relief stints after being picked up off waivers from the Orioles. Between Garrett and the serviceable lefty Jake Diekman (who Stearns signed for $4 million with a $4 million option last winter), not to mention the return of Edwin Diaz, Mendoza has considerably more bullpen weapons than Showalter had last year.

All of which is why 85 wins might be too modest.

What’s going to be interesting is how Stearns operates next winter when he’s out from under the Scherzer, Verlander and McCann financial obligations. A decision certainly is going to have to be made on Pete Alonso and the temptation will be there to pursue Juan Soto. Cohen can’t sign both and you keep hearing that Stearns’ analytics crew is against re-signing Alonso. On the other hand, with Stearns’ analytic (and small market) background, doling out a contract of 10-12 years and upwards of $400 million for Soto might seem abhorrent, especially when Alonso can probably be secured for half of that and the Mets’ two elite prospects, Jett Williams and Drew Gilbert, are both outfielders who’ll be ready next year.

That’s why, come November, the most watched person in baseball is going to be David Stearns.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

Farewell John Sterling, and to quote one of your favorites Bob Hope, “Thanks for the memories.” … The Chicago White Sox, by far the worst team in baseball even with Luis Robert (who’s expected to be out for at least 6-8 weeks with a hip flexor injury), went into the weekend with a .196 team batting average that doesn’t figure to get a whole lot better. Which means, in addition to challenging the ’62 Mets’ 40-120 worst record in history, the White Sox might also challenge their 1910 ancestors, who hold the modern record for batting futility with a .212 collective average. … Before he became a Hall of Fame manager with the Cardinals and Royals, Whitey Herzog, who died Monday at age 92, had his baseball roots with the Yankees and Mets. The Yankees originally signed him as a player but traded him to the Washington Senators before he ever reached the Bronx and he went on to have a very mediocre eight-year career with four different teams about which he later quipped: “Baseball’s been very good to me since I stopped trying to play it.” It started when he was named farm director for the Mets in 1966 and under his watch they developed the core of the 1969 and ’73 championship clubs — Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman, Nolan Ryan, Wayne Garrett, Gary Gentry, John Milner plus standout outfielders Ken Singleton and Amos Otis who they traded before they reached their prime. It was at the 1971 Winter Meetings in Phoenix that Herzog was sitting around having breakfast in the headquarters hotel with a bunch of New York writers when one of the Mets’ PR men came to the table and informed him they had just traded four players to the Angels for third baseman Jim Fregosi. “Who are the four players?” Herzog asked, to which the PR man began reciting their names — Ryan and minor leaguers Frank Estrada, Don Rose, Leroy Stanton. “Wait a minute” Herzog gasped. “You’re telling me we traded Nolan Ryan plus three players for Fregosi? I wouldn’t have traded Stanton straight up for him!” It was because of his outspoken opinions that Herzog ran afoul of the stuffed-shirt imperial Mets president M. Donald Grant, who passed him over for Mets manager in favor of Yogi Berra when Gil Hodges died in 1972. Not only that, Grant would not permit Herzog to attend Hodges’ funeral, and soon thereafter Whitey quit the Mets and began his managerial career, first with Texas. The rest is history.

Carl Erskine, the humble Hoosier who pitched two no-hitters for the 1950’s Brooklyn Dodgers and was the last of the fabled “Boys of Summer” has died. Erskine, 97, died Tuesday morning in his hometown of Anderson, Ind., after a brief bout with pneumonia. His family confirmed his death to the Indianapolis Star.

One of the classiest players ever to grace the major leagues, Erskine spent his entire career (1948-1959) with the Dodgers, compiling a 127-78 record that included no-hitters against the Chicago Cubs (June 19 1952) and the Giants (May 12, 1956) as well as a World Series record 14 strikeouts in one game that was later eclipsed, first by Sandy Koufax and again by Bob Gibson. In all, Erskine pitched in 11 World Series games from 1949-56, all against the Yankees, making two starts in 1952, three in 1953 and one each in 1955 and ’56. He also was the starting pitcher for the Dodgers’ first game in Los Angeles in 1958.

His Game 5 win in the ’52 Series was one of the more phenomenal — and unlikely — pitching efforts by any starting pitcher ever in a World Series. The Dodgers were leading 4-0 when suddenly the Yankees, held to just one hit to that point, erupted for five runs off Erskine in the bottom of the fifth. The first two runs were scored via a walk, two soft singles and an infield force-out before Johnny Mize delivered the only hard-hit ball in the inning with a homer to deep right field.

Right after the Mize homer, an annoyed Erskine was visited at the mound by Dodger manager Chuck Dressen and assumed his day was done. He was admittedly caught off guard when, instead of asking for the ball, Dressen began asking him what his plans were for after the game.

“When I got to Yankee Stadium that morning there was a telegram in my locker from a guy in Texas who I’d played with in the minor leagues,” Erskine related in a 2017 interview with the Daily News. “It said, ‘Good luck. It’s the fifth game, on the fifth of October and this is your fifth wedding anniversary’. I showed the telegram to our broadcasters, Red Barber and Vince Scully, and Scully took it up to the booth with him.

“Now it’s the fifth inning and I’ve just given up five runs and Dressen’s out there asking me how I feel.”

“’How do you think I feel?’“ I said to him.

“Dressen says: ‘I know it’s your anniversary. Got any plans for dinner tonight with Betty?”

“’As a matter of fact I do,’” I replied.

“’Well, Dressen says, ‘Mize’s was the only ball hit hard off you. Try to get this game over before dark so you don’t have to keep her waiting too late.’”

That was it. The reprieved Erskine went on to retire the next 19 batters and the Dodgers won the game on Duke Snider’s RBI double in the 11th inning. Erskine retired the Yankees in order in the bottom of the inning, including Yogi Berra on a game-ending strikeout.

“After that last pitch to Yogi, a curve ball, I looked at my finger and there was a big blister on it,” Erskine said. “I couldn’t have thrown another pitch in that World Series.” As Scully exclaimed in his broadcast after relating the story of the letter Erskine had received, the time on the clock as the game ended was five minutes past five.

“It wasn’t until after the game someone pointed out to me that I’d pitched nine no-hit innings in that game, the first pitcher to ever do that in a World Series,” Erskine said.

During the regular season in ’52, Erskine was 14-6 with a 2.70 ERA for the Dodgers. In his no-hitter against the Cubs, only a four-pitch walk in the third inning to his opposing pitcher, Willard Ramsdell, prevented him from a perfect game. The following year he had his best season, 20-6, and pitched another gem in the World Series.

After a quick kayo in Game 1 of the ’53 World Series, in which he was removed by Dressen having given up four runs in the first inning, Erskine was at least well rested for his Game 3 start three days later. In out-dueling Yankee ace Vic Raschi, 3-2, Erskine turned one of the most dominant starts in World Series history, breaking the 24-year old Series record by striking out 14 batters, including Mickey Mantle and Joe Collins four times each.

“The ’53 season was very unusual for me,” Erskine said. “I was only 5-4 at the All-Star break and Dressen said I was just unlucky. I’d pitched really well but had nothing to show for it. Then I went 15-2 in the second half, the best stretch of pitching in my entire career. I had a bad first inning in Game 1 of the World Series when Billy Martin, who set a Series record for hits, got me for a bases-loaded triple. But Dressen was very re-assuring. ‘Don’t worry,’ he told me, ‘’you’re gonna start Game 3.’”

According to Erskine, he had a rush of adrenaline the entire Game 3. When he struck out Don Bollweg on three high fastballs to start the ninth, he looked to see who was coming up, “and it was my old nemesis. Johnny Mize.”

Erskine later heard that Mize, the Hall of Fame slugger who prided himself for his keen batting eye, had been chastising the Yankee hitters the whole game. When Mize was summoned by Yankee manager Casey Stengel to hit for Raschi, he reportedly shouted to the bench, “I’ll show you guys how to hit Erskine.”

October 5, 1955

He instead became Erskine’s 14th strikeout victim and as he disgustedly came back to the dugout, Billy Martin reportedly said to him: “That’s the way you beat Erskine?”

(The 14 strikeout record was later broken by Sandy Koufax with 15 in Game 1 of the ’63 Series and then again by Bob Gibson, with 17 in Game 1 in the ’68 Series.)

Erskine, who retired at age 32 in 1959, later revealed he pitched his entire career with a sore arm, the result of a torn muscle in his shoulder incurred in his very first major league start, against the Cubs, on a cold, damp day in Chicago in 1948. “I struck out Bill Nicholson on a high fastball and I felt this sharp pain in the back of my shoulder,” he said. “But in those days you didn’t dare tell anyone you were hurt. The Dodgers had over 200 pitchers in their minor league system, all looking to take your job. So I kept pitching, periodically taking cortisone shots throughout my career to dull the pain.”

As chronicled in Roger Kahn’s iconic book “The Boys of Summer,” the ‘50s Dodgers were seemingly snake bit against the Yankees in the World Series, save for 1955 when they won their one and only world championship in Brooklyn — and star-crossed with tragedy off the field in the after-careers: Gil Hodges died at 47, Jackie Robinson at 53, Billy Cox at 58; Roy Campanella was paralyzed in an automobile accident in January of 1958; Ralph Branca was forever haunted for giving up the home run to Bobby Thomson in the 1951 Giants-Dodgers playoff game; Carl Furillo left baseball a bitter man after suing the Dodgers for releasing him in 1960 while he was on the disabled list. And Erskine dedicated his entire life to raising and caring for his son, Jimmy, who was born with Down syndrome. Despite the advice of many to have Jimmy institutionalized, the Erskines insisted on raising him themselves. Jimmy lived until 2023.

For years afterward, Erskine loved to joke about the unwitting role he had in Thomson’s “shot heard ‘round the world” homer off Branca. Both he and Branca had been warming up in the bullpen when Dressen called down in the ninth inning with two runners on base and the Giants trailing 4-1, and asked his coach, Clyde Sukeforth, which one was ready. “They both are, but Erskine just bounced a curve ball,” Sukeforth reported, prompting Dressen to reply: “OK, send me Branca.”

“Whenever anyone asked me what my best pitch was,” said Erskine, “I always told them it was the curve ball I bounced in the Polo Grounds bullpen in 1951.”

After his retirement, Erskine returned home to Anderson, where, in addition to being a successful businessman as a licensed agent for United Life Insurance Co. and vice chairman of STAR Financial Bank in Indianapolis, he coached the Anderson College baseball team for 12 seasons, winning four Hoosier Conference championships. He was also very active in the Special Olympics because of Jimmy. At the Hall of Fame ceremonies in July 2023, Erskine was honored with the Buck O’Neil Award “for extraordinary efforts to enhance baseball’s positive impact on society.”

He is survived by his wife, Betty, a daughter, Susan, and sons, Gary and Danny.

It seems every week another top shelf major league starting pitcher is going down with an elbow injury, most of them requiring season-ending Tommy John surgery. Last week it was the Marlins’ Eury Perez and the Guardians’ Shane Bieber both going down with torn ulnar collateral ligaments in their elbows, with the Braves’ Spencer Strider (who’s already had one Tommy John surgery) joining them and the Astros’ Framber Valdez, the Red Sox’s Nick Pivetta and the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole all down with inflammation in their elbows being closely monitored. Already on the injured list recovering from Tommy John surgery are the Rangers’ would-be ace Jacob deGrom, Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara, Rays ace Shane McClanahan and the Dodgers’ Walker Buehler.

Surprisingly, it has taken this long for the alarm bells to sound all over Major League Baseball as they did last week when, I’m told, MLB has begun reaching out to former pitchers for their thoughts of what’s behind all these blown-out elbows. They’re going to get the same answers and it’s not the pitch clock, as players union chief Tony Clark put out there to much agreement from a lot of the pitchers who all hate the clock.

There is absolutely no documented proof that an 18-20 second limit of recovery time between pitches is putting additional strain on the UCLs. What is well documented as the primary culprit is baseball’s analytics brigade’s obsession with velocity. All of the above mentioned pitchers have ranked among the hardest throwers in baseball with averages of 96 mph or higher with their four-seam fastballs. According to MLB’s Statcast, the average four-seamer fastballs and sinkers mph has risen from 92.8 in 2015 to 93.9 in 2023 and is presently sitting at 93.7 this season. In addition, the total number of pitches in the majors of over 100 mph has risen from 1,057 in 2014, to 1,829 in 2021, to 3,880 in 2023.

In his first spring training start, in late February, the Pirates’ Paul Skenes, the overall No. 1 draft pick last year, struck out the Orioles’ fellow phenom Jackson Holliday on a 102 mph fastball. His first outing of the spring! It wowed all the fans, but should have sent tremors through the Pirates hierarchy, although all the new analytically inclined GMs today love seeing those high digit velos and spin rates.

All the teams have created these pitching labs where the analytics geeks sit around measuring velocity, spin rates, pitch shape, landing spots, horizontal breaks, vertical breaks, release points, etc., but nothing to do with actual feel for pitching. Tom Seaver said so often that the three basic elements of pitching were command, movement and velocity and by far the least important of the three was velocity. And yet, going all the way back to even the high schools and these data-driven performance programs like Driveline, the coaches’ emphasis with pitchers is building velocity because of its monetary rewards. The higher velocity the bigger the bonuses.

And as it’s been proven now, the greater risk of blowing out their elbows.

Last week, Dr. James Andrews, the foremost practitioner of Tommy John surgeries, said: “In many cases the injury leading to Tommy John surgery in today’s young pitchers actually began when they were adolescent amateurs,” adding that pitching year-round on multiple teams in youth travel leagues is also a major factor, especially when you’re talking pitching year round with maximum effort.

Here’s what Hall of Fame GM Pat Gillick told me — which pretty much sums up the problem: “They’re not teaching these kids how to pitch anymore. They’re just teaching them to throw hard…for velocity and spin rates but not how to pitch in games. I worry that we have so many of these pitching coaches today who never pitched in the majors and can’t relate that experience to these pitchers.”

Gillick added the analytics credo of not facing the lineup a third time around, pitch count limits…all of that “is contradictory to learning how to pitch. By that I mean learning to take something off their pitches and concentrating on command and movement instead of throwing as hard as they can for as long as they can.”

When I asked a former player from the ’70s why was it that all the hardest throwing pitchers of the ’60s and ’70s — Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer, Ferguson Jenkins — all had multiple seasons of 300 innings or more yet none of them ever had a blown-out UCL, his answer was: Running. There was a time when pitchers ran foul pole to foul pole laps before every game and especially in spring training, the purpose of which was to build up leg strength, which in turn contributed to putting less stress on their arms in their deliveries.

In regard to conditioning, last week Pedro Martinez said: “In the minors I focused on working on my ligaments. I never lifted weights. Time has changed and so has training, but if you want to become a pitcher, you should strive to learn the feel for pitching and the knowledge of what to do with the ball rather than throwing it hard. The analytics department has forced the young kids by pressuring them to have revolution, velocity and spin rate…that’s too much for baby ligaments.”

When asked what baseball needs to do to remedy this growing epidemic of blown-out elbows, he said a good start might be to stop flashing the pitch velo on the scoreboards after every pitch.

One pitcher to keep a close eye on this year is the White Sox’s Garrett Crochet. A No. 1 draft choice out of Tennessee in 2020, Crochet was called up to the majors as a reliever Sept. 18 that year and from there to the end of the season he threw the second-most 100 mph pitches (45 out of a total of 85 or 52.9%) in the majors. A year later, in April 2022, he underwent Tommy John surgery. This season the White Sox made him a starter where he’s so far been close to unhittable — but he hasn’t thrown a single 100 mph pitch and his average four-seam fastball has been 94 mph. It would seem he’s learned from the Tommy John surgery the necessity of being a pitcher and not just a thrower.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

Meanwhile, as for position players, all the usual suspects — the White Sox trio of Luis Robert Jr. (hip flexor), Eloy Jimenez (left abductor strain) and Yoan Moncada (left abductor strain) and the Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe (oblique) have all landed on the injured list again and will miss considerable time. The White Sox trio all suffered their injuries running the bases. Since the start of 2020, the White Sox played 557 games as of Friday and Robert, Jimenez and Moncada, arguably their three best players, have played together in only 161 of them — 28.9%.It’s the same thing with the Rays and Lowe, one of their most productive players whenever he’s been in the lineup — which has been seldom since 2021. In his only full season — 2021 when he played 149 games — Lowe hit 39 homers with 99 RBI. Since then, he missed over 50 games last year with back inflammation and a knee fracture and in 2022 missed nearly 100 games due to a stress reaction in his back. He’s also had periodic injured list stints over the last five years with a triceps contusion and a bone bruise in his lower leg. … The White Sox were already a bad team with Roberts, Jimenez and Moncada. Without them for considerable periods of time, they have a good chance of beating out the 120-loss ’62 Mets as the worst team in baseball history.

Well, for the Yankees, we can say, probably not, and the Mets hopefully not.

Who among us had the Yankees going 6-1 on their opening-season road trip to Houston and Arizona, two of the best teams in baseball, without Gerrit Cole? Somehow, they did, despite a subpar performance by Nestor Cortes (13 hits, 7 ER in 10 innings) in his first two starts, 11 strikeouts in 20 at-bats by Giancarlo Stanton and a mostly silent (5-for-28, 1 HR, 4 RBI) Aaron Judge in the seven games. (I hate to say this, the noticeably slimmed down Stanton really does look like he’s finished and that’s a decision the Yankees are going to have to come grips with sooner rather than later.) They also caught a lot of breaks on the trip, most notably Arizona manager Torey Lovullo running out of players last Wednesday and watching helplessly as reliever Scott McGough, hitting in the DH spot, struck out to end the game.

On the other hand, Juan Soto had a sensational road trip, offensively and defensively, leaving no doubt of his maiden season in New York being a smashing success — and a $500 million gulp for Hal Steinbrenner.

Then the Yankees came home to the announcement Jonathan Loaisga was landing in a familiar place, the injured list, with a strained flexor muscle that will likely sideline him for weeks, and the bullpen void immediately showed up on Opening Day when secondary relievers Caleb Ferguson and Dennis Santana followed Marcus Stroman’s brilliant six innings of shutout ball by surrendering the three runs in Toronto’s 3-0 win.

All that said, we know that Judge is going to start producing, while Anthony Volpe has really come into his own with his revised swing, and Luis Gil looks like a real find for the rotation. The Yankees are going to be a much better team than last year’s desultory 82-80 bunch, but not nearly as good as the Orioles and Blue Jays, and their challenge will be hanging close with those two teams until Cole comes back in mid-May.

(For the record, I’m seeing this as the year the Rays’ penny-pinching ways, especially with their starting pitching, finally catches up them.)

As for the Mets, thank God for the pitiful Marlins, the only thing standing in the way of them going on their first road trip of the season as a last-place team. (I have to believe there’s nobody happier to be no longer in Miami than Kim Ng, who did a brilliant job of trading the Marlins into the postseason last year only to be pushed aside by their clueless owner Bruce Sherman.)

It was indeed a disastrous opening homestand for the Mets in which Francisco Lindor, Jeff McNeil and Brandon Nimmo went a combined 3-for-60 with no RBI. We know that isn’t going to continue, and Francisco Alvarez has developed into one of the best catchers in the game, so going forward the Mets should not have concerns about their offense.

What should concern them, however, is their bullpen beyond Edwin Diaz, which GM David Stearns has filled with a lot of mediocrities, most surprisingly bringing back Adam Ottavino, who was pretty much shot last year, for $4.5 million. Their disastrous loss to the Tigers in the first game of Thursday’s doubleheader in which they blew a 3-0 lead was largely the result of manager Carlos Mendoza having to pull his starter Adrian Houser, who wasn’t built up, after just 67 pitches and using Ottavino and Drew Smith in a high leverage situation for which neither is up the task anymore.

I think Mendoza has the makings of being a pretty good manager, but this is going to be a test for him, rallying the Mets back from this early season hole. I’d feel a lot more confident about a veteran manager who’s been through the wars and knows the players intimately, but Stearns was not willing to let Buck Showalter finish out the final year of his contract, was he?

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

Larry Lucchino, the hard-driving, uncompromising former CEO of the Red Sox and George Steinbrenner’s most famous antagonist, died last week at age 78 after as long, recurring battle with leukemia. Let it be said the Red Sox would not have won those world championships, Fenway Park might have fallen victim to the wrecking ball, and Camden Yards in Baltimore would not have started the ballpark renaissance in baseball were it not for Lucchino. It was Lucchino who hired Theo Epstein, who ended the Curse of the Bambino in Boston, and Lucchino, who fostered a relationship with Boston mayor Thomas Menino that led to the Red Sox being able to secure the necessary funding for the renovations to fast-decaying Fenway, including the seats above the Green Monster in left field that really should be named after him. It was also Lucchino — who never met a fellow baseball lord he couldn’t engage in mortal combat with — who breathed new life into the age-old Yankee-Red Sox rivalry by dubbing the Yankees “the evil empire” after Steinbrenner had out-maneuvered he and Epstein to sign Cuban defector Jose Contreras in 2002 a week after they’d also signed Hideki Matsui. In 2002, Red Sox owner John Henry told Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy that it was Lucchino who brought him in as the primary investor to the group that bought the Red Sox in 2002. Sadly, Lucchino had a falling out with Henry and Sox chairman Tom Werner, who blamed him for the disastrous hiring of Bobby Valentine as manager in 2011 and the loss of Jon Lester in 2014. Werner was said to have long been jealous of Lucchino getting all the credit for the Red Sox successes, and with Henry’s blessing was able to push Lucchino out. In his last years, Lucchino owned and operated the Red Sox Triple-A farm club in Worcester but friends said he died a bitter man after the way things ended for him in Boston. I would add it’s no coincidence the Red Sox ownership/front office has been a dysfunctional mess and the team has gone backward since his departure.

I realize this is the time of year — especially in New York — where fans dream World Series dreams, but it just ain’t happening with either of our locals. For all their offseason maneuverings (the Yankees much more so than the Mets) there’s still too much difference between the Orioles and Blue Jays in the AL East for the Yankees and the Braves and the Phillies in the NL East for the Mets.

We start with the Yankees, who addressed their biggest need — a left-handed power bat — in the biggest way with the trade for Juan Soto. But at the same time they are still a team lacking in athleticism. With the exception of right field (Soto) and center field (Aaron Judge), the Orioles have better, younger and more athletic players at every position, especially when they bring the gifted Jackson Holliday up at the end of April. At the same time, the acquisition of Soto has forced the Yankees to move Judge to center where opposing scouts and even some of the Yankees’ own people worry is an injury waiting to happen.

Bad enough the Yankees are going to be without Gerrit Cole until at least May, and still don’t know what they have (or don’t have) with Carlos Rodon, but the Blue Jays with Chris Bassitt, Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman and Yusei Kikuchi have the strongest starting pitching in the AL East. Here’s how a scout following the Yankees all spring assessed them: “Soto is unquestionably a difference-maker and I think he’ll thrive in New York because he seems to have the even keel disposition for it. But the Yankees’ starting pitching, especially since they don’t know when Cole will be back and whether he can pick up where he left off last year, is a real issue.”

About the Mets, this much is certain: They will be considerably better than last year’s 75-87 and will likely be better than both the Marlins (who after letting Kim Ng go as GM went back to their penny-pinching ways by not re-signing their best hitter Jorge Soler) and the forever rebuilding Nationals. How do we know that? Well, starting out, new manager Carlos Mendoza has two pivotal players — Edwin Diaz and Starling Marte — who Buck Showalter was without all or most of last year, as well as this offseason’s last-minute signing of J.D. Martinez.

But while Steve Cohen and his new GM David Stearns have continued to caution us that this is a transitionary year for the Mets, they’ve done almost everything to confirm that other than filling the previously revolving-door DH role with Martinez. In particular, Stearns took the cheap route to fill out the starting rotation behind Kodai Senga (who hopefully will be back by May) and Jose Quintana, spending a total $46 million on Luis Severino, Sean Manaea and Adrian Hauser — all of whom have something to prove. And it was the same thing with the bullpen in front of Diaz; Stearns obviously hoping Brooks Raley will have a second straight standout season and Adam Ottavino still has something left in the tank (questionable).

I’m still betting on the Mets to have improved enough to finish third. But I’m also keeping a close eye on Phillies star Bryce Harper, who had a dismal spring (5-for-28 with no homers and only one extra base hit). Scouts were alarmed at the fact that he wasn’t pulling anything and word is Harper has a back issue. If this is something that lingers, second place for the Mets may not be a pipedream.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

In his “no questions/statement only” press conference last week Shohei Ohtani managed to inadvertently invoke both Claude Rains’ Captain Renault in “Casablanca” (“I’m shocked there was $4.5 million in gambling debts paid off out of my bank account”) and John Banner’s Sergeant Schultz in “Hogan’s Heroes: (“I knew nothing about this until I arrived in Seoul”). But he did nothing to answer the two most pertinent questions that could clear up this entire scandal: (1) How did Ohtani’s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara have access to Ohtani’s bank account and the ability to make wire transfers out of it? And (2) How did Ohtani not know — or get any alerts — that thousands of dollars were being wired out of his account to a bookmaker? Until or unless those questions are answered satisfactorily to all the proper authorities — MLB, the IRS, the state of California — Ohtani is coming off less-than-credible in all of this. … On Tuesday, Jordan Montgomery became the final Scott Boras client to take a severe haircut, electing to sign with the Diamondbacks for a one-year deal worth $25 million with a vesting option of $22.5 million for the 2025 season. Two days before Montgomery finally got a job, MLB’s Jim Bowden breathlessly reported on their Front Office show that ”the Montgomery market is here” and that “he has two long-term offers” while also reporting the Yankees and Red Sox were also still on him. What do you think happened to those two long-term contract offers? Who could Bowden’s source possibly have been? So much for his credibility. Meanwhile, Montgomery had spent all winter reportedly seeking a seven-year deal of upwards of $170M, but as he did with Blake Snell, Cody Bellinger and Matt Chapman, Boras grossly over-reached and misread the market, costing his clients millions by having to settle for one-year deals with opt-outs after the market dried up.

If there has been one common thread to this Mets spring training — other than the growing suspicion it might be the last for Pete Alonso — it’s that their core of top-rated prospects — position players Drew Gilbert, Jett Williams, Ryan Clifford and Luisangel Acuna and pitchers Christian Scott, Blade Tidwell, Mike Vasil, Dom Hamel and Nate Lavender — have all pretty much been kept under wraps under the cautionary flag: No promotions before their time.

It’s highly unlikely any of the position prospects will see time at Citi Field before September and the preference is for the pitchers to get another full year in the high minors, although both Scott and Vasil are deemed closest in the inevitable event of a starting pitcher going down with an injury.

That’s the new philosophy of David Stearns & Co. Too often in the past the Mets have rushed players to the majors only to have them fail and never recover. This present group was not given a chance to compete for a major league job this spring and if Met fans traipsing to Port St. Lucie in hopes of getting a glimpse of the “stacked” minor league system prospects Cohen was talking about they were disappointed. Cohen and Stearns have made it clear this is going to be sort of a transition year for the Mets and they’re staying the course with last year’s group — with one notable exception as they signed J.D. Martinez to be the fulltime designated hitter. This meant another player who thought he was going to be part of the Mets’ future — Mark Vientos, who’s led the team in homers this spring — will likely be going back to Triple-A.

What seems to be happening is, Cohen hasn’t given up on the Mets somehow making the postseason, despite the presence of the Braves and Phillies in their own division, while Stearns and his analytics team want to find out if Brett Baty is their third baseman for the foreseeable future, Tylor Megill has developed into a reliable and consistent middle rotation starter and just how much they’ve got left in Starling Marte.

Definitely an assessment shift from last September when previous GM Billy Eppler executed the two salary dumps of Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, netting Gilbert and Clifford from the Astros for Verlander and Acuna from Texas for Scherzer. At that time then-manager Buck Showalter predicted that Acuna had so much talent that he could wind up at second base for the Mets at some time this year while scouts seemed unanimous that the 5-9 multi-talented Gilbert probably needed only another half-season Triple-A.

Meanwhile, I continue to be told by Mets insiders that Stearns and the analytics corps are against re-signing Alonso, who strikes out way too much for them, walks too little and is barely adequate defensively at first base. On the other hand, they love Juan Soto, who’s led the league in walks the last three years and has almost 200 more hits than strikeouts lifetime (as opposed to Alonso’s 635/650). It’s believed the Mets plan to have the 20-year-old lefty-swinging Clifford play first base at Double-A this year — which they will be monitoring closely.

With both Alonso and Soto playing for a big contract, and both being represented by Scott Boras (who’s had a bad winter), this is shaping up as a fascinating internal debate for Cohen and the Mets, First off, Soto is going to have to prove he can play in New York, but assuming he continues on track as the dominant left-handed hitter in baseball, Boras is going to want to make him the highest paid player in the game

On the other hand, Alonso is beloved by the Citi Field faithful and loves playing in New York. If he has another 40-plus homer season, he too, will be demanding Freddie Freeman money ($27 million per) as the highest paid first baseman in the game. There is no way Cohen would seemingly be able to sign both Soto and Alonso — not with the 110% competitive balance tax attached to both contracts. But even though he’s got plenty of highly regarded outfielders coming through the system now, his analytics people still want Soto. Will he listen to them or listen to the fans?

It’s an internal debate that will go on all season long.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

As if the burgeoning gambling scandal with Shohei Ohtani’s fired interpreter isn’t bad enough, the Dodgers may have even bigger concerns over their $325 million righty Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was hit hard in his last two spring training outings then failed to get out of the first inning of his major league debut Thursday, allowing five runs on four hits, a walk, a hit batter and a wild pitch. He threw just 23 pitches, averaging 95.4 mph with his fastball before Dodger manager Dave Roberts mercifully lifted him. Meanwhile, if as Ohtani’s reps are claiming, that his interpreter and close friend Ippei Mizuhara engaged in massive theft of Ohtani’s money to pay off gambling debts is proven to be the real story, the scandal will slowly go away. But if it’s determined that Ohtani himself paid off his friend’s gambling debt — as Mizuhara said in a since-retracted interview with ESPN Tuesday — the $700 million toast of baseball could be facing serious federal charges, not to mention being perilously close to violating baseball’s rule on gambling. …Here’s a loud and hearty boo for Orioles GM Mike Elias, who lamely tried to explain Friday why baseball’s No. 1 overall prospect Jackson Holliday would not be opening the season with the O’s despite going 6-for-14 with two homers, six RBI,  two steals and no errors this spring. Elias claimed the O’s felt Holiday needed some extra time adjusting to switching positions from shortstop to second base. Had nothing to do, of course, with Holliday spending a couple more weeks in the minors so they could gain extra year of service time. “This is a 20-year-old that has played 18 games in Triple-A and is also in a position change and has not faced or had the opportunity to produce a ton against upper-level minor league left-handed pitching in particular. This is where we’ve landed for now.”

But that’s exactly what the Yankees did back in December when they traded Michael King, the minor league pitcher of the year in Drew Thorpe, and two other pitching prospects in Jhony Brito and Randy Vazquez to the Padres for Juan Soto in his free agent walk year. Despite creating a sizeable void in their starting pitching depth, the Yankees still believe it was worth it to acquire arguably the best left-handed hitter in the game. But with Gerrit Cole now out for at least two months, Carlos Rodon seemingly a fingers-crossed adventure every time he takes his turn, and the ever-fragile Nestor Cortes coming off an injury-plagued season that limited him to just 12 starts, the Yankee starting rotation is a major vulnerability until further notice.

Meanwhile, King, Thorpe and Brito have all pitched well this spring and were slated to be the 3-4-5 starters in the Padres rotation until they used Thorpe as the key prospect in the deal with the White Sox last week to land Dylan Cease. So from the Padres’ standpoint the Soto trade is already a huge success, especially because they were able to wait the Yankees out on including King and Thorpe in the deal. By contrast, the Yankees’ initial replacement for Cole in the rotation appears to be Marlins’ castoff Cody Poteet.

According to MLB sources, San Diego GM A.J. Preller was under strict orders from ownership to trade Soto and his expected $31 million salary by Opening Day, so the longer the standoff went with the Yankees, the less leverage he had. Despite Soto’s enormous talent, the market was also limited for him due to his agent Scott Boras already having predicted him to be the first $50 million-a-year player as a free agent. The other clubs the Padres had engaged with on Soto all viewed him as a one-year player they most likely could not afford to re-sign, and, as such, employed the “Gene Michael credo” about not surrendering top prospects for him.

For the Yankees, the ramifications of the Soto trade go far beyond shrinking their starting pitching options. For one thing, it has forced them to move Aaron Judge to center field and there hasn’t been a single baseball person I’ve talked to this spring (including even some within the Yankees) who hasn’t expressed grave concerns about that.

“They’re playing with fire there,” one AL exec said to me last week when Judge went down with an abdominal issue. “Soto is below average defensively and really should be their DH and they’re compensating for that by moving their best player into center field, with all that extra running, etc., where he’s bound to get hurt.”

But even if the Yankees are able to sign Soto after the season, they’re committed with Giancarlo Stanton as DH (for another $118 million) through 2027. And there is also the matter of the competitive balance tax where last year the Yankees went over the fourth and highest threshold of $293 million, which carries a levy of 110% tax on all contracts above that. It’s what’s handcuffed the Yankees this spring signing any free agents to replace Cole.

The Yankees are confident they’ll be under that threshold next year, although they already have $160 million in salary commitments in six players — Judge, Cole, Stanton, Rodon, Marcus Stroman and D.J. LeMahieu — alone. Hypothetically, add another $50 million or so for Soto and they’re already over $200 million with nearly an entire roster to fill. Of course, Steve Cohen who figures to be their chief (and possibly only) competitor for Soto may have an even harder task of getting under that so called “Cohen” fourth tier tax.

For now, in light of the Cole injury, the Yankees, even with Soto, look like a third-place team in the AL East.

IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD

You haven’t heard much about him but one of the most impressive pitchers in the Mets camp has been Nate Lavender, a 24-year-old left-handed reliever with a funky sidearm delivery that hitters find extremely difficult to pick up. Because his velo ranges mostly in the low nineties, Lavender, who was a 14th-round draft pick out of the U. of Illinois in 2021, isn’t a big fave of the analytics geeks — which may explain why he was left unprotected off the 40-man roster last winter and subject to the Rule 5 draft despite 86 strikeouts and just 26 walks in 54.1 innings at AA and A ball. “He’s got great mound presence and he throws strikes,” said one scout. …Have the Dodgers bought a $325 million junker in Yoshinobu Yamamoto? Scouts in Arizona following the Dodgers have been so far very underwhelmed by Yamamoto who, in back-to-back outings against the Mariners and White Sox, was hit hard his third time around the lineup. In all, Yamamoto has given up 15 hits and nine earned runs in 9.2 innings (albeit with 14 strikeouts) in his first three spring outings. …Sending get well soon wishes to Darryl Strawberry, who suffered a heart attack last week. I’ve been told Darryl has been spending over 200 days on the road visiting churches, prisons and schools for his ministry and doctors have told him he’s just going to have to cut down.