The New York Yankees’ starting rotation has taken a beating this season. Not so much on the field, where they rank a middling 13th in MLB with a 3.76 ERA, but on the injured list.

With 2023 Cy Young winner Gerrit Cole out for the season with Tommy John surgery, and 2024 American League Rookie of the year Luis Gil sidelined until at least June with a lat strain, the Yankees turned to Marcus Stroman – a pitcher they had been desperate to trade during the offseason – to fill one of the rotation holes.

Stroman will earn $18.5 million this season and another $18.5 million next year if he reaches 140 innings pitched this season. But he did not exactly live up to that contract in 2024, his first season in the Bronx.

After a respectable start to last season, Stroman collapsed in the second half, posting ERA figures over 5.00 in June and August, and a whopping 8.80 in September and October.

As a result, manager Aaron Boone kept Stroman off the mound in the postseason and the team attempted to unload his burdensome contract once the season ended.

But the Yankees turned out to need Stroman in light of their injury problems. And then, on April 11 after he coughed up five runs in two-thirds of an inning against the San Francisco Giants, the 34-year-old was also sent to the injured list with a knee injury.

The left knee has been an ongoing issue for Stroman. He underwent surgery to repair a torn ACL in that knee in 2015. He has yet to return from his April 11 aggravation of the knee – and over the weekend the Yankees announced Stroman had suffered yet another setback in his rehab process.

Boone said that after a throwing session on Friday, Stroman continued to feel “discomfort” in the knee.”

“He’s got a lot of treatments on it and stuff, and he just can’t kind of get over that final hump to really allow him to get to that next level on the mound,” Boone said, as quoted by the New York Post. “We’ll try and continue to get our arms around it and try and make sure we get that out of there.”

If there is a bright side – at least for the Yankees in the long term – to Stroman’s setback, it means that with only 9 1/3 innings pitched this season, and with a date for his return to the rotation now looking to be at least several weeks in the future, the 11-year veteran stands little chance of reaching the 140-inning mark.

That means the Yankees could simply cut ties with Stroman after this season, with no further financial commitments.