Isn’t June the best month of the year? We get nice warm weather, summer begins, pool days, grilling outside, baseball in the summer sun, Tommy John surgeries, and… wait a minute,\u00a0what was that? Who in their right mind associates Tommy John with fun outdoor activities?\u00a0\u00a0Sad Yankee fans who have had back to back years of players in the system go under the knife in June, that’s who! Last year saw Gleyber Torres<\/a> get TJ on his non throwing arm and now its Jordan Montgomery<\/a>‘s turn to accept the almost inevitable surgery for pitchers. Comparisons can’t really be made between Torres and Monty’s injuries and the effects TJ will have on their careers but in both cases its just a damn shame to lose the guys for a year+.<\/p>\n With every season ending injury comes the wave of disbelief and sadness for the player but then the inevitable “what the heck do we do now” moment. The Yankees<\/a> have felt the need to add starting pitching depth all season, especially when Monty went down with his original elbow injury\u00a0a little over a month ago but now that there is no hope for a return in 2018 things just got hotter in the oven. Last year near the trade deadline the Yankees dealt with a similar problem when they were figuring out what to do after Michael Pineda<\/a> went down with a season ending injury. As we all now know they ended up making a move on deadline day to add Sonny Gray<\/a> to the rotation.<\/p>\n Flash forward to June 5th, 2018 and Sonny Gray has been the worst Yankee starter this season, carrying a 5.50 ERA and 4.71 xFIP into his next start on June 6th against the Blue Jays<\/a> (which was a stellar 8 IP, 2 H, 2 BB, 8 K outing). Domingo German<\/a> has filled in as best he can for Montgomery in his starts since the injury and most likely will continue in that role for a bit further. While German has not necessarily been consistently bad he hasn’t been consistently good either. One has to wonder if he is best suited for a bullpen role with his pitch arsenal, velocity, and finishing breaking pitches.<\/p>\n The big question is where do the Yankees<\/a> look for help, outward or inward? Well, its probably a combination of both. While there hasn’t been any concrete rumors this far out from the deadline the big names of Hamels or even Bumgarner have floated around NY Media in regards to who Cashman should be targeting. But that might not happen until mid to late July. In the meantime the Yankees<\/a> will probably be required to look inward for their next starter. That is, if they decide to switch things up from German. In my preseason top 50 list there were 5 pitchers in the top 10 and 9 in the top 15, so you’d have to imagine one of those guys could foot the bill. Below is a table of 5 of those 9 pitchers, 4 of which are top 10 and 1 within the top 15.<\/p>\n