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It was a rough week for the Yankees... After starting the season with a remarkably injury-free run, they've lost two key pitchers to Tommy John surgery. Luis Gil (above) and Chad Green (below) both left games with forearm pain -- and were quickly told they needed the procedure that will sideline them for 12-18 months.
Gil dazzled when he debuted last August, while Green had been a consistently effective middle reliever and setup man since his breakthrough in 2017. With Aroldis Chapman struggling this year, Brian Cashman's challenge to corral more reliable relievers gets even tougher.

With the Mets also dealing with pitching injuries, Thomas Szapucki -- the opening night starter for AAA Syracuse -- will get a chance to fill in for Scherzer, deGrom and Megill sometime this week. There's a nice local angle to the soon-to-be 26 year old lefty; a Toms River, New Jersey native, his family moved to the Palm Beach area (about 50 minutes from the Mets spring training home) when he was 10.

Welcome back to Justin Upton. Cut by the Angels during spring training, the veteran outfielder just signed with the AL-West rival Mariners. While three unproductive seasons can't be overlooked -- otherwise, he'd still have a job in Anaheim -- he brings 324 career homers and exactly 1000 RBI to Seattle, which stands 10 back of the Astros in their division.

Finally, as we dial up the wayback machine:

On May 23rd, 1962, Joe Pepitone became just the second Yankee ever to hit two home runs in the same inning. Leading off the bottom of the 8th down 7-4 to the Kansas City A's, he planted a Dan Pfister pitch deep in the right field seats to cut the deficit -- and open the floodgates to a huge inning where the club batted around and grabbed the lead. On his second time up, John Wyatt had taken over on the KC mound, just in time to serve up Pepi's second home run to right. This one extended the Yankees lead to 13 - 7 -- and enabled Pepitione to match the heroics of another Yankee named Joe: DiMaggio on June 24th, 1936. Since then, Alex Rodriguez matched the two Joes, with a pair of 7th inning homers against the Mariners on September 5th, 2007.



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