Things were already bad enough for the New York Yankees, who entered Thursday’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays losers of three in a row and 13 of their last 19. Their lead in the AL East, which stood at 7.5 games not all that long ago, had evaporated, and the offense seemingly couldn’t get a hit when it mattered. The team was in desperate need of a turnaround.

Instead, the baseball gods somehow found a way to make everything even worse. Righty Clarke Schmidt, a valuable rock in the middle of the team’s injury-ravaged rotation all year, gave up three runs over his first three innings of work. And then, after just 55 pitches, he was removed from the game.

That immediately set off alarm bells, and soon enough the Yankees had issued an ominous injury update, announcing that Schmidt had been removed with “right forearm tightness”. It’s possible that this is just dead arm in the middle of a long season; but given that it comes after Schmidt set a new season-high in pitches thrown during a no-hit bid last week, an outing he reportedly needed longer than usual to recover from, it’s understandable to fear the worst.

And of course, if a worst-case scenario exists, Yankees fans will find it — especially when their team is mired in a miserable slump. It wasn’t long before everyone in the tristate area was assuming that Schmidt was destined for Tommy John surgery, and that New York’s once-promising season was officially over.

For more news and rumors, check out MLB Insider Robert Murray’s work on The Baseball Insiders podcast, subscribe to The Moonshot, our weekly MLB newsletter, and join the discord to get the inside scoop during the MLB season.

Yankees fans are packing it in after Clarke Schmidt leaves with arm injury

In fairness, the Yankees were already looking dead in the water, in need of serious help at the trade deadline to turn things around. And the starting rotation is already beat up, with Gerrit Cole out for the year, Luis Gil not yet back from shoulder surgery and Ryan Yarbrough on the IL himself. If Schmidt is forced to miss time, much less miss the whole year, New York would be reliant on rookie Adam Warren, Marcus Stroman and … well, it’s not exactly clear who the fifth starter would even be in that instance.

For a team that already looked like World Series pretenders rather than contenders, losing a pitcher like Schmidt, who’d posted a 3.09 ERA across his first 13 starts this year, sure feels like a death knell. Of course, we still have no idea what Schmidt’s prognosis looks like, and all it takes is one offensive hot streak to turn everything around. Don’t tell that to Yankees fans, though, who feel like they already know how this movie ends.

Again: Forearm tightness can often be a precursor of something very, very serious, especially given Schmidt’s earlier warning signs. And if that does in fact come to pass, it’s hard to imagine this team making any kind of noise come the playoffs. But it’s also worth remembering that none of this is actually set in stone yet, and there’s still a long way to go in this season.