The Yankees will be in New York on July 1 for their second go at spring training to gear up for the 2020 regular season. Baseball is finally back.

But manager Aaron Boone has a lot of decisions to make.

Of course, the Yankees' skipper has been preparing for this moment just as his players have. New York's roster is stacked, there's no question about it. However, with a 60-game season, deploying it properly and making sure everyone stays in tip-top shape is paramount for a World Series run.

So what roster and lineup questions will Boone have to answer in the coming weeks? Let's start with the biggest elephant in the room...

Will Aaron Judge be ready for Opening Day?

Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks and James Paxton should all be set for it. But Judge is the last piece of the puzzle here, and there hasn't been that much clarity on whether or not he'll be set to go.

Judge has been posting to his social media about how hyped he is to get back on the field, but until we actually see it happening and Boone as well as the 6-foot-7 slugger says it, I'd remain cautiously optimistic.

He has been working out in Tampa, rehabbing his stress fracture in his rib as well as his shoulder injury. Boone will need to alter his lineup if Judge can't be ready by the end of July, and luckily with the 30-man rosters, he'll have the depth ready to do so if needed.

What is Miguel Andujar's role?

With Hicks returning, Boone's potential plan for Andujar is now squashed.

Andujar was taking reps in left field and his coaches liked what they saw back in spring training. Hicks was going to be out until the All-Star break at least, so that meant Brett Gardner was going to get most of the starts in center and left field was up for grabs. Now Gardner will likely be moving back to left with center field going to Hicks, though the Yankees will just need to make sure his arm post-Tommy John surgery is 100 percent.

Gio Urshela is still locked in at third base, and Stanton might be the team's full-time DH (more on that in just a bit). So where does Andujar fit into all of this? Boone might just have to use him wherever he can. Andujar's bat is a weapon, so he'll want to have it in the lineup.

Is there going to be a full-time DH or a rotation?

Speaking of the DH, one would think that Stanton can now sit in that role and focus on crushing baseballs, right? Not so fast.

Again, Andujar provides a solid bat as well and doesn't have a definitive spot in the lineup. Also, Stanton has said he doesn't necessarily want to be stuck as just a hitter. But with his injury history and the shortened season, I'm sure the Yankees don't want to take the chance of him getting hurt laying out for a fly ball.

Boone might want to think about a rotation here, with Stanton and Andujar the primary DH options. Of course, one is getting paid a boatload more than the other, so Stanton will get priority. I'm curious to see how Boone makes this work with the many options he has on the bench.

Who gets the extra slots on the roster?

The roster already had an extra person with it moving to 26 men for the season. Now the league has allowed four more to make it, so Boone and his staff have some meetings to sit down in to figure that out.

You'd expect a few of them -- three or so -- would be going to the bullpen. That's what we predicted in our latest 30-man roster piece, as teams don't want to burn out their starting pitchers, especially early on in the season. Adding more depth to the bullpen helps prevent that.

Then, there's the bench. You have guys like Clint Frazier, Mike Ford, Mike Tauchman, and Tyler Wade who were all battling for a spot. Everyone might make it now but Andujar is definitely going to take over one bench role. Depending on how the Yankees fill the extra slots, someone might not be playing ball right away in 2020.

Who's the team's fifth starter?

Jordan Montgomery has to be the favorite, but there wasn't one named before spring training was suspended. The Yankees were still trying to figure it out.

Clarke Schmidt was having a great camp, and he was in the running. But Montgomery did look really sharp. Give the advantage to him but maybe these three weeks of intrasquad scrimmages will say otherwise.

Popular in the Community