1:45pm: The league has issued German an 81-game suspension, Hannah Keyser of Yahoo Sports reports. The suspension’s retroactive to last September, meaning German will sit the first 63 games of 2020. He will not appeal the ban, Lindsey Adler of The Athletic tweets.
1:15pm: Yankees right-hander Domingo German’s future has hung in limbo since Major League Baseball placed him on administrative leave Sept. 19 for a violation of its domestic violence policy. Now, almost four months later, a resolution is seemingly on the way. The league’s decision isn’t far off, per MLB Network’s Jon Heyman, who reports German is facing a “significant suspension” that should last longer than a month.
The 27-year-old German was amid a solid season in 2019 before his off-field actions brought an end to it shortly before the playoffs. As part of a Yankees rotation that faced plenty of questions throughout the season, German was a stabilizing presence, as he posted a 4.03 ERA/4.72 FIP with 9.63 K/9 and 2.45 BB/9 across 143 innings.
Looking ahead to next season, it’s unclear which role German will fill should he return to the Yankees. They’ve added Gerrit Cole in free agency, and he’ll front a rotation that also counts Luis Severino, James Paxton and Masahiro Tanaka as locks. There appears to be room for German to vie for the No. 5 spot if New York welcomes him back, but J.A. Happ (if he’s not traded) and Jordan Montgomery (who missed almost all of 2019 while recovering from Tommy John surgery) look like the top options for that role right now.
