NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Yankees placed slumping reliever Fernando Cruz on the 15-day injured list with right elbow discomfort on Wednesday, a day after the right-hander allowed his fifth homer since the All-Star break.
Putting Cruz on the injured list was among five moves the Yankees before tonight's game against the Astros.
New York signed Michael Fulmer to a major league contract and added him to its active roster and recalled Elmer Rodríguez from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre to start Wednesday's game. The Yankees also optioned reliever Bradley Hanner to Triple-A and transferred reliever Kervin Castro to the 60-day injured list.
In his second season with the Yankees, Cruz is 4-6 with a 3.13 ERA in 61 appearances. He allowed a tying two-run homer to Jeremy Peña on a fastball in the sixth inning of Tuesday’s 9-7 loss and has a 5.52 ERA in 17 appearances since the All-Star break.
The Yankees were waiting for results of imaging for Cruz, who was seen exiting the clubhouse with a trainer after saying he was healthy following Tuesday's game.
“Anytime you have that and the trainers feel like an IL situation before getting the results,” manager Aaron Boone said. “So we’ll see what we have and then attack it from there.”
Cruz was 3-4 with a 3.56 ERA last season after being acquired from Cincinnati for catcher Jose Trevino. Cruz missed two months in 2025 with a strained left oblique that he suffered while working out with a medicine ball, along with a brief absence due to a strained right shoulder.
Cruz became the 17th Yankee to spend time on the injured list this year and the second in the last four days. Starting pitcher Ryan Weathers landed on the IL Sunday with a strained left forearm after feeling pain during the fourth inning a day earlier against Toronto.
Fulmer made 37 appearances in Triple-A with the Giants and Angels. The 33-year-old right-hander made three scoreless relief appearances for the Angels before getting designated for assignment on Sunday.
Fulmer said the Yankees were the first team to call his agent. He signed a minor league deal Tuesday after clearing waivers and was headed to meet Scranton/Wilkes-Barre in Worcester before replacing Cruz.
“As soon as I cleared, the Yankees were the first team to call, which I value quite a bit a team that’s showing interest like that,” Fulmer said.
The 33-year-old won the AL Rookie of the Year in 2016 with Detroit after being acquired from the Mets for Yoenis Cespedes at the 2015 trade deadline. He underwent Tommy John surgery in March of 2019 and right elbow surgery cost him the 2024 season.
He is 37-50 with a 3.92 ERA in 268 appearances with the Tigers, Twins, Cubs, Red Sox and Angels.
“I’m excited to get him here,” Boone said. “Obviously it’s a guy that’s got a lot of experiences, had a lot of success in the big leagues, has been through a lot on the injury front. He’s a guy that’s had a good season and is throwing the ball well and hopefully he can come here and grab a role."
Rodríguez was called up for his fifth career start and is 0-2 with a 4.76 ERA. Rodriguez is 8-3 with a 2.59 ERA in 19 starts at Triple-A this season.
Castro appeared in five games before going on the injured list with right elbow neuritis and is meeting with a doctor to discuss a possible surgery. Hanner allowed three runs in three appearances.
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New York Yankees pitcher Fernando Cruz throws during the ninth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Slava ‘Sal’ Veder, best known for his picture of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel joyfully reuniting with his family after five years in a prisoner of war camp in Vietnam, died Aug. 22. He was 99.
Veder’s family on Wednesday confirmed that the retired Associated Press photojournalist died in his sleep, just eight days shy of his 100th birthday, at his home in El Dorado County, California, outside of Sacramento.
The San Francisco Bay Area native was 46 years old in March 1973 when he was sent to Travis Air Force Base for the arrival of Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm and other war prisoners returning from Vietnam. Veder was in a crowded bullpen jockeying for pictures with dozens of other photographers when, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Stirm’s four children begin to gallop toward their father.
“You could tell, even at a distance, what they were feeling. It was all over them, their faces, the way they all broke into a run. There was a surge of emotion from the crowd, too,” Veder said in a 2015 interview with The Guardian.
Using a makeshift darkroom set up in a women’s bathroom on base, Veder cranked out six images, including “Burst of Joy,” which won the 1974 Pulitzer in feature photography. Veder noted that in the photograph, Stirm has his back to the camera, rendering him an everyman soldier returning to the undeniable joy and excitement on the faces of his children.
The photo became a symbol of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. But for Stirm, it represented heartbreak as he had been handed a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release and the couple divorced a year later. Stirm died in 2025.
Slava J. Veder was born Aug. 30, 1926, in Berkeley, California, to Ivan and Anka Veder, who had left Russia and taken the names John and Ann when they settled in the U.S. He was their only child.
He worked as a sports writer and news editor at several publications and, in 1961, he was hired as a staff photographer by The Associated Press at its Sacramento bureau. Later, he transferred to the San Francisco office, which is where he was based when he took the prize-winning photograph.
“He was a newsman at heart, it wasn’t just a career for him. It was really his passion,” said his daughter, Kathleen Daly. “The AP really was the home for him because they could appreciate what he had to offer.”
Daly, friends and former colleagues remembered Veder as a kind and humble person who loved to ice skate and sail. He mentored younger photographers and always took time to ask the people around him how they were doing that day.
“He was the first Pulitzer Prize winner I ever met, like holy smokes,” said Brad Mangin, a freelance sports photographer in the San Francisco Bay Area. “He was just the sweetest man.”
Eric Risberg, a retired AP photographer who worked in San Francisco, said Veder was a great mentor and teacher.
“He really, really emphasized the marriage between pictures and words. He encouraged me to dive deeper, and get more into what’s really the story?” Risberg said.
Among his many assignments, Veder took photographs of the late Ronald Reagan when he was California governor, university campus protests against the war in Vietnam, the bank robbery trial of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst, and the assassinations of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by disgruntled former city supervisor Dan White in 1978.
Veder, who raised five children with his wife, retired from AP in 1993 to the small community of Camino, in El Dorado County.
He is survived by three children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Har, a former AP journalist, contributed reporting previously for this story. AP reporters Randy Herschaft in New York and Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco contributed to this report.
FILE - Released prisoner of war Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, Calif., as he returns home from the Vietnam War, March 17, 1973. (AP Photo/Sal Veder, File)
