Last winter the New York Yankees searched for a third baseman, but ultimately struck out in their pursuit which led to them entering the year with an Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza platoon.
The injury to Cabrera hurt an already weak third base room, and when DJ LeMahieu returned he expressed an inability to stick at the hot corner, forcing a move off of second base for the far superior player in Jazz Chisholm.
Until the Yankees acquired Ryan McMahon, their group of fourth infielders which consistented of Cabrera, LeMahieu, and Peraza with Jorbit Vivas and Pablo Reyes getting some starts culminated in a negative WAR.
Had the team added a replacement level infielder, they might have won the American League East and altered the course of a 2025 postseason where even the eventual World Series Champion Dodgers displayed weakness.
With the team entering the 2026 year without a notable pitching addition to its bullpen or rotation, they run the risk of making that very same mistake and wasting another year of a contention window.
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Why the Yankees Cannot Be Arrogant About Their Pitching Staff’s Prowess
I can already hear the cries about how this rotation ranked inside the top 5 in ERA and will be adding Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon back, but this is a flawed argument that doesn’t align with modern roster building.
While the Yankees were fourth in ERA (3.61) and seventh in FIP (3.92), they were also 12th in xFIP (4.05) and 16th in K-BB% (14.3%), metrics that forecasted this rotation’s collapse in the American League Division Series.
Pitchers such as Luis Gil had performed much better than their underlying metrics suggested, and while Carlos Rodon was good he wasn’t 3.09 ERA levels of good as the season went on.
You can attribute the decline in strikeouts to the bone spur that he just got removed, and if he returns with better velocity and crisper stuff, there’s a chance he ends up remaining a no. 2-3 starter for 2026.
As for Gerrit Cole, while he was a recent Cy Young Winner, the pitcher who took home that award is not the one he is as things stand right now.
I would expect Cole to be an above-average starting pitcher next year, but it would be hard for me to think two additional years of aging and a UCL tear wouldn’t make me take the under on all three of these important underlying metrics.
Relying on both of these pitchers to also remain healthy and deal with no other issues without the normal ramp up of Spring Training is incredibly optimistic considering how frequently these injuries occur.
Another incredibly optimistic idea that the Yankees seem to be warming up to is the idea that their current staff can survive the initial weeks of the season without Rodon and then Cole.
The Yankees if everyone remains 100% healthy will have Ryan Yarbrough as their fifth starter; did this past Spring Training not show them how naive it would be to think there won’t be an injury in the ramp up period?
It took three criticial injuries to their rotation for Carlos Carrasco and Marcus Stroman to open the season with the team, and even Stroman ended up getting injured just a couple of weeks into the year.
Stroman would be re-inserted into the rotation because of injuries, as Ryan Yarbrough dealt with a lenghty injury that sidelined him for the entire summer.
Nine pitchers got starts for the Yankees over the course of the 2025 season; the idea that they should not or do not desperately need another rotation piece is a complacent idea that leads to the team not winning a title once again.
The bullpen currently consistst of three pitchers who the Yankees had on their roster last year but did not trust in big situations, two of them being left off the playoff roster altogether.
Cade Winquest has never pitched at the Major League level, and Tim Hill saw a steep regression in his effectivness against RHP and is another year older.
I’ve said before that this group doesn’t need depth, they have it in the form of Yerry De Los Santos and the returning starters who will eventually be pushed into reliever roles.
I also like the fliers they’ve taken, but they need one more lockdown arm for that bullpen, and they completely avoided the top and middle of the free agent market despite that need.
They want to trade for a starter and trade for a reliever, but what ammo do they have to pull off such a thing without completely wrecking their farm system?
The Pitching Staff Feels Like Another Third Base Outcome
The Yankees essentially bowed out of the top of the infield market when Willy Adames was off the board, which then spurred them to look into less expensive pieces.
Every infielder in that middle-market came with severe flaws, which is why the Yankees internally justified passing on these additions (including a very cheap Jorge Polanco contract) in order to find the right guy at the right price.
They ended up misjudging the market and completely striking out, and that’s how the pitching market is trending unless something dramatic changes.
Shane Baz, who has never been a reliable frontline starter, was essentially traded for three first round picks, do they suddenly think the Nationals would trade two years of MacKenzie Gore for anything short of a haul?
It seems like they’ll just take the approach of “we like what we have and didn’t like the market prices” when they backed themselves into a horrible corner on that front.
I really hope I’m wrong, but the middle-of-the-pack farm system that was already raided at the trade deadline doesn’t seem to have enough to give in a starter trade without blowing the whole group up.
We know the Yankees don’t want to do blow the farm up, and I get not wanting to do that since the Dodgers have shown having a strong farm is how you can consistently produce cheap talent or trade chips.
That being said, why not use money as your greatest asset to reel in productive players?
It’s an eternal battle between misguided but not completely inaccurate attacks on the Yankees’ current-day philosophy, which I believe starts with ownership.
The Yankees are always good and always competitive, but they are never the best team in the game and they will seemingly never go that extra mile to be it.
Another example is playing out in our eyes; in a market and baseball landscape where everyone is vulnerable, the Yankees choose to remain with the pack instead of standing out.