A stray transaction in early December rarely moves the needle in the Bronx, but every so often it hints at the kind of work the New York Yankees believe can change the shape of a season. You notice it in the small bets, the quiet adds, the pitchers who arrive without headlines but with something else: raw material that intrigues the people in charge. This week offered two of those reminders.
A Subtle but Telling Week for the Yankees
The Yankees haven’t been the team scooping up marquee free agents or dangling prospects for splashy trades. Not yet, anyway. But they’re clearly scanning the board, curious enough to keep turning over stones in search of arms they think they can transform. That much was obvious when they dipped into the Rule 5 Draft for the first time in 14 years, grabbing right-hander Cade Winquest from the Cardinals. It felt small, but it also felt intentional.
A day later came a move that fit almost perfectly with the organization’s developmental instincts: the signing of right-hander Bradley Hanner to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training.
He’s the kind of pitcher who might get lost in the churn of December news, yet he also looks exactly like the type Sam Briend, Matt Blake, and Desi Druschel spend hours dreaming on.
Why the Yankees See Potential in Bradley Hanner
Hanner, who turns 27 in February, arrives from Cleveland’s Triple-A affiliate, where he finished 2025 with a 4.74 ERA and a 62-to-25 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 49.1 relief innings. That line tells you two things right away: hitters swing through his stuff often, and he doesn’t always command it. Historically, the Yankees have gravitated toward this profile. They believe they can polish the rough edges if the raw traits are there, and in Hanner’s case, the raw traits are hard to miss.
He’s also a little different from what you might picture. Hanner throws from an unconventional arm angle, a look that adds deception and movement but can make repeatability tricky. His sweeper plays well against right-handed hitters, giving him a legitimate weapon in certain matchups. The challenge, and it’s been a fairly consistent one, is executing with the same confidence and sharpness against lefties.
That’s where the Yankees see an opening. If they can help him bridge that gap, Hanner shifts from “intriguing depth piece” to someone who might matter in the middle of a long season. They’ve done this before with pitchers who arrived as projects and blossomed once the staff helped them optimize a pitch, reshape a grip, or refine a usage pattern.
The Path Forward and the Realistic Expectation
Making the Yankees’ Opening Day roster won’t come easy. There’s too much competition in camp, too many arms ahead of him on the depth chart. But spring training is always full of surprises, especially for relievers with swing-and-miss traits. All it takes is a small tweak connecting with a pitcher at the right moment.
For Hanner, winter becomes the testing ground. If the organization builds a development plan that helps him hold his line against lefties while keeping his strikeout punch intact, he has a legitimate chance to become more than just a winter footnote. And even if the climb is steep, the Yankees understand the value of having pitchers like him stretched across the system when injuries hit and innings pile up.
The signing won’t shake up the AL East or dominate talk radio, but it reflects something useful about the Yankees right now: they’re still hunting for advantages on the margins, still trying to find the next arm they can mold into something valuable. And sometimes that quiet search says more about a team’s direction than the moves that make headlines.