The Yankees lost Juan Soto to free agency and Gerrit Cole to Tommy John surgery. Can they overcome those absences to repeat as AL East champs?
This week, Camden Chat will be previewing the rest of the division and other expected AL contenders. First up: the Yankees.
What a difference a couple of weeks can make.
At the beginning of March, the New York Yankees were the presumed frontrunners to defend their AL East crown and make an encore appearance in the World Series. Then, with one shocking injury, their outlook took a definitive turn for the worse.
In the span of 10 days, Gerrit Cole struggled through an exhibition start, was diagnosed with a torn UCL, and underwent Tommy John surgery that will cost him the entire 2025 season. With it, the Yankees’ plan to build their team on the backbone of a stellar starting rotation went up in smoke.
Cole wasn’t the first Yankee to succumb to injury. Earlier in the spring, right-hander Luis Gil — last seen robbing Colton Cowser of the AL Rookie of the Year Award — suffered a right lat strain that will sideline him for about three months. Slugger Giancarlo Stanton, coming off a scalding hot postseason performance last year, has a calf injury in addition to tennis elbow in both arms, with no timeline on an expected return.
The Yankees might have been able to weather the losses of Gil and Stanton. Trying to do the same with Cole, the 2023 Cy Young winner and six-time All-Star, is going to be much, much harder. The Yanks may well unleash their devil magic and emerge as serious contenders again, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone if they fail to repeat as division champs.
Additions and subtractions
- Notable additions: OF Cody Bellinger, RHP Fernando Cruz, LHP Max Fried, 1B Paul Goldschmidt, RHP Devin Williams
- Notable subtractions: IF Jon Berti, LHP Nestor Cortes Jr., RHP Clay Holmes, RHP Tommy Kahnle, 1B Anthony Rizzo, OF Juan Soto, 2B Gleyber Torres, C Jose Trevino, OF Alex Verdugo
Had I listed the subtractions in order of importance rather than alphabetically, it would start with Juan Soto in giant letters and everyone else in small font. It’s hard to overstate how much the Yankees will miss Soto, whose 7.9 WAR last year was more than twice that of any of his teammates aside from Aaron Judge. Soto’s one-and-done season with the Yanks saw him finish third in the AL MVP vote before he landed a record-breaking 15-year, $765 million deal with the crosstown Mets.
Joining Soto with his new team is Holmes, the Yankees’ embattled 2024 closer who is now the Mets’ scheduled Opening Day starting pitcher. The former Oriole lefty Cortes, who’d spent parts of four years in the New York rotation, was traded to the Brewers. And Torres, former destroyer of Baltimore pitchers who crushed 13 homers against the O’s in 2019, went to the Tigers on a one-year deal. Rizzo and Verdugo, both coming off of tough years, remain unsigned.
Starting rotation
- LHP Max Fried
- LHP Carlos Rodón
- RHP Marcus Stroman
- RHP Clarke Schmidt
- RHP Will Warren
If there’s any potential cushion to the blow of Cole’s injury, it’s the fact that the Yankees already have another established #1 starter ready to fill the void. They signed Fried, the longtime Braves ace, to an eight-year, $218 million deal in hopes of creating a dominant 1-2 punch atop the rotation. Now with Cole out, Fried is the unquestioned top dog.
Fried has been one of baseball’s best pitchers since becoming a full-time starter in 2019, going 71-31 with a 3.06 ERA and 141 ERA+ in that span, finishing as the NL Cy Young runner-up in 2022. Fried is not without injury concerns himself — he missed a month last year with forearm neuritis, and more than half the 2023 season due to hamstring and arm troubles — but when healthy, he’s arguably the most dominant starter in the AL East.
Behind Fried, the Yankees will be counting on veteran Carlos Rodón to eat innings. Rodón, who signed a six-year, $162 million deal ahead of the 2023 season, rebounded from a disastrous debut campaign to make 32 solid starts for the Yanks in 2024.
The injuries to Cole and Gil have given new life to Marcus Stroman, whom the Yankees initially planned to move to the bullpen, an idea that the veteran flatly refused. Now he figures to get plenty of starting opportunities, hoping to bounce back from a mediocre 2024. Rounding out the expected rotation are Schmidt, the 28-year-old righty who had excellent results in limited starts last year (2.85 ERA in 16 games), and rookie Will Warren, who was torched for 26 runs in 22.2 innings in his first taste of the bigs in 2024. But Schmidt has been slowed by a bad back and a shoulder issue this spring.
Bullpen
The Yankees’ bullpen has the chance to be a solid unit, even with the losses of Holmes and setup man Tommy Kahnle in free agency. The Yanks emphatically addressed their closer void by acquiring two-time All-Star Devin Williams from the Brewers. Williams, known for his devastating changeup called the “Airbender,” had a sub-2.00 ERA in each of his three full seasons as Milwaukee’s closer, though he missed the first four months of last year with stress fractures in his back.
Adding Williams allows the Yankees to move 2024 revelation Luke Weaver, who served as their closer in the postseason, into a setup role, creating a tough 1-2 punch in the late innings. The rest of the Yankees’ relief corps includes righties Ian Hamilton and Mark Leiter Jr. and lefty Tim Hill, holdovers from last season, along with newcomer Fernando Cruz (acquired from the Reds).
Starting lineup (projected)
- Austin Wells, C
- Aaron Judge, RF
- Cody Bellinger, CF
- Paul Goldschmidt, 1B
- Jazz Chisholm, 2B
- Jasson Domínguez, LF
- Ben Rice, DH
- Anthony Volpe, SS
- Oswaldo Cabrera, 3B
The Bronx Bombers, these ain’t. The departure of Soto’s 41 homers and .419 OBP has reduced the Yankees’ lineup to one otherworldly hitter and a whole lot of question marks.
Any lineup with Aaron Judge, of course, can’t be completely discounted. He’s a one-man wrecking crew who’s coming off of one of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history — a league-leading 58 homers, 144 RBIs, 133 walks, .458 OBP, .701 SLG, 392 total bases, and unheard-of 223 OPS+ — on his way to unanimously winning his second MVP award.
Still, if Judge wants to see a pitch to hit ever again, he’ll need some help from some of the new veterans in the Yankees lineup. The team is taking a gamble on a pair of former NL MVPs in Goldschmidt and Bellinger. The 37-year-old Goldschmidt has seen his offensive stats fall off table since winning the award in 2022, dipping to a below-average 98 OPS+ last season for the Cardinals. With 362 career homers, he’s still a power threat, but Father Time may be getting the better of him.
Bellinger, meanwhile, has been all over the map, production-wise. His first three seasons with the Dodgers were sensational, culminating in a 47-homer, 1.035 OPS campaign that won him MVP honors in 2019. He then flat-lined so dramatically that the Dodgers cut him loose, only to bounce back with a resurgent 2023 season for the Cubs before starting to slip again last year. It’s hard to predict what the Yankees will get out of Bellinger offensively, though the former Gold Glover gives the club a natural center fielder, allowing Judge to slide back to his usual right field slot after starting 105 games in center last year.
If the Yanks can’t wring some production out of Goldschmidt, Bellinger or someone else — such as the highly touted Domínguez, the Yankees’ #1 prospect — then Operation Pitch Around Aaron Judge will be in full force for opposing teams this year.
Projections
PECOTA: 85-77
FanGraphs: 86-76
DraftKings Sportsbook: Over/under 89.5 wins, +135 to win AL East, +330 to win AL pennant, +850 to win World Series
The Yankees’ betting odds, if you care about that sort of thing, took a bit of a hit when Cole went down, though the club is still listed with the third-best chance of winning the World Series, behind only the Dodgers and Braves. Meanwhile, Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system projects an 85-win season for the Yanks, putting them in third place in the AL East behind the Orioles (88) and Blue Jays (85).
FanGraphs forecasts a decidedly mediocre AL East in which every team has between 82-86 wins. It’s not impossible to believe. At the moment, no club particularly stands out as being demonstrably better or worse than the other four. It’s anybody’s division to win, including — grumble, grumble — the Yankees.