About the Off-Season: Meanderings of My Mind

About the Off-Season: Meanderings of My Mind

By Tim Kabel

December 15, 2025

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The Yankees were eliminated from the postseason in the ALDS, so there will be no more games to recap until March of 2026. The Winter Meetings are over, and the Yankees essentially accomplished nothing. They claimed a pitcher from the Cardinals in the Rule 5 draft and signed a few players off the scrap heap to minor league contracts. After the Winter Meetings concluded, the Yankees signed Amed Rosario to a one-year contract.

These were not exactly monumental moves. To put what the Yankees have done so far in perspective, it would be like saying, “I don't have anything ready for the holiday meal yet except the pickle platter. The pickle platter is all set. I don't have a roast; I don't have any side dishes; I don't have beverages; I don't have desserts; but pickles, we have”. Since we will have a lot of free time on our hands waiting for Spring Training, I will be able to ponder and speculate about a variety of issues. I will now move from topic to topic like Brian Cashman moving through the Winter Meetings greeting free agents he has no intention of signing. 

·      There has been a lot of speculation about the Yankees possibly trading Jazz Chisholm, Jr.. To be clear, I am not necessarily in favor of that. However, we need to look at the big picture. The Yankees have not signed Jazz to an extension beyond this season. Based on their history, it is unlikely that they will do so. That means that Jazz will likely become a free agent after the 2026 season. That will probably result in a bidding war. Based on the Yankees’ recent performances in bidding wars, Jazz will be playing somewhere else in 2027.It's not that the Yankees can't sign him, it's that they won't sign him. If the Yankees allowed Jazz to leave in free agency, they would receive a draft pick as compensation. However, if the Yankees decide to trade him now, he could bring back a hefty return.  The Yankees could theoretically sign Bo Bichette to play second base, which would mean he would be a Yankee for several years. Trading Jazz could be one of those challenge trades that Cashman has talked about. It would also make the team less left-handed than it is now. While I don't necessarily love the idea of trading Jazz, if he is going to be gone after 2026 anyway, then it might be better to trade him for someone who will not be gone after 2026 and strengthen the team that way. Besides, bringing in Bichette to take Jazz’s place would be a very good move.

·      My cats are assembling a small pile of Christmas ornaments they have liberated from the tree. We keep putting them back on the tree and they keep taking them off. This year, I have the full selection of ornaments from the White House Historical Association. They began producing those ornaments in 1981. At that time, they were very simple and were basically something you could make in shop class. The first few ornaments were just shiny brass cut outs of doves or angels that had the year stamped on them. Now, they are extremely ornate and fancy items with historical significance. The cats ignore the early ones and go straight for the sparkly ones. My late mother began getting the ornaments for me when they first came out because I was a history major, and she knew how much I enjoyed things like that. I still do and it's also a way of honoring her memory by putting them on my tree every year. I had fallen behind in my purchases but now I am up to date. Surprisingly, Clancy is not the chief perpetrator of the mayhem. Jasper and Catalina have taken him under their wings and are teaching him how to do it. One of Clancy’s more bizarre behaviors is that if someone leaves a spoon in the sink, he will leap into the sink, pick the spoon up with a paw, shift it to his mouth and then run around the apartment with it. I'm not sure why he does this. He doesn't do it with forks or knives. It is annoying but also mildly amusing.

·      I definitely would like to see the Yankees re-sign Cody Bellinger. I had advocated for them to get him ever since he left the Dodgers. However, I can envision a scenario in which not bringing him back would not be a disaster. Right now, the outfield would be Aaron Judge in rightfield, Trent Grisham in centerfield, and Jasson Dominguez in leftfield. I suspect that if Dominguez is given a fair opportunity, he could have a progression similar to that of Ben Rice in 2025. Now, let's say that Spencer Jones, who is already working out, comes into Spring Training and tears things up. He is considered to be a superior fielder to Grisham, who is only under a one-year contract. He cannot be traded before June 15th, unless he agrees to it. That's the important part. Let's say that Jones shows he is ready, and Dominguez has a strong Spring Training as well. The Yankees could theoretically play both kids in the lineup. Grisham could become a backup outfielder, or he could be traded. Think about it, if the Yankees approached Grisham about a trade, why wouldn't he agree.? If it looked like he was going to lose playing time to Spencer Jones, why wouldn't he go somewhere where he could play every day. He would still get his $22 million salary. It's something to think about.

·      I have been getting visits from friends and former associates who have asked me to sign copies of my books. That is truly a wonderful feeling. Both books are continuing to receive very favorable reviews on Amazon. It seems likely that my second published novel, “The Sea Change of Dr. Abernathy”, will be on a list of the best books of the year that will be presented on Amazon in January. I currently have four novels that are ready for publication. I started writing a new one last month. With everything going on with the holidays, I haven't been working on it as much as I would like. I am also editing the very first book I wrote, “My Uncles’ Son”, which is a historical novel about two ninety-year-old Bataan Death March survivors who finally tell their family their life stories. It is such a long book with so many components to it that I have decided to break it into three short novels to make it more palatable to publishers and less overwhelming to readers. My friend Roger would likely claim that he had a hernia from carrying it and would attempt to sue me. Since I'm doing it that way, the first volume of that book will be ready before the end of the year.

·      Let's get a little crazy here. Let's say the Yankees do make a challenge trade involving Jazz Chisholm. What if they were to trade him, Anthony Volpe, and a pitching prospect to the Texas Rangers for Corey Seager? This would be contingent upon the Yankees signing Bichette to play second base. What if the Yankees also signed Kazuma Okamoto to play third base? That would upgrade the infield tremendously and make up for the absence of Cody Bellinger in the lineup. By adding Okamoto and Bichette, the team would become more right-handed than it was. They would be adding salary by bringing in Bichette and Seager, but when you subtract the salaries of Ryan McMahon, Jazz Chisholm, and whatever the Yankees would have paid for Cody Bellinger, the difference would be negligible. It can be done. It might be done. Right now, it is easy to be pessimistic and assume the Yankees will do practically nothing. I tend to take the view of Winston Churchill, who said, “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”