Breaking: Yanks Get Third Baseman
- Paul Semendinger
- Jul 25
- 1 min read
July 25, 2025
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Ryan McMahon is a Yankee....
From Me:
Ryan McMahon has played 696 games at third base. He's a real third baseman. No more experimenting with players at a position they are unfamiliar with. No more on-the-job training. That is a good thing.
In the bad news department: Ryan McMahon has been in the Major Leagues since 2017. He has played 1,010 games. He had never, ever, not once, had an OPS+ of even 100. He is, absolutely, positively, a below average hitter.
McMahon does have power. He is a 20+ homer guy. That's the good news. The bad news is homeruns are the only way the Yankees score runs for large periods. This doesn't help that approach.
McMahon is signed through 2027, so the Yankees have a third baseman, on defense, for at least the next 2 1/2 seasons.
More to come, I am sure...
FanGraphs had an interesting take on this trade. Using wRC+, they point out that McMahon only narrowly outperforms the Yankees third basemen this season: 88 to 83.
However, he's aslso running the highest wOBA/xwOBA gap in MLB well also running the highest pull rates and fly ball rates in his career to date.
Basically, he's been targeted as a guy to go get by Michael Fishman & co. Yankees analytics thinks he's just been very unlucky and they think he'll benefit from playing in Yankee stadium.
Not saying I'm buying in to bringing in such a strike out prone player, because I'm not down with this trade, but at least we likely know what the Yankees rationale is.
It was…
This is not a trade I'm in support of, not because the Yankees gave up any prospects I wanted to see them keep, but more so because of McMahon. He simply doesn't hit well enough to be a corner infielder on the Yankees. Here we go again. I think it's a case of acquiring Joey Gallo 2.0. He's Way to strikeout prone and for once, the Yankees actually needed a right-handed hitter. What they got was another Gallo.
Everybody's writing about the positives, 2 years of team control, maybe Yankee stadium will help him, he plays, defense well etc etc.
Ho- hum...yawn. The trade might be okay, mostly to younger fans probably, but anybody who grew up watching Brooks Robinson…
N\ow get Seth Lugo and a couple of relievers.
maybe they can now use Peraza at SS a few times per week to spell Volpe.
At least he's not a rental.