Five Thoughts on the Yankees After the Trade Deadline

By EJ Fagan

August 5, 2026

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The following post comes from EJ Fagan's Substack, Baseball Is Life. It is shared with permission.

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The trade deadline has come and gone. Let’s take stock.

The Yankees Got Better at the Deadline

The Yankees have had one of the worst offenses in the majors since Aaron Judge was hurt. Part of the decline has been losing the GOAT, but also they saw steep drop offs initially from Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Jose Cabarello and later stalled recoveries from Ryan McMahon, Jazz Chisholm and Trent Grisham. There’s something broken about the Yankees hitting beyond the personnel, but you can only fix the personnel problem via trade.

Luis Garcia Jr. definitely helps the offense. He’s got big platoon splits, but most pitchers are right-handed. Garcia is a legitimately elite bat in 2026 and it’s remarkable that the Nationals gave him up for so little. He’s also a bit of a different look than most Yankees as a high contact, bad ball type hitter. He moves the needle even if the positional fit isn’t clean and will help the team next year too.

Heliot Ramos helps too. I saw a lot of negative reactions from Yankee fans and notable podcasters to the Ramos trade. The reality is that the Yankees were getting awful production on both sides of the ball from Jasson Dominguez. Any league average-ish player is a huge upgrade over sub-replacement level.

Ramos isn’t going to win any MVP votes, but he’s a major league regular.

Ramos is probably best suited as a lefty mashing bench player. His career .847 OPS against lefties is a real weapon if you can avoid his .693 OPS against righties. But, even against righties he’s an upgrade over Dominguez’s abysmal .589 OPS in 2026. And I suspect that Ramos will be both be a defensive upgrade and benefit from moving out of San Francisco (career OPS is .050 better on the road). He’s an average-ish MLB player even when facing both righties and lefties.

All of that for an injury prone 21 year old in A-ball. It’s a good trade in a vacuum, even of I wish the Yankees added more. To that point:

There Were Way Too Few Sellers

One reason why the trade deadline was disappointing to the Yankees was how few teams decided to sell. Losing teams like the Mariners, Reds, Padres, Rangers, Royals, Cardinals and Rockies mostly stood pat or were buyers and the Tigers and Blue Jays only partially sold.

There are only so many good players that you can get from the Orioles, Marlins, Mets, Angels, Giants and Nationals. In a market governed by supply and demand, prices were high. Starting pitching was pretty plentiful, but that didn’t help the Yankees.

But, the Yankees clearly wanted to add more players from the pool that got moved. They tried to get Tarik Skubal, Luis Arraez, Adley Rutschman, Adrian Morejon and Mason Miller (that we know of) but would not meet asking prices from sellers. The reality is that the Yankee farm system is so depleted that some of these prospect packages would have effectively bankrupted the team.

Part of that depletion comes from consecutive years of heavy buying at the deadline, but the bulk of the problem is because the Yankees farm system has been awful lately. The Red Sox gave up better players than the Yankees had to trade. Brian Cashman’s problem has always been player development.

Adding Zero Relief Pitching is Insane

We know that the Yankees were shopping for rental relief pitching because they tried to get Adrian Morejon from the Padres. But for the first time that I can remember, they didn’t acquire a single arm at the deadline.

It’s bewildering to me. Sure, the Yankee bullpen is pretty good. They are second in the majors with a 3.16 relief ERA. But it sure doesn’t feel that way. Paul Blackburn, Brent Headrick and Fernando Cruz are playing way above their heads. Tim Hill is release bait right now. Angel Chivilli looked like a nice addition until he got himself sent down last night. They are short a high leverage guy.

Luke Weaver was sitting right out there for them to acquire. Or if you don’t like Weaver, you could have gotten Tyler Wells or Erik Miller or Antonio Senzetala or a half dozen other guys. The prices weren’t that high. Utter malpractice.

Austin Wells Better Be Back

Austin Wells has a had a decent few weeks at the plate. He’s hitting .222/.340/.511 in 53 PAs since the start of the Tampa series. His strikeout rate over that time is 20%, back to his career normal. But his season numbers are so awful that you have to question how real the recovery is.

The Yankees are betting that Wells and Ali Sanchez will not hit like Austin Hedges going forward. They know more about Wells’ health and confidence than we do. But their track record in betting on young incumbents doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

They probably could have gotten a warm body to catch like Luis Torrens or Tyler Stephenson. If you assume that Wells is back to his okay-ish 2025-level performance, I think it’s fair to ask how much of an improvement those guys are, especially considering the issues with mid-season catching changes. Adley or Hunter Goodman would have been a different story, but they didn’t have the farm system to make such a trade.

George Lombard Jr. Should Help

Lombard Jr. is debuting tonight! (This article was published on EJ's Substaclk on Tuesday.)

While I wouldn’t expect him to make a late season ROTY push, I think that he’ll be an upgrade. Let’s look at some numbers, starting with his Prospect Savant profile:

When you account for age using whatever formula Prospect Savant has landed on, Lombard was the 2nd or 3rd best prospect at Triple-A. He was right up there with Pedro Ramirez, who has made a huge impact in the middle of a already strong Cubs lineup. But Travis Bazzana, who was right behind Ramirez and Lombard, has struggled in the majors. Prospects are a roll of the dice.

He also has some hit tool risk. Lombard swings and misses at pitches in the zone a lot. That’s better than swinging and missing out of the zone, but worth keeping an eye on. I don’t see any reason why Lombard can’t beat Volpe’s .646 OPS by a lot, but I wouldn’t expect him to immediately slot into the middle of the lineup.

We should also note that Lombard’s Triple-A numbers included a brief adjustment period. His OPS was in the .500s for the first three weeks after promotion. Since May 17th, he’s hitting .320/.437/.595 with a 23% strikeout rate. When you include all of the good and bad Triple-A numbers plus his first month at Double-A, he’s hitting .284/.411/.498 on the season. He’s rolling this year despite being the youngest hitter at his level.

Importantly, he’s hit far better than Volpe (and arguably, Jasson Dominguez) ever did in the high minors despite being a year younger at each level. He’s also a bigger, stronger and more athletic guy. Volpe always felt like he was playing above his physical abilities on all sides of the field through hard work and gumption, but ultimately it’s better to just be 6’2” and 210 lbs.

The defense should be there. I’ve watched a lot of Lombard highlights this season. He looks like an excellent shortstop in the way that Volpe never did. You’ll notice the arm strength difference right away. We’ll see how the range numbers grade out, but I think that we’ll be very happy with him real soon. I can’t wait to watch him play tonight.

Volpe’s future is pretty uncertain. He’ll be a non-tender candidate this Fall. If I were him, I’d work my butt off to learn second base.