Four Storylines that Defined the 2026 Yankees Regular Season

By EJ Fagan

September 2026

***

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

***

Before the calendar turns over to the playoffs, let’s reflect a bit on the 2026 regular season. I think there’s a case to be made that the overall team had an excellent regular season, better than any in a long time, even though they may win 94 games for the third year in a row and failed to win the division.

What are the major storylines of the 2026 season? Here are my top four, in no particular order.

Storyline #1: Aaron Judge’s Most Serious Injury

Judge had suffered two serious injuries since his GOAT breakout: injuring his foot against a defective Dodger Stadium wall and his throwing elbow last year. In both of those cases, he missed some time before returning and played injured until it healed or the season ended. In both cases, he was still one of the best hitters on the planet after returning.

That changed in 2026. Judge got hurt early in the season and never returned to play, even at a reduced level. The Yankees had to win 94 games while only getting 1.9 bWAR from the big guy.

To put that another way: the Yankees won the same number of games in 2026 as they had with the greatest hitter of all time at his peak in 2024-2025. That’s kind of impressive! The 2024-2025 Yankees would probably have missed the playoffs without Aaron Judge. The 2026 Yankees made them comfortably.

Storyline #2: The Emergence of Cam Schlittler and Ben Rice

I think Judge will continue to play at a very high level next year, but he will be 35 years old. Some time soon, he will no longer be the best player in the game.

Luckily, 2026 saw the emergence of the next generation of Yankee stars.

Cam Schlittler’s 2026 season will go down in the Yankee history books to the point that you will be annoyed to hear future broadcasters talk about it. But like Ron Guidry’s 1978 season, Schlittler deserves those flowers:

Schlittler invented a new way to pitch by just throwing three different high-90s fastballs. His curveball remained a show-me pitch all year, and he never used a slider. The result was that he could pound the zone with power and just enough spin. He was remarkably consistent all year. He will cruise to a unanimous Cy Young Award. And he’s just 25 years old.

Ben Rice was almost as good. He had a strong 2025 season, but broke out in a huge way in 2026:

Rice was 7th in home runs (before game 162) and 3rd in slugging. His 149 wRC+ was 3rd in the league behind just Pete Crow Armstrong and Yordan Alvarez and well ahead of the career rate of guys like Rafael Devers, Vlad Guerrero Jr, Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso.

Amazing.

Rice has a lot of room to improve at 1st base, but he still only has less than a full season of games at the position. He’ll get there. In a world without superheroes like Aaron Judge, Ben Rice is as good as it gets. Amazing.

The Rest of the Starting Staff Showed Up

Gerrit Cole won the 2023 Cy Young Award, but the rest of the pitching staff fell apart behind him. That wasn’t the case for Schlittler in 2026. While the veterans struggled to stay healthy, they were elite when on the field.

Chief among them was Max Fried:

Fried just refused to allow anyone to hit he ball hard in 2026. He lost a little velocity between the injuries, but none of the decline showed up on the field. Fried should scare teams just as much as Schlittler during the playoffs.

Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon were effective, but saw some noticeable decline in their Statcast numbers. Cole is coming off Tommy John, so that probably should be expected. Rodon posted a great ERA, but struggled with command and control early in the season.

Ryan Weathers and Will Warren did their job to round out the rotation. Unlike previous years, the Yankees didn’t need to dip deep into the minor leagues other than a handful of starts from Elmer Rodriguez and Luis Gil.

The sum total was the best Yankee pitching staff in a very long time. They allowed 100 runs fewer than the 2025 staff. They posted a 78 ERA-, better than any of the 90s teams.

The Offense Was Saved at Midseason

Other than Ben Rice, the other other full season Yankee to post a wRC+ above 100 was Cody Bellinger. Veterans Jazz Chisholm, Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Trent Grisham and Ryan McMahon all performed much worse than they did in 2025. It all added up to the worst offense in baseball after Judge went on the IL in late May.

The team was saved by its mid-season additions. Spencer Jones, Heliot Ramos, George Lombard Jr and Luis Garcia were the deadline reinforcements. While none of them posted phenomenal numbers in pinstripes, they collectively added a ton of at bats of league average-ish production to a team that was struggling to score 3 runs per game.

Perhaps because of the reinforcements, the rest of the Yankee bats came back alive in August and September. They enter the playoffs as an above average offensive team even without the GOAT. Even an average offense feels like a huge victory given how low the offensive lows were last year.