Let's Talk About the Yankees Rolling it Back in 2026

by E.J. Fagan

February 15, 2026

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NOTE: The following comes from EJ Fagan's substack page and is shared with permission. This was published a few days ago so the stats don't include the last few games.

Please check out EJ's substack page for more great articles.

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With the Paul Goldschmidt signing, the Yankees have pretty much completed their 2026 roster. As you well know, it’s pretty much the exact same roster they brought to the 2025 playoffs.

I sense that Yankees fans are frustrated, including Piper and Domenic on Sunday’s episode of the Bronx Beat Podcast. I get it. The 2025 Yankees lost pretty badly to the Blue Jays in the ALDS. I would also have liked the Yankees to improve the team.

But we should also acknowledge that the team the Yankees brought to the 2025 playoffs was pretty good. The 2025 team as a whole won an AL-best 94 games but played most of the season without a complete roster. They also underperformed their Pythagorean record by three games in part due to a bunch of blown games by the only players to leave the team this offseason. It was a really good roster.

They got a lot better at the deadline with McMahon, Rosario, Bednar, Cabarello and Schlittler. That team would have won more games than the pre-deadline Yankees, evidenced by how much ground they made up in the standings in September. I’d go as far as to say that the September 2025 Yankees was the most well-rounded Yankees roster since the 2009-2012 era.

They begin the 2026 season with a similarly well rounded roster, with a big caveat: starting pitching. The Yankees will begin the season with a lot of downside risk in the rotation.

There’s a pretty good chance that two out of five starts in April and early May are rough.

Could the Yankees have reasonably done better on starting pitching? My instinct is no. They are in a tough spot given that they have every reason to expect Cole and Rodon to return in the first half of the season. The trade market for starting pitchers was so expensive that it didn’t make sense to give up two or three top prospects from a thin farm system for Freddy Peralta or Edward Cabrera. And the Yankees have enough starting pitching in the high minors that they probably shouldn’t add a fourth long term contract to their rotation.

In that context, Ryan Weathers makes a lot of sense. He’s better than Ryan Yarbrough, with some upside. He was cheap due to his injury history. If he can stay on the mound until May, the trade will pay off. And there’s a decent enough chance that he turns out to be a 3/4 MLB starter. Plus, he’s under team control for three more seasons.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I was a little nervous. The Yankees had seven starters going into the 2025 season and still ended up giving a ton of innings to Carlos Carassco and Ryan Yarbrough in the first half. But I’m not sure what I would have done differently if I were Cashman.

Overall, the team projects pretty well. Fangraphs projects them at 86 wins, just ahead of the Blue Jays and Red Sox and just behind the Tigers and Mariners. I’m a little worried about the Red Sox upside if Roman Anthony turns into an MVP, but the Yankees are better right now.

They also have some upside potential if Rodon and Cole come back at full force, Ben Rice turns into his Statcast page and Cam Schlittler continues what we saw at the end of the season. Plus, Aaron Judge is perpetually underrated by a system like ZiPS because of how much an outlier he is. The Blue Jays roster feels safer, but their 94 win performance feels like as good as they are going to get.

I’m also not going to read too much into the playoff loss. The Dodgers got knocked out early for years before they were a playoff powerhouse. There isn’t any specific playoff magic other than fielding a great team.

The team is running it back, but they are running it back with a solid roster. Things could be a lot worse.