Where Should the Yankees Go from Here?!

Frozen Mid-January Thoughts by Cary Greene

January 21, 2026

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Everywhere you turn to look, it seems there’s an article about the Yankees missing out on an uber expensive free agent! I’m tired of reading about it actually and at this point, I’m gearing up for spring baseball. Baseball is coming to a crossroads and the coming season ends, the future is very cloudy and dark. A protracted labor dispute could really put the clamps on all of the progress MLB has made recently. Changes to the game are coming, but the good news is that we have one last season to enjoy baseball as we know it, unfair as it currently may seem to the fan bases of most MLB teams - with the exception of Dodgers fans of course.

Make no mistake though, Yankees GM Brian Cashman still has some areas of the 2026 roster to address and there actually is plenty of time to do it. Will Cashman soon give in to the demands that Cody Bellinger’s agent, Scott Boras, is making? It's anyone’s guess but personally, I’d rather see the Yankees not sign Bellinger to a long term deal and I don’t think he’s really worth a short term deal with a high AAV, so let’s take a poll today. Where should the Yankees go from here - what moves should they make?

Operationally speaking, the Yankees are in perpetual win now mode. Without spending money on free agents, it's very difficult to sustain that kind of philosophy. Because Hal Steinbrenner spends big but also has limits, Brian Cashman often cobbles together a group of supporting cast members to augment a roster dotted with star players here and there.

Inevitably, Cashman often uses the Trade Deadline to attempt to fix the usual problems that Steinbrenner’s offseason spending limits tend to cause.

Cashman is often forced to raid the Yankees farm system in order to make needed improvements designed to get the win-now minded Yankees into the playoffs and Yankees fans have grown very used to the way the Yankees operate. There’s also a degree of frustration that's been brewing in the minds of Yankees fans due to Hal Steinbrenner unwillingness to spend commensurately with their primary large market rival - the Dodgers.

It appears that this offseason, Cashman is likely going to be forced to be even more creative than he usually has to be, as he looks to field the best team he can muster. Given that the Yankees farm system has been vastly depleted in recent years, it’s fair to speculate that when this season’s Trade Deadline arrives, Cashman won’t have nearly enough prospect capital to pull off the usual flurry of trades he’s known to broker. This season, Cashman won’t likely have the trade assets that rebuilding teams want and that will make it difficult to improve any roster flaws that emerge over the first half of the year.

Seemingly,  Cashman needs to do more this offseason with far less, than he’s ever done before. Hal Steinbrenner obviously isn’t keen on spending big this offseason, so whatever moves Cashman makes from now until mid-May, will likely need to be ones that need to move the needle or else the Yankees, a team whose current payroll is the fifth highest in MLB, could easily wind up being dead ducks in 2026.

Cashman has proven, even as recently as last season, that he’s more than adept at putting together a roster that will likely outperform the money Hal Steinbrenner spends on it. I wrote a piece recently where I detailed that last season, the Yankees spent roughly $142 million on the positional portion of their payroll and according to Fangraphs, the players greatly outperformed the spend - to the tune of being worth a little over $288 million f-Dollars - meaning if the Yankees positional players were all free agents last season, that’s how much they were really worth! Aaron Judge alone made $40 million but he was worth double that!

Based on the new stat I created, called  f-Value, which was born by noting how much the Yankees paid each Yankees position player in 2025, then subtracting their fDollars from the amount they were paid. Presto. f-Value was born. I noted that Yankees fans were probably going to be surprised when they learned  that the Yankees positional group produced $140.4 million in surplus value last season. 

Even with Gerrit Cole’s $36 million AAV of total loss factored into the Yankees pitching part of the roster, the Yankees somehow managed a little over $4 million in f-Value. Yankees pitchers who massively outperformed what they were paid were led by Will Warren, Max Fried, David Bednar, Cam Schlittler, Clarke Schmidt and Fernando Cruz. Besides Cole, other notable pitchers who weren’t worth what they were paid included Marcus Stroman, Jonathan Loaisiga, Carlos Carasco, Ryan Yarbrough and surprisingly, Carlos Rodon.

My conclusion regarding last season is that Cashman constructed a 2025 roster that basically played their pants off during the regular season, overcoming the loss of their ace starter, Gerrit Cole. The roster that Cashman assembled last season was worth far more than what the Yankees paid them and this might account for why Hal Steinbrenner feels that Cashman is doing a really good job as a General Manager. Could the Yankees have wisely spent even more money last offseason? Yes, it would have been possible.

Throughout 2024’s offseason and again last offseason, the Yankees notably passed on Blake Snell, who in ‘24 went on to sign with the Giants for two-years and $62-million. Snell then opted out last offseason, after producing only 2.1 bWAR across 104 innings with the Giants, and he inked a deal with the Dodgers for $182 million over 5-years. Snell earned $27.9 million in his first year with the Dodgers, throwing a measly 61.1 innings. His performance however was only worth a contract of $15.1 million last season, which means his f-Value was negative $12.8 million.

Though Snell went 3-2 in last year’s playoffs, pitching to a 3.18 ERA, he wound up losing two World Series games to the Blue Jays. While the old baseball adage “You can never have enough pitching” is true, is Brian Cashman really supposed to throw Hal Steinbrenner’s spare change around like it’s monopoly money?

Besides Snell, other top free agents last offseason were Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman and Teoscar Hernandez. If Steinbrenner had permitted Cashman to sign just one of those players, would it have been enough to put the Yankees over the top? Personally, I don’t feel it would have and I feel the same way about this year’s crop of offseason free agents, who are seen collectively as a pretty weak class compared to prior years.

I know a lot of fans wanted the Yankees to sign Kyle Tucker and many were very upset that the Yankees weren’t in on him and that of all teams, it was the Dodgers who landed him. Yet, as John Heyman of the New York Post recently opined, “Tucker is a superb complementary player but there’s no good reason he should be the game’s top-paid player.” He then went on to say, "Sure, Tucker is a fairly elite talent, but he was 45th in WAR and 77th in RBIs in an ultimately unsatisfying 2025 season on the North Side of Chicago. He’s had nagging injuries two years running, and his defense fell into the average range as a Cub.”

Many Yankees fans were also upset that the Yankees didn’t make a run at Alex Bregman or Bo Bichette, while also managing to miss out on lesser talents like Kazuma Okamoto or Tatsuya Imai..etc. I’m not sure the Yankees feel any of those names are going to be worth significantly more than they wound up getting paid this offseason. I actually trust Brian Cashman to understand this and in fact, the way he’s handled the demands Scott Boaras is making for his client, Cody Bellinger, shows Cashman is trying to avoid wasting money.

This notion doesn’t fly with most Yankees fans, who note that the Yankees failed to win a championship last season, after the Blue Jays convincingly bounced the Yankees three games to one in the American League Division Series. Fans also complain that other teams like the Dodgers, Mets and Blue Jays are spending larger chunks of their revenue than Hal Steinbrenner is willing to pony up.

Now here we are and adding insult to injury, the Yankees have made only one significant move, which was the trade with the Marlins that netted lefty starter Ryan Weathers, as of the time of this article being written (January 20th).

The Yankees have yet to do anything significant this offseason to show its fan base that the franchise takes winning the World Series as seriously as its fan base does.

It all boils down to this: Yankees fans expect championships and they’re growing frustrated by Hal Steinbrenner’s unwillingness to spend commensurately with a team like the Dodgers. That much is true. It is. However, let’s not all get lost in the weeds. Cashman is hitting the ball right down the middle of the fairway these days. He’s working within the budget that Hal Steinbrenner has set and he even has the ability to bring potential signings of significance to Hal for review and potential approval. If Hal is advised that the idea makes sense, he might pull the trigger, but in the meantime, Cashman is showing that he’ll likely give Hal Steinbrenner a roster that likely will again out perform the spend.

It wasn’t long ago that Cashman was putting together rosters full of sunk costs, so personally I’m glad to see that the Yankees are no longer doing that. All it takes is one or two bad, very expensive contracts to run a franchise into the ground.

Make no mistake, Hal is looking around at all of the playoff teams and he sees how much more efficiently their organizations run. He knows that more can be done with less and he’s also content to see the Yankees make the playoffs as he knows that is step one. Unlike his father, Hal trusts the people he has in place to get the job done. They haven’t been able to break through yet, but they’ve been very close. Hal knows this.

There is still plenty of time left this offseason for the Yankees to pull off a trade or two. It’s no secret that the Yankees are after a quality starting pitcher. The Yankees have been linked to names like Freddy Peralta and MacKenzie Gore, though it would seem that if Cashman doesn’t like the asking prices, his recent acquisition of Ryan Weathers has already given the Yankees the added depth they needed. Let’s also not forget that the Yankees have a few intriguing young arms knocking on the door as well - names like their number two prospect, Carlos Lagrange and their number three prospect, Elmer Rodríguez are both primed to crash the party in 2026. Topping it all off, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon and Clarke Schmidt are all on the mend and even if only one of them comes back strongly, that would provide a huge lift to the Yankees rotation.

Conceivably, the Yankees have enough in-house depth in order to fortify their rotation and perhaps shuffle people around so that any bullpen openings could also be buttoned up nicely. Gil and Lagrange might wind up becoming a double-headed monster in the Yankees bullpen. Ben Hess is also lurking in Somerset and many scouts see his floor as being a set-up man, with a ceiling being that of a closer or potential mid-rotation starter.

Where the Yankees are organizationally thin is in the area of nearly ready position players, so I do expect the Yankees to either sign a free agent or make a trade to address obvious areas of need. Presently, the most glaring needs the Yankees have are in left field and at shortstop. In 2027, the Yankees will also need a second baseman and a center fielder. Those are significant, highly important openings that will need to be filled.

After the horrible Dominican winter league performance Jasson Dominguez recently put up with Leones del Escogido, where he slashed an anemic .184/.304/.263/.568 across a skimpy 38 at-bats while working on his right-handed swing, it’s probably fair to conclude that Dominguez needs many more reps if the’s ever going to amount to a MLB switch-hitter. At this juncture of his career, he’s still the strong side of a platoon and his defense is simply putrid. Cashman knows this and I still believe Dominguez will be traded this offseason, but not until the Yankees acquire a starting left fielder.

Free agent names the Yankees have been linked to are Cody Bellinger and Austin Hays. On the trade front, there have been subtle murmurs regarding Steven Kwan, though it’s public knowledge that the Guardians aren’t open to trading him. Austin Hayes checks a lot of boxes if Cashman wants to sign an inexpensive free agent platoon option. Cody Bellinger is an even better option, though it’s anyone’s guess at this point if the Yankees will wind up signing him. Cashman has already signed the 2025 Mexican League MVP - Nick Torres, so we’ll no doubt see him vying for a roster spot with the Yankees this spring. Torres is a right-handed masher who plays corner outfield and first base, maybe Cashman has something here?

What the current roster needs most is coverage in left-field and production against left-handed pitching. Hays is basically a platoon player who plays acceptably defense and while he mashes left-handed pitching (.319/.400/.549/.949 OPS ly), he is only fairly average against right-handed pitching (.249/.286/.422/.707). That makes Hays a fourth outfielder, which is fine if the Yankees don’t wind up trading Dominguez. However, forming a plan that grants Dominguez the lion’s share of the playing time in left field is likely a bad idea.

Killing two birds with one stone is a preferable plan and I hope Cashman understands this, as I really don’t want to see a Hays/Dominguez plan in left-field next season. I’d rather see an everyday player step in and give the Yankees lineup production against both left and right-handed pitching. Therefore, while I’m still hopeful that the Yankees might be able to sign Bellinger, Cashman is going to either have to get very creative or very lucky if he can’t land Bellinger. Bellinger destroys Lefties and he’s absolutely playable against Righties. His defense is also fantastic. It can’t be argued that Bellinger isn’t a good fit with the Yankees and options are at this point in the offseason, very limited.

One name that hasn’t come up yet is Spencer Jones and the reason I haven’t mentioned him is that it really isn’t fair to count on him just yet. He clearly needs reps in order to attempt to reduce his propensity for striking out and to his credit, last season Jones worked on his hand positioning and his mechanics. Jones deserves the Yankees to remain patient with him as he continues honing these adjustments this spring, after which he’ll need plenty of reps in Triple-A before he can be considered a legitimate option in the Yankees outfield.

It seems like the best option is always the one that is right under your nose, as they say, so short of Torres coming out of nowhere to claim a starting spot in the Yankees outfield, perhaps this April and May we’ll see a healthy Giancarlo Stanton playing some outfield here and there. This would open up the DH spot in the lineup and if that were to happen, there is one under the radar move that Cashman could make and it involves signing a free agent that I’m all-in on and he wouldn’t be very expensive to acquire.

The Yankees bench has long lacked a good bat. Imagine if an inexpensive to acquire free agent was out there who scalds left-handed pitching to the tune of (.389/.409/.578/.987 OPS ly) and he also tags right-handed pitching (.290/.331/.429/.760 OPS ly)? This player is exactly the kind of contact oriented, gap to gap extra base hit machine that the Yankees offense needs. His name is none other than Miguel Andujar. Our old friend Miggy is an everyday player these days. He’s primarily a DH, but he can masquerade as a left fielder here and there while also filling in at third base and at first base. He remains a free agent.

Signing Bellinger and Andujar both would add up to vastly improving the Yankees lineup. It would also give the Yankees some protection in case Stanton continues to battle injuries. While I believe the Yankees have enough pitching presently, I certainly wouldn’t be complaining if the Yankees traded for a front part of the rotation starter either. The Yankees aren’t far from fielding a formidable roster and Cashman still has time to make that happen.

Let’s close with this. The Yankees have lots of in-house solutions, but it seems like there is more work yet to be done. Where should the Yankees go from here?