Ryan Garcia
The New York Yankees are 32-22 and 3.5 games behind first place after Memorial Day, a comeback win in Kansas City feels like a really nice vibe shift for the squad entering the second game of the Royals’ series.
If they keep this win pace up, they will win 96 games and definitely go into the postseason, but I’m not sure anymore if that is even getting you the American League East.
They’re clearly contenders in an American League that is absolutely rancid, but how good are they?
With Memorial Day being the official “things are real” point in the season,let’s breakdown every unit on the Yankees’ roster with their offense, rotation, and bullpen.
READ:The Yankees’ infield puzzle just got even stranger
Can The Yankees’ Offense Get It Going?
The Yankees’ offense has been very hot and very cold; they’ve had stretches where they light up the scoreboard for a bevy of runs and they have stretches where you wonder if certain hitters are fans cosplaying as Bronx Bombers.
Some of that up-and-down is normal, but it does feel a bit weird that they’re capable of playing this poorly for this prolonged of a period of time and there’s more to it than just “that’s baseball Suzyn”.
First, not having Giancarlo Stanton is difficult because the team had to run out Jasson Dominguez, who promptly got hurt and opened the door for Spencer Jones.
Jones had a 44.4% K% and didn’t collect a single XBH, and he’s emblamatic of a lot of the team’s high strikeout hitters at the moment.
The Yankees have three other hitters who fall into the bucket of low SLG% hitters with poor strikeout rates, as Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm, and Ryan McMahon have SLG% numbers below .400 while striking out over 25% of the time.
Having three everyday regulars who aren’t making up for their poor contact rates with excellent quality of contact numbers is going to create a lot of issues if the top of the lineup isn’t on fire.
Add on that Paul Goldschmidt is just an everyday player right now when he can’t handle RHP because of the injuries to both Stanton and Dominguez, and you’re looking at Judge-Rice-Bellinger to come through in every game.
I expect Trent Grisham and Jazz Chisholm to get their OPS+ numbers over 100 and finish around a 110 when the season’s over, and I think one of Jose Caballero or Anthony Volpe can hold down shortstop due to their defense.
Austin Wells (catcher) and Ryan McMahon (third base) are where I look for improvements, and it starts with finding a right-handed compliment to the catching room.
Wells has a .340 OBP and 93 wRC+ vs RHP with a .337 xwOBA, I have no problem with him playing against righties if the defense is going to be elite and if we have a righty to use off the bench who can take him out of a big spot.
His issue in 2026 has been that teams can spam left-handed relievers against him since Aaron Boone appears hesitant to remove his catcher from the game, resulting in 34% of his PAs coming against LHP.
The third base room needs a new starter; they cannot continue running Ryan McMahon out there since he doesn’t hit righties, has no enticing underlying numbers, and isn’t even that good of a defender right now.
Playing Anthony Volpe at shortstop and Jose Caballero at third base is the move for now while they evaluate the makret for something resembling an upgrade.
Given Nolan Arenado’s newfound affordable contract since the Cardinals chose to eat a good chunk of that salary to get an interesting prospect back, I would no longer consider it a bad idea to target him.
It’s not a great profile for Yankee Stadium, but the combination of contact, Pull AIR rates, and his right-handed bat make him a really nice bat to add over Ryan McMahon.
You wouldn’t be losing much on defense either, and against a lefty the team can use Amed Rosario in left field and Jose Caballero at second base to give them a greater advantage in those matchups.
Overall, this group is a top-five performing offense by Runs Scored and OPS, while remaining top 5 in those statistics when looking at RISP or High-Leverage situations.
They need to make some tweaks and get Giancarlo Stanton (or even Jasson Dominguez) back to lenghten the lineup and eliminate some of the empty strikeouts, but ~25 other teams have far greater offensive issues.
The Rotation is Really, Really Good Man
The Yankees’ rotation is the best in baseball by WAR (6.8) on FanGraphs, third in ERA (3.07), and fourth in xFIP (3.65) as they’ve been able to churn excellent starts over and over again.
It starts with Cam Schlittler, the current odds-on favorite to win the American League Cy Young Award due to an incredible start to the season headlined by a league-best 1.50 ERA.
His stuff is otherworldly, and the Yankees have managed to get excellent results from Will Warren and Ryan Weathers so far as well.
Weathers has a 3.14 ERA and 3.05 xFIP through his first 10 starts of 2026 while Warren is cruising with a 3.55 ERA and 3.31 xFIP, both of whom were expected to be backend starters entering the season.
Carlos Rodon and Gerrit Cole have successfully completed their rehab assignments and their stuff looks good post-operation, although the command is still a work-in-progress.
They’ve done this with a back-breaking injury to Max Fried that clearly limited him in his last three starts, which were not only ineffective but uncharacteristically errant command-wise.
A deathblow to most rotations is just a small setback for this one, and they’ve still got Clarke Schmidt on the way back who had pitched like a strong mid-rotation arm before tearing his UCL last season.
Injuries are bound to arise throughout the season, but the Yankees seem uniquely prepared to handle it by adopting the Los Angeles Dodgers’ strategy of “acquire as many talented arms as possible”.
Some will fail to stay healthy for October, but if you can keep enough of them healthy, you’ll have a notable pitching advantage in the biggest games of the year.
New York could convert some of their surplus arms into relievers, and they may have to since the excellent MLB performance has not been backed by brilliant MiLB performance from their expected top arms.
Elmer Rodriguez has suddenly lost the strike zone, Carlos Lagrange is still working through command issues, and Ben Hess has been slowed down by arm troubles that he’s still building back up from.
All of those arms could likely convert well into a reliever role if needed, but Lagrange stands out here as a potential superweapon if used out of the bullpen.
It’s been a bright-green light for this group this season, a unit that has become the bedrock on this team and seems to be even better prepared for a high-stakes matchup against a big-time offense in October.
I Still Do Not Understand The Bullpen
The Yankees’ offense has the highest WPA in MLB (3.43), meaning no offense has directly added to their team’s chances of winning a game more than the Bronx Bombers.
When looking at the rotation, they’re sixth in WPA (2.37), so both of these groups in theory should gel to form a team that’s about 1-3 wins better than they currently are right now.
So why are they not?
New York’s bullpen has the sixth-worst WPA in MLB (-0.79), so while their ERA (3.50, 11th) and xFIP (3.77, 9th) are shiny, their actual impact has been really poor.
I think part of it is just poor timing, some guys are just getting their outs in less meaningful moments and that is just a thing that can happen sometimes.
The full picture is that the Yankees have built a bullpen that contradicts itself in a myriad of ways, putting together a unit that has manager Aaron Boone overtaxing some key arms and burning them in low-leverage spots.
The Yankees have three of the 10 most used relievers in MLB by appearances, and while I think Tim Hill has a rubber arm and can pitch a ton, the other two arms in Fernando Cruz and Brent Headrick have injury flags.
Both spent a considerable chunk of the 2025 season on the injured list, and while it’s easy to blame Aaron Boone…what other choices does he have?
Ryan Yarbrough and Paul Blackburn are both bad MLB relievers, while the team is trying to build up the soft-tossing lefty as a traditional bulk man, they’ve found themselves using him four times in the last month.
He completed more than one inning in just two of those four outings, so he hasn’t even been that effective in his role as the long-man who mops up innings.
They seem to be trying Blackburn as a middle-innings medium leverage reliever…which is a really unwise decision given his lack of any swing and miss abilities and poor stuff.
Yovanny Cruz has more upside than both of these guys and Aaron Boone can actually use him to burn innings as he figures out a potential leverage situation for him.
I ticketed this as a disaster waiting to happen when they inked Blackburn because there’s nothing the Yankees love more than giving too much rope to a veteran on an MLB deal.
Unlike an optionable flier or an MiLB signing, the Yankees will actually trot this two long-man thing out there even as it costs them wins because they don’t want to lose an arm.
The conclusion here? Have to find one really dominant reliever and if you can convert some of the starters to the bullpen…this group could actually be good!
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