The MLB has wasted no time in ranking all 30 teams ahead of the 2024 season, and the New York Yankees are not as high on their list as they’d like to be.
Yankees Ranked In Accordance With Their Finish in the Standings
A pool of voters including Will Leitch of MLB.com placed the Yankees as the twelfth-best team heading into next year without justification for their slot, nor any team outside of the top five.
The Atlanta Braves took the top spot with the defending champion Texas Rangers coming in at second and the Baltimore Orioles rounding out the top-three. Encouragingly, the Yankees were not placed below any team that had a worse record than them in 2023.
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The Offseason Will Allow Yankees Stars to Get Healthy
New York has yet to land any of their top free-agent targets with the World Series having concluded over a week ago. As presently constructed, they have a roster that is capable of making a playoff push at full strength, but that was not the case in 2023.
Injuries to Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton took a chunk out of their hitting and fielding prowess for an excess of 50 games apiece. Additionally, Nestor Cortes and Carlos Rodon Jr. being sidelined for significant portions of the season depleted their pitching rotation.
Those four, as well as the rest of the Yankees lineup at 100%, have a great chance of making better on their 82 wins and returning to World Series contention.
Yankees Expecting to Make a Major Splash in Free Agency
As the days go by, new names are added to the Yankees’ radar as potential trade and free-agent targets. Named the favorites to land Chicago Cubs OF Cody Bellinger and San Diego Padres LF Juan Soto, the Yankees are looking primed to add power at the plate and elite gloves next to Judge.
There are around a dozen other prime candidates to land in pinstripes this winter heading into Spring training, including Texas Rangers champion Jordan Montgomery and Japanese sensation Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
