Uncustomed Heroes of 2025: Yankees

 

If the last year or so has taught me anything, it is this: everybody wants to play in New York. They just don't realize it til it's too late that they don't want to play for the Yankees.

In 2024, the Yankees had the biggest star in the game come to them and play beautifully, and then he decided the Mets were respecting him more. This year, Cody Bellinger had an incredible year with the Yankees, and now it's looking like Scott Boras is making a deal very difficult. Devin Williams, Luke Weaver and Clay Holmes are all suiting up for the Mets next year after we seemed to burn our bridges with them. The only people that haven't fled the Bronx have been Paul Blackburn and Amed Rosario. And meanwhile, we gave Caleb Durbin to Milwaukee, gave Michael King a much firmer place to start in San Diego, Drew Thorpe will start for the Sox this year if he's healthy enough, and in a year or two Roc Riggio is gonna hit 40 homers in Coors Field. We're much better at improving other teams than we are at improving our own.

The Yankees still had the third-highest record in baseball this year, delivered an MVP season for Aaron Judge, and was home to several great seasons from a variety of role-players. But that wasn't enough either. The Jays were better than us, and could consistently show up in October. And so here we are, still trying to win a World Series for the first time since Steinbrenner was still alive. Will it happen in 2026? For the low, low price of 199.99, a Yankee championship could be yours..

Austin Wells was the primary choice at catcher this year, as Jose Trevino was flipped to Cincinnati for a strong year of Fernando Cruz. Wellsy has his perks but he's not perfect. In 126 games he hit .219 with 21 homers and 71 RBIs, a very average offensive season. Defensively he was a liability this year. We've gotta do better than 'Wells or Rice' as a catching platoon, man.

2026 Prediction: A colossal improvement. I'm not sure if it'll be enough to become THE guy back there for the next 10 years, but it'll do the trick.

In a year without Gerrit Cole, and in a year where Luis Gil would be out for several months, the last spot in the rotation, behind Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Marcus Stroman and Clarke Schmidt, went to rookie Will Warren. Warren had some chances in 2024, but was still a risk for a rotation spot right after a championship. Sure enough, Warren was one of two Yankees to make all 33 starts, and went 9-8 with a 4.44 ERA, 171 Ks and 80 earned runs in 162 innings. A little messy, and a bit too many long balls, but the sort of heat that the Yankee fans could get behind.

2026 Prediction: He'll be 27, and he just pitched a full season of high velocity work as a rookie. See ya in 2027. I'd love to be wrong and get another full campaign from him, but I just can't trust pitchers anymore.

Jasson Dominguez spent the entire year in the majors. He is 22 years old, still one of the most promising young players in baseball, and still reaching his full potential. Due to platooning him with Trent Grisham, Dominguez played 123 games, and hit .257 with 10 home runs and 47 RBIs. The moment simply has not come yet. It looked like it was here in 2023, when Dominguez was on fire on a call-up and aided the team before getting hurt, but he's really yet to take charge of an opportunity since then. I'm really worried Boone has given him the Yermin Mercedes effect, where he's been so warped by a manager's tough love that he can't perform to the standard.

2026 Prediction: It all comes down to whether or not the Yanks re-sign Bellinger. Cause if they do, and Grisham still takes seniority, we have another year of this. But if they don't, and Dominguez can start everyday, not only does he have a breakout year and 30 homers, but it's more of an incentive to get Spencer Jones up.

Clarke Schmidt only had 14 games up this year due to injuries, but he looked very good in them. In 79 innings he had a 3.32 ERA, 73 Ks and a 1.7 WAR. Very good use of our time. Sadly he didn't factor much into the team's progress in the second half.

2026 Prediction: Much fuller, healthier year. His free agency is coming up kinda soon, too, so it's about time.

And now, our bullpen, or as they will be known next year, the Mets' bullpen. Luke Weaver's been terrific for us since we turned him into a reliever, and this year he began to wear out his welcome slightly. In 64 games, Weaver had a 3.62 ERA, a 1.021 WHIP and 72 Ks, plus 8 saves as the Yanks went away from an initial closing choice. Granted, that higher ERA is a clue to why we needed bullpen help midyear. Weaver also had a 135.00 ERA in 3 postseason appearances so...yeah

2026 Prediction: Figures his shit out in Queens, becomes an ideal setup man again.

The biggest picture of 'the Yankees as the problem' came from Devin Williams, a sure shot in the ninth that didn't work at all here, despite the team bending the rules to let Williams keep his beard. Williams did not mesh well with this team, and with the moment; in 67 games he had a 4.79 ERA, with only 18 saves and a lot more blown ones. It's important to add that Williams was perfectly fine in an eighth inning role, and his 90 Ks in 62 innings gave us enough pure dominance to be placated by. But we traded Nestor Cortes and Caleb Durbin for the next great closer, and Williams was not that guy for us, despite everything that said he would be. He was, however, scoreless in 4 postseason innings, even getting a win. 

2026 Prediction: HUGE season in the ninth for the Mets. They'll move on from Edwin Diaz very quickly.

Luis Gil, as he tends to, missed some time with injuries this season, and when he returned you could tell he was still being very careful not to overexert himself. It seemed to work well enough in terms of dominance, as he had a 3.32 ERA, a 4-1 record and a 1 ERA in 11 starts, despite only 41 Ks. Gil needed to just keep balls in play and work carefully, and it seemed to work out, even if his postseason start didn't go especially well.

2026 Prediction: Much better year, much more on target and closer to 2024.

It initially baffled me when the Yankees traded for Amed Rosario, even sacrificing Clayton Beeter to do so, but Rosario became a very helpful utility bat for us. While a later addition would be the defensive version of this, Rosario had some cool power moments, hitting .303 with 10 hits, 5 RBIs and a home run in 16 games. He also had 3 hits and an RBI in 10 postseason at-bats. From the strength of this small sample size, the Yanks kept him on, making Rosario the only person to seem to prefer the Yankees to the Mets this decade.

2026 Prediction: Nowhere near as contact-friendly but he'll have some cool moments late.

Landing David Bednar from the Pirates was a huge move, as it finally gave us an effective closer after the last two had let us down. The man known as the Renegade had a rough start in the Bronx, but, as he had earlier this season, found his footing and became an excellent ninth inning man, with a 2.19 ERA, 4 wins, 35 Ks and 10 saves in 22 appearances. He also had a 1.50 ERA, 9 Ks and 2 saves in 6 postseason innings.

2026 Prediction: 35+ saves, the culmination of his whole career.

Shakier still was Camilo Doval, who'd led the league in saves a couple years ago for the Giants. Doval's control issues got the better of him in New York, and in 22 games he had a 4.82 ERA, plus a 1.607 WHIP. Doval figured some things out by October, and gave up 1 earned run in 3 postseason innings.

2026 Prediction: He just needed to adjust. Becomes a really nice relief asset for us, even if it's not pretty in points.

My personal favorite mid-year Yankee pickup was Jose Caballero, who was leading the AL in saves when we got him from the Rays. Cabby is insanely versatile, can play multiple infield positions, hits for contact and steals bases. We needed a guy like him, even if McMahon was taking most of the reps at 3rd. Cabby was a huge success with the Yanks, hitting .266 in 40 games, with 21 hits, 9 RBIs, 3 homers and 15 steals. He was limited in the postseason, but the fans seem to really like him.

2026 Prediction: If Volpe doesn't figure the big leagues out, Cabby might be a winning everyday shortstop. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but it certainly could.

And that was 2025. It was a lot. Lots happened this year, in baseball and in general. I didn't post as much as I wanted. I dunno how often I'll post in 2026, or how often I'll have new cards worth posting about. We'll see where things go, I guess. As it stands, thanks for checking out the blog this year, and I hope you've enjoyed the writing and content. I hope to have near as much to say in the following 12 months, and I hope things are a little happier for all of us. 

Either You Want it or You Don't

 

From a storytelling perspective, the right team won. 

There were so many storylines in play. The Dodgers not getting the full glory, and the full credit, in 2020. The Dodgers failing to actually win with all their big stars. The best teams never taking the glory after the playoff expansion. Ohtani finally playing for a competitor. The pitching revealing a skeleton crew. Freeman recovering from both a personal tragedy and an injury. All of this farming in a five year timeline to lead to an incredible win, and a HUGE win at that, is what baseball can be at its best. You want a full-season storyline with definite heroes? There you go. The best team won, and it wasn't an easy win, because in an alternate universe the Padres keep the leverage. The Dodgers had to become a well-oiled machine in October after breaking down throughout the second half, and they refined themselves and became unstoppable.

Watching this team keep fighting throughout this series, with all the Freddie Freeman highlights, all the incredible pitching energy from Yamamoto, Buehler and Vesia, all the quick contact moments late, was incredible. There was so much fight in this team, and they only got more hungry as the series went on. Any other team couldn't have come back from a 5-0 deficit tonight, and they not only did it, but erased any possibility of a Yankee surge. 

All things considered, this was the outcome that made the most sense. The Dodgers earned this. They fulfilled their promise to the fans from 2020, and undid the punchline of dropping early. They should be very proud.

Now...if I can be honest...the Dodgers shouldn't have won that game. I'm sorry, but there was only so much that the Dodgers themselves did that couldn't be chalked up to mistakes the Yankees made. This game had multiple fielding errors, a catcher's interference, a balk, and a pitching missed tag. And 5 runners left in scoring position. The Yankees were constantly put into position to win this game, and they refused. And it honestly sums up this Series for them. They had so many opportunities, so many moments they could have owned, and they just couldn't. 

And for all of this to happen after 4 innings of beautiful baseball, Aaron Judge shushing the haters, Jazz Chisholm and Giancarlo Stanton going yard, Gerrit Cole working on a beaut and Judge robbing a Freeman homer. It felt like this team was flipping the script, at last. And then everything fell apart, and all of the flaws this team had been working to hide just burst open. And despite conscious efforts to keep at it, it just felt like something broke. 

The Yankees could have won, and chose not to. This game, this series. A more bitter person could make a case that it was less the Dodgers winning this series and more the Yankees losing it. I'm not gonna do that. The Dodgers did a lot right, and earned this win. But they were certainly helped by the Yankees blowing every last opportunity that came their way. 

You also have to think of it this way: Juan Soto, Gleyber Torres, Clay Holmes, Alex Verdugo, Tommy Kahnle and possibly Anthony Rizzo might all be gone next year. This season was the perfect storm, and a tip of a lot of the Boone regime's quest to make the deeper postseason. And while next year the Yankees will still be competitive, I don't know if they'll have a lot of the pieces that made themselves a World Series team, and they may be in danger of falling off. Even if they keep Soto, which'll prevent subsequent moves probably. 

So that's where we're at. The Dodgers won at the right time, and can build off of this World Series win, while the Yankees lost at the wrong time and have a rockier path to staying at this level. What a happy, joyful end to a really entertaining season. 

Deeper Wells

 

The Yankees don't make sense this year. We took 5 from Houston and we can't even take 1 from the Mets?  What's even going on??

I mean, Luis Severino made waves before the Yanks-Mets games in the Bronx saying 'well they really only have 2 guys that are any good right now', and all the Yankee fans stood up and went 'THAT'S NOT TRUE' and then the series happens and not even those two guys show up. In Game 1, Judge was walked 4 times and then struck out in a clutch position in the ninth. Soto was similarly held down in those two games. The second game, where the Mets kept striking repeatedly without the Yankees having anything to contend with, was painful. You got the sense that every so often the lineup COULD wake up, like the Rays game where Austin Wells, Gleyber Torres and Oswaldo Cabrera made 'em suffer, but most of the time they didn't want to.

And so right now you're hearing, once again, the cries of 'fire Boone' and 'fire Cashman', because they couldn't build a team that could withstand slumps or injuries, and while it may not be quite as bad as it was in 2023, it's concerning. This team isn't...completely terrible, but you get the sense that they could be much better. Gerrit Cole has been fine since he was activated. Not awful, but for someone who won a Cy Young last year he's been decidedly mid. He's stuck out 38, and given up 39 hits. Similarly disappointing is D.J. LeMahieu, who's hitting .179 since his return. It's genuinely upsetting that a team, that employs D.J. LeMahieu, Anthony Rizzo, Jon Berti, J.D. Davis and Gleyber Torres is apparently looking for infield help. And Ben Rice has been helpful, but he's stopped hitting since his come-up and is now back under .200. This sort of thing, everybody going cold at once, is the kind of thing that really should have been avoided.

The thing that hopefully will be remembered about this down period is that at least Austin Wells was able to come into his own during it. Wells is decent enough at the plate, with 7 homers and 22 RBIs, but his defensive catching abilities have pushed him ahead of Jose Trevino. He's also one of those guys that can come through in the clutch when you least expect it, like a better version of Kyle Higashioka. The hope is that, like Anthony Volpe, he'll come into his own consistently at some point, but for now he's been very useful.

This Yankees team has come upon flashes of great moments. Occasional great starts by Nestor Cortes and Carlos Rodon. Trent Grisham periodically doing something incredible. Judge hitting a homer. Those games you trivia for where the team comes alive and punishes an opposing pitcher. But the problem with this July stretch is that they've been too infrequent. And now comes the point in the coping, as the Red Sox and Phillies line up, where we start believing that if we make a trade deadline move, which Cashman will either A.) not do despite reports of the contrary or B.) do in a way that makes us regret it in a year's time, that'll save the team. It's a nice pipe dream, but it probably won't.

Coming Tonight: He's over 40 and a team can still count on him. Who'd have thought?

Uncustomed Heroes of 2023: Yankees

 

The good news is that the 2023 Yankees finished above .500.

Everything else is gonna be what people take away from this season. Poorly-timed injuries, people worth hundreds of millions of dollars not playing to their worth, a guy pitching a perfect game and then getting another domestic abuse suspension, and the single most prized prospect in the organization coming up for 10 games and then immediately needing surgery. That is the 2023 Yankees: tragedy on multiple levels.

There was a lot that went well for the Yanks this year, including a monster season from Gerrit Cole, an impressive rookie year from Anthony Volpe, 37 homers from Judge even in a shortened season, and the knowledge that Juan Soto will be suiting up for us in 2024. But there was a lot of misery, and we had to stomach that.

All I can say is that if you think being a Yankee fan was hard this year, imagine having to root for either of the two football teams in addition. Unrelated, but go Birds.

Giancarlo Stanton essentially confirmed how ill-advised it was to take on a jekyll-or-hyde power machine or injury-prone goat for nearly a decade. He's had some nice years for us, but he's whittled away so much of his early promise, and now he's just taunting us. The good news is that I got to see Stanton hit 2 homers in person this year, including one of the most incredible long-shots I've ever seen. The bad news is that this is really all Stanton can do anymore. In 101 games, Stanton hit .191 with 24 homers and 60 RBIs, passable power numbers but knocked down by his inefficiency otherwise. 

2024 Prediction: Because absolutely no one would expect it, a comeback year DHing.

Nestor Cortes was coming off two excellent years starting for the Yankees, so it was only natural that he'd let us down. Cortes battled injuries all year, and only had 12 games up in the majors in between setbacks. He was decent in that period, with a 5-2 record, a 4.97 ERA and 67 Ks, but compared to his incredible 2022, it wasn't much.

2024 Prediction: Cortes is gonna have an excellent start for us, and make up for lost time, but something tells me that around July the rotation is gonna get crowded, and he might end up doing long relief work again.

Luis Severino has been with the Yankees since 2015. I remember watching one of his first starts in a bar in Pt. Pleasant, NJ. He gave us an incredible pair of seasons in 2017 and 2018, threw out his arm and hasn't been the same since. 2023 was just another year of Sevvy trying to do what he did before and just not having it; in 19 games he had a 6.65 ERA, a 4-8 record and 79 Ks. He can still strike people out, but he's nowhere near as dominant as he was before the injuries, and he's yet another victim of young players throwing too hard too soon.

2024 Prediction: He will get Mets fans excited for exactly 5 seconds.

Clay Holmes, of all people, has become a pretty decent closing option for us. I never thought that somebody like Holmes, a career reliever who can work his way up a depth chart and hold the ninth, would take over for the line of career closers that was the Yankee 2010s. Holmes has done well for himself, and had another strong year in 2023, with a 2.86 ERA and 24 saves in 66 games.

2024 Prediction: For the last year before free agency, Holmes will have his best relief year yet, and teams will overpay for him in 2025.

Kyle Higashioka is a perfect portrait of the Yankees of the early 2020s: he was supposed to be our backup, but he's caught 242 games for us since 2021. Higgy is a perfectly acceptable catcher with some perks and some drawbacks. He wasn't great defensively this year, but he hit .236 with 10 homers and 34 RBIs, which isn't bad for a backup pressed into the starting spot.

2024 Prediction: Wouldn't it be funny if San Diego, after giving us Soto and possibly even Hader, has a Sanchez/Higgy catching platoon? I reckon Higgy will be the backup for the Padres, no matter who they get.

Carlos Rodon was supposed to be one of the biggest exclamation points of the Yankees' 2023 season. Of course, because he threw harder and more accurately than ever in 2021 and 2022, he was injured going into this year, and only made 14 starts for us this year. In that stretch, he went 3-8 with a 6.85 ERA. In a rebuilding year for the Yankees, this was a recovery year for Rodon. The hope is that he can get back to where he was next year and we didn't just pull a Carl Pavano/James Paxton again.

2024 Prediction: The 'that's more like it' season.

With Higgy starting, Trevino hurt and Rortvedt clearly not the answer, the Yankees went with a rookie for some Aug/Sept. games, that being organizational favorite Austin Wells. Like another Austin in Yankee history, Wells might be a lot of pomp for a perfectly acceptable backstop choice. In 19 games he hit .229 with 4 homers and 13 RBIs. Not a bad start, but the hope is that he builds on it.

2024 Prediction: Doesn't have the position to start the season, but definitely earns it as the season wraps up.

And then there's this guy. The Martian. The guy that every Yankee fan has been waiting for since the story broke on how insane this guy is. Jasson Dominguez made waves in Spring Training, then in Scranton, and by August he was called up to start in the Bronx. When this happened I was floored--we were already out of contention pretty much, and they weren't even gonna save Jasson for next year? Alright then. The second Dominguez took the plate, I understood. In 8 games, Dominguez hit 4 home runs, and 7 RBIs. The 20-year-old looked like a hitting machine from the very beginning, and we all got so excited. And then, of course, Dominguez gets injured and might miss the majority of 2024. Which is so indicative of this season. We get 8 games of the future and then he gets yanked away.

2024 Prediction: Will make some late appearances, and will get right back to what he was doing this year. The Soto-Judge-Dominguez OF isn't far away, guys.

And that was 2023. A wild, unpredictable year with a baseball story that thrilled me, and a lot of great players to keep me excited. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

To all my readers, I wish you a happy and healthy 2024. I'm gonna, as usual, take a lot of January off. I'll be back when there's something to write about. You'll definitely see me back here around early February, there's a big milestone to celebrate.