Remembering the random Yankees of the 2024 season
Yesterday at 08:00 AM
Every team has some players who completely forget about, and the 2024 Yankees were no different.
Even teams good enough to make the World Series — like, say, the 2024 Yankees —still have their share of players who when you look back on a roster for a given season make you say "who?" Whether they be injury replacements or just players a team tries to get something out of, no team can make it through the season with the same 26 players on their active roster, especially in this day and age. That leads to some turnover and some players who end up having very brief tenures with a team, even on good ones.
With that in mind and the season in the books, let's take a look back at some of the random players and the unexpected tenures from the 2024 Yankees' roster.
As you might expect, the back ends of a team's bullpen often have some decently high rates of turnover, and the 2024 Yankees did as well. Who could possibly forget that one inning from Anthony Misiewicz or the third of a frame from Clayton Andrews? A far as players that actually appeared in more than one game, there was Phil Bickford (8.64 ERA in 8.1 innings), Josh Maciejewski (2.57 ERA in 7.0 innings), and of course Enyel De Los Santos.
That last name is arguably more than just a random Yankee because of the circumstances of his tenure. De Los Santos was acquired via a trade with the Padres at the deadline, as the Yankees looked to shore up a struggling bullpen. However, he arguably only made things worse, putting up a 14.21 ERA in his 6.1 innings across five games, getting DFAed less than three weeks after being acquired. To make matters worse, the team that decided to take him off the Yankees' hands via waivers was the truly horrific Chicago White Sox.
Also, shout-out to Dennis Santana, who somehow appeared in 23 games in this season, but is someone I haven't thought about in months. This is perhaps a byproduct of his June DFA.
One other pitcher who may be forgotten from this season is Cody Poteet. Appearing in five games, Poteet made four starts for the Yankees as their spot starter in the first half of the season. The last of those starts came on June 7th, where he went inning for inning with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Dodgers. He shut out LA for 4.2 innings, allowing just two hits to the Dodgers' dangerous lineup, even fanning the surging Mookie Betts.
As far as position players go, it's hard to be more forgettable than Kevin Smith's run with the 2024 Yankees (his name certainly doesn't help in this regard). An infielder by trade, Smith appeared in two games with the Yankees, but did not make a plate appearance. Even more remarkable was that his two games both came as a pinch-runner in the final inning of an eventual loss. One of the times, it was for DH Giancarlo Stanton, meaning that in a way, Kevin Smith DHed for the Yankees without ever batting on the season.
Triple-A catcher Carlos Narváez had a brief run in the bigs while Jose Trevino was down with an injury, while Taylor Trammell somehow managed to finish his Yankees run with a 1.000 batting average and a negative Baseball Reference WAR — though he did get a World Series ring thanks to his early-season cameo with the Dodgers.
The two most notable random Yankee 2024 position players are probably Jahmai Jones and J.D Davis. Jones maybe shouldn't qualify as he appeared in 33 games, but you may have forgotten that he led off once. Meanwhile, Davis' tenure was fairly infamous when it was happening. They brought him in from the A's at a time where they were were looking for any sort of production from first base. He didn't provide it. Despite starting at the cleanup spot four different times and DHing on a couple occasions, he put up a 13 OPS+ in 22 plate appearances as a Yankee, all while vanishing for a couple weeks with a stomach flu.
We hope you enjoyed this walk down memory lane for stuff you may have entirely forgotten about, even though they just happened a few months ago.
