Three offseason moves that the Yankees need to make

Yesterday at 08:02 AM

What do the Yankees need to do to bolster their odds of a World Series return in 2025?

The very moment that Alex Verdugo swung over Walker Buehler's knuckle curve to bring the 2024 MLB campaign to a close, the Yankees' eyes turned toward 2025. They had come closer to their 28th championship than they had in any season since 2009, but once again came up short.

Even now, three weeks later, so much of the offseason lies ahead. There are tough decisions that the Yankees will have to make in anticipation of earning another shot at the coveted World Series crown. There's a long list of varying priorities for GM Brian Cashman and his front office to address before pitchers and catchers report to spring training in February. If they address the three that follow, then they will be in excellent shape.

1) Re-sign Juan Soto

There will be a temptation to say that the Yankees are better served splitting up the contract that Soto might receive into deals for a few different players. This is getting too clever by half because no one is as reliable for superstar seasons as Soto, and while some group of two or three players might get away with combining to match his value—not an easy task, given his 8.1 FanGraphs WAR in 2024—they'll be more likely to fade quickly as they age in coming years. As Joel Sherman alluded the other day, this is what happened in the 2013-14 offseason, when the Yankees let Robinson Canó walk and signed the trio of Jacoby Ellsbury, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltrán in his place.

At 26, Soto is a younger player than Canó was back then, while simultaneously maintaining a longer track record of smashing success. It's true that Soto will end up receiving a contract that sounds utterly preposterous, and even adjusting for inflation, it will be much bigger than Canó's. And yet the most straightforward move will be for the Yankees to just bring Soto back. There's no one else like him out there on the market, and the one-two punch he formed with Aaron Judge in 2024 was utterly remarkable.

Soto was every bit the dynamo that the Yankees anticipated when they rolled the dice on a blockbuster trade with the Padres last December. He belted a career-high 41 homers, batting .288/.419/.569 with a 180 wRC+, also his best in a full season. The only reason why Soto wasn't the Yankees' MVP frontrunner was because that Judge guy also had an incredible year. And unlike Judge, Soto followed up his regular season with an October worthy of his reputation, essentially clinching the pennant in ALCS Game 5 with a 10th-inning bomb in Cleveland and hitting .327/.469/.633 in 14 playoff games.

Mets owner Steve Cohen is by far the richest man in baseball. Even though the Yankees themselves are the most valuable franchise, Cohen simply has more liquid assets than the Yankees' Hal Steinbrenner. So if Cohen gets truly ridiculous with his offer to Soto, then there may be an upper limit. All the same, Steinbrenner has to be there every step of the way with the bidding and demonstrate that he will do whatever it takes to keep this star shining in the Bronx, rather than Queens (or elsewhere). The 2025 Yankees are simply not going to be as much of a title contender without Soto, no matter how they subsequently adjust their offseason strategy.

2) Find a new first baseman

When even an average fan thinks about Yankees history, it goes hand-in-hand with a storied tradition of slugging first basemen. Lou Gehrig, the "Iron Horse." Bill "Moose" Skowron. Joe Pepitone. Don Mattingly, aka "Donnie Baseball." Tino Martinez. The "Giambino," Jason Giambi. Mark Teixeira. All of those players rank among the top 30 home run hitters in the franchise record books, and a quartet (Gehrig, Mattingly, Giambi, and Teixeira) highlight in the upper 15.

This staple has been largely absent from the past decade of Yankees baseball. It all dates back to when Teixeira suffered the batting practice wrist injury in March 2013 that derailed his career. Save for a resurgent few months in 2015 that preceded another season-ending IL stint, he was never the same hitter, retiring at the end of 2016. The Yankees have had fits and starts trying to fill the power void at first; none have really lasted beyond a season. Greg Bird had young promise, but was rarely healthy. Luke Voit had surprising highs, but ultimately battled streakiness and injury issues of his own. Former Cubs icon Anthony Rizzo was supposed to fill the void, and he did the job with a 32-homer 2022. A nasty concussion in 2023 was mishandled and he became a slap-hitting shadow of his former self this past season. (His option for 2025 was unsurprisingly declined.)

All of this is to say that the Yankees rank 23rd among the 30 MLB teams from 2013 onward in terms of offensive production at first base. That's not going to cut it, especially when they were second-to-worst last year and didn't see a single homer from a first baseman after DJ LeMahieu's out-of-nowhere grand slam in Philadelphia on July 31st. There was no pop whatsoever in the 2024 home stretch from Rizzo, fellow over-the-hill vet LeMahieu, rookie Ben Rice, first-time first baseman Jon Berti, or utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera.

Although Rice offers some hope, the Yankees can't bank purely on that in 2025. Whether it's a bigger name like free agents Pete Alonso or Christian Walker, someone unheralded on the trade market, or even talking to Judge (or Soto) about at least a partial move to a less demanding defensive position, there has to be a real answer for the premium power position.

3) Add a starting pitcher

I went back and forth on whether to focus Priority No. 3 on the Yankees' starting rotation or bullpen. Honestly, the relief corps is essentially a 3B to the rotation's 3A, as New York really needs to get at least one more known commodity in there since Tommy Kahnle, Clay Holmes, and Tim Hill could all depart as free agents. There's a long way to go between now and Opening Day, but newly-minted playoff closer Luke Weaver has to get a little more help beyond Ian Hamilton, Mark Leiter Jr., and Jake Cousins.

In the scenario where I can only make a significant addition to one of the two though, I have to lean toward the rotation. Part of my rationale is that I have more confidence in pitching coach Matt Blake and the Yankees' capacity to churn out relievers of note. Yes, sometimes their flyers turn into duds like Dennis Santana or Enyel De Los Santos, but other arms like Weaver, Hamilton, and Hill flourished from anonymity. So again, they should bring in at least one accomplished MLB reliever, but the slightly higher priority is a starter.

Simply put, the Yankees have to get another starting pitcher because they have minimal depth at the moment. Right now, the rotation would feature Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Clarke Schmidt, Luis Gil, and Nestor Cortes, with Marcus Stroman the next man up. It's easy to point to that and say "Well, there are six starters right there and you'll only need five on Opening Day."

The problem with that thinking is that in modern baseball, more than or five or six planned starters are required to survive a campaign. The Dodgers are a somewhat-extreme example because they lost a ton of arms this past season, but discounting openers, they used 11 different starters en route to winning it all in 2024. I'm not asking the Yankees to go that deep, but there needs to be more insurance. All of their starters contain red flags.

• Cole had a serious elbow injury that kept him out of commission in 2024 until late June, and he didn't truly look like himself on the regular until August.
• Rodón runs hot-and-cold and missed half of 2023 with a forearm strain and back problems.
• Schmidt was on the IL from late May until September of this past season with a lat strain.
• Gil had Tommy John surgery in 2022 and pitched all of four minor-league frames in '23 before zooming up to almost 165 innings in '24 combined with the postseason.
• An All-Star in 2022, Cortes missed a lot of time in '23 and rebounded with a decent '24 until landing on the IL at the end of the year with his own elbow injury.
• One can be reasonably confident in Stroman's health, but there's also a reason why the Yankees did not use him for a single inning in October: he's just not that good.

Could you run through almost every rotation in the majors and point out similar flaws in most of their starters? Absolutely. But the issue for the Yankees is that they have understandably higher standards, and at the moment, the only starters behind these guys are Will Warren, who looked awful in his big-league cameos this year, and Cody Poteet, who is better but also 30 with a minimal track record. Although you might have dream on prospects like Clayton Beeter or Yoendrys Gómez, they likely project as future relievers.

At least two of the current starting five will get hurt in 2025. I don't think that's an unfair assumption. The Yankees have to honestly be prepared to dislodge one of them—at least at the outset of spring training—to make room for a new starter. (And some could even find themselves on the trade market if a superior option emerges.) If New York somehow makes it through camp with the new guy and everyone else healthy, then that's a problem that should be welcomed. But only so many of these starters should have locks on 2025 roles.

The market does feature prominent names like Corbin Burnes and Roki Sasaki, but even if the Yankees can't land one of them, there are more than a few modest starters available. Others are certainly possibilities via trade, too. We're not looking for the next Cole, CC Sabathia, or David Cone here; just a good, solid starter.

How would you construct your Yankees offseason priority list? Let us know below.