The Yankees will win 102 games, Aaron Judge will win his second MVP award, and Juan Soto will have his best season since 2020 and decide to stick around long-term. Those are some of the hopes for this 2024 season, and the Yankees surely have plans to get themselves back to the top of American League.
But you can’t always get exactly what you want. As players like Kodai Senga and Kyle Bradish can attest, sometimes, the best-laid plans get scuttled on contact. The injuries that felled those pitchers, among others, brought me the annual reminder of the following cycle:
- We have things figured out, armed with cold, logical projections
- Stuff happens and all 30 teams are forced to adjust
Soto certainly adds a massive presence to the Yankees’ lineup next to Judge, and a healthy Carlos Rodón has all the tools to be an elite sidekick to Gerrit Cole. The team’s lineup looks notably more balanced this year, with the additions of Alex Verdugo and Trent Grisham helping provide more length on the card. However, so much of a team’s success is tied to their depth and it’s no different with the Yanks, who saw just last year how much can go not according to plan.
With all this in mind, I decided to look through the Yankees’ current roster with a simple mission: to find and pinpoint players that might not be poised for big roles on Opening Day, but will likely be required to step up at some point or another in 2024 once the Yankees’ Plan A is no longer viable and they’re forced to change things up.
SP – Will Warren
In their pursuit of a better lineup, the Yankees gave up a healthy chunk of organizational pitching depth, sending four pitchers in Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Randy Vásquez, and Jhony Brito to San Diego. King was a major piece of last year’s staff, and Vásquez and Brito both acquitted themselves well in depth roles. Thorpe wasn’t necessarily close to the majors with only a bit of experience in AA, but his loss is not one to take lightly either.
Projecting injuries is always a tough business, but the simple fact is that multiple starters in the current rotation (Rodón and Cortes) missed significant time last year. While they look ready in spring to have bounce back years, it’s a guarantee that someone on the Yankee staff will need to miss time and necessitate the use of upper-level pitching depth.
The only other potential starter on the active roster if someone goes down is Luke Weaver. If the Yankees are to have hopes of anyone joining the rotation mid-season and providing a bit of a legitimate boost, those hopes lie primarily with Will Warren.
Between Double-A and Triple-A, Warren had 149 strikeouts in 129 innings last year, finishing the season at the highest minor league level. The 24-year-old earned himself a ranking on the top-100 prospect list for FanGraphs and is by a wide margin the team’s best bet at a positive contributor currently in the minors when the inevitable issues start to creep in.
2B – Jorbit Vivas
Part of the return in the Trey Sweeney trade with the Dodgers, Vivas isn’t a super exciting prospect, but his .827 OPS in Double-A last season indicated a bit of promise.
Between the declining skills of DJ LeMahieu, and the recent injury woes with Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo, there’s potential for a cascading ripple effect on the team’s defensive alignment. That means there could be plenty of ways for opportunities to prop up during the year.
Vivas still needs to show a bit more at the Triple-A level, but he’s one in a list of names that might get the call for a short stint in 2024. As a lefty-swinger who has lots of time at both second and third base in the minors, he could be a versatile piece that slots in nicely should a hole arise at the big league level. Vivas may not be top of mind, but Jake Bauers, Willie Calhoun, and Billy McKinney weren’t top of mind a year ago either. The Yankees are in a better position now and hopefully won’t need to dig as deep for depth as they did last year in unearthing the likes of Bauers or Calhoun, but they’ll likely still need someone to fill in at times, and Vivas could be up to the task.
UTIL – Oswaldo Cabrera and Oswald Peraza
As things currently stand, Cabrera and Peraza will be flexible bench pieces on the Yankees’ active roster. Both players are capable of playing a multitude of positions, with Peraza covering across the infield, and Cabrera adding some corner outfield flexibility into the mix. But the pair combined for over negative -2.0 bWAR in 2023 after a promising cup of tea in 2022 and the expectations are much lower this time around.
However, anybody who gets hurt outside a catcher will probably open up a window for whichever of the two is playing better. Even if say Rizzo goes down, you can move LeMahieu to first and find playing time for one of them.
Cabrera and Peraza may not be great hitters, but they’re capable of plenty more than the numbers we saw in 2023. Peraza projects for a 96 wRC+ per FanGraphs, and Cabrera a 91 figure; neither is great, but if either can beat those projections, they’d profile as an excellent utility player. It’s a pretty safe bet that they’ll get the opportunity to show that this year.
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