Have the Yankees Refueled Enough this Off-Season?
The New York Yankees started the off-season losing out of star free agent Juan Soto who decided to leave the team to head across town to play for the New York Mets.
Many fans thought that the Yankees might just go quietly into the night of the off-season not making any big splashes, but the Yankees seemed to have had a strong plan B.
Will what the team has done be enough to get them back to the World Series?
The Yankees are still a bat away in the estimate of most fans, but they have surely countered and used the Soto money in a good way.
The team replaced Soto and Rizzo in the lineup with Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger.
Bellinger will certainly be an upgrade defensively in the outfield, and he has shown over his career to be a feared hitter at the plate.
Bellinger, still only 29, will look to return to his MVP form in his first season with the Bombers. If he can do that, the Yankees will be just fine.
Goldschmidt on the other hand is an aging first baseman like Rizzo was but showed he has much more left than Rizzo in the tank towards the end of last year. Goldschmidt will look to build on a very solid second half, and who knows, maybe playing on a competitive team will milk the last ounce once of elite baseball he has left in him.
Everyone thought that the Yankees were going to add another infielder, a third baseman, but that has yet to happen. With Bregman still on the market it might make sense for the Yankees to make him a huge one-to-two-year offer if his market doesn’t heat up for him.
There is a growing feeling that the Yankees don’t want to lock themselves into a long-term third baseman. The Bombers are said to have an interest in Japanese phenom Muneteka Murakami which might be why the team went for the one-year deal with Goldschmidt.
Where the team made a big splash with huge upgrades in the pitching department. Adding an ace like Max Fried, and arguably the best closer in the game in Devin Williams also known as the Air Bender, the Yankees are gearing up for another postseason run in 2025.
The Yankees can certainly dominate with the rotation that they have right now, and a bullpen that may once again be scary and elite.
Expect the Yankees to once again be back in the postseason, as this team will be so much better fundamentally and pitching-wise than the team that just lost the World Series in 5 games.