TAMPA — Meet the 2026 Yankees, same as the 2025 Yankees.
OK, so that may be a slight oversimplification, but not by much, as the Yankees are set to open spring training with a roster mostly identical to the one at the end of 2025, when they were boat-raced by the Blue Jays in the ALDS — 24 of the 26 players on the roster for that series are back in the organization.
Their decision to essentially run it back has not sat well with the fan base, and will loom throughout the year until something changes, but their brain trust insists it was the right path to take because of how strongly they felt about their roster by the end of 2025 and believing that it can bear better fruits over the course of a full season.
“I disagree it’s the same team running it back,” said Brian Cashman, entering his 29th camp as general manager and the final year of his current contract. “There’s going to be some differences and the competition’s going to be different, too. In some cases, some teams got better. In other cases, some teams you could argue maybe got a little worse. Our division’s the best in baseball.
“But long story short, one series [the ALDS], make-or-break, is not going to define what we think our capabilities are. We all understand in postseason baseball, you got to bring your best baseball every series and if you don’t, you’re going home. It doesn’t mean that we weren’t capable of great things. We just didn’t get the job done in that time frame against the Toronto Blue Jays.”
Of course, the Yankees are still eight long months away from actually getting a chance to flip the script in the postseason, as they try to end a World Series championship drought that is entering its 17th year.
But their work to get there begins now, with pitchers and catchers reporting Wednesday and position players set to follow Sunday.
The reality is that two of the biggest culprits in the ALDS were Max Fried and Carlos Rodón, who combined to give up 13 runs in 5 ¹/₃ innings, but are not going anywhere as important staples of the rotation.
The offense that led the majors in runs during the regular season also came up short when it mattered most, but the Yankees are bringing that unit back in full as well.
The biggest potential difference this season is that the Yankees expect to have Gerrit Cole back at some point in the first half (they hope by June) after he missed all of last season with Tommy John surgery.
What version of the former AL Cy Young winner they are getting remains to be seen, but even a slightly diminished one would bolster a potential powerhouse rotation along with Fried, Rodón (who hopes to return from his own elbow surgery by early May) and a full season of 2025 rookie phenom Cam Schlittler plus a mix of Luis Gil, Will Warren, Ryan Weathers and eventually Clarke Schmidt.
But Fried, Schlittler, Warren and Rodón are all coming off career-high workloads, so the Yankees may handle their buildups carefully this spring in an attempt to keep them healthy.
Then there is the lineup, where the returns of Cody Bellinger — which loomed over the whole offseason before he signed a five-year, $162.5 million contract late last month to remain in pinstripes — and Trent Grisham on the qualifying offer ensured it would look the same.
They also brought back Amed Rosario and Paul Goldschmidt as right-handed bench bats — Rosario offering defensive versatility and Goldschmidt providing insurance behind Ben Rice.
But questions still remain, including whether they are too left-handed, whether Grisham can repeat his breakout season, what Anthony Volpe will look like when he returns from shoulder surgery around May and whether he will simply reclaim his starting shortstop role or have to fight José Caballero for it.
“I feel like our roster flexibility’s better, night in and night out, going in,” manager Aaron Boone said.
The biggest changes involve the bullpen, where the Yankees let Devin Williams and Luke Weaver walk in free agency but have not yet filled their spots with established options.
They took their big reliever swings last summer at the deadline when they acquired David Bednar, Camilo Doval and Jake Bird with mixed results, but now will have them for a full season.
The wild card is whether the Yankees will have any of their young pitching prospects — a la the hard-throwing Carlos Lagrange — emerge as bullpen options as early as this spring.
Otherwise, there will be plenty of familiarity this spring around the confines of George M. Steinbrenner Field — both in the personnel and the yearning for a different October ending.
“It’s just going to be a little bit of a different mix, a little different feel,” Cashman said. “Everything’s different. It’s a different year, and we’re looking for a different result, meaning a better result.”
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