Category: MLB

SABR: The Yankees’ Cody Bellinger was already awarded his second career Gold Glove for his excellent work in left field in 2026, but now he’s taken home an even higher honor. Since 2011, Rawlings has also given out one Platinum Glove per league each year to honor the best of the best. Until last night, 2022 catcher Jose Trevino was the only Yankees player to take home the award. Now, they have two, as Bellinger was named the AL’s best defender, joining the truly outstanding Pete Crow-Armstrong, the NL winner and likely MVP. Congrats to Cody!

MLB.com | Bryan Hoch: Elite pitching, lackluster bats; such was the story of the 2026 Yankees. If the 2027 squad is to progress further into the postseason, offensive upgrades are a must. Here, Hoch examines a number of positions where the Bombers should seek more thump. To my eyes, the position that is most in need is also the spot with the most intriguing option – third base, where Ryan McMahon stunk it up this past year, and where NPB slugger Teruaki Sato is seeking to make a splash in free agency. It’s been a hot minute since the Yankees acquired NPB talent, so I’m not sure how seriously the Yankees will participate in the Sato sweepstakes (especially if they’re unsure about his glovework at the hot corner), but a blogger can hope.

FanGraphs | Eric Longenhagen: If you want more info on Teruaki Sato, Eric Longenhagen has you covered. The FanGraphs lead prospect analyst covered Sato as part of his overview on notable players from the NPB and KBO, had this to say about the 2026 Central League Triple Crown winner – “Though Sato isn’t a five-tool superstar – he’s going to strike out a lot and play below-average defense – he should hit for enough power to be a productive, heart-of-the-order power hitter with 25-30 home runs.”

Another potential upgrade for the Yankees, albeit at second base, is Shugo Maki of the Yokohama BayStars, who expressed his desire to play stateside last offseason, though he hasn’t been officially posted yet. Says Longenhagen: “Maki projects as an everyday second baseman in the Brandon Lowe mold, and you could make a pretty good argument that his hit-tool stability (Maki has a single-digit miss rate against fastballs compared to Sato’s whopping 32 percent) makes him a superior “prospect” when compared to Sato.”

NJ.com | Bob Klapisch: With yet another postseason run cut short, Yankees fans are understandably frustrated with Brian Cashman. However, former Athletics GM Billy Beane of “Moneyball” fame considers Cashman to be “one of the best that’s ever done this job. Period.” While your mileage may vary on Cashman’s maneuvering in recent years, one must acknowledge that his overall body of work remains very impressive. If you’re up in arms about Hal Steinbrenner handing Cashman another extension, maybe Beane’s words can offer you some reassurance. Or not.

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Lastly, in case you missed Madison’s column, the Yankees are down a key member of the 2026 coaching staff. Tanner Swanson has gained a reputation since being hired away from the Twins in 2020 as one of the best catching instructors in baseball. As noted above Trevino became a Platinum Glove winner under his watch, and most impressively, he’s helped transform Austin Wells from a guy who might not stick behind the plate into a legitimately great defensive catcher who was a Gold Glove finalist himself in 2026. But his contract was up, and he’ll be heading to the Pacific Northwest because new Mariners skipper Jason Kanzler offered the Seattle native a job as his bench coach. Best of luck to him — and to the Yankees on finding his replacement.

Awards season continued on Friday, as MLB announced the winners of the Platinum Glove Award in the NL and AL, the Team Gold Glove, and the Heart & Hustle Award.

The AL Platinum Glove honor went to Yankees’ outfielder Cody Bellinger, while the NL Platinum Glove honor went to Cubs’ outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong. Before I say anything else, I’ll just editorialize with this: the fans having a vote in this award is very dumb.

Crow-Armstrong was certainly one of the top two of three defenders in the NL, so I don’t think him winning the award is egregious. But Bellinger was nowhere near as deserving as some of the other names in the AL.

Bellinger finished fifth in defensive runs saved (20), tied for 16th in dWAR (1.7), 42nd in fielding run value (8), and 49th in range value (5). A few of the more deserving names includes the Red Sox’s Wilyer Abreu and Ceddanne Rafaela, as well as the Rays’ Taylor Walls, not to mention the Tigers’ Dillon Dingler, the Mariners’ Cole Young, or the Royals’ Bobby Witt Jr., who didn’t even win the Gold Glove at his position (he had to go head-to-head with Walls, who was arguably the best defensive player in all of baseball, leading the majors with 3.0 dWAR).

Crow-Armstrong finished near the top of many defensive categories, ranking ninth in defensive runs saved (16), seventh in dWAR (2.1), first in fielding run value (26), and first in range value (23).

The Team Gold Glove Awards went to the AL’s Toronto Blue Jays and the NL’s Chicago Cubs. Toronto, interestingly, had zero individual Gold Glove winners. However, they had finalists at five positions, including José Soriano (pitcher), Brandon Valenzuela (catcher), Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (first base), Andrés Giménez (shortstop), and Nathan Lukes (right field). They finished at the top or near the top of several AL defensive ratings, including defensive runs saved (No. 6 overall, No. 3 in AL), defensive WAR (No. 2 overall, No. 1 in AL), and fielding run value (No. 2 overall, No. 1 in AL).

The Cubs were represented in the individual vote by third baseman Alex Bregman and Crow-Armstrong. They also had finalists in Dansby Swanson (shortstop), Ian Happ (left field), and Seiya Suzuki (right field). Chicago finished with the best defesne in baseball by many marks, including defensive runs saved, defensive WAR, outs above average, fielding percentage, and fielding run value. This marks the second consecutive Team Gold Glove honor for the Cubs.

The Heart & Hustle Award went to Royals’ shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., the third straight year Witt took home the award. The award, created by the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association in 2005, is voted on by alumni and active major league players and is presented annually to an “active player who demonstrates a passion for the game of baseball and best embodies the values, spirit, and traditions of the game.”

Witt becomes the first player to win the award three times, as he was previously tied with Craig Biggio as the only players to receive the award twice.

Every team puts forward a nominee, and the Brewers were represented by Sal Frelick, his second consecutive season as Milwaukee’s nominee.

Jackson Appel
Catcher
5´11´´
200 pounds
Age: 25
2025 South Side Sox Top 100 Ranking60
2026 South Side Sox Top 100 Ranking 77
2026 High Level Winston-Salem (High-A)
Age relative to high level +2.0 years
SSS rank among all catchers in the system 9
Overall 2025 MiLB stats (ACL/High-A) 21 games ⚾️ 2 HR ⚾️ 7 RBI ⚾️ .197/.363/.311 ⚾️ 1-of-1 (100%) SB ⚾️ 13 BB ⚾️ 13 K ⚾️ 4-of-22 (18.2%) CS ⚾️ .995 FLD% ⚾️ 0.3 WAR

The Sox drafted Jackson Appel in Round 6 (No. 169) in 2024. The catcher played four years at the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the prestigious Wharton School of Business. He then took an extra year of COVID-19 eligibility and served as the starting backstop for the 2024 College World Series runner-up, the Texas A&M Aggies. You may recognize the name of one of his teammates — Braden Montgomery — also a 2024 first-rounder.

Chicago seems bound and determined to stock up on as many young catchers as they can after decades of homegrown drought at the position. Appel is impressive both at and behind the dish, and he has earned numerous accolades throughout his collegiate career, including All-Ivy League and All-SEC First Team nods. In 2024 with the Aggies, the switch-hitter demonstrated both pop and contact, slashing .331/.422/.534 with 10 home runs and 41 RBIs. The 23-year-old also recorded a 26-game on-base streak and led the team with 26 multi-hit performances.

And hey, the defense isn’t shabby, either. With a .997 fielding percentage, Appel was one of the best defensive catchers in Division I in 2024.

Appel also got to show off his stuff for a dozen games with the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers after the draft, and he didn’t disappoint. He hit .268/.400/.390, including one dinger and six RBIs. On the receiving end, he was equally impressive, earning a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage over 111 putouts.

The 2025 season was more of the same for Appel, in that he remained an extreme bat discipline player (which dovetailed with a movement by the White Sox to collect more patience at the plate/contact hitters, though that movement was fleeting) with little power. His defense remains very sound, his arm holding its own in a very challenging caught-stealing environment. Appel added a dimension not seen in his career beyond a final year of college ball: wheels; the catcher proved sly on the basepaths, swiping 11 of 13 bags.

The White Sox were modestly aggressive with Appel in 2025, possibly due to age, moving him right up to High-A Winston-Salem. He remained with the Dash all season, and his solid overall game and SEC pedigree seemed to put Double-A Birmingham within reach after he slashed .248/.387/.318 with a .705 OPS.

Instead, his second full professional season barely got off the ground.

Appel landed on the injured list on April 14, 2026, with an undisclosed injury and did not begin a rehab assignment until July 22. He appeared in just 21 games, including 19 with Winston-Salem. In 58 at-bats for the Dash, he hit .190/.329/.259 with a .588 OPS, one double, one home run and five RBIs. The familiar patience remained, with 12 walks against 12 strikeouts, but there wasn’t much opportunity to turn it into production.

Heading into 2027, the 25-year-old needs a healthy stretch behind the plate to get his development moving again. His plate discipline and previously solid defensive work still give him something to build on, but the lost time leaves him with more to prove — especially with the age clock ticking — before earning that trip to Birmingham.

Full 2027 South Side Sox Top 100 White Sox ProspectsStorystream

Welcome to our series grading every member of the San Diego Padres’ 40-man roster. The roster being evaluated is current as of Oct. 18, prior to the end of the World Series. Because of that, it will include players who will be free agents once the postseason concludes. Each player will be graded on their performance in the 2026 season, including the playoffs. That performance will be weighted based on how much time the player spent with the team (availability is the best ability). 

Mason Miller

It took quite a haul to bring Miller to San Diego. The Friars traded for the elite closer at the 2025 Deadline, shipping off No. 3 overall prospect Leo De Vries in a blockbuster deal. It’s turned out well for the Padres thus far. Miller was dominant down the stretch in 2025, acting as a setup man behind former closer Robert Suarez. In 23 1/3 innings with the Friars, Miller allowed just two runs (0.77 ERA).

Overall Grade: A

Even though it didn’t seem possible, he looked even better in 2026. Miller posted a 1.67 ERA over 70 innings of work. In that time, he struck out a ridiculous 129 batters with a 0.90 WHIP and .152 opponent batting average. Miller set a Padres’ franchise record for consecutive scoreless innings with 34 2/3 frames. It’s the eighth-longest scoreless streak by a reliever in MLB history.

Miller had just one problem, knocking his grade from an A+ to an A. He often couldn’t throw his fastball for a strike. It didn’t happen terribly often, but when it rained it poured. Miller’s tantalizing stuff was good enough to get him out of jams, but he walked 26 batters in the season. May was a particularly odd month for the elite closer, with Miller notching a 1.24 WHIP (more than 0.30 points over his season mark).

Even still, Miller was one of the best relief pitchers in baseball. The right-hander was named a finalist for the NL Reliever of the Year Award alongside Jhoan Duran and Trevor Megill. Miller is the obvious frontrunner for the award, though Duran and Megill are both phenomenal in their own right. With Jason Adam and Adrian Morejon potentially departing, Miller will be one of the Padres’ most important arms in the coming season.

Now that the Houston Astros have found the GM in Randy Flores, now they need to settle on a new manager.

While team owner Jim Crane has said that interviews began before the GM was even hired, Flores has now gotten immersed in the search. Several names familiar to Astros fans have been associated with the position, including former Astros catcher Brad Ausmus, former Cardinals 1B Albert Pujols, former Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina, and former Astros 3B Morgan Ensberg.

Astros beat writer Brian McTaggart was on MLB Network today with the latest on the Astros search, including a timeline on the hire, which he described as they want to “move fast” and on Crane’s desire to make a “big splash” hire:

"They're moving fast. I think they want to hire somebody within the next few days…"@brianmctaggart shares insight into the Astros’ managerial search, noting they might want to go into the GM Meetings (starting on Monday) with a skipper. pic.twitter.com/d5xEXKVJZj

— MLB Network (@MLBNetwork) November 6, 2026

The Mets are retaining an arm and his brain. 

Robert Stock, a veteran who served as rotation and bullpen depth last season and is among the most data-literate baseball players around, will return on a one-year major league contract, the Mets announced Friday. 

Last season, Stock required surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome in March, pitched in eight minor league games while building up in June and July and then earned a major league look as the Mets sold at the August deadline. 

Stock’s stint was a roller coaster but apparently showed the Mets enough: He pitched in relief once and started seven times, with four excellent outings in which he allowed one or zero runs.

In the other three, he was hammered for 18 earned runs in 11 innings, which were to blame for his season-ending 5.93 ERA. 

His season ended early, hitting the injured list in mid-September with finger numbness that he did not believe was serious. 

“I have proven that my name should be in consideration for being a major league pitcher,” Stock said at the time. “There are a million things I want to do better.” 

A true journeyman who originally was drafted in 2009 and is turning 37 later this month, Stock has pitched for the Long Island Ducks, in the KBO, Mexico and plenty of spots in between and has been public about using the growing technology in the game to get better.

The calendar says November 6 but it’s Christmas around here at Lookout Landing HQ.

The New York Post reports the Mariners have reportedly finally pried Tanner Swanson away from the Yankees organization to serve as Jason Kanzler’s bench coach. The 44-year-old Swanson, who has deep roots in the Northwest, has been a long-time dream coaching candidate for many of us in the LL community, but he’s been deeply enmeshed in a high-profile role in the Yankees organization since 2019 as their primary catching coordinator; he’s also served as their quality control coach and field coordinator. Finally, with the bench coach job open under new head coach Jason Kanzler, the Mariners were able to bring Swanson home.

Swanson, who was born in Cle Elum and attended high school at Cle Elum-Roslyn (and still makes his home in Roslyn), played his college baseball in the Northwest, moving from local community colleges (Green River and Everett) before transferring to Central Washington. After graduation, he coached high school baseball in Sultan and at his various alma maters (almae mater?) as well as at the University of Washington, where he zeroed in on his true love of coaching catchers, founding his own catching development business, D1 Catching. He parlayed that into his first job in pro baseball, joining the Twins as a minor league catching coordinator in 2017. Swanson’s first big-league job came in 2019, when the Yankees hired him as their quality control coordinator and big-league catching coordinator, where he remained until the Mariners came calling with the bench coach opportunity.

This hire is very exciting for lots of reasons. Under Swanson’s leadership of the Yankees catching corps, they’ve improved from middling to one of the consistently best teams in catcher framing runs. Swanson oversaw Jose Trevino during his first Gold Glove-winning season in 2022, when he led the league in the metric. Swanson has also been credited for his work with Yankees catcher Austin Wells, who many scouts expected to move off the catching position post-college. Wells has ranked in the top five for catcher framing runs for each of the past three seasons.

More globally, Swanson was an early adopter of the one-knee-down catching philosophy, at the time regarded as controversial but now standard practice. Swanson advanced the technique way back in 2017 during his first year with the Twins, while working with minor-league catcher Ben Rodriguez, whose bigger frame caused him issues when he was trying to block balls. He’s a respected voice in the industry who has spoken at conferences, appeared on podcasts, and generally acted as a thought-leader in his field for the past two decades.

Swanson’s father was Jim Swanson, a left-handed catcher with the minor-league Portland Mavericks – made famous in the documentary The Battered Bastards of Baseball – and is worth reading up on if you don’t know his story (left-handed catchers, I will forever dream of you). For those of you fans of a certain age, he also ran Swannie’s sports bar in Pioneer Square in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Catching development is Swanson’s calling card – and makes him a good fit for a team where one of the clubhouse leaders is the catcher – but ironically, he never played catcher in his career, instead playing as an infielder during his college career. But Swanson’s interests are beyond catching; he’s a student of all aspects of the game, often retweeting ideas he finds interesting about hitting or coaching in general (he’s a solid Twitter follow – @TannerSwanson. I’ve been following him for years and learned a ton). He is also passionate about sports in general – especially women’s sports, as the dad of four girls – and still deeply connected to developmental sports in the Northwest.

As far as experience, Swanson has direct experience being a bench coach – he served as Great Britain’s bench coach in the WBC this past year. (He also served as manager for one game in 2026 when both Aaron Boone and Brad Ausmus were ejected in a game against the Rays.)

As the Houston Astros look for a new manager, the idea of future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols getting the job has both fans and media abuzz.

Former Astros OF and World Series Champion Josh Reddick joined the Crush City Podcast and expressed he would like to see Albert Pujols get the job and laid out his case for why:

Josh Reddick is ready to roll out the red carpet for Albert Pujols… 👑 @JRedDubDeuce believes the future Hall of Famer would instantly command respect in Houston, saying his “baseball IQ is through the roof.” pic.twitter.com/K2EM5LgujU

— Crush City Territory (@CrushCityShow) November 6, 2026

Pujols was known as a team leader with an incredibly high Baseball IQ. He was essentially another coach on the field, and had the respect of players, coaches and front office staff alike. Pujols was also known for his intensity, and could perhaps bring some fire to a team that has at times looked like it could use more if it.

The Dodgers have a designated hitter, and he’s under contract for seven more seasons.

His name is Shohei Ohtani.

Doesn’t matter how special of a hitter the Dodgers believe Josue De Paula is. Doesn’t matter how many evaluators say that De Paula reminds them of Yordan Alvarez in the batter’s box.

De Paula will not be the Dodgers’ primary DH anytime soon.

The 21-year-old knows what he has to do.

His team knows. His agent knows. Everybody knows.

He has to improve his defense.

“We’re going to keep working at it and come back better,” said De Paula, who is widely considered a liability as a corner outfielder.

When the Dodgers were eliminated by the Brewers in the National League Championship Series, De Paula said he would return to his native New York, then spend time at a training center in Miami run by his agent, Scott Boras.

“The focus is on him adapting to an outfield position,” Boras said.

Working with De Paula will be former major league outfielder Alex Ochoa, who now runs Boras’ Miami facility. A defensive standout as a player, Ochoa was a World Series champion with the Angels in 2002. He also played in Japan.

Boras said he also expects former Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. to assist De Paula. Bradley won a Gold Glove in 2018.

De Paula isn’t being asked to transform into Willie Mays overnight. He just has to be competent enough to make the Dodgers unafraid to play him in the outfield. 

He does that and he could make Teoscar Hernández expendable. He doesn’t and he will remain an insurance policy for Ohtani at DH — or, perhaps, become a trade candidate himself.

With Ohtani on the injured list, De Paula was the DH in nine of the 10 games he started as a mid-September call-up. In the one game he started in left field, he was removed after six innings.

Nonetheless, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman argued that De Paula showed “marked improvement” as a defender over the last year.

Friedman said he believed De Paula benefited from being in a major-league environment in the month between his promotion from Double-A to the end of the Dodgers’ postseason run.

“For us, it was about the added benefit of him coming up in September, being on our playoff roster, being around,” Friedman said. “It’s one thing for us to say to the guy, ‘Hey, here’s your daily routine. Here’s what you have to do.’ We were all 21 at one point and thought we had all the answers, and it’s just hard to connect those dots in your brain.

“I think him coming up, the way our guys welcomed him in the clubhouse, him being around our players and seeing how they prepare and what they do before a game — I think really landed with him in a way that words from us or our minor league staff couldn’t have accomplished in the same way.”

De Paula worked on his defense daily with third base coach Dino Ebel. He also received pointers from manager Dave Roberts, a former major-league outfielder.

“I felt like I was in the best place to learn,” De Paula said.

General manager Brandon Gomes said he was encouraged by De Paula’s attitude.

“We’re not looking just to be like, ‘Oh, De Pau got pretty good,’” Gomes said. “Like, I think his mindset and our coaching staff and all of us is to make him as good of a defensive outfielder as he can to be a full player because that’s what we expect of all of our guys that step on the field.”

Gomes said he thought De Paula could be an above-average defender.

Shortly after he was promoted from Double-A, De Paula said he was driven by the negativity regarding his outfield play.

“I know that’s a big area of improvement for me,” he said. “I know I get a lot of hate on it. I’m that type, if I get hate on it, I’m going to focus on it more. So I’m gonna shut a lot of people up with my defense very soon.”

Becoming a solid outfielder will do more than silence criticism. It will open up a pathway into the Dodgers’ lineup.

It was exactly one week ago that I explained why the Mets might consider keeping Robert Stock around for the 2027 season:

“It takes guts to make it back to the majors after years away. It takes guts to perform under pressure with each outing potentially being the last of your career. And it takes good enough stuff and good enough command to show the glimpses of success that Stock did in August and September.

Injuries will always strike. Severe underperformance is always possible. (The current Mets brass should know those two principles better than anyone). If by May 2027, the Mets are already in emergency need of a spot starter or even a full-on rotation replacement, Stock is certainly a more attractive option than someone with zero command, zero experience, or zero ability to meet the moment.”

Well, on the seventh day, the baseball gods answered my prayers. On Friday afternoon, the Mets announced they had signed Stock to a one-year major league contract. 

Once a member of the 2021 Mets, Stock spent three years away from the majors while playing in international leagues. The 36-year-old underwent thoracic outlet surgery last March, but leveraged a summer spot start opportunity into a two-month stint with the Mets, posting a 5.93 in 30.1 innings across eight appearances. His 3.92 FIP suggests poor batted-ball results, and a couple of egregious outings overshadow the fact that he allowed one or zero runs while pitching four or more innings in four of seven starts, including one against the American League champion Rays.

The right-hander offers another veteran presence at the back of a projected pitching staff brimming with young talent. Nolan McLean, Christian Scott, and Zac Thornton all put their potential on display last season, with Jonah Tong waiting in the wings for another shot at the starting rotation. Sean Manaea will look to provide stability in the final year of his three-year contract. The Mets may also look to add outside reinforcements, even if that doesn’t mean signing two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal.

Stock also has experience out of the bullpen, including in his breakout 2018 season with the Padres under current Mets manager Andy Green. Should the Mets’ rotation slots become occupied, Stock can slide into a multi-inning relief role, providing flexibility for Green in his first full year at the helm in Queens.

It appears the Red Sox and Sonny Gray are heading their separate ways.

The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier suggested earlier this week on NESN’s “310 to Left” podcast that the franchise is unlikely to prioritize re-signing Gray despite his dominant 2026 season.

“My guess is that the interest on the part of the Red Sox in reupping with Sonny Gray is going to be muted, at least in the short term, and that they’re likelier to try to use any resources that they have elsewhere,” Speier said.

The veteran right-hander officially became a free agent last week after declining his side of a $30 million mutual option for 2027, instead collecting a $10 million buyout.

Gray, who turns 37 on Saturday, is coming off one of the best seasons of his 14-year big league career, posting a 2.72 ERA across 29 starts for Boston. 

The three-time All-Star was believed to be considering retirement before deciding to come back for the 2027 season. 

Last month, Gray told Speier he would be open to a Red Sox reunion while leaving the door open to departing this winter. 

“I still want to win a World Series, whether that is [with] Boston or with whoever wants me,” Gray said.

If that’s it for him in Beantown, Gray will be leaving on a sour note, having been pulled after 4 ⅔ innings in Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Series against the Yankees, and later expressed his displeasure with the early hook. 

“I’m the best pitcher in the American League going through the order for a third time. I think that’s a fact,” Gray said after the game. “I would’ve liked to live or die with me in that moment but that’s the competitor I am. Yeah, I think you can probably ask the guys and they felt the same way.

“I felt strong. I felt confident. I felt convicted … but what can you do, you know?”

Gray is expected to be one of the most coveted starting pitchers on the free-agent market, joining Tarik Skubal, Michael King and Freddy Peralta among the top available arms this offseason.

For the second time this week, the Yankees have lost a significant member of their coaching staff. Tanner Swanson, the organization’s director of catching since 2020, has been hired by the Seattle Mariners to join new manager Jason Kanzler as their bench coach according to the New York Post’sJoel Sherman. This comes on the heels of Triple-A manager Shelley Duncan defecting over to the Red Sox on Wednesday to join their staff, and now despite not making any firings of their own on the coaching staff the Yankees will have some holes to fill.

Swanson was revolutionary in the organization for developing the team’s ability to frame pitches. Austin Wells has become the model for his work, becoming one of the best pitch framers in the game, and his development lined up directly with Swanson’s arrival in New York. The Yankees have been providing catchers to several teams over the years though, as they traded from their surplus of catchers sending Carlos Narváez over to Boston for Elmer Rodriguez, flipping Jose Trevino to Cincinnati for Fernando Cruz, and including Kyle Higashioka in the package to San Diego that netted Juan Soto.

The loss of Swanson is a big one for the Yankees to swallow, but they’ve hopefully learned enough from his time here to continue the catching pipeline that has netted them so much value. For Swanson, the chance to coach in the major leagues is an opportunity that he couldn’t pass up on, and he’ll now get to work with a premier catcher in Cal Raleigh coming off what was a disappointing follow-up to his MVP runner-up 2025.

Good afternoon everyone, it’s time to dive back into the mailbag and answer some of your questions. Remember to send in your questions for our bi-weekly call by e-mail to pinstripealleyblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

Darth_Lazarus asks: If the CBA negotiations go really sideways is there a possibility we see replacement player games next year?

Never say never, but I doubt the owners would want to go this route even if it’s looking like the season is completely lost. Recruiting scab players at this point in the league’s history would be a black eye on ownership and would completely kill any goodwill they could have with the public as these negotiations drag on, as the product on the field will be a clearly inferior copy that wouldn’t draw much interest while also making them look desperate to recoup on the broadcast deals they’ve negotiated. Speaking of those broadcasting rights, while the league is a much more regional product than the NFL or NBA and several teams were having trouble finding an actual partner for their TV audience, it’s my hope that the prospect of future negotiations with broadcasters is one of the pressure points pushing ownership to get to the table sooner rather than later resulting in an actual season being played out in 2027 — perhaps a bit too hopeful, considering the lines in the sand that have been drawn this time around, but a girl can dream.

LocalBlueWhaleRuinsEverything asks:With the Yankees needing some offense, could they consider Arozarena or Suzuki? Theoretically, they could stick one in LF and have Cody move to CF. It’s not something I’d want them to do long term, but for one season I’d be interested. Stanton and Garcia should be gone after next season, so in the future you’d a spare DH spot to rotate them.

Theoretically they could, but that takes a lot of the value that Bellinger provides away by moving his excellent left field defense over to center field, where he has been underwhelming at best since 2021. Arozarena and Suzuki are both quality offensive options that would improve the lineup tremendously, but the defensive setback that adding either would cause problems down the line. That being said, the free agent market for true center fielders is abysmal, so if they’re looking for an upgrade they’re going to have to get creative with trades to find it.

Johnny1944 asks:It seems JD was overhyped for years by Cash. Does he have any real value?

Jasson Domínguez’s career is looking like a relatively unremarkable one, which is what tends to happen to the majority of MLB players — but most players don’t get compared to Mickey Mantle when they were 17 years old. That unfair expectation has felt like a weight on Domínguez’s shoulders the entire time that he’s been in the organization, with every glimpse of a solid run down in the minors being heralded as the turning point where he was going to spark a path straight to the majors. However, Domínguez has now had two full seasons in proximity to the majors, and while he’s still very young entering his age-24 season in 2027 it just doesn’t seem like there’s much to work with in his game.

Our own Andrés tackled the idea of whether the Yankees should move on from Domínguez the other day, and while his conclusion was that there’s no pressure to do so immediately time is running out for the former wonder prospect. He’s got one minor league option remaining meaning he’s likely to start the year in the minors, and while there’s some underlying promise in his peripherals the majority of his Savant page is disappointing. Domínguez’s defense has been atrocious to watch, and he’s alternated from being unable to hit lefties to being unable to hit righties. If there was just some consistency to his game he’d at least be able to stick around as a bench option in the majors, but as is he’s got to get consistent playing time to try and make something of himself and he isn’t going to find that in pinstripes at the moment.

OLDY MOLDY asks:How reliable are Cole, Fried, and Rodón next year considering recent arm problems in the last 3 seasons and age? Any innings projections? Does Schlittler come back to earth in 2027?

I don’t have many concerns about Max Fried at the moment — he’ll probably be good for one short-term IL stint but otherwise give the team 25-30 starts and has been lights out when he has been active. Likewise, while Gerrit Cole has missed significant time over the past couple of seasons the core issue has now been dealt with and he should be fully healthy entering 2027. It’s wild to think that we’re already seven years into the nine-year deal that Cole signed with the team, but there’s just two seasons left of his contract and if you told me back then that he’d have compiled three top five Cy Young finishes with one win up to this point, I’d be pretty content entering the final days of that deal. Carlos Rodón has salvaged his Yankees career quite well following his disastrous first year in pinstripes, but of the three his health still concerns me more going forward — not enough to panic, but enough to keep my eye on how he’s getting through each start even when he’s on. As for Cam Schlittler, the sky is the ceiling for the team’s newfound ace and while it would certainly be unrealistic to expect a 1.95 ERA as the standard going forward I think he’ll remain the team’s best pitcher next year as he comes into his own.