Despite losing their ace in spring training and then suffering a rough patch with the rest of the team over the summer, the Yankees’ starting rotation was one of the stronger units in baseball in 2025.
The group finished in the top-eight league wide in innings pitched (873), ERA (3.61), FIP (3.92), and fWAR (13.5). The staff received major contributions from veterans (Max Fried and Carlos Rodón) and rookies (Cam Schlittler and Will Warren) alike, but with several members expected to miss the start of the season as they rehab from surgery, the rotation becomes the most pressing area of concern over the winter.
We’ll start with the good. The staff was led by the pair of workhorse southpaws in Fried and Rodón. Fried’s first season in pinstripes was a success, the 31-year-old setting career-bests in starts (32), innings pitched (195.1), wins (19), and strikeouts (189), en route to earning his third All-Star nod and fourth Gold Glove Award. Rodón completed by far his best campaign with the team in his third year in the Bronx, earning his first All-Star nod with the team (third overall), and setting career-highs in starts (33) and innings pitched (195.1) while posting his best ERA (3.09) and FIP (3.78) as a Yankee and allowing the lowest opponent batting average (.187) of any qualified AL starter. Schlittler emerged from relative obscurity on the farm to look like the second coming of Gerrit Cole, posting a 2.96 ERA and 3.74 FIP, culminating with an eight-inning, 12-strikeout scoreless gem to advance the Yankees beyond the Red Sox out of the AL Wild Card Series. Warren deputized ably for the injured Cole and led all rookie pitchers with 33 starts, 162.1 innings pitched, and 171 strikeouts, his 4.44 ERA and 4.07 FIP providing a floor of legitimate MLB fifth starter.
Cole’s return will certainly be a massive boon, but it won’t be immediate. The Yankees have set a return target of May as they and Cole are understandably taking the cautious route with his rehabilitation from the first major surgery of his career. What’s more, five pitchers who made multiple starts in 2025 — Rodón, Clarke Schmidt, Ryan Yarbrough, Marcus Stroman, and Carlos Carrasco — will not be on the Opening Day roster, Rodón as he recovers from a procedure to remove bone spurs from his pitching elbow and Schmidt as he rehabs from Tommy John surgery, while the other three are either free agents or were released (thankfully in some cases). The math is not one-to-one given Rodón should return shortly after the season begins, but that is roughly 70 starts and 409 innings pitched that the Yankees will have to replace.
As it stands, the Yankees project to enter the season with a starting rotation of Fried, Schlittler, Warren, and Luis Gil, the former trio all coming off career-high workloads in terms of appearances and innings pitched. Their first instinct might be to reinforce from within, calling upon a pair of prospects who distinguished themselves in the minors in 2025. Carlos Lagrange and Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz rocketed up the organizational ranking chart to finish the season as the team’s second- and third-ranked prospects, respectively, according to MLB Pipeline. Lagrange always tantalized with his triple-digit heater but questions remained over his ability to throw strikes — he tightened up his command in 2025 and made 23 starts between High- and Double-A, posting a 3.53 ERA, 3.14 FIP, and 168 strikeouts in 120 innings. Rodriguez-Cruz came over in the trade that sent Carlos Narváez to the Red Sox, and he dominated at each stop from High-A to Double-A to Triple-A, winning Baseball America’s Yankees Minor League Player of the Year after striking out the second-most batters (176) of any minor league pitcher and posting a 2.58 ERA and 2.47 FIP in 26 starts and 150 innings.
However, both youngsters began last season at High-A and would almost certainly benefit from more seasoning on the farm before being pressed into action in the major league rotation, particularly for a team that intends on contending. There are several quality options on the free agent market should the Yankees choose to reinforce externally. Heading this class of free agents are groundball machine Framber Valdez, strikeout artist Dylan Cease, and soft-contact extraordinaire Ranger Suárez. However, all three will be 30 or older on Opening Day and should command nine-figure, multi-year deals. The Yankees already have over $90 million a year in average annual value committed to a trio of starters older than 31 in Cole, Fried, and Rodón for each of the next three seasons, and might balk at the prospect of adding a fourth nine-figure starting pitcher contract to the books.
Fortunately, the free agent market is not the only potential source of external reinforcement. There is an intriguing crop of starting pitchers expected to be available via trade in varying degrees, and this is absolutely a market the front office should scour — even if nonpareil ace Tarik Skubal stays put in Detroit, as expected. There’s the pair of young starters with ace potential in Hunter Greene and MacKenzie Gore whom the Reds and Nationals, respectively, may listen to offers on, though the asking price is expected to be astronomical. A half-step down from them are the likes of Freddy Peralta and Joe Ryan, both of whom would be a number two if not the Opening Day starter on most MLB staffs. There are steady veterans including Pablo López and Sonny Gray who both have a decent amount left in the tank. The real wild card is Sandy Alcantara, who seemed un-tradable for long stretches after his Tommy John surgery but started to recover his dominant form in the second half of 2025.
The question is whether the Yankees would be willing to part with the trade chips necessary to pry any of these players from their current employers. As my colleague Nick explored in his piece to open this offseason priority series, the Yankees’ two most talked about trade candidates might have outsized roles to play with the major league team in 2026, Jasson Domínguez and Spencer Jones internal candidates to help fill the gaping void in the outfield.
Given the optimism surrounding the potential mid-to-late spring returns of Cole and Rodón, the Yankees may prefer not to make any drastic moves to address the rotation, instead preferring to tread water with their in-house options until the two veterans make their season debuts. That is a potentially perilous strategy for a team playing in an increasingly competitive division and risks creating an unnecessary early deficit in the standings. Rather than risk exposing two of their top prospects to the majors perhaps before they are ready — and to avoid relying too heavily on a significantly diminished Gil — the Yankees must prioritize adding at least another impact arm capable of not only taking the ball every fifth day but giving the team a chance to win every time he does so.
