Grading the Yankees' 2026 MLB Trade Deadline
· Yahoo Sports
The Yankees added a big-time basher at this year’s MLB Trade Deadline, plus a platoon-side righty swinger who should help against left-handed pitching until their injured sluggers return. Two needs met – nice job, Brian Cashman and lieutenants.
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But the Yanks’ deadline feels incomplete because the club did not address other glaring needs, particularly behind the plate and in the bullpen. There were a couple of big-name blockbusters that didn’t involve the Yankees, too, which is weird because those kinds of deals were once their annual domain.
So while we love the addition of slugger Luis García Jr., like well enough the trade for Heliot Ramos and understand the addition-by-subtraction of sending Camilo Doval away, we have mixed feelings overall. Too many flaws left unaddressed.
Here are our grades for the deals the Yankees made at the trade deadline:
Acquired 1B Luis García Jr. from the Washington Nationals for four pitchers (Yovanny Cruz, Jake Bird, Jack Cebert and Ben Grable)
Aaron Judge has not played since May 31, and the Yankees are 26th in runs scored, last in on-base percentage and 25th in slugging since then. Yikes. With Judge down and Cody Bellinger out for several weeks, too, the Yankee attack needed help. Desperately.
García, who is just 26 and comes with one more year of control beyond ‘26, is enjoying a breakout season. He entered Monday leading the National League in slugging (.560) and has already established career-bests with 23 home runs and 76 RBI. He ranks ninth in the NL in extra-base hits with 48 – the same number as some guy named Shohei Ohtani.
“He can hit, and he’s coming into the power this year for sure,” said a scout from another MLB organization who was granted anonymity to talk about García.
“He will wear out the right-field bleachers,” the scout added. “He’s got a really good feel for the barrel and he’ll use the whole field, too. He’ll create opportunities and balls will end up in the seats.”
Aaron Boone noted that García has been a “wrecking ball” in the NL this year and says he’ll add instant presence to the Yankee lineup. Monday night, Boone slotted García third in the order, tucked behind Ben Rice, the Yanks’ best hitter.
García, who was born in New York, doesn’t walk much, so he doesn’t have the patience profile that other Yankees do. Still, they’ll benefit from his thump. Swing-happy or not, he’s batting .283 and has been a very effective hitter.
It’s not an ideal trade – García is a left-handed hitter and it would’ve been better for the Yanks had their big acquisition on offense been a righty. He’s not positionally perfect, either – the Yankees now have three first basemen on their roster – García, Rice and Paul Goldschmidt.
García has played second base in the past, but “his tools fit best at first,” the scout noted.
Still, they needed some thunder before Judge, Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton return from injury. They’re weeks away, though. The rough roster edges can sort themselves out whenever they get back.
In the meantime, García can mash. Maybe one or two of the pitchers morph into something good for Washington, but it’s worth it to fill this Yankee need.
GRADE: A
IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect /Acquired OF Heliot Ramos from the San Francisco Giants for LHP Henry Lalane and INF Kaeden Kent.
With the abovementioned players out, especially Judge and Stanton, the Yankees lacked weapons against lefty pitching. Ramos is batting .292 against lefties this year with a .343 on-base percentage and .492 slugging in 65 at-bats. Overall, he has a .728 OPS. He figures to give Boone platoon options.
Two years ago, Ramos, a former first-round pick, was an All-Star for the Giants when he hit 22 homers and notched a .792 OPS.
Ramos is a handy pickup, though he cost the Yanks their No. 5 prospect (Lalane) and their 13th-ranked youngster (Kent). Lalane is a highly-regarded 6-7 lefty who had a 2.77 ERA across two levels of A-ball this season. Kent, the son of Hall-of-Famer Jeff Kent, is, perhaps not surprisingly, a bat-first second baseman who was hitting .302 at High-A.
GRADE: B-minus
Acquired C Omar Alfonzo and OF Luis Cruz from the Pittsburgh Pirates for RHP Camilo Doval
Doval, a former closer for the Giants, was acquired at this time last year with great fanfare as the Yanks rebuilt the bullpen by targeting relievers with control. Doval has high-octane stuff and nice peripherals, but he never thrived, pitching to a 4.63 ERA in 66 games for the Yankees.
Alfonzo, a 22-year-old minor-league catcher, has a .743 OPS this year, which he’s spent mostly in Double-A. Cruz, 18, was hitting .300 in the Dominican Summer League.
Doval was supposed to be David Bednar’s primary setup man, but his strikeouts backslid and he always walked too much. A change of scenery was inevitable and necessary for both Doval and the Yankees, regardless of the return. It’s fine.
GRADE: C-plus
IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect /OVERALL
Again: love the García acquisition. But the Yankees should’ve pressed deeper into the trade market, even if it got pricey. The American League is, overall, pretty soft this season and an easy path to the World Series should’ve injected more urgency into the Yankee deadline.
They really needed to add to their catching department – a right-handed hitting catcher with power would’ve been ideal, especially since Yankee backstops are 26th in homers, 28th in average and 29th in OPS this season. Bleah.
Austin Wells is a quality defender and deft handler of pitchers. But he’s batting .161 with a .537 OPS. Wells swatted 21 homers last year and was supposed to be a contributor at the bottom of the lineup.
Cashman told reporters he had multiple conversations with the Orioles about Adley Rutschman, the three-time All-Star, but couldn’t agree on price. Then Baltimore traded him to the Red Sox – gulp! – instead. The Rays, the team the Yankees are chasing in the AL East, also acquired a catcher, getting Liam Hicks from the Marlins.
Non-moves there by the Yankees may prove costly in the division race. Or even October.
Maybe Wells gets his offense together. He’s been better lately, as Cashman noted. Wells also has the lowest catcher’s ERA in MLB this season among backstops with at least 50 games caught. It’s 2.84. Connor Wong of the Red Sox is second at 3.21.
Even though they have the second-best bullpen ERA in baseball (3.01, just 0.06 behind Boston), they could’ve and maybe should’ve added relievers. The bridge to David Bednar often feels rickety.
In fairness, they’ve been good at finding relievers in recent years. Maybe their rotation surplus, such as Ryan Weathers, helps keep the bullpen humming.
Finally, the Yanks saw Tarik Skubal get traded to the Dodgers. That could be a pinstriped problem come October. Cashman said the Tigers set an enormous price for the prized lefty and he also indicated that Detroit wanted one player in particular. Seems pretty certain that was the Yanks’ best prospect, George Lombard Jr., who might be in the Majors soon. Maybe including Lombard wouldn’t have even gotten the deal done.
Whatever the case, the Yanks left too much undone. Maybe it’s unreasonable to ask them to splurge prospect capital on Skubal, a luxury of sorts for a team with an already-terrific rotation. But the Yanks needed other fixes and didn’t get them. That hurts their overall mark at this deadline.
OVERALL GRADE: C-plus