The Yankees’ Pitching Staff Is a Puzzle That Needs Solving

Few teams in baseball are built for success quite like the New York Yankees. Any baseball fan will be able to tell you that this has been the case for a long, long time, and it will continue to be that way for many years to come.

The 2025 version of the Bronx Bombers is no different. They’re absolutely stacked on offense with past (and future) AL MVP Aaron Judge leading the way alongside promising young studs like Jazz Chisholm Jr., Austin Wells, Ben Rice, and Jasson Dominguez.

This year’s Yankees have been hit hard on the injury front, especially to their starting rotation. Nothing puts a well-built team to the test quite like a pile of injuries, and the Yankees have found that out in a big way. We’ve only just entered the month of July and the club is in the middle of a slump and keeps losing pitchers to injury.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t only been the starting rotation. The bullpen has also been ravaged by injuries. As of right now, a total of eight pitchers are on the shelf. Each and every one of them was supposed to fill an important role on this year’s team’s deep postseason run.

Instead, this team even making the playoffs seems to be a question mark. There’s a lot the Yankees need to get squared away on this pitching staff if they’re going to continue to be viewed as legit threats for a deep October run.

Let’s break down how we got here, and what the Yankees can do to right this ship.

All stats updated through Thursday, July 17

Injured Yankees Pitchers Aplenty

As of right now, the Yankees have eight pitchers on the injured list. Four of them are starters and four of them are relievers, with three of them residing on the 60-day IL.

As you can see, there are some pretty significant names on this list. The club lost Cole before the season even started, but their staff has done an admirable job staying afloat in his absence. Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, Will Warren, and a Schmidt/Yarbrough tandem came together to adequately replace Cole’s production in the rotation.

Schmidt was only just starting to get hot before he went down with an injury that’s going to keep him out for the next year and a half. Pre-injury, he had put up scoreless outings in three of his final five starts. He struck out seven or more batters in three of his final six starts, too.

Yarbrough is a quirky jack-of-all-trades swingman who can fill multiple roles on a pitching staff. The Yankees swiped him this past offseason after the division rival Blue Jays made the poor decision to cut him in spring training. Since then, he emerged as a crucial piece of the Yankees’ staff. While he wasn’t quite as dominant as Schmidt, Yarbrough was a helpful asset in the rotation. Fortunately, he won’t be gone for very long.

Cruz is one of the best strikeout artists out of any team’s bullpen in baseball; De Los Santos had a 1.80 ERA through 14 appearances and 20 innings before going down; Leiter was second on the team in relief outings and innings before he got hurt, too.

An Internal “Trade Deadline Acquisition” Is on the Mend

Luis Gil, last year’s AL Rookie of the Year winner, is nearing his return. The right-hander has yet to throw a pitch on a big-league mound this season, but his rehab assignment is currently underway and he started things off on a solid foot there.

In a recent rehab outing, Gil went 3.1 innings with six strikeouts, a walk, two hits, and one run. He was kept on a 50-pitch limit, but his fastball topped out at 97 mph and he appears to be nearing a return at a crucial time for the Yankees.

There hasn’t been a firm timeline placed on Gil’s path back to the big leagues, but it sounds like an early August return is on the table. This would come right after the trade deadline passes, so Gil’s addition to the team will be similar to that of a trade acquisition.

Last year, Gil went 15-7 with a 3.50 ERA and 4.14 FIP, striking out 171 batters (10.1 K/9) and surrendering only 6.2 H/9 across 151.2 innings of work. Yes, he led the majors in walks, but this did not hold him back in bringing home some hardware as the league’s best rookie.

With the way the Yankees’ pitching staff has been ravaged as of late, getting Gil back into the swing of things is going to be massive. The best part? He’s not going to cost anything at the deadline.

Additional Internal Pieces

To help fill some innings in their big-league rotation, the Yankees have already turned to right-hander Cam Schlittler, who just recently made his MLB debut. The 24-year-old is Just Baseball’s No. 3 Yankees prospect and punched out seven Seattle Mariners in his first career start. Along the way, he allowed three runs on just four hits across 5.1 innings of work.

Prior to his promotion, Schlittler posted a 2.38 ERA across nine minor league starts (and one relief appearance), striking out 10.9 batters per nine while bringing his walk rate down from where it had previously sat throughout his minor league career. He represents the best depth piece the Yankees have.

Unfortunately, there’s slim pickings behind Schlittler on the club’s depth chart, especially at starting pitcher.

Right-hander Allan Winans has utterly dominated Triple-A hitters this year, but so far has been unable to carry that momentum into the big leagues. Winans, a 29-year-old journeyman is 9-0 with a sparkling 1.19 ERA in Triple-A this season, but he’s surrendered seven runs (six earned) on eight hits in The Show.

Otherwise, our No. 7 Yankees prospect, Chase Hampton, is on the injured list after undergoing Tommy John in February, which leaves 38-year-old Carlos Carrasco as the top depth option at the moment.

There’s also very little relief-pitching depth in the high-minors. Clayton Beeter, 26, has a 1.02 ERA through 16 Triple-A appearances, but he’s walked over 7 batters per nine innings. He’s up in the big-league ‘pen right now but he’s got a 14.73 ERA through a pair of appearances.

Other than Beeter, 26-year-old Kervin Castro has a 1.88 ERA through 16 appearances. He’s punched out 11.6 batters per nine and has surrendered just one home run this season. He could be an option, but it’s hard to pretend that the amount of depth on-hand is enough to get excited about.

Where Can the Yankees Look For External Help?

There are a ton of pitchers that should be available at this year’s trade deadline. The Yankees’ pitching staff as a whole is 14th in ERA (4.13) and 22nd in FIP (4.37) dating back to June 1, so the need for an upgrade (or two…or three…) is apparent. Apparently losing multiple top pitchers in your rotation and bullpen at the same time is a recipe for regression.

We’ve already established that there’s not a whole lot in the way of internal upgrades, so that leaves the trade and even free agent markets.

While we have a piece coming consisting of a lengthy list of trade targets for the Yankees, here are three starters (and a reliever) that would fit perfectly on this team’s pitching staff:

Sandy Alcantara

After missing last year thanks to Tommy John surgery, Alcantara has had some trouble bouncing back. The right-hander leads the majors with 73 earned runs allowed and currently sports a 7.22 ERA and 4.59 FIP across 18 starts.

Yes, that looks a whole lot different than the numbers he put up in 2022 when he took home the NL Cy Young Award. However, there have been some signs of hope in his recent starts.

Alcantara, 29, hasn’t gone less than five innings in a start since the end of May. He’s allowed five or more runs in each of his last three outings, but prior to that he had put together a nice four-start streak of three runs or less allowed. Over the course of this year, he’s shown brief glimpses of hope, and basically his entire month of June was a significant step in the right direction.

The one-time rotation anchor down in Miami is certainly experiencing a weird year, but he’s almost guaranteed to be moved at the deadline. With the Marlins still working their way through a rebuild, they’d be smart to flip him before his value dips any further.

The Yankees are one of the better teams in the league to grab pitchers and get every ounce of value out of them that they can. There’s no reason Alcantara can’t be another one of their success stories.

Zac Gallen

Gallen is another tough case, as he’s a star pitcher who would be the staff ace of half of the teams in the league, but he’s struggling. The right-hander has made an MLB-leading 20 starts this season, but he’s sporting a 5.40 ERA and 4.80 FIP through 115 innings of work. He’s allowing more hits and more home runs, walking more batters, and striking out less than he has in years past.

However, Gallen is also showing some glimpses of promise. The 29-year-old struggled in his last time out against the Angels, but he went six innings of shutout ball with nine strikeouts against the Padres the time before. The start prior to that? He went seven innings, allowed one run, walked zero and struck out 10 Giants.

Gallen has earned Cy Young votes three times in the past five years and is one of the premier starting-pitch talents in the league. Unlike Alcantara, he’s on an expiring contract, so the Yankees can easily move on in a few months if any investment they made in him goes south.

David Robertson

How about an old friend?!

Robertson, 40, was the Texas Rangers’ most oft-used reliever last year, posting a 3.00 ERA and 2.65 FIP through 68 games and 72 innings. The right-hander has quietly continued to be a dominant force even as he’s gotten close to, and eventually passed, the age of 40.

To this point, Robertson has not signed with a team yet this season. However, now that contenders are starting to have needs in their bullpens, he’s garnering interest. According to The Athletic’s Will Sammon, the Yankees are one of the teams that has “recently looked into” Robertson. He’s going to have some throwing sessions in the coming weeks, and the expectation is that multiple teams will be in attendance.

Of course, Robertson and the Yankees have a relationship that goes all the way back to 2006, when the club drafted him in the 17th round of that year’s MLB Draft. He made his MLB debut in 2008 and was a key piece of the Yankees’ bullpen through 2014. He came back to New York at the 2017 trade deadline and remained there through the next season.

All told, Robertson has 861 career games under his belt at the big-league level. 501 of them have come in a Yankees uniform. If he can prove that he’s still got what it takes to pitch at a high level for a team eyeing a playoff spot, the Yankees should be all over their old pal.

Jeffrey Springs

The Yankees already have a pair of left-handers in their rotation already, but when a hurler like Springs is dangled on the trade market, you pick up the phone.

In what is his first and likely only season on the A’s, Springs has been money. Through 18 starts and a pair of “relief” outings as a follower, the 32-year-old has a 3.93 ERA. So many of his full-season stats have been skewed by a few rough starts, but he hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in a start since May 30.

Since then, the southpaw has a 2.94 ERA and hasn’t gone less than five innings in a single start.

The nice thing about Springs is that he’s controllable, but shouldn’t require the Yankees to gut the farm for him in a deal. He’s closing in on his 33rd birthday and has a bit of a checkered past when it comes to injuries, so the A’s aren’t going to be able to land a king’s ransom for him.

However, Springs has done nothing but boost his value as of late, so he could be one of those pitchers that’s moved for a “wait, they got WHAT for him?!” type of package like we see at least once per deadline. He’s under control through the end of next season and also has a $15 million team option for the 2027 campaign. Should the Yankees land him, that control will be helpful as they have Yarbrough slated to hit the open market after this year and Stroman could also end up doing the same.