Yankees baseball is back. Real, meaningful baseball. For the first time since lying down to a fatigued Blue Jays bullpen for nine innings to save their season 168 days ago, the Yankees will play their first game of 2026 on Wednesday.
I’m cautiously optimistic about the 2026 Yankees. It’s hard to be anything more than that when you return the same roster that was humiliated in the ALDS and the same manager who has overseen enormous failures and disappointments.
With the Yankees opening the season on Wednesday night in San Francisco, let’s get ready for the season with questions and comments from readers.
Is Grichuk and his right-handed bat a lock to be the fourth outfielder over Dominguez? – Rich
Rich asked this question last week before the roster had been determined. But as we all know now, Randal Grichuk is a Yankee and Dominguez is a RailRider.
I’m fine with Grichuk being a Yankee because it means he can’t play against the Yankees. Grichuk has an .825 OPS against the Yankees in his career. It’s why he has been a staple on my All-Animosity Team in recent years. Even last year when he had a down year and was playing for the Diamondbacks in the NL West, he still managed to win a game against the Yankees with a big, late-game double at Yankee Stadium in the first week of April. Grichuk owes Yankees fans a lot of big hits for all of the big hits he recorded against them in his career.
The Dominguez decision is depressing. I didn’t want Trent Grisham back and the Yankees either offered him the qualifying offer because they thought he wouldn’t accept it or because they were that worried Cody Bellinger would leave as a free agent. Grisham accepted it and Bellinger re-signed and Dominguez is the odd man out.
There’s a better chance Hal Steinbrenner goes against the idea of a salary cap when the current CBA expires than there is that Grisham hits 34 home runs again this season. Grisham had never hit more than 17 home runs in a season before last season and now the Yankees are clogging up a developmental lane for Dominguez (or Spencer Jones) with a player with a .720 career OPS. The Yankees have screwed up the development of their former top prospect in Dominguez as he is the latest Yankees prospect to be too good to trade, but not good enough to play for them.
When the Yankees want to give a top prospect a real chance they will stop at nothing to do so like they have with Anthony Volpe. If Volpe had Dominguez’s slash line last year of .257/.331/.388 there would already be a spot roped off for Volpe’s number 11 in Monument Park. I fully expect the Yankees to trade Dominguez and for him to realize his potential elsewhere.
How long will the leash be on Trent Grisham? – Mark
Look at how the Yankees have treated other high-priced veterans deserving of losing playing time to know how long Grisham’s leash will be. Grisham is making a lot of money in 2026 and will be given an unbelievably long leash. No matter how bad things get, Cashman and Boone will tell us he’s close and that the player who hit 34 home runs last season is in there, even if Grisham’s next-best full season is half of that total. Grisham could have a .600 OPS come the first week of May and he will still be leading off against righties. It will take a lot for him to become what he should be in a fourth outfielder.
I noticed in the international tournament that just went on that and some of the bigger games and crucial situations that Judge didn’t rise to the occasion? Am I being over critical? – Paul
You’re only being overly critical in that the World Baseball Classic is a meaningless tournament in which players play for countries they have the loosest of ties to and pitchers like Ryan Yarbrough are on Team USA. If the tournament mattered or meant something, Team USA would field an unbeatable team.
As for Judge, Americans who aren’t Yankees fans got to see what Judge does in the biggest of games, even if this time in came in March instead of October. I was at the Stadium in October when he hit the mammoth, three-run, game-tying home run in Game 3 of the ALDS, and while it was a great moment, it happened in Game 3 of the ALDS — 10 wins away from a championship. It was Judge’s at-bat in Game 1 of the ALDS that completely changed the series and his Game 3 home run ended up prolonging the season by a day before the offense was embarrassed by a fatigued Blue Jays bullpen game. Judge is a .294/.413/.615 hitter in the regular season and a .236/.346/.476 hitter in the postseason. The best postseason players have an equal or better OPS in the playoffs compared to the regular season and Judge’s postseason OPS is 200 points under his regular-season OPS.
It’s right in front of us. We turned the page on 2025. Hopefully we win the East and trounce the Dodgers in the World Series. – Dave
Sadly, we didn’t turn the page on 2025. There is nothing different about the end of the 2025 season and the start of the 2026 season. A few months without baseball didn’t make this roster better at baseball. The start of 2026 is just a continuation of the end of 2025. The Yankees made that so when they decided to bring back the same not-good-enough roster and then had the balls to tell everyone it’s not the same roster. Though that part shouldn’t come as a surprise since the Yankees have been spewing “championship-caliber” bullshit for years, believe internally that they won the 2017 World Series, continue to operate with the same manager and general manager and have an owner who said this winter that the franchise with the highest valuation in the sport (and possibly all sports if put up for sale) doesn’t turn a profit.
When do we replace 27 time world champion on the backstop with insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? – WasWatching
If this change was going to happen, doing it after the 2021 season would have made the most sense.
Is there enough depth with both pitching and hitting given the age of the roster and injury history? – Michael
The depth of the team is Judge. If Judge goes down, the season goes down. It seems impossible that a baseball team and a $325 million roster could be so reliant on one single player, but the Yankees are. Not only is the roster built in a way that the entire season hinges on Judge’s health, but it also hinges on him playing at an MVP level. Judge can’t just be a superstar. He has to be an all-time great for the Yankees to get to where they want to go.
The Yankees do have pitching depth, but no team seems to have pitching depth for long. Carlos Rodon and then Gerrit Cole are expected back and while that sounds awesome, they both need to stay healthy and have no setbacks and then the starters that are available as of now need to stay healthy as well. The good news is Marcus Stroman and Carlos Carrasco aren’t making up 40 percent of the Opening Day rotation.
Luis Gil is currently the fifth starter and because the Yankees won’t need a fifth starter until mid-April, he won’t start the season in the majors. That’s problematic because Gil won the 2024 Rookie of the Year and started the only game the Yankees won in the 2024 World Series and then they made him untouchable last season. He followed up being untouchable by missing nearly the entire regular season and then pooped his pants on the mound at Rogers Centre in the ALDS. Now he’s behind Will Warren and Ryan Weathers in the starting pitching pecking order.
Same team, a year older, less wins. Predict 86 wins. – Tyler
In full season since 1995 the Yankees have failed to win at least 86 games only four times. Those four times are …
2013 when Lyle Overbay (142 games), Vernon Wells (130), Chris Stewart (109), Eduardo Nunez (90), Jayson Nix (87) and Travis Hafter (82) played in the most games after Robinson Cano, 39-year-old Ichiro Suzuki and Brett Gardner …
2014 when Brian Cashman built an infield of 40-year-old Derek Jeter, .711 OPS Mark Teixeira, 36-year-old Brian Roberts and Yangervis Solarte …
2016 when not a single one of the nine players with the most games played at their position finished the season as a league-average hitter and the team sold at the deadline …
and 2023, when the Yankees posted their lowest full-season win total in 31 years and then brought back the manager who led the team to that three-decade-low win total.
(Joe Girardi deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for posting winning seasons with the 2013, 2014 and 2016 rosters).
A lot would have to go wrong for the Yankees to not win more than 86 games in 2026. Last season, they mailed in one-third of the season (like they always do under Boone) and won 94 games. I still think this team wins in the mid-90s. But if they don’t a lot of people should lose their jobs (many of whom should have lost them years ago).
Are we ready to put ourselves through this again? – Greg
Yes, we are. Beginning on Wednesday, there will be real Yankees baseball to write and talk about for at least the next six months. But do we know how this season likely ends because we have seen this same season many times now? Highly likely.
Last modified: Mar 24, 2026
