The Yankees have an interesting offense as they get ready to fly to New York, as on one hand there are a lot of question marks, but on the other, there is a lot of youth and upside. What gets overlooked about this lineup is just how young it is, with just two of their projected nine starting position players under the age of 30 on Opening Day. There are some returning faces such as Aaron Judge, Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, and Oswaldo Cabrera, but there are also some new homegrown players joining the fray with Ben Rice and Jasson Dominguez.
Offseason additions of Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger aim to stabilize the offense, while a full season of Jazz Chisholm could provide some energy and speed to a team that has been woefully bad on the bases in recent years. It will be a different look from last year’s team, but there’s an internal sense of confidence that this team can score runs and contend for the AL Pennant despite the flurry of injuries.
Is it misguided? Are they spot-on? Let’s delve into the Yankees’ projected Opening Day offense, why it could work, and what fans should be worried about.
Why the Yankees Believe They’ll Put Up Runs In 2025
Aaron Judge being the best offensive anchor in the entire sport is a huge reason why the Yankees aren’t having a meltdown about their offense behind closed doors. He’s simply one of the best hitters in the world, and even bottom-of-the-barrel supporting casts can find themselves treading water when the two-time AL MVP is in the lineup. The 2023 Yankees were 59-51 when you remove the games played while he was active versus 23-29 when he was not, which is the difference between being in the thick of a playoff spot and being a 90-loss team.
Furthermore, the 2023 Yankees had an 85 wRC+ outside of Judge that season, only three teams in the franchise’s history have dipped below an 85 wRC+ as a team and they all came before the United States involved itself in World War I. The Yankees also got a 174 wRC+ from Aaron Judge that season, a mark that fits right in line with what most projection models believe he’ll do following a truly historic 2024 campaign. The injuries he’s sustained in recent years have all been freak accidents, which everyone in the Yankees’ sphere will pray doesn’t happen again.
His supporting cast is very new from last year’s two-man wrecking crew with himself and Juan Soto, as the new hitter protecting him in the three-hole will be fellow 2017 Rookie of the Year winner Cody Bellinger.
Cody Bellinger has been the best hitter on the team in the Grapefruit League, which means absolutely nothing to me, but the underlying data is very good. Bellinger’s exit velocities are up through the roof, and while we haven’t reached the point where they regress from somewhere between where he’s at right now (93.6 MPH) and where he was last season (87.8 MPH), he’s played in enough games where I think something’s up. You can sniff out a blip in the radar by going for a hitter’s 90th Percentile EV, but Bellinger’s is up from 101.2 MPH to 104.3 MPH.
He’s still pulling the ball in the air frequently, and that kind of profile should result in a fun season at Yankee Stadium if the former NL MVP can keep this up. The Yankees have been raving about Cody Bellinger since acquiring him, and while I believed then (and still do now to an extent) that it was coping for losing Juan Soto, now I’m starting to wonder if there were real changes they believed he was capable of. We did know that the power would play at Yankee Stadium, but if he’s hitting the ball harder, watch out for what he can do.
The best part is, he’s not the only guy hitting the ball noticeably harder in Spring Training.
Ben Rice and Austin Wells have crushed the ball in Spring Training, as both are averaging 74.7 MPH of bat speed which would be 3.3 MPH harder than Rice’s 2024 bat speed and 2.3 MPH harder than Wells’ 2024 bat speed. For context, that’s the same number that Fernando Tatis Jr. and Bobby Witt Jr. averaged last season, as both of them were in the 88th Percentile in that metric. These two guys are destroying baseballs left and right, with Ben Rice specifically shattering his previous career-bests in exit velocity.
Entering Spring Training, Ben Rice had zero batted balls record at the professional level with an exit velocity at or above 111 MPH. During this run in the Grapefruit League, he has six of them, including three over 113 MPH. The Yankees are beyond encouraged with what they’ve seen from him, but I fear it’s left the tweaks made by Austin Wells go under the radar. The AL Rookie of the Year finalist is leaning into his power approach, pulling the ball aggressively with high exit velocities and earning the lead-off job against RHP as a result.
Austin Wells had a sub-.200 average against four-seamers at or above 95 MPH last season, but this Spring he’s hitting .500 against them. He also failed to hit a single HR against a LHP last season, and yet he just launched a HR against Tyler Holton, an elite lefty reliever, bringing his OPS in those matchups in the Grapefruit League to 1.714 (small sample size).
READ MORE: Yankees considering a very interesting strategy at leadoff
The other player I’m encouraged by? Anthony Volpe. You might be stunned to see him here given that he has a 73 wRC+ in 17 Spring Training games, but the bat speed is up 2 MPH and he’s pulling a lot of his contact while hitting more line drives and flyballs. The plate discipline was gross at the start of Spring Training, but he’s started chasing less and making more contact as games have gone on. I’m not saying we’re seeing 25+ home runs and an .800 OPS, but could we get an improved version of his 2023 self offensively?
An Anthony Volpe who hits ~20 home runs with a 90-95 wRC+ (most pessimistic projections have him here) would be a 4 WAR player. That would give him 9.2 fWAR and 10.7 bWAR through his first three seasons, which is a pretty awesome outcome for a player drafted 30th overall. J.C. Escarra is another glove-first guy who has displayed more power than I assumed he’d have, and while his role on this team isn’t expected to be grand, he is an important depth piece who will play in important matchups against tough RHPs.
Jasson Dominguez and Paul Goldschmidt turned on the jets after slow starts to join the hit parade, and bench pieces such as Pablo Reyes, Trent Grisham, and J.C. Escarra have made convincing cases to get some MLB playing time in favorable matchups, providing some defensive versatility and specific platoon matchups they can excel in. Here’s the thing; most of these guys are expected to be good if you look at projection models. They shouldn’t run an 85 wRC+ around Aaron Judge the way they did in 2023…at least against right-handed pitching.
You’re Not Alright, You’re All Left!
Did you laugh at the subheading? I know I’m a comic. My mom thinks I’m very funny.
The Yankees have a lot of hitters who are not expected to be good against left-handed pitching based on their career trends, and that includes Ben Rice, Jazz Chisholm, Austin Wells, Oswaldo Cabrera, and Jasson Dominguez. All of them are guys you wouldn’t bet on having a wRC+ at or above 100 in those matchups based on either a track record in the big leagues or Minor League data where they’ve performed poorly in those matchups. Someone who should have been a safe bet in these matchups was Anthony Volpe, but his dive in 2024 against Southpaws has me understandably unsure.
Cody Bellinger had strong numbers against LHP in each of the past two seasons so I’ll give him a pass, and Aaron Judge and Paul Goldschmidt have made left-handed pitchers soil their pants for years now. Trent Grisham (107) and Pablo Reyes (105) have solid career wRC+ marks against left-handed pitching, but Grisham was brutal against them last season and Reyes is kind of hard to write on a lineup card for a serious contender regularly. The Yankees could probably bet on the track record for Grisham and write off his 2024 season as an oddity, but they desperately need a right-handed bat.
If they get one for the infield, platooning with Oswaldo Cabrera, I would feel very good about the state of the offense since the switch-hitting utility man had a 107 wRC+ against RHP last season. Someone like Dylan Moore would be cool because the Mariners might make him more of a bench piece and his ability to hit the ball hard while running the bases well would make him super valuable for the Yankees, but why would Seattle make their offense worse?
READ MORE: Yankees send 5 players to the minors in big roster trimming
The Orioles could have a real infield logjam with Ramon Urias, as the Orioles will have to clear out two roster spots relatively soon when Jorge Mateo and Gunnar Henderson return to the team. If Heston Kjerstad goes back to Triple-A after a solid first stint in the big leagues, they’ll be further wasting a 26-year-old who has been a highly regarded prospect in their organization, so that could be unwise. I would flag this under “Why would the Orioles help the Yankees?”, especially given that what the Orioles would want (starters) is what the Bronx Bombers lack.
Maybe the Mets eat almost every dollar from the Starling Marte contract and the Yankees send them someone like Yoendrys Gomez in return, as the veteran outfielder has strong numbers against LHP in his career. I’m sort of in on this idea, but I also seriously wonder what Marte’s role on the roster would be when Giancarlo Stanton returns. He does have a .352 OBP and 124 wRC+ against LHP since 2021 and I guess you can’t really be worried about the return of a player who hasn’t even begun baseball activities yet.
I don’t think David Stearns is hesitant to trade Marte for a reliever of value just because it involves the Yankees, and if this went down, Aaron Boone might align his offense like this against LHP:
- Starling Marte DH
- Aaron Judge RF
- Cody Bellinger CF
- Paul Goldschmidt 1B
- Austin Wells C
- Anthony Volpe SS
- Jasson Dominguez LF
- Jazz Chisholm 2B
- Pablo Reyes 3B
Pretty underwhelming I can’t lie, you’re really banking on some miracles here, but at this point, you’d take it over what you have in-house. The benefit to landing a right-handed infielder would be that if Giancarlo Stanton returns, he could slide right into that DH spot and you can just have him in addition to your left-handed lineup instead of in replacement of one of your more reliable bats in those matchups.
I’m pessimistic about their ability to hit left-handed pitching, and that is where I expect the Yankees to get burnt throughout the first half of the 2025 season. They put themselves in a bad spot with the infield market by not landing one of those right-handed infielders even if they were fringe big-leaguers, and now Pablo Reyes remains your best option for those matchups at third base. Oswald Peraza has been really bad and I’ve completely lost faith in him as a Major League bat, so there’s that as well.
Final Thoughts and Predictions For the Yankees’ Offense in 2025
I expect the Yankees to be…good offensively! Between my questions and concerns, the majority of pitchers are right-handed and that will ultimately play to their benefit. I don’t expect them to match or surpass last year’s wRC+ of 117 as a team, but I do think they’re capable of a 110 as a group with much better baserunning. A lot of people overlook that last year’s Yankees were horrendous on the basepaths and lost most of their most error-prone baserunners.
We could see their highest stolen base total in a decade, a positive BsR, and an OPS that places them firmly in the top 10 in 2025, which would make them the kind of offense that can drive pitchers up a wall. It also helps that the Yankees didn’t lean into the small ball aspect of the game the way I think some fans feared they would after Brian Cashman’s tirade during the 2023 offseason, all of their hitters for the most part are making active attempts to do damage on contact.
This team should still hit a lot of home runs while making a good amount of contact, which is a combination that can really work in the postseason. When guys who do damage on contact make enough contact, you end up putting up runs on the board, and that speed element they have could be a breath of fresh air. The addition of a right-handed infielder would have me more sold on this group than I am right now and calm a lot of nerves, and I think there’s more pressure on this group because of the pitching injuries.
No longer can we hope for a decent run-scoring unit that the pitching staff carries, these guys have to be stout defensively, hit home runs, and be the driving force for their ability to win games. There’s a lot of pressure on player development here, and that’s both scary and exciting. What if Austin Wells can actually hit LHP? Does Ben Rice have that massive breakout season that he’s been pegged for by anyone who has a basic understanding of Baseball Savant? Can Cody Bellinger just use his aura to make pitchers throw a bunch of meatballs?
All of those questions can’t be properly answered in an article; they’re going to be answered over the next seven months, and for better or worse we’ll know a lot about the health of the Yankees’ organization in 2025.