Projections are a useful tool for baseball analysis, and with a Yankees team that’ll have a lot of new faces, they serve as a way to help understand the expected value each player provides. Overall, projections have a solidly optimistic view about the 2025 Yankees, with their win total being higher than any other team in the American League, but one could say they’re favorites by default. If they want to be a dominant team, they will have to outperform what’s expected of them, but there are players capable of doing just that on this roster.
Using Steamer projections as our baseline, we’re going through the three Yankees who I believe will overperform their expected outcome and cement themselves as key players on this team.
Cody Bellinger Becomes A Fan-Favorite in Debut Season With Yankees
Steamer Projections: 2.7 fWAR | 112 wRC+ | 23 HR | .757 OPS
A player who I once held little-to-no interest in acquiring, Cody Bellinger’s data in Chicago last season would indicate he was a victim of incredibly harsh park conditions. Due to unfavorable wind and weather, Wrigley Field became a nightmare for offense, especially for left-handed batters, as it was tied with T-Mobile Park for the worst Park Factor in baseball (90) for hitters on that side of the plate. With a .399 SLG% and .700 OPS at home, Bellinger’s numbers were bogged down by a ballpark that held in a lot of his pulled flyballs, a problem he won’t have at Yankee Stadium.
One of the biggest concerns when a left-handed hitter comes over to Yankee Stadium is that their batting average could plummet, as there isn’t as much outfield grass to dink and dunk with, Wrigley Field was just as bad, with a 94 Park Factor for hitting singles and a 92 Park Factor for picking up hits in general. His batting average should get better at Yankee Stadium, as the slew of outs that would become home runs if he played his home games in the Bronx wouldn’t just help his SLG%.
Going from a hellhole for left-handed hitters to a ballpark that loves lefties like Cody Bellinger who pull the ball in the air a ton could make a monumental difference, one that I believe will result in a wRC+ in the 120-125 range.
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Cody Bellinger’s ability to consistently pull the ball in the air to right field should result in plenty of home runs, as he hit 10 batted balls that weren’t home runs but would have been at Yankee Stadium. Seven of those came while playing at home in Wrigley Field, an indication that the wind and ballpark was a limiting factor in his ability to generate power. The most telling piece of data that indicates Bellinger is due for a bounceback in the power department comes with his HR/FB%, as he posted the lowest mark of his career in that metric (9.0%).
Visiting left-handed batters had a 13.1% HR/FB% at Yankee Stadium while Cody Bellinger had an 8.2% HR/FB% at home, there’s going to be some sort of improvement there in 2025. While Steamer projects a .254/.318/.439 slash line for a .757 OPS, I believe we’ll see a .270/.330/.450 slash line, as Bellinger will go from one of the worst ballparks for his swing to one of the best. There aren’t any changes that he has to make at the plate, he just has to keep doing what he did last season and stay healthy enough to play 130-140 games, and I think we could see ~25 home runs in year one with the Yankees.
Clarke Schmidt Puts It All Together For a Full Season
Steamer Projections: 1.8 fWAR | 3.92 ERA | 4.10 FIP | 15.6% K-BB%
Similar to Cody Bellinger, projections believe that Clarke Schmidt will be a productive contributor on the Yankees’ roster, but they’re not all that convinced he’s more than just a backend starter. I’m here to make the case that he’ll firmly entrench himself as a top-50 starter in the sport, as he’s fleshed out his repertoire thanks to his cutter and has become the kind of pitcher who can both limit damage contact and miss bats at a high clip. By adding a little more ride to his cutter and throwing it 1.1 MPH harder, it became a high-whiff pitch that he could use against righties or lefties.
His sweeper and curveball are big swing-and-miss pitches as well, and the only pitch he has that isn’t capable of missing tons of bats is his sinker, which generated more whiffs than the average sinker did last season. Just like Bellinger, I’m not sure the fix here is necessarily making sweeping changes to his arsenal as much as it is just sticking to what worked last season and staying healthy. Clarke Schmidt was in a unique tier of pitchers last year when it came to damage suppression and whiff rate, and he could blossom into a frontline starter for the Yankees.
With a 2.85 ERA and 3.58 FIP last season across 16 starts, Clarke Schmidt proved to be effective, but there are some hurdles he’ll have to overcome if he wants to truly become a frontline starter. First, he’ll have to pitch deeper into games, which is something he’s struggled with at times but showed more and more flashes of being able to work past during the season. His stuff improved upon returning to the mound in September, an indication that he might have been fatigued from a larger workload in 2023 than usual, as his sinker made some notable improvements.
He pitched to a so-so 3.65 ERA as a result of walking 9.4% of batters faced, as his command never looked right after the shoulder injury, but his sinker averaged 12 inches of run with some more depth, and if he can maintain those adjustments, he might have four pitches post a positive Run Value this season. Pitch diversity and arsenal depth are the keys to pitching deep into games, and if Clarke Schmidt comes into Spring Training healthy and fresh, we could see a version of him that has all of the Stuff+ gains from last season with the maturity and poise of a veteran.
Is Austin Wells Ready To Take An All-Star Leap?
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Steamer Projections: 3.5 fWAR | 107 wRC+ | 16 HR | .726 OPS
When he first came up, Austin Wells had some mechanical deficiencies in his swing that caused him to slump in Triple-A and become more of a pedestrian hitter. The Yankees still believed in the bat, and for good reason, as Wells displayed early on that he could do tons of damage on contact and become a productive MLB hitter. He also showed off tons of defensive upside, and it translated into a strong rookie year as he posted a 105 wRC+ and 3.4 fWAR in 115 games. He barreled the ball a good bit, worked walks, and hit the ball in the air, but he somehow posted just a .261 BABIP.
Yankee Stadium does suppress BABIP for left-handed hitters, so I’m not surprised that Austin Wells struggled to hit for average, but his league-average .167 ISO will almost certainly improve in 2025. Steamer projects a decrease in walk rate for the young catcher from 11.4% to 9.9%, a regression I disagree with, but the improvements to his SLG% and ISO are ones I do agree with. One of the big changes that Wells underwent was adjusting his load at the plate, planting his leg sooner which allowed him to get into launch position a lot sooner instead of being behind at the point of contact.
Austin Wells went from hitting everything to center field and left field to aiming for the right field wall, and that changed the outlook of his season. He hit 11 home runs in 267 PAs with the new toe tap, and I think these changes are going to lead to a very productive sophomore season. Just as I believe that Cody Bellinger’s biggest step forward will come in the power department, the same rings true for Wells, who could hit 20 home runs in 2025 and slug between .430-.440, which with last year’s OBP (.322) would result in an OPS between .752 and .762.
Seeing that he’s a catcher, an OPS in that range would probably give Austin Wells a serious bid at making the All-Star team, as he’s one of the best defensive catchers in baseball. He was fourth in Framing Runs (10.5) and Fielding Run Value (13), and I expect him to remain one of the best in 2025. Steamer does Wells’ justice here, having him take just a small step back on the defensive side of the ball, which is why he’s projected for a pretty good 3.5 fWAR. This is the year for Austin Wells to become a ~115 wRC+ hitter with an elite glove, cementing himself as the Yankees’ long-term catcher.