How the Yankees Can WIN The 2026 World Series

How the Yankees Can WIN The 2026 World Series

Hello everyone. I’m Ryan from Fireside Yankees and I’ve just dropped my offseason plan for the New York Yankees on empireports media.com. And today we’re going to break down that offseason plan, talk about it, talk about why I think it would work for the Yankees and get your guys’ feedback in the comment section below. Make sure you guys again comment. Let me know what you think about this offseason plan. If you like this kind of content, make sure you guys like, comment, subscribe, and turn on that notification bell. We have analysis videos just like this one. We’ve also got podcasts throughout the week. Chris and I are going to get back on that horse and give you guys some more podcasts alongside Sam as well, who will feature in some episodes. And you might see Alex a little bit in some of these podcasts. Uh he hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s just doing stuff with Fireside Giants and is a little bit wrapped up with Jackson Dart and Cam Scataboo. Of course, you guys should go subscribe to Fireside Giants as well. But with all that promotional stuff out of the way, let’s get talking about this offseason plan. So, first and foremost, I want to set some rules that I kind of gave myself for this plan. Number one, the payroll uh at the end cannot exceed $316 million. I feel like the Yankees increasing payroll from the 2025 season isn’t a given. And so, putting the Yankees in a situation where I either a match or b decrease payroll is a little bit underwhelming obviously for the fan base, but it’s a little bit accurate or somewhat accurate for what I think will happen. Also, I couldn’t make more than six MLB acquisitions or transactions. That includes free agent deals and trades. And that also includes shipping out players. So, I couldn’t just say, “I’m shipping out this guy, that guy, this guy, that guy, and then make three or four moves on top of it.” Minor league uh deals do not count towards this, but I didn’t make any because I think that’s a little more subjective. And for no trades, I put players with the Yankees that I could not trade. that included Ben Rice, Cam Schlitler, and any player making $20 million or more on average according to the luxury tax. So, Max Reed, I know technically speaking, he’s not making $20 million in terms of his contract structure, but I used average annual salary in that regard. Now, let’s talk about the offseason plan. We’re going to start this offseason plan by signing Kyle Tucker to an 11-year, $450 million contract. This keeps him under $40 million towards a luxury tax. Although he’s probably here for a year or two longer than most Yankee fans would like. I thought this mirrored the best way to kind of look at how the Yankees do contracts. Garrick Cole signed for 9 years. Maybe 9 years was too long. That’s just how people think. I think most people wouldn’t give a pitcher 9 years. Uh for Aaron Judge, they gave him 9 years, $360 million. uh Yoshino Yamamoto, they offered a deal where it was uh shorter term uh higher AE but still an 8-year deal compared to the Dodger deal. Um and then for the Maxfree deal, it was a deal that extends a year further than maybe most teams would have extended him, but um I think that the keeping the luxury tax hit down is important for the Yankees. I’d like to also note Juan Sodto, they made him a 16-year offer versus the Mets who made him a 15-year offer. That was in an attempt to lower the average annual salary. So, I definitely baked that into this calculation here. Now, Kyle Tucker is all but certainly going to get the qualifying offer, which means the Yankees will have to forfeit draft picks in order to make this acquisition. Spoiler alert, this is the only acquisition where the player uh that I have them signing is going to likely receive the qualifying offer. Other players are eligible, but they’re not going to get $22 million for one year. Now, Tucker is one of the best hitters in baseball. Over the last three years, he is top 10 in both OPS and WRC Plus among qualified hitters, and he’s a very well-rounded bat. He has a higher batting average than Steven Quan, a better on base percentage than Bryce Harper, and a higher slugging percentage than Raphael Devers over that three-year stretch. That well-rounded nature and approach to his game makes him an excellent bat despite not really having that outlier elite tool. He doesn’t have as much raw power as you would think or as much bat speed as you would think for someone who has his kind of status, but he has that with he has that pretty good power to go with excellent bat-to ball skills and really good plate discipline. Those plate skills are something that are really important to me for when you’re talking about somebody to pair with Aaron Judge. Kyle Tucker has the fourth best walk to strikeout ratio in baseball since 2023, only behind guys like Luis Arise, Steven Quan, and Juan Sodto. I think the Yankees really struggled with that in the postseason. They have the worst strikeout to walk rate in the American League among offenses. And we saw that in the Blue Jays series. They didn’t walk a lot, but they struck out a ton. That really killed them offensively. Personally, I think Kyle Tucker addresses that problem way more than Cody Bellinger does. It’s not that the Yankees can’t work walks or make contact. It’s that it seemed like the Yankees as a collective abandoned their approach in the postseason. And if you want to kind of protect yourself against something like that happening again, Kyle Tucker is not the kind of hitter who when he presses, he’s going to stop walking. He has struggled in the postseason, but he still owns a walk rate north of 11%. The other thing I really like about Cody Bellinger is his swing. I know people are going to look at Cody Bellinger and Kyle Tucker in this video and say, “You don’t like Cody Bellinger, Ryan, but I loved his swing for Yankee Stadium.” And in the offseason once the Yankees acquired him, when I dug deep into the numbers, I realized, hey, this guy could be a really good fit for the Yankees and he might put up a big year. One of my hot takes going into the season was saying that Cody Bellinger would be an all-star. And while he wasn’t, he was certainly deserving based on his final season numbers. Kyle Tucker has a very similar situation with his swing. He pulls the ball in the air a lot. He actually pulled the ball in the air just as much as Kyle Cody Bellinger did. Uh and in the case of Tucker as well, he generates more damage on his swings. He hits the ball harder and harder and therefore hits it further. And the other thing is that he doesn’t chase as much. So he’s swinging at good pitches to hit consistently. If you hit him in front of Aaron Judge where he’s going to see a lot of fast balls, he’s going to be a very tough out for opposing pitchers. And that’s why Kyle Tucker is again someone who appeals so much to me. Wrigley Field is one of the worst ballparks in baseball to hit home runs at. The average weighted on base average on pulled fly balls over the last few years is 870. Whereas at Yankee Stadium, it’s over a thousand. So there’s a massive gap in what you get out of a pulled fly ball. Directionality with where you hit your fly balls does matter. And even when you ignore that, which is where expected stats kind of come into play here, they don’t really factor in where you hit the ball. Kyle Tucker’s expected stats rank him as a top 10 to 15 hitter in baseball. And that’s again not factoring for how well he navigates his fly balls and how optimized his swing is. Kyle Tucker’s swing is perfect for Yankee Stadium. I think he could hit 30 home runs here easily. He’s a pretty good base runner. He has stolen over 20 bases this past year and he has more stolen bases in a higher BSR than Cody Bellinger. BSR stands for base running value on Fangcraft for those who aren’t aware. Uh overall, I know the defensive fit is weird with him in left field and Jason Mingz in center field, but I think it’s worth it for the New York Yankees. He is again a top 10 hitter in baseball over the last three years and he just spent this past season at Wrigley where he had a 747 OPS at home. Cody Bellinger in 2024 had a 700 OPS at home. His 117 WRC plus on the road which means he’s 17% better than league average was more reflective of his 2025 WRC plus which was at 125. Cody Cody Bellinger is a player that you look at and you say hey if you cannot get Kyle Tucker he is a good plan B. But if the Yankees want to get the best player available, they should sign Kyle Tucker. And the growth that Cody Bellinger had going from Wrigley to New York should only fuel the Yankees desire to get Kyle Tucker. Look, the Yankees tried to trade Ben Rice alongside other prospects to get Kyle Tucker this past offseason. Sources told Empire Sports Media that some of those players may have been Jason Dominguez and Luis Heel. Sources also told Empire Sports Media that the thing stopping the Yankees from getting Kyle Tucker was Jim Crane and ownership not wanting to trade a player of his caliber to the Yankees, an American League rival. So, I’m going to sit here and just say the Yankees desperately wanted Kyle Tucker. They wanted him so badly and they wanted him before he ended up going to the Cubs, which then caused them to trade for Cody Bellinger. The Yankees loved Kyle Tucker, and I wonder if they’re going to go after him this off seasonason, but in my opinion, they should. Up next, we’re going to make a pair of additions to further improve this bullpen. The first player I want to add is Hunter Harvey, a hard throwing right-handed pitcher whose fast ball sits around 96 miles per hour with good vertical movement and an excellent splitter to go with it. He also has a tight gyro slider and it’s featured just as much as that splitter, but I would consider that his third best pitch in the repertoire. If you look at his last four seasons, he has a 3.07 RA with a 27.4% strikeout rate and an above average walk rate. The ability to limit walks and generate swings and misses is very appealing to me as a Yankee fan because I looked at this bullpen this year. They really, really struggled with command. They struggle with fast ball velocity. Their bullpen ranked inside the bottom 10 in fastball velocity this season. And I think getting back to being able to throw harder is a big win for the Yankees if possible. Furthermore, I’d like to also note that Hunter Harvey having a splitter makes him someone I think the Yankees should be or at least will be interested in because the Yankees love good splitters. They brought in Fio Cruz, Mark Laterer Jr., uh Devin Williams and Luke Weaver are change up guys and those are guys that they brought in over the last two years to bolster this bullpen. The Yankees love offspe pitches. I have no reason to believe that Hunter Harvey wouldn’t at least be inconsideration for them. And around $6 million, I think he can be had. So, the Yankees could address their bullpen needs with a cheap bullpen reliever who has had some injury issues, but otherwise is a very dynamic pitcher, really good stuff, really good fastball. the kind of profile the Yankees have missed in their bullpen over the last few years. The other move I would make is a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays, who the Yankees made a trade with at the deadline for Jose Cabiro. Garrett Cleinger is perfect for the New York Yankees. He is a left-handed pitcher who put up a 2.35 ERA with a 33.7% strikeout rate. His fastball sits around 96 mph, but what headlines his repertoire is his tight gyro slider and his sweeping slider. He is a very slider heavy pitcher. And what I noticed with the Yankees this year is that they were one of the worst bullpens in baseball in terms of slider efficiency. The Yankees were bottom 10 in run value this season in terms of slider run value. And when you look at the names in that bullpen, Williams, Weaver, Cruz, Bedar, Dval, Hill, Lighter Jr., Bird, Hedrich, like Bird and Dval the only guys there who have excellent sliders and one of them was optioned to Triple A. Hedrick is another guy with the slider. He wasn’t on the roster. Paul Blackburn slider isn’t great. Uh Brian Yarro’s slider isn’t great. Uh the Yankees didn’t have a lot of great sliders. The only great slider I could think of really is Camilo Dval’s and his is a double plus slider. So I’ll say it’s not just a good one. It’s a great slider. I think that Clevelander adds another great slider to this bullpen. And I would also note going back to Hunter Harvey for a second here, his slider is good. It’s not a great pitch, but it’s a good pitch and it’s a usable pitch. And those also are two guys with distinct slider shapes. Harvey’s slider is very much an over-the-top slider. lot of dropping action, more of that bullet spin. Cleaginger F features a gyro slider that has a little more movement horizontally than Harvey’s, and then that big sweeping slider. Uh, so we’re we’re getting different slider shapes. I like variance in slider shape. I like um, you know, different looks, different arm angles. Clevenger is a pitcher who the Yankees don’t really have a mirror to in their bullpen. Hill is a lefty, but he throws the ball very differently than Clevenger does. Uh, if you want to mention that Jake Bird’s another like sinker sweeper guy kind of like Cleger is, while his is from the right-handed side and he features a curveball and a four seamer, Clevenger features a four seamer and a sweeper. Uh, uh, so it’s it’s very different. Like these are very different arms and looks and I think that kind of variety in your bullpen just makes this group that much better. We’ll break down how the pitching staff looks, but you add two guys who are going to strike out more batters than not and aren’t going to walk too many guys and you’ve got a bullpen that you have Betnar, you have Cruz, you have uh you have Dval still, you have Hill. You’re going to have a pretty good group. You’re going to have a pretty darn good bullpen for 2026. Now, I do want to address the bench as well. I know that the Yankees are going to lose Rosario Goldmid or they’re at least scheduled to have them hit free agency. So, that doesn’t help their bench depth. I think the Yankees should look externally from that group to get a player. Not because I don’t like Amed Rosario. I love Amed Rosario and I would love him back and if the Yankees bring him back, I’ll be very happy. Uh but because with Jason Dominguez playing center field, you need a fourth outfielder who at least has experience playing center field and can do it in a pinch. Because the Yankees are not going to move judge center field to spot start. They’re not going to put Kucker in center field. You need someone you can spot start in center field. doesn’t have to be a great defender, just to be one that can play out there and can move around and can make plays. And that for me would be Austin Hayes. Now, I expect the Reds to decline that $12 million option for Hayes. They’re cheap. That’s my reason for it. If if that’s a lame reason, oh well. Uh but this past season, he had a 949 OPS against left-handed pitching, was slightly below average against right-handed pitching, but overall finished with an above average OPS on the season. He’s got good power. Um his career OPS against lefties is 8:16. He’s not a high on base guy, but he’s a swing happy guy. He’s someone who if you throw him a strike, he’s going to try and hit it. He’s going to try and pull the ball in the air. Um he’s got enough speed to still be a little bit dynamic on the base paths. I like Hayes. I think he’s a good spot starter, fourth outfielder, right-handed bat. Kind of fills in the hole of being able to maybe shortside platoon with Dominguez if the Yankees still feel uncomfortable. Dominguez is at bats against left-handed pitching. Uh but with Hayes in the fold and Cabrera coming back, you’ve got Cababiro and Hayes who can sub in and play uh against the lefty. You could put Cavier at third, you can put uh Hayes in center field and you can have a, you know, a better offense against left-handed pitching. Um, and you also have his Waldo Cabaro who can kind of come in in a late game situation if needed. Uh, or you can have JC Assar kind of spot start as a catcher as well, but I I know that there are going to be some conversations about whether Ben Rice should catch and if the Yankees should move on from Austin Wells or not. So, you know, there are a lot of conversations that come with the Yankee roster, but uh, you know, I ultimately tried to be as realistic as possible. I tried to not spend too too much money. This payroll actually comes around to like $35 million, which would be an 11 million decrease for how Steinber Steinbrer’s walk wallets. You’re welcome, Mr. Steinbrer. Uh, but I I I think that the Yankees at the end of the day, they don’t have a million holes. They have issues in the bullpen that they need to fix and they have an outfield problem. They need to sign an outfielder or trade for an outfielder. Outside of that, I don’t think there’s much work that can be done to this roster or needs to be done to this roster. I know I’m going to get a lot of comments saying like the whole philosophy screwed. Aaron Boon’s got to go. It starts at the top, whatever, whatever. But like I I’ll say this, I I think there that there are incompetent organizations that can go on and win the World Series. I think that there are organizations that are less than perfect that can go on to win the World Series. If you ask a Blue Jay fan or a Mariner fan about their process going into the 2025 season, they would tell you that their GMs and inept, uh, their organization’s screwed. They don’t know what they’re doing and they’re kind of doomed. Uh, and they’re going to battle it out for the World Series. It looks like the Mariners will move on, but time will tell. Uh, I think for the Yankees, even if you think that they as an organization are incapable of doing the right thing, um, you should believe they’re capable of winning the World Series because they were four wins away from doing it two years a year ago. And this past season they were a better team than they showed in the postseason. Like I don’t think this is an organizational like the organization will stop them from winning a World Series. I think if you put the right players in front of the in front of fans, that team should win games. Now for the roster itself, I would have Ben Rice leading off. I’d hit Kyle Tucker second. I’d hit Aaron Judge third. Uh John Kan fourth, Jashis in fifth, Jason Ming sixth, Wells, Vulpi, McMahon to round out the bottom of the lineup. For the bench you have, Cabrera, Cababiierro, Hayes, and then for the rotation, you have Fred, Schlintler, Rodon, Heel, Warren, Bullpen, Lighter, Bird, Harvey, Hill, Doval, Cruz, Clevener, Bednar, Lighter, Junior, I know, is not a popular name, and I wasn’t a big fan of him down the stretch. I thought the lack of splitter usage was terrifying considering um he had a knee injury, but the Yankees like their splitters. He missed a lot of bats. I think in the Yankees mind and in their brain, uh if he can get back to throwing the splitter again, he should be a semi-effective reliever for them. Uh, and he’s not the worst backend reliever I’ve ever seen. I I’ve seen worse. I I’ve seen way worse at the back end of bullpends. Um, now for the combined production of these guys during the 2025 season, these 13 players on offense combined for a 799 OPS with plus 10.4 base running on fan graphs, which means this group was a very good offensive group. They slugged a ton. They walked a ton. They hit for a decently high average given the context of where batting average is at in 2025. Uh, and they were very good on the bases. is I think that kind of offense is the modern identity of like the slug offense or the the analytically quote unquote inclined offense if people at home think that you know modern offenses are just uh you know I want to hit the home run because I want to get paid versus like the effectiveness of the home run ball. But I say it to say the Yankees would be able to score runs in a lot of different ways. And I like that about the team. I think that’s a good quirk to have. I think that, you know, I love hitting the home run ball, but in the regular season, I think that the ability to kind of do things like that, take advantage of bad teams and bad catchers, bad pitchers to the plate, late game closers, you know, that is going to win you an extra game or two. And that extra game or two would have won you the division this year. So, I think the Yankees need to squeeze out as much value as humanly possible from the position player group, especially on the offensive side of the ball because defensively, this is not going to be a very good defensive team. Like if Vulpi bounces back, the infield can be very good defensively. You’re going to have Jazz, Vulpi, McMahon. Rice is not a great defensive first baseman. The scoops are not there yet. Uh maybe he develops that tool, but I think you’re banking on a lot of like if if um Tucker in left field, don’t expect that to be great. I expect to be solid. You know, maybe slightly below average. I’d consider him a soft negative in left field. Dominguez is a double negative in the outfield, and I don’t think that’s going to change unless I see it change. Judge is a plus defender in right field. well as the plus defender at catcher. Um it’s just like there there are some strong negatives and that could be the outfield and that could be first base and those are two areas where you know there’s at least some level of concern that that won’t go well for the Yankees. But in the rotation, the pitching staff as a whole, this unit should be great. They had a 3.38 combined RA as a rotation with a 3.63 expected RA. Excuse me. That’s as a pitching staff, not as a rotation. And then if you look at the bullpen, they had a 3.44 44 RA, a 3.35 expected ERA at a 27.5% strikeout rate. Average four seam velocity around 94 m 95 miles per hour. Cutter 97, sinker 96. So, lot of hard throwers in this bullpen. A much harder throwing staff than last year. A group that has more velocity, has a little more kick in their bullpen, and can overpower hitters a little bit better than they did in 2025. Overall, I think it’s a strong roster. Like, I I’m not sure if everyone’s going to agree with me, and that’s cool. You know, I want to hear your guys feedback. players that you think, “Hey, Ryan, like at that price point, you could get this guy and I think that guy’s better.” I’d love to hear what you guys think. Um, and you know, the trade market, too. I know I didn’t really explore the trade market that much. I only acquired a reliever through the trade market. Um, but I also think it’s going to be tough to figure out who’s available to trade now, and I don’t know if there’s anyone I want more than Kyle Tucker in the outfield. So, yeah, that kind of covers that. We appreciate you guys watching so much. Make sure you guys like, comment, subscribe. Again, let me know what you guys think about this offseason plan in the comment section below. and check out empiresportsmedia.com. That’s where the written version of this plan is listed. Uh and you guys can also check it out for all of your favorite New York sports teams, NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MMA, all that stuff and more. Knicks, Giants, Jets, Yanks, Mets, etc., etc. Uh and finally, check me out at Ryan Garcia ESM on Twitter. I’m Ryan Garcia again. Thank you guys so much for tuning in to Fireside Yankees. We’ll see you guys in the next one. Have a great rest of your day and peace out. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

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