Angel Chivilli from the Rockies on Wednesday<\/a>.<\/p>\nFernando Cruz is an important holdover, coming off his own breakout season, while left Brent Headrick (whom multiple Yankees officials have mentioned as a candidate to pop this season) and Yerry De los Santos are among the other candidates to carve out a role in the bullpen.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we enter spring training, we definitely are a different bullpen right now than we were last year, because we\u2019ve had some departures,\u201d general manager Brian Cashman said Wednesday. \u201cBut we also have some young pups pushing up the ladder, we have a Rule 5 pick we selected, we just made this addition [Chivilli]. So I think it\u2019s a work in progress with a lot of quality choices. Some might be emerging talented players from our system, some might be more imports like [Chivilli].<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d just say stay tuned.\u201d<\/p>\n
The best of the \u201cyoung pup\u201d pitching prospects the Yankees boast are currently starters, though someone like Carlos Lagrange \u2014 who some scouts see as a reliever in the long run \u2014 could speed up his road to The Bronx in a relief role if the organization eventually chooses to go that route. They also have a group of relievers at Triple-A that could help at some point, including Kervin Castro (added to the 40-man roster earlier this offseason), Eric Reyzelman and Harrison Cohen.<\/p>\n
![\"Angel](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/57-fourth-inning-baseball-game-119883109.jpg\")
Rockies\u2019 Angel Chivilli throws a pitch during a Sept. 6, 2025 game in Denver. AP<\/p>\n
None of those are sure things, though. While even the best of relievers are volatile \u2014 in the same season he thrived as the Yankees closer in a playoff chase, Bednar was demoted to Triple-A by the Pirates \u2014 the Yankees could still use another arm or two that are closer to safe bets to give Aaron Boone enough trustworthy options for the late innings. <\/p>\n
They sat out the high-end (and now most of the mid-tier) portion of the free agent relief market, with those dollars reserved for Cody Bellinger, though the Yankees have had their best success acquiring impact relievers through trades in recent years.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGo beyond the box score with the Bombers\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to evaluate all choices that come our way,\u201d Cashman said. \u201cBut I do think we have a lot of quality choices at the very least that we can fall back on if we do nothing more. But the job at hand is to see if we can improve in any aspect of the roster we can and we\u2019ll continue to look at that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps they eventually get some relief from the rotation once the likes of Carlos Rod\u00f3n, Gerrit Cole and eventually Clarke Schmidt get healthy, but until then, they seem to be putting an awful lot of faith in their pitching department \u2014 getting Bird back on track, continuing Blackburn\u2019s transition to relieving, trying to harness Chivilli\u2019s big arm and get something out of the rookie Winquest, among others.<\/p>\n
The other issue with the projected 2026 bullpen is a lack of flexibility. Only Bird, Chivilli, Headrick, Doval and Cruz have minor league options remaining \u2014 and if they are used on Doval or Cruz, they will have bigger issues than flexibility \u2014 while they must carry Winquest on the big league roster all season if they want to keep him in the organization. For a team that often churns through arms with the last spot or two in the bullpen, that may prove to be more difficult this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With less than two weeks remaining in the offseason, most of the moves involving the Yankees bullpen this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,3936,4,1690,62,2548,2547,185,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-545230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brian-cashman","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-yankees","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkyankees","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115982028845858824","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Fernando](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/new-york-yankees-pitcher-fernando-113027013.jpg\")
Fernando Cruz throws a pitch during the third inning of the Yankees\u2019 Game 3 ALDS win over the Blue Jays on Oct. 7, 2025 in The Bronx. JASON SZENES\/ NY POST<\/p>\n