The Yankees may have stumbled into a late-August opening, but getting Eugenio Suarez is no simple grab.
Cincinnati put the veteran slugger on outright waivers Wednesday, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, and that immediately put New York in the conversation for a proven right-handed bat without paying the usual trade price. The catch is obvious: the Yankees are near the back of the line if the claim process gets crowded.
The Reds also placed outfielder TJ Friedl on waivers. Clubs around the league have a 48-hour window to file claims, and because MLB’s 2026 trade deadline passed Aug.
3, Cincinnati can’t work out a trade or bring back players in return if Suarez is claimed. A claiming team would take on the money left on his deal and add him to its 40-man roster, while the Reds would only clear salary.
That matters in New York because Ryan McMahon is on the 10-day injured list with a Grade 2 sprain of his left thumb. Jose Caballero and Amed Rosario have been covering third base while McMahon is out, which is why Suarez suddenly looks like more than just a name on a waiver wire.
McMahon injured the thumb Aug. 19 in Baltimore while trying to turn a single into a double. The Yankees put him on the injured list Aug. 21, retroactive to Aug.
- He’s hitting .216 with 10 home runs and 32 RBIs in 106 games, and he said the injury did not appear to require surgery and that he expected to miss only the minimum amount of time.
That makes Suarez less of a clean long-term answer at third and more of a short-term roster and lineup decision.
The 35-year-old hasn’t had the kind of season that made him such a desirable target a year ago, when New York was heavily linked to him before the 2025 deadline. Instead, the Yankees dealt for McMahon from Colorado on July 25 for pitching prospects Griffin Herring and Josh Grosz. Suarez later went from Arizona to Seattle and finished 2025 with 49 home runs and a career-high 118 RBIs before returning to Cincinnati in free agency.
This time, the numbers are more modest. Entering Thursday, Suarez was batting .208 with a .295 on-base percentage and a .410 slugging percentage in 103 games. He had 19 home runs and 57 RBIs in 410 plate appearances, with a strikeout rate still hovering near 35 percent.
Still, the power is real. Suarez’s grand slam Wednesday in the ninth inning helped Cincinnati erase a six-run deficit in a 10-9 win over the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park. It was the 344th homer of his career, and he also has a 49-homer season on his résumé from 2019.
For the Yankees, the appeal is straightforward: a right-handed power bat, no prospect cost, and a possible postseason-eligible addition if the claim is completed before MLB’s cutoff. But the waiver rules make the path steep. When multiple clubs claim a player, MLB gives the nod to the team with the lower winning percentage, and the Yankees entered Thursday at 75-57, 3 1/2 games behind Tampa Bay in the AL East and holding the American League’s top wild-card spot.
That strong record hurts them here. After Wednesday’s games, only Milwaukee, the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tampa Bay and Atlanta had better winning percentages than New York. Since Cincinnati can’t claim its own player, 24 clubs would sit ahead of the Yankees in a theoretical all-team claim scenario, and any one of them could knock Suarez out of New York’s reach.
Cincinnati is 63-71, last in the NL Central and nine games back of the final National League wild-card spot, so the waiver move also serves as a way to shed salary. Suarez is on a one-year, $15 million deal with a $16 million mutual option for 2027 and no buyout, and about $3 million remains on his 2026 salary.
If the Yankees did land him, they’d still need room on the 40-man roster and an active-roster opening. And even then, the fit would depend on how long McMahon stays out.
For now, the Yankees have a need, a familiar target and a rare post-deadline avenue. The question is whether the waiver order lets them get to the front of it.
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