The Yankees are heading into the Wild Card Series with a real test in front of them, and the biggest question mark is the same one that has hovered over them for weeks: Aaron Judge.
The star right fielder is likely out for next week’s series, which means New York has to find a way to win without the best right-handed hitter in baseball. That’s a major blow, but it’s also a spot the Yankees have navigated for long stretches already. They’ve gone 48-41 in games Judge has not played, a big reason they’re still standing heading into October.
ESPN’s David Schoenfield still viewed the season through a pretty strong lens, handing the Yankees a B+ grade for 2026. His reasoning came down to two things: power and pitching.
"General manager Brian Cashman has been much maligned by Yankees fans in recent years for failing to build a World Series winner, but the depth of the roster he built has once again carried the team to the postseason," Schoenfield wrote.
"Even with Aaron Judge missing more than 90 games, the Yankees are still neck and neck with the Cubs for most home runs in the majors," he added. "Despite Max Fried, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon missing significant time, they lead the majors in rotation ERA."
That depth is what has kept New York afloat even after it came up short in the AL East race and watched the Tampa Bay Rays celebrate at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night.
The pitching setup could give the Yankees a fighting chance anyway. Cam Schlittler, the AL Cy Young Award favorite, looks like the obvious Game 1 weapon after allowing one run or fewer in 21 of his 31 starts this season, a franchise record.
If the series goes deeper, manager Aaron Boone can lean on some combination of Fried, Cole and Rodon in Games 2 and 3.
In Other News...
Yankees May Be Preparing A Playoff Infield Change Fans Saw Coming
The Yankees have spent enough time looking for answers at third base that Aaron Boone is now openly floating one of the cleaner possibilities. Boone said Anthony Volpe will probably get a look there sometime this week, a move that lines up with what the organization has seen before from the shortstop and with the modest offensive uptick he has shown compared with Ryan McMahon. With home-field advantage already locked in for the AL Wild Card Series, New York has a little breathing room to test whether a postseason adjustment can sharpen the infield before October starts in earnest.
Volpe has handled third base before in Triple-A, so this would not be a blind experiment so much as a practical shuffle with real stakes attached. The bigger question is how the Yankees want their best defensive and offensive alignment to look when the games begin to count, and whether this kind of late-week change is the first sign of a more aggressive playoff setup. Boone has not finalized anything yet, but the timing makes it clear the team is at least considering a different shape on the left side of the infield. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Just Entered An Ownership Era Fans Never Saw Coming
Major League Baseballs latest tweak to its ownership rules has given the Yankees a new kind of headline, one rooted less in the lineup card than in the boardroom. With private equity now allowed to own up to 20 percent of a club, up from 15 percent before, Apollo Global Capital moved quickly enough to buy a 16 percent minority stake in the Yankees for $2.6 billion, a deal that puts the franchises value above $12 billion.
For a team whose identity has long been tied to the Steinbrenner family, the bigger picture matters just as much as the price tag. The family still holds just over 60 percent of the club, keeping control in familiar hands even as outside capital becomes a bigger part of the modern baseball landscape. What this shift means for the Yankees day to day is still unfolding, but the sale alone shows how far the financial power structure around the sport has moved. [Read more 🡒]
Yankees Triple-A Era Ended With A Twist Fans Never Saw Coming
The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders went out with a little bit of everything in their final game under that name, edging Jacksonville 6-5 in 10 innings on Sept. 19. In a fittingly strange finish for a longtime Yankees Triple-A affiliate, catcher Edinson Duran wound up taking on pitching duty and was credited with the win, giving the club one last memorable night before the name change.
The scheduled season finale the next day never got played, with rain and unplayable field conditions bringing the curtain down early on the RailRiders era. The franchise is set to rebrand for the 2027 season, which means the Yankees' top minor league stop has now closed one chapter before the next one officially begins. [Read more 🡒]