How The Yankees Can Return to the World Series in 2025

Soto or bust? Soto a must. Let's get funky.

Given the state of the world and how little I want to focus on reality at the moment, why don’t we take a much-too-deep-dive into the 2025 New York Yankees potential roster and payroll.

The Yankees 2024 season concluded with a display of everything Yankee fans who pay attention have been saying is wrong with the team for the better part of a decade. They don’t get the big hit, they don’t play defense, they don’t make smart decisions on the bases. They barely play baseball. As I often hear my Dad put it, “I’m so sick of this home run derby crap! Play baseball!”

Brian Cashman and the rest of the Yankee front office have been faced with a reality that even the famously stubborn, and sometimes combative long-tenured GM cannot ignore. His team’s flaws were too great and too numerous to put them over the hump once again. Yes, they reached the World Series, I was elated that they finally made that leap. However, the taste left in the mouths of all Yankee fans following the disheartening gentleman’s sweep at the hands of the Dodgers is not one of satisfaction, or comfort at knowing the team is headed in the right direction despite a losing effort. It’s closer to a shattering shame for many, and for some, smugness for being ‘right’ about all the problems they rattle on about during their calls to the Michael Kay Show and WFAN.

Despite all the clear problems facing the team, and what feels like too many holes to plug without enough fingers to plug ‘em, I have done the work for the front office myself. Hal Steinbrenner in the past has publicly stated his displeasure with having a $300m payroll, however with some of the albatross-like contracts currently on the books, I think staying under the Cohen tax is the best the team can hope for while staying competitive. I have come up with an offseason plan that allows the Yankees to retain Juan Soto, bring in two additional impact bats which they desperately need, and bringing in a potential ace pitcher, all while staying below the $301 million maximum luxury tax penalty. The total payroll I have them winding up with comes to $333 million post-tax, with a pre-tax total of $288.2 million.

You’re welcome Brian (please hire me).

Here we go.

Freakin’ Cash, Man

Unless the Yankees trade away about half their roster, they will exceed what is now the $241 million luxury tax threshold for the fourth consecutive season in 2025, which means they will incur the maximum penalty of 50%. My plan places them within the $40-60 million overage bracket which will subject them to an additional 45% (due to them being >$60m over last season). This puts their competitive balance tax rate at 95%, just about doubling the cost of every dollar they decide to spend over $241 million.

The maximum luxury tax penalty is 110%, and known as the Cohen tax. It is the penalty incurred by a team should they cross the threshold of $60 million over the $241 million dollar CBT figure (or $301 million), designed to dissuade Mets’ Owner Steve Cohen from exorbitant and thoughtless spending. In theory. He still does anyway.

I know solving the team’s problems without spending a bajillion dollars like the Dodgers last summer sounds a little too good to be true, so let me throw a bone to the ‘realists’ who are ready to dismiss this plan on the grounds of it necessitating the Yankees front office to make too many smart moves.

I’m not head over heels in love with the roster it leaves you with, but it absolutely fixes the holes in the lineup and defensive alignments, allows you to keep Soto, and doesn’t bring the team into the Cohen tax bracket, which I believe are the biggest priorities for the front office this offseason, and the best case scenario all things considered.

The Soto of It All

The Yankees resign Juan Soto for $658m/14 years (47m/year) which gives Soto and his agent Scott Boras exactly what Boras's massive clients always want, the biggest contract in MLB history, not just of the offseason (e.g. A-Rod). 

I know, Shohei. However Shohei Ohtani's contract effectively acts as a $46.1m luxury tax hit, this would exceed his number.

I don’t believe I need to give any numbers as to why the Yankees should be interested in bringing Juan Soto back into their clubhouse. The whole world knows it’s what they want to do, so let’s move on to the first acquisition beyond the obvious.

Walk(er) This Way

First base is arguably the biggest position of need for the front office. The top two options on the free agent market are Pete Alonso and Christian Walker. I believe Pete will be heading back home with a fat check from Uncle Stevie, and besides, despite his power, I would be surprised if the Yankees were enticed by the poor defensive metrics, low batting average, and 25% K rate. We’ll be discussing Walker in a moment, but it’s important to take a broad view of the entire market before explaining why he’s the answer.

Beyond Walker, you’d have to settle for grizzled vets like Carlos Santana (age 39), Paul Goldschmidt (37), Justin Turner (40), or Donovan Solano (37), none of which are a good fit. The Yankees could of course look to return Anthony Rizzo, who will be turning 36 in August. You can argue either way about how much sense it would make to bring him back after the Yankees opted out of his contract, settling for a $6 million buyout in lieu of rostering him at the $17 million he would be owed had they opted in. If the Yankees can effectively restructure the deal with Rizzo by signing him for around $10 million over two seasons, I think they might be open to it, but Rizzo is a known commodity and clearly is not the best option to improve the team.

That would be the Yankees signing free agent first baseman Christian Walker for three years for a total of $36 million. I know this number seems low for the slugging Gold Glover, however he is 33 years old, a significantly longer contract doesn’t seem to be in the cards for Walker. If you’re thinking that a desperate team may end up going to 4 or more years to get him in the door, you’d be right to think that, only 10 teams had positive WAR from first base last season. The problem is that the Yankees will most likely be that desperate team. They ranked second to last in WAR at first base with a brutal -3.2 tally out of the combination of Rizzo, Rice, Cabrera and LeMahieu (not to mention the ill-fated JD Davis experiment).

Walker has a few things the Yankees initially loved about Anthony Rizzo, such as his durability, his power, and his top tier defense at first. He’s won three straight Gold Gloves at the position, and doesn’t miss many games. 160 in '22, 157 in '23, 130 in ’24 (injured oblique while making a catch, IL’d on Jul 29, returned Sep 3), and comes with three consecutive seasons with 25 or more home runs, 36, 33, 26, respectively. He’s averaged an OPS+ of 123 since ’22, but has a 21% K rate in the same timeframe. That’s not ideal but it’s not a deal breaker in a desperate Yankee lineup, the same can be said for his right handedness. Adding in his very appropriate, very solid walk rate of 10% to pair with Soto’s penchant for the free pass is a juicy dream as well.

If the Yankees must go to 4 years at around $48-60 million to bring him in, they can without going over the Cohen tax.

Walker would solve one half of the corner infield problem. To solve the other, we head to the NL Central.

Nolan Pryin’

The Yankees trade one or both of George Lombard Jr. and Roderick Arias, plus another rank 10-25 prospect, to the St. Louis Cardinals for Nolan Arenado while asking them to retain half of the $52m remaining on his contract.

The Cardinals are about to be in a pickle in terms of their RSN deals and subsequent revenue streams. Diamond Sports Group has gone bankrupt and transformed into the FanDuel Sports Network. They have asked to restructure the Cardinals rights fees ahead of the 2025 season, leading to Cardinals President of Baseball Ops to say he’s looking for as much “flexibility” as possible with the roster.  Getting out of half of Arenado’s contract with an extremely cheap crop of good prospects to replace him is a pretty sweet deal for a drowning St. Louis front office.

Arenado has $52 million remaining on his original 8/$260m deal he signed with the Colorado Rockies ahead of the 2019 season. The full luxury tax hit from Arenado would be $25.5 for each of the remaining 3 years on his contract.

Now Yankee fans will most likely read this plan to acquire around ~$50m in payroll for an over the hill third baseman from a team in the midwest and have Vietnam War style flashbacks to the worst mistake ever made by the regime manning the front office, Josh Donaldson. However, if you’ve watched Arenado play, you’ll be well aware there’s few similarities with the loathsome mound of false confidence the Yankees willingly brought into their clubhouse in 2022.

The primary reason is that Arenado is a far superior player than Donaldson ever was. While Arenado has never won an MVP like Josh, he does have more top 5 finishes for the award, 4 to 3. Josh has 4 total top-10 finishes for MVP, all came in the stretch of 2013-2016. Arenado on-the-other-hand has been a top-10 finisher 6 out of the last 10 years, while also accumulating 10 Gold Gloves, 6 Platinum Gloves, and 5 Silver Sluggers (if you’re into that kind of thing). Donaldson never won a Gold Glove, and if you can recall, the reason Donaldson stuck around with the team for so long was how in love the front office was with his defense.

Arenado would also be an improvement on the base paths, but let me be clear: that is not to say he is a plus value base runner. He ranks at the 42nd percentile in baserunning run value. No, this is to serve as yet another indictment of the extremely poor performance the Yankees put on display on the bases this past season. For example: Gleyber Torres’ baserunning run value last season ranked in the 6th percentile. Not great.

Arenado is currently 33, with 3 years left on his contract, he’d be hitting the same age on his way out the door that Donaldson showed up at.

Do the Roki-Pokey

The Yankees sign the extremely talented international amateur, Roki Sasaki, out of Japan’s NPB. It was just announced that Roki Sasaki would be posted to MLB clubs this offseason, meaning Cashman and the Yankees front office have 45 days to get a deal done with Sasaki and pay the release fee (dependent on the value of the contract he signs) to his NPB club, the Chiba Lotte Marines. If no agreement is reached between a club and Sasaki after 45 days, he will return to the NPB for 2025.

Sasaki will coming over with the same status that Shohei Ohtani entered MLB with. Due to him being under 25, he is not eligible to enter international free agency like last off-season’s big fish, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and would begin his MLB career with 6 seasons of team control, 3 before arbitration, just like Shohei.

Ohtani signed with the Angels initially with a $2.315 million bonus. This money comes from the international signing bonus pool. The Yankees currently are in the middle of the pack in terms international signing money, but the good news is they sit in the same bracket as a number of teams that will be competing for Sasaki, such as the Braves, Red Sox, Cubs, Mets, Phillies, Padres, Rangers, and Blue Jays. All these teams have access to $6,261,600 to hand out to international signings. Teams in the higher brackets to worry about as competition could be the Orioles, Guardians, and Royals, who have close to $7 million in their pool, and the Brewers, Mariners, Twins and Rays who have the maximum ~$7.6 million.

Sasaki was introduced to most American baseball fans in the 2023 World Baseball Classic as a member of the champion Japanese club, he was certainly a name to watch going in as an incredible prospect with the supposed best splitter in the world that he used to pitch a perfect game at only age 21 in the NPB. He pitched well in the WBC, 7.2 innings over 2 starts with a 1.17 and .233 oppAVG, nothing that jumps off the page though. In an article for The Athletic, Eno Sarris dove under the hood in anticipation of Sasaki’s arrival and described his 111 stuff+ (a basic measure of how effective his pitches are against the average) metric during the WBC as ‘excellent’ and placed him in the top 10 starters in the tourney, almost all of which are MLB starters.

What makes him such an incredible prospect is his combination of his upper 90’s fastball that can touch three digits, and world class split-finger that we’re so accustomed to seeing from star Japanese pitchers when they make their way to MLB. There is some concern that his velocity and movement have declined slightly recently, but Sarris believes his stuff will still play at a very effective level in MLB.

Sasaki slotting in as an incredibly cheap option as either the third or fourth starter in the Yankees rotation could wind up giving them a massive bump whose effects will be felt most impactfully in the usage of the bullpen, hopefully allowing them to stay fresher, longer.

He is also heavily favored to wind up with the Dodgers, because of course he is, but the Yankees have more bonus money to play with than LA and they should strongly consider throwing the kitchen sink at what would likely be a superstar for a rookie’s price.

Put ‘em Together and What Have You Got

So how will all these pieces look on the field? I put together a lineup headlined by the hope that the slight improvements made by Anthony Volpe carry him into reaching the potential solid leadoff man we all believe is in there this upcoming season. I also adhered to the Yankees trying to alternate L/R and looking to avoid any same-handedness for three batters in a row, which is how we end up with 6-hole Stanton and 8-hole Arenado.

I’ve included the luxury tax hits for each player as well.

Lineup

1 R Volpe SS - 1m

2 L Soto RF - 47m

3 R Judge CF - 40m

4 R C. Walker 1B - 12m (3/36)

5 L Chisholm 2B - 8m

6 R Stanton DH - 22m

7 L Wells C - 1m

8 R Arenado 3B - 12.5m (12.5m by stl)

9 L Dominguez/Jones LF -1m

144.5m in the lineup.

Rotation

I’ve included the six projected starters, but it’s likely one of these guys would end up in the bullpen (looking at you, Nestor).

Cole - 36m

Rodon - 27m

Sasaki - 800k

Stroman - 18.5m

Nestor - ~8m

Clarke - ~5m

95.3m in the rotation.

The Pen

Weaver - 2m

Hamilton - 1.5m

Leiter Jr. - 2.4m

Mayza - 2.9m

Cousins - 800k

Effross - 900k

10.4m in the bullpen.

So far this roster gives them the ability to hunt two of the top free agent relievers such as Tanner Scott and Carlos Estevez, or maybe returning Clay Holmes to bolster the back end of the bullpen. Other somewhat interesting names such as Kenley Jansen, Jeff Hoffman, A.J. Minter, Paul Sewald, Blake Treinen, and plenty others are out there if they are looking to spend in the pen as well, although we know they often like to find their diamonds in the rough.

The Bench

Jones/Dominguez - 800k each

Berti - 3.5m

Rice - N/A

Cabrera - 800k

5.1m on the bench

The Rest

The total cost of the players above comes to $255.3 million, however there are other players on the books, such as:

LeMahieu - 15m

Aaron Hicks - 10m

Brubaker - 2.3m

Poteet - 800k

Peraza - 800k

Vivas - 800k

Beeter - 800k

Y. Gomez - 800k

Warren - 800k

Y. De Los Santos - 800k

These players account for $32.9 million. Bringing our total to $288.2 million. That puts them at $47.2 million over the tax threshold of $241 million, subjecting them to a tax hit of 95% on that $47.2 million (an additional $44.8 million). This brings our total payroll to $333 million. This leaves the Yankees the ability to further entice the Cardinals by giving them the flexibility to take on a higher percentage, like 75% of Arenado if they must, without going over the Cohen tax.

This would be a very substantial increase from the 2024 post-tax payroll of ~$310 million, but with the contracts they already have on the books, the Yankees will have to compete with their past financial mistakes as much as the Dodgers going forward. The good news is big money contracts such as LeMahieu, Stanton, Stroman, and even Aaron Hicks’ 10 million will all be leaving the books within the next few seasons.

I firmly believe everything I’ve written is possible this offseason, and that it would result in a markedly improved offense, defense, and heads up baserunning. It would also cement a young core of players such as Juan Soto, Anthony Volpe, Jasson Dominguez, Austin Wells, and Spencer Jones (hopefully) supporting the older cast of veterans. Sasaki and Schmidt could do the same for the rotation that will need a true anchor as Gerrit Cole ages.

I have seen the common talking point that should the Yankees retain Juan Soto, that’s it for the offseason. I hope I’ve laid out a plan that proves otherwise, and helped to re-light the spark of excitement for next season that was so brutally stomped out at the end of this October.

See you in a few weeks, check out my podcast Mudville in the meantime.

Go Yanks.