After a Flurry of Trades, Yankees Cut Ties With Marcus Stroman and Bet Big on Younger Arms

As expected, the Yankees were among the contending teams active ahead of the July 31 trade deadline and in the days leading up to it. They filled a big hole at third base and a smaller one in their outfield, shuffled utility infielders, and restocked their bullpen as well, though the fortified unit did not get off to a flying start. But one thing they did not do was add a starting pitcher. Instead, as they worked to fit the newcomers onto their roster in the aftermath of the deadline, they chose to cut loose starter Marcus Stroman, ending the 34-year-old righty’s disappointing season-and-a-half run with the team. By doing so, they’re betting big on the live arms behind Max Fried and Carlos Rodón.

In 38 starts and one relief appearance totaling 193 2/3 innings since the start of 2024 — numbers suppressed by his 11-week stay on the injured list this season due to left knee inflammation — Stroman managed just a 4.69 ERA, a 4.73 FIP, and 1.0 WAR. Among pitchers with at least 180 inning in that span, only Logan Allen, Kyle Gibson, and Randy Vásquez produced less value. In 39 innings this year, Stroman was lit for a 6.23 ERA and 5.15 FIP while making just one quality start out of nine.

Stroman was squeezed out of New York’s five-man rotation by the return of Luis Gil. The 27-year-old righty, who won AL Rookie of the Year honors last season, suffered a high-grade lat strain in late February, before he’d even pitched in an exhibition game. Gil began a rehab assignment on July 13, making the first of two starts for Double-A Somerset before adding two more with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and maxing out at 4 1/3 innings and 75 pitches. He made his season debut for the Yankees on Sunday, and it was a rough one. Facing a Marlins team that has been playing very good baseball lately by going 30-22 since the start of June, Gil struggled with his command, walking four and yielding five hits while striking out three in 3 1/3 innings. He was charged with five runs, the last two of which scored after reliever Brent Headrick served up a three-run homer to Kyle Stowers.

The Yankees signed Stroman to a two-year, $37 million deal in January 2024, a few weeks after losing out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who instead inked a 12-year, $325 million deal with the Dodgers in late December 2023. Stroman was coming off an uneven season with the Cubs; he made the NL All-Star team after pitching to a 2.96 ERA and 3.38 FIP in the first half of the season, but was rocked for an 8.63 ERA in 24 innings in the second half, and he also missed six weeks due to right hip inflammation.

Though he was healthy enough to make 29 starts totaling 154 1/3 innings for the Yankees in 2024 — his highest totals in either category since ’21 with the Mets — Stroman was a disappointment in pinstripes. Both his 16.7% strikeout rate and 1.11 homers per nine allowed were the worst marks of his major league career to that point, while his 4.31 ERA (108 ERA-) and 4.62 FIP (111 FIP-) marked him as a below-average pitcher, to say nothing of his 4.94 xERA. The Yankees included him on their ALCS and World Series rosters as a long man in the bullpen, but he didn’t make a single postseason appearance.

Stroman made three rough starts at the outset of this season, failing to work through the fifth inning in any of them before landing on the IL. While he reached the five-inning mark in all but one of his six starts after returning, only on July 20, when he allowed one run in six innings against the Braves, did he pitch deeper than that. His 14.9% strikeout rate, 9.1% walk rate, and 1.38 homers per nine represented steps in the wrong direction even relative to last season. He was at least able to avoid opponents’ barrels last season, but that wasn’t the case this year; his barrel rate shot from 6.7% (70th percentile) to 10.7% (15th percentile).

So what happened? Stroman’s fastball velocity had already dipped into the 25th percentile as of 2021, when he pitched for the Mets, and it continued to trend downwards in the seasons since. Basically, he never recovered his velo after returning from his 2023 IL stint, and the quality of his stuff suffered for it. His sinker averaged 92 mph both in 2022, his first year with the Cubs, and ’23 before his injury, but dipped to 91.3 mph in his four post-injury starts in September of that season, then 90 last year and 89.8 this year.

The picture painted by Stuff+ is no prettier:

During his time with the Yankees, Stroman couldn’t muster a single above-average offering according to Stuff+. PitchingBot, which tells a similar story, did score his curveball — actually an amalgamation of what Statcast views as two distinct offerings, a curve that averages 77.9 mph and a slurve that averages 82.1 mph — at 51 on the 28–80 scouting scale this year. Either way, he didn’t have enough weapons to get by.

By releasing Stroman, the Yankees are eating the final $5.61 million owed to him, minus the prorated minimum salary if another team adds him to their major league roster. At that price, it wouldn’t be a surprise if another team takes a flier on him and makes some tweaks to his delivery or arsenal. As for the Yankees, who have lost both Gerrit Cole and Clarke Schmidt to Tommy John surgery this season, they’re placing a lot of faith in the youth and higher-quality stuff of Gil and rookies Will Warren and Cam Schlittler instead of whatever Stroman may still have left in the tank. It’s a bold move that comes at a point when the Yankees’ margin for error has dwindled because of their 25-30 record since the start of June — third worst in the AL, ahead of only the White Sox (24-30) and Twins (21-33). New York is now 60-52, 4 1/2 games behind the Blue Jays in the AL East, and with just a 2 1/2-game cushion in the Wild Card race, though its Playoff Odds are still a robust 88%.

Sunday’s return didn’t go well for Gil, but his four-seam fastball did average 96.4 mph, just a hair below last year’s average. That said, he got just five whiffs on 31 swings between his four-seamer (two out of 11), slider (one out of 13), and changeup (two out of seven), with only the last of those rates approaching last year’s marks. Batters chased just four of his pitches outside the zone (15.4%). He’ll need to be better than that to approximate the 3.50 ERA and 4.14 FIP he provided in 151 2/3 innings last year.

Warren, a 26-year-old righty who entered the year at no. 65 on our Top 100 Prospects list with a 50 FV, has scuffled lately. His 5.34 ERA and 5.61 FIP across six July starts totaling 30 1/3 innings pushed his season ERA to 4.64 and his FIP to 3.64, and his six homers allowed last month matched the total he allowed in 80 1/3 innings from March through June. What’s more, his 98 Stuff+ and 98 Location+ were his lowest monthly marks this season, suggesting he may be running out of steam.

Schilttler, a 24-year-old righty, graded as a 45-FV prospect at the outset of the season but leveled up to 50 FV in our pre-deadline Top 100, with Eric Longenhagen writing, “[H]is velocity kept climbing this year, and it’s rare to find guys his size who also throw strikes in the upper 90s.” Through four starts totaling 19 1/3 innings, the 6-foot-6, 225 pounder has managed just a 4.68 ERA and 5.95 FIP — too many walks and homers — but averaged 97.8 mph with his four-seamer. For as good as his other offerings look via Stuff+ (a score of 120 for the curve, 116 for the slider/sweeper), batters are slugging .656 against those secondaries.

With the departures of Stroman and Carlos Carrasco — who was outrighted off the 40-man roster in June, assigned to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and then traded to the Braves for cash considerations at the end of July — the only other starters on the 40-man roster are Allan Winans, a 29-year-old righty who’s made one start and two relief appearances this year and owns a 7.48 ERA in 49 1/3 innings since 2023, and Ryan Yarbrough, a 33-year-old lefty who is rehabbing his way back from a mid-June oblique strain. Yarbrough has pitched to a 3.90 ERA and 4.71 FIP in 55 1/3 innings over eight starts and eight relief appearances with the Yankees. Despite a fastball that averages just 87.5 mph, he’s been one of the best in the majors at suppressing hard contact, with his 32.3% hard-hit rate and 86.3 mph average exit velocity both placing in the 95th percentile and his 5.1% barrel rate in the 90th percentile.

Yarbrough has yet to head out on a rehab assignment, so he’s still at least a few weeks away. While the rotation doesn’t have an immediate opening for him, he can still provide support for a bullpen that was the AL’s worst in June in terms of ERA (6.03), FIP (5.23), HR/9 (1.86), and WAR (-0.7). General manager Brian Cashman was very busy last Thursday, acquiring David Bednar from the Pirates, Jake Bird from the Rockies, and Camilo Doval from the Giants in the final hours before the deadline. That he didn’t come away with a starter rated as at least a mild surprise given the losses of Cole and Schmidt, but this deadline lacked impact starters, and one could hardly fault a team for not convincing itself to part with talent and hope that it could suddenly fix Sandy Alcantara or Zac Gallen, or trust the rehabbing Shane Bieber or Nestor Cortes (no stranger to the Yankees). Particularly with the Dodgers winning last year’s World Series with a postseason rotation that — counting generously — had two effective starters in Yamamoto and Walker Buehler (Jack Flaherty not so much), you can understand Cashman’s impulse to favor relievers instead.

Cashman may also have been a bit gun shy given his recent track record. He didn’t trade for a starter at the deadline last year, and you have to go back to 2022 to find the last time he made such a move: Frankie Montas, who was supposed to be an upgrade on Jordan Montgomery, whom they dealt to the Cardinals for Harrison Bader. Montas posted a 6.35 ERA in eight starts for the team that season, then managed just 1 1/3 innings the next year due to injuries. Montgomery pitched very well both for the Cardinals in 2022–23 and the Rangers in the latter season, emerging as a postseason hero. The 2021 deadline acquisition of Andrew Heaney didn’t go so well, either.

The new-look bullpen didn’t cover itself in glory when it was unveiled on Friday in Miami. Despite Rodón’s failure to get through five full innings, the Yankees entered the bottom of the seventh inning leading 9-4. Manager Aaron Boone called upon Bird, but he retired just one of five batters faced, serving up a grand slam to Stowers. Bednar entered and allowed two more runs before the seventh ended, coughing up the lead on a Javier Sanoja solo homer and an Agustín Ramírez RBI double, but he did pitch a scoreless eighth after Anthony Volpe hit a game-tying solo homer in the top of the frame. The Yankees went up 12-10 in the ninth thanks in part to deadline acquisition Jose Caballero (pinch-running for Ben Rice) stealing second base and then scoring on Ryan McMahon’s single, with McMahon coming home on a Volpe double. Doval came on to close with a two-run lead, but after retiring the first batter, he allowed a Sanoja single, a walk, and a two-run single by Xavier Edwards to tie the game. Ramírez then hit a dribbler that didn’t even clear the dirt around home plate, but catcher Austin Wells had to range far enough afield that he couldn’t reach the sliding Edwards, who scored the winning run. The nightmarish Yankee debuts of the day weren’t limited to the trio of relievers; the only reason Edwards had reached third base to begin with was because his single scooted under the glove of Caballero in right field — who’d just scored the go-ahead run in the top of the inning — for an error, allowing the tying run to score and Edwards to advance two bases.

If there’s good news for the Yankees, it’s that they have the league’s second-easiest schedule the rest of the way. Still, their revamped lineup and pitching staff will have to shake the team out of its tailspin. As for Stroman, he’s already beat long odds by carving out a 12-year major league career, as one of only two expansion era pitchers 5-foot-7 or shorter to produce even 1.0 WAR. (Bobby Shantz is the other.) If he’s going to extend that career, however, he’ll have to pitch better than he did for the Yankees.