Why the 2024 Yankees might be better than you think

Last year’s Yankees were, by Yankee standards, a disaster, winning just 82 games and finishing in fourth place for the first time since 1992. Though they weren’t officially eliminated from playoff contention until Sept. 24, their odds dropped below 10% in early August and never recovered. They essentially spent the final two months playing out the string. That word “disaster?” It wasn’t ours. It was Brian Cashman’s, and then they went big this winter on trying to court Yoshinobu Yamamoto … before he chose the Dodgers.

The vibes might not be good, especially with the slumbering Orioles finally making some moves. So imagine our surprise when we turned to the 2024 projected standings at FanGraphs and noticed that the Yankees weren’t just rated well, they’re considered to be good, with a .549 winning percentage, well above last year's .503.

Projections aren’t predictions, and nothing is guaranteed, especially with several big-name free agents remaining on the board. But the numbers have proven to be useful, and as we wait for Spring Training camps to start, it’s a good time to look into why the databases seem to like the Yankees more than, say, Sal from Yonkers calling into WFAN.

“Fans are way too optimistic about teams when everything goes great,” wrote projector Dan Szymborski, when laying out his own Yankees projections, “and way too pessimistic after things have gone awry.”

That’s exactly right. What happened last year doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what happens this year, especially when you consider turnover in rosters and the effects of injury, and as bad as last season was, it still didn’t end up with a losing record for New York. So what do the numbers like this time? Even if we don’t fully agree with them, it’s worth finding out why they're saying what they’re saying.

1) They might now have the two of the four best hitters in baseball.

Right. There’s that. While the disappointment at failing to land Yamamoto is understandable, it also feels like it’s too easy to forget that the Yankees did get Juan Soto, who has a career .946 OPS through age-24, which, as we’ve pointed out many times, is one of the greatest all-time starts to a career ever. (That they may only have him for a single season before free agency is not to be ignored, but is also not particularly relevant when looking just at the 2024 season.)

By Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA, Soto is the top-projected hitter, just ahead of Aaron Judge. FanGraphs’s Steamer projections have Soto first and Judge fourth; the Bat X says Judge first and Soto fourth; ZiPS says Judge and Soto tied for third-best. None of the actual ordering and rankings really matter; what does matter is that they all agree that of the four best hitters in baseball, two wear pinstripes. One of those two, Soto, took 0 plate appearances for the 2023 Yankees, while they were instead giving nearly 1,500 plate appearances to the likes of Willie Calhoun, Jake Bauers, Billy McKinney, Franchy Cordero, and so on. The other, Judge, missed two months due to one of the more freakish of freak injuries.

Put it this way: Soto is projected to be something like a 6-WAR player. So is Judge. Last year’s Yankees outfield was, combined, worth 2.9 WAR, or 25th in the Majors. Yes, that’s saying that the rest of the non-Judge outfielders were, cumulatively, a net negative.

It’s hard to overstate what turning Calhoun, Bauers, McKinney and co. into Soto really means. It’s not hyperbole to say that the Yankees could gain eight to 10 wins just from the outfield, given how poor it was last year.

2) They might have improved their roster the most in the AL.

In addition to Soto, the Yankees completely revamped their outfield, adding an elite defender in Trent Grisham as part of the trade with San Diego and Alex Verdugo in a swap from Boston. (As we wrote at the time of the Padres trade, the team went from having the fourth-worst projected left field/center field spots to the best in the span of four days.) They also signed Marcus Stroman to add depth in the middle of the rotation. It wasn’t all adds, of course; Michael King and several other pitchers went to the Padres for Soto.

While failing to land Yamamoto stings, it also doesn’t really count here, because he was never a part of the organization. In fact, if you look at 2024 projections taken in early November – so after all free agents were no longer part of their 2023 teams – and compare them to the current 2024 projections, you won’t at all be surprised that the Dodgers added the most projected value. You might be surprised to see that the Yankees are next.

That's the effect of adding Soto, Verdugo, Stroman, and Grisham, while losing King.

You’ll notice this doesn’t average to zero, and it’s not supposed to, as most teams have made some positive moves for the upcoming season after losing their free agents. This gives credit to the Phillies for retaining Aaron Nola, who had already reached free agency; it also doesn’t think much of Kansas City’s flurry of veteran moves.

It might be fair to say the Yankees didn't attain all of their goals this winter, so far. It doesn't mean they haven't added a lot of value for 2024, too.

3) Some better health fortune is expected …

Last winter, the Yankees signed the defending AL MVP and a starter who had finished top six in the Cy Young voting in both of the last two seasons. Judge then missed two months with the toe injury, and Carlos Rodón’s Yankees debut could have hardly gone worse, thanks to arm and hamstring injuries before a memorably disastrous end to the season in Kansas City.

Meanwhile, 2022 All-Star Nestor Cortes Jr. missed months with a shoulder issue and had a 4.97 ERA when he was available. Fellow 2022 All-Star Jose Trevino was limited by a wrist injury and had a mere .570 OPS before missing the second half. Aside from Gerrit Cole’s Cy Young season, the year went about as bad as it could have, and still they ended up with only two fewer wins than the D-backs, who represented the NL in the World Series.

What does that mean for 2024? Cortes and Rodón each reported early to train in Tampa, and reportedly are in good health. That trio – Cortes, Rodón and Trevino – combined for 1.6 WAR in 2023. In 2022, they were worth 11 WAR. In 2024, they’re projected for 7.1 WAR. It’s not nearly as good as 2022, when everything went right. It’s not nearly as bad as 2023, when everything went wrong.

You might put it this way: You can’t simply assume that everything will be fine and you’ll get the 2021-22 versions (2.64 ERA in 562 innings) of the two pitchers. You also can’t just assume that 2023 (5.92 ERA in 127 innings) will repeat itself, either.

4) … but there’s not a big rebound expected from Anthony Rizzo or Giancarlo Stanton.

This is key, because if the numbers were based on these two being the long-ago best versions of themselves, they’d be hard to accept. Rizzo, 35 in August, got off to a good start last season (.880 OPS in the first two months) before a May 28 collision caused a concussion. He then posted a .496 OPS over the next two months before being shut down on Aug. 1. Stanton, 34, had his usual injury issues, and posted a career-worst .695 OPS.

Neither is projected to return to big performance in 2024. Rizzo is projected to be the eighth-most valuable Yankees position player, at 1.4 WAR. Stanton is 12th at 0.9 WAR. Take it as a good sign that the positive Yankees projection comes without expecting much from this pair.

5) The rest of the AL didn’t do much.

… yet, anyway. Ask Red Sox fans how they feel about their team right now. The Blue Jays, so far, have whiffed on their big-ticket searches and instead added small pieces around the edges. The Orioles acquiring Corbin Burnes is huge, but he is also the only major piece they have brought in so far aside from Craig Kimbrel, and they’ve lost the injured Félix Bautista and the average-if-unexciting Kyle Gibson. The Rays have also lost more than they’ve gained.

The less said about the AL Central the better, probably, and out West, the only moves of note have been Houston adding Josh Hader and Seattle swapping in and out a number of pieces.

If the Yankees don’t reach this projection, it will be for many of the reasons that plagued them last year – an older, slower, injury-prone roster proves to be old, slow, and injury-prone. (It will not be because of ‘analytics,’ as Cashman correctly pushed back against.) It will be because they had a good offseason but didn’t continue to push even further, though they reportedly extended an offer to Blake Snell. Perhaps, relative to expectations of a “Yamasoto” winter, it’s been a disappointment. That might be going too far. There’s still a lot to like here.