2025 Team Previews - New York Yankees
As part of my 2025 team previews series, I go through all fantasy-relevant players on the New York Yankees ahead of the 2025 season.
Check out the intro and team links page here.
Intro
Hating the Yankees was a feature of my teenage years. Luckily for me, I have grown the hell up, and now I don’t care about the Yankees either way. But fine, I’ll show you the picture again:
Here you see me and Producer Lee when we were 16 or something. Lee liked the Yankees; I did not. So I got this “Yankees Suck!” t-shirt and wore it one day. Some kid told a teacher on me for wearing an inappropriate shirt, and I had to wear it inside out for the rest of the day. I’m pretty sure there were several kids having sex with each other and doing drugs in the bathroom while I was inverting my t-shirt, but whatever, I’ll bear that cross. It’s not like I’m still mad about it or anything.
Let’s just start the team preview.
Roster
The Bombers were unable to re-sign Juan Soto, but they quickly got back to work and ended up with a pretty solid roster as we enter the 2025 season.
The lineup is not one I think will lead the league in runs, although a lot is possible when you have Aaron Judge. Chisholm and Stanton are quite good when healthy, and they don’t have a true weak spot here besides probably third base.
The strength of the team appears to be the pitching staff. They added on Max Fried to make their top three very strong. The bottom two are decently strong as well.
I like their chances of another playoff berth this year, and they’d probably be my pick for the division crown as well. But there is plenty of injury risk on this roster, so things could go south in a hurry if they are unfortunate on that front.
Hitters
Aaron Judge
Age: 32
Pos: OF
I can see the light at the end of the tunnel here. I am so close to being done with the team previews, and that will be a huge load off my back. Because of that, these write-ups on the known commodities are going to get pretty short.
The question with Judge is just about how much you can be worth without providing many steals. Judge has reached a new high in ADP at three. He’s going after Witt Jr. and Ohtani. That can feel a little weird for a guy coming off of a season with just ten steals, but then you see the 58 homers, the 122 runs, the 144 RBI, and the .322 batting average, and you get it.
It’s not as though he needs to repeat all of that to be worth the #3 overall pick, which is good - because he’s not going to repeat all of that. Not only will there be natural regression to the mean (144 RBI is such an outlier), but Soto is gone now and that changes a pitcher’s approach to Judge.
You can see that natural regression in his recent career. He hit 62 bombs in 2022 with a .311 batting average. That got him well into the first round, and then he turned in a 37-homer season in 2023 with just a .267 batting average.
Judge needs to hit at least .290 with 40+ homers and 120+ RBI to justify the #3 pick, and I think it’s probably pretty close to 50/50 on whether he can do that or not.
All of that said, it’s basically impossible to find someone who can hit 40 homers and not hurt you in any other category. Only Judge and Ohtani project above 40 homers, and it’s hard not to drive in a ton of runs when you’re hitting that many bombs. I’m fine with Judge at #3.
Rank
Projection
665 PA, 107 R, 48 HR, 114 RBI, 8 SB, .279/.421/.614, $20.54 roto value
Jazz Chisholm Jr.
Age: 27
Pos: 3B/OF
Chisholm escaped Miami at the trade deadline and ended up turning in a very good season.
621 PA, .253/.320/.432, 24 HR, 40 SB, 24.5% K%, 8.5% BB%
That was the best work of his career, and that was mostly because he stayed fully healthy for the first time.
He improved his strikeout rate significantly, dropping to 24.5%, a very competitive number. Let’s check these team splits:
MIA: .244/.319/.402, 24.9% K%, 33.0 PA/HR, 28.3% SB Att%
NYY: .273/.325/.500, 23.6% K%, 17.3 PA/HR, 45.5% SB Att%
He really took off after putting the pinstripes on. That could have had something to do with randomness, or it could have just been that he was re-invigorated and re-focused by the new team. I could see both.
The bad news was that his xBA for the year was just .233, his xwOBA was short of elite at .318, and he kept hitting ground balls with a 50% GB%.
He has 82nd-percentile sprint speed and 54th-percentile bat speed, so I can believe in a repeat of the 20-40 season we saw last year, but I do think there’s some risk with the guy. I could see the K% coming back up, and the power profile isn’t all that great on him with that higher GB% and lower EV marks.
The verdict is that Chisholm is a top-three third baseman for fantasy purposes this year. He will also likely add second base eligibility pretty quickly as he takes over for Gleyber Torres there. That makes him a 2B/3B/OF guy, and that’s very valuable in a lot of league types.
Rank
Projection
629 PA, 90 R, 25 HR, 79 RBI, 32 SB, .235/.303/.418, $11.32 roto value
Austin Wells
Age: 26
Pos: C
Wells broke into the Majors last year, claimed the job at catcher, and did not give it back. He’ll come into 2025 as their backstop, and the fantasy upside is pretty interesting. The stats from his MLB time last year:
409 PA, .229/.324/.398, 13 HR, 1 SB
That’s a decent 31 PA/HR, and he kept the strikeouts well under control at 21%. In the minors from 2023-2024:
429 PA, .240/.333/.442, 17 HR, 6 SB, 22.6% K%, 11.2% BB%
Let’s get into some of the skills stuff:
Brl%: 9.1%
xwOBA: .341
xBA: .246
GB%: 37%
EV90: 103.8
Max EV: 111.2
So he’s a catcher who can make contact and get balls in the air. That’s a good thing, especially as a lefty in Yankees Stadium, hitting behind Aaron Judge.
I can’t say Wells is safe, and he’s certainly not my favorite catcher target, but he does have more upside than most of the guys remaining after the first couple of tiers are gone.
Rank
Projection
437 PA, 52 R, 17 HR, 53 RBI, 4 SB, .235/.319/.428, $4.65 roto value
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