5 starting pitchers Yankees should target via free agency or trade this offseason

The Yankees have the numbers to fill out a five-man starting rotation even before winter business gets percolating, but it’s fanciful to think that any team in modern Major League Baseball can thrive – or even survive – without pitching depth.

Example: Carlos Rodón and Nestor Cortes had injury-plagued seasons in 2023 and they’d at least be projected right now to hold down two of the spots next season behind ace Gerrit Cole. Clarke Schmidt deserves another shot at a slot and Michael King probably pitched his way into the mix as well.

That’s five. But the Yankees had eight pitchers make at least nine starts last season, so Hal Steinbrenner and his minions have some work to do to backfill their starting corps.

If they are successful adding some elite talent – which, frankly, they need – they can shuffle the rotation pecking order and bump an arm or two to the bullpen. Plus, it’s tough keeping five arms healthy through a full season, so a smart team prepares for potential bad news.

Here are five rotation moves the Yankees should at least consider in free agency and on the trade market, depending on how this winter breaks:

Sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto

Even the Yankees seem to have limits when it comes to having mammoth contracts on the books. But Yamamoto might be worth another $200 million or so from the pinstriped vault. He is only 25 years old, an age at which free agent stars just aren’t available. The Yanks could have him as he’s entering his prime, with so many more zeros still to be thrown.

Yamamoto has won the last three Sawamura Awards in Japan, the hardware akin to MLB’s Cy Young. He has a career 1.82 ERA in seven seasons and his Japanese club, the Orix Buffaloes, announced after they lost Game 7 of the Japan Series that they would post him, making him eligible to join an MLB team.

Yamamoto got dinged in his first Japan Series start, but he spiked speculation about how he handles big games with his final start. He threw a complete game with 14 strikeouts in Game 6 for Orix, forcing that deciding Game 7.

He’s too good – and too young in a market where many of the other options are older – for the Yankees to pass on. Yes, even if his contract likely will exceed the record for a Japanese pitcher (the $155 million the Yanks gave Masahiro Tanaka before the 2014 season).

Yamamoto should be the Yankees’ top pitching priority this winter.

Fix the Monty mistake

There are some big names on the pitching market beyond Yamamoto – likely NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell and Aaron Nola might be the biggest. But what if the Yanks instead choose a do-over with a pitcher they developed?

The Yankees did not believe lefty Jordan Montgomery would be a playoff factor for them in 2022, so they tried to upgrade their center field defense by swapping him to St. Louis for Harrison Bader. Since then, Montgomery has bloomed, pitching himself into a pile of money while working for the Cardinals and then as a deadline acquisition for the eventual World Series champion Texas Rangers.

Montgomery, 31 in December, had a 3.20 ERA in 188.2 innings in 2023 and then he sparkled in the postseason, going 3-1 with a 2.90 ERA in six games (five starts). He is no longer a mid-rotation starter and likely will be paid like a difference-maker this winter. The draft nerds in the Yankee organization probably would approve this – since he was traded midseason, he can’t get a qualifying offer, so there’s no draft pick compensation looming.

Assuming Rodón and Cortes are in the rotation, adding Montgomery would give the Yanks three lefty starters. Not such a bad thing in a park with a short porch in right field.

Trade for Shane Bieber

As the winter progresses, we’ll see if the Guardians will really deal their ace, who will be a free agent after the 2024 season. Bieber could’ve been a hot commodity at last season’s trade deadline, but he was hurt and only pitched twice after July 9, making two starts in September. In 21 starts, he had a 3.80 ERA.

Bieber was dominant in 2020, winning the AL Cy Young Award in the pandemic-shortened season. His numbers haven’t been quite as overwhelming since – he struck out 14.2 per nine innings in 2020 but just 7.5 per nine last year. Bieber had a strong 2022 (2.88 ERA), though, and is generally good at suppressing home runs.

He turns 29 in May and is estimated by MLB Trade Rumors to make $12.2 million in his final year of arbitration. The Guardians have moved pitchers close to free agency in the past, so maybe it happens with Bieber, too. Or, Cleveland could hold onto him and see how they’re faring leading up to the trade deadline, when demand could increase.

Call a Philly Special

Nola should get a nice contract this winter and maybe the Yanks ought to be the team giving it to him. There’s risk – he’ll be 31 in June, he gave up a career-high 32 homers last season, and he’s probably never going to be the same pitcher who was third in the NL Cy Young voting in 2018.

But Nola has provided at least 180 innings pitched in each of the last five full MLB seasons, including 200-plus in three of them. The Yankees could use another reliable starter, no? Plus, Nola seems comfortable in big moments, especially after the Phillies' run to the World Series in 2022 and the NLCS this year. This year, he was 3-1 with a 2.35 ERA in the postseason, including scoreless starts of seven and six innings.

His strikeouts fell to 9.4 per nine innings this season, the lowest since his rookie year in 2015. But he’s generally good at limiting walks and he’s never relied too much on outsized velocity to get outs. He throws five pitches and maybe his craft will help him continue to get outs, even as he gets older.

Try a reclamation project

Every transaction can’t be a blockbuster. Neither can every suggestion. So maybe the Yankees can look to hit pitching Lotto with a bounce back type in what would be a complementary move. Luis Severino profiles as a guy who just might do better with a fresh start elsewhere or he’d be our pick.

Instead, what if the Yankees signed Lance Lynn and told their pitching coaches, “Get busy with this guy.” Yeah, he’s coming off a mostly poor season and he needs to fix the home run problem (an MLB-worst 44) that flared last season.

But the Yanks could hope Lynn, 36, can continue to get strikeouts (he had 191 in 183.2 innings this year for the White Sox and Dodgers, only 19 pitchers had more). And that he reverts to his track record.

Lynn, who was one of just 28 pitchers to make at least 32 starts in 2023, is just one season removed from a four-year stretch in which he had a 3.42 ERA. He also owns a career ERA-plus of 112. Yes, he had an unmemorable stint in pinstripes in 2018, but it probably wasn’t as bad as you might remember (4.14 ERA, 10.1 K/9, two homers allowed in 54.1 innings). And he went on to get Cy Young votes in the next three seasons, finishing fifth, sixth and third.

This isn’t “Sign Lynn and bag Yamamoto or Nola.” It’s more to make the point that there can be different routes to finding pitching help. Can the Yankees be smart enough to find the right turnaround candidate? Maybe if it’s not Lynn, it’s Lucas Giolito.