Yankees Add Randal Grichuk To Fill a Niche in Their Outfield

When the Yankees re-signed Cody Bellinger in late January, they more or less committed to running back the same outfield they used in 2025. And why not? Even with limited contributions from their reserves, the primary trio of Bellinger, Trent Grisham, and Aaron Judge combined to produce a major league-high 16.6 WAR. But with secondary roles still up for grabs, New York added outfielder Randal Grichuk to its options last week, signing the 34-year-old veteran to a minor league deal with a non-roster invitation to spring training.

The signing of Grichuk isn’t exactly out of left field, so to speak. While the Yankees do have 23-year-old switch-hitter Jasson Domínguez — who spent all of last season with the Yankees and made 93 starts in left but was reduced to a bench role by September — and 24-year-old prospect Spencer Jones on their 40-man roster, both have minor league options remaining (two for the former, three for the latter). If the primary trio is healthy, and if primary designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton is able to answer the bell often enough (yes, that’s a load-bearing if), the Yankees would prefer that their youngsters continue to develop by playing regularly, if not in the Bronx than at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes Barre.

“I would concede it’s in his best interest to be getting everyday reps,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said in mid-February regarding Domínguez, who placed 16th on our Top 100 Prospects List last spring as a 55-FV prospect despite having been moved from center field to left, then hit a modest .257/.331/.388, (103 wRC+) in 429 plate appearances. While the Yankees tolerated worse from left fielder Alex Verdugo in 2024, when Domínguez was coming off Tommy John surgery on his right (throwing) elbow, between his league-average offense and his struggles in left field (-7 DRS, -9 FRV in 793 innings), he was an afterthought in September. He made just four starts and totaled 20 plate appearances in the final month of the regular season, before getting just one postseason plate appearance. (He made the most of it, lacing a leadoff double into the right-center gap in the bottom of the ninth inning of an elimination game with the Yankees down four runs.) Domínguez’s 0.6 WAR — which matched Verdugo’s 2024 output in about 200 fewer plate appearances — indicates he still has enough to work on to justify another stint in the minors.

“We’ll just have to wait and see how the spring shakes out, who’s standing, and then we’ll make the appropriate decisions when we have our meetings close to the end of camp,” Cashman said in that same mid-February interview. “There’s flexibility in the roster with a lot of players that we can do a lot of different things with, whether they’re going north with us or going to Triple A.”

Enter the righty-swinging Grichuk, who split last season between the Diamondbacks and Royals, the last of those his fifth team in a five-season span, following the Blue Jays (for whom he played from 2018–21), the Rockies (2022–23), the Angels (2023, his first major league games with the team that chose him one pick ahead of Mike Trout in 2009), and the Diamondbacks (2024–25). Grichuk was exceptionally effective with Arizona in 2024, batting .291/.348/.528 (139 wRC+) with 12 home runs and 1.6 WAR in 279 plate appearances, but he slipped to .240/.277/.457 (96 wRC+) with seven homers in 188 plate appearances before being traded to the Royals for pitching prospect Andrew Hoffmann on July 28. Things went from bad to worse for Grichuk in Kansas City, as he hit just .206/.267/.299 (56 wRC+) with two homers in 105 plate appearances. He was exactly replacement level with the Diamondbacks, and 0.4 wins below replacement level with the Royals.

Grichuk’s ability to hit lefties has always been his calling card, and he had been particularly strong in that department until last year. For his career, he owns a .268/.318/.500 (118 wRC+) slash line in 1,672 plate appearances against lefties, compared to .241/.287/.446 (92 wRC+) in 3,161 times up against righties. From 2022–2024, he was exceptional when facing southpaws, but last year, he was actually worse against them than he was against righties for the first time since 2017, his second major league season:

Particularly against lefties, Grichuk’s performance against four-seam fastballs fell off. From 2022–24, he batted .359 and slugged .634 against such pitches, including a .377 average and .698 slugging percentage in ’24. Last year, he slipped to a .222 average and .407 slugging percentage against four-seamers from lefties, though to be fair, his expected stats (.268 xAVG and .533 xSLG) were still respectable.

On that note, Grichuk actually made much better contact against pitchers of both hands last year than his actual stats would suggest:

If he had enough batted ball events to qualify, Grichuk’s average exit velocity would have placed in the 92nd percentile, his hard-hit rate in the 85th percentile, and his barrel rate in the 74th percentile. His pull rate was in the 44% range for the third straight year, and his 22% pulled air rate was just a bit below what it was 2024 (23.3%). But for the first time since 2017, he undershot on both his slugging percentage and his wOBA relative to his expected stats. His 56-point shortfall in the former would have grazed the top 20 and his 37-point deficiency in the latter would have cracked the top 10.

Given Grichuk’s track record and a reason to believe he was better than his stats showed, it’s understandable that some team would take a chance on him. For the Yankees, he could serve as something of a platoon partner for the lefty-swinging Grisham. In 2025, Grisham set career highs with 34 home runs, a 129 wRC+, and 3.2 WAR while batting .235/.348/.464 overall, but he hit just .182/.303/.348 (88 wRC+) in 153 plate appearances against lefties, his third year out of four with a sub-100 wRC+ in that context. His career splits are basically level (103 wRC+ against lefties, 102 against righties), but that trend is a turn for the worse, and it remains to be seen if the same is true for his defense following career-low marks of -3 FRV and -11 DRS. The Yankees might prefer to take advantage of a defensive alignment with Grichuk in left and Bellinger — the majors’ most effective lefty against lefties last year — sliding over to center now and again.

Grichuk’s arrival points to one of Domínguez’s glaring shortcomings. While he was quite solid against righties last season, he was anemic against lefties:

Not only did Domínguez struggle to make contact against southpaws, his contact wasn’t very good when he did; he averaged just an 86.7-mph exit velocity with a 1.7% barrel rate, 41.7% hard-hit rate, and .281 xSLG against them, compared to an average 91.8-mph exit velo with an 8.6% barrel rate, 51.9% hard-hit rate, and .399 xSLG against righties.

The Yankees tried to compensate for Domínguez’s struggle against lefties at the deadline last year, acquiring righty-swinging Austin Slater from the White Sox on July 30. A left hamstring strain and a 3-for-25 showing when he was available pushed Slater to the margins, though prior to his signing with the Tigers last month, the Yankees did offer him a major league deal.

So long as Grichuk lives up to expectations this spring, it appears Domínguez is slated to try shoring up his game in the minors, and the same is likely true for Jones. The 6-foot-7, 240-pound lefty is known for his plus-plus raw power, but his stock has fallen considerably since he placed 15th on our 2024 Top 100 Prospects list as a 55-FV center fielder, even after he went on a 13-homers-in-19-games binge last summer following his promotion to Scranton/Wilkes Barre from Double-A Somerset. For the season, he hit .274/.362/.571 with 35 home runs, but he also struck out 35.4% of the time; at Triple-A, he had a 35.5% chase rate and just a 72% zone contact rate. Notably, those numbers were not enough for him to shed the 45+ FV grade he slipped to last year while sliding out of the Top 100, with a Prospect TLDR that likened him to “a Franchy Cordero type of player.”

“He’s an exciting young talent that’s, again, unproven at the Major League level,” Cashman said of Jones in the wake of Bellinger’s return in January. “We’re going to find out at some point — or somebody else would find out at some point, if they pry him away from me.”

That statement obviously points to the possibility of a trade down the road, but while Cashman may be listening offers, he still has the slugger on his radar. “I think Domínguez and Spencer Jones are just looking to make a name for themselves and make sure that people take notice of them, and then we’ll act accordingly,” he said on Saturday. By that point, Jones had homered three times in his first four Grapefruit League appearances, off the Tigers’ Keider Montero, the Braves’ Austin Pope, and the Twins’ Raul Brito, in case you’re wondering about the caliber of competition.

Whatever near-term opportunity arises for either youngster probably depends upon the availability of the 36-year-old Stanton, who hit a thunderous .273/.350/.594 (158 wRC+) with 24 home runs in just 281 plate appearances last year, his best season since 2021 — all after missing the Yankees’ first 70 games due to bilateral epicondylitis, which is a double case of tennis elbow. The issue is one of pain management; Stanton told reporters last week that he’s still dealing with the problem, which makes day-to-day activities difficult. “You have your good days and bad days, just like your mood and everything,” he said. “I can’t open a bottle… I can’t open a bag of chips… a bag of anything. That’s the way it is.”

While Stanton could have undergone offseason surgery to clean up the tendons in his elbows that are placed under so much stress, he apparently doesn’t believe the trade-off is worth it, and remains especially guarded in sharing details. “What’s written (about my elbows) is what me and the Yankees give you,” he said.

Stanton has averaged just 101 games over the past four seasons and has shown no signs of backing down from swinging harder than anyone else; his 80.6-mph average swing speed was 1.8 mph ahead of the official (qualified) leader, Oneil Cruz, with the 11th-ranked Colson Montgomery (77.0 mph) as close to Cruz as Cruz is to Stanton. Stanton’s 97.3% fast swing rate is over 16 percentage points ahead of second-ranked Junior Caminero. His 94.4-mph average exit velocity ranked fourth among batters with at least 100 batted ball events, with his 22.1% barrel rate third and his 55.2% hard-hit rate 11th.

Thus, the Yankees will try to get as much as they can out of Stanton without overtaxing him. That would probably mean an ample number of days off, with Judge DHing and a Grichuk-Grisham-Bellinger outfield. The calculus is different if Stanton lands on the injured list or can only produce at the level he did from 2022–24 (.212/.291/.454,107 wRC+) while dealing with an assortment of leg injuries, but a hundred games at something approaching his 2025 level would be more than welcome.

The Yankees are sometimes criticized for overhyping their prospects, but the way they’ve handled Domínguez and Jones is an acknowledgment that they’re far from finished products. While the hope is that they develop enough to force their way into the big league lineup, with the addition of Grichuk, Cashman has fortified the roster while taking some of the pressure off the kids.