Rotation Grades: One of MLB's Best Staffs

This was a very strong season for the Yankees’ starting staff, but one can only imagine how much better it could have been if it was fully operational. Lets get to it.

When Cam Schlittler came up from Triple-A to join the rotation in early July and performed as superbly as he did, it kind of made me a little sick to my stomach because I couldn’t help but think of what could have been with this Yankees rotation.

Can you imagine a starting five of Schlittler, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried, Carlos Rodon, and Clarke Schmidt, with depth options being Luis Gil and Will Warren? That is one formidable group, and it arguably might have been the best group in MLB.

Alas, Cole missed the entire season because of a Tommy John surgery, Schmidt missed two-thirds of it because of the same surgery - poor Tommy John that his name is affixed to such a bad thing for pitchers - and Gil also missed two-thirds because of a lat strain.

Schlittler’s sparkling debut covered some of the void, and Warren - while he was certainly volatile - actually performed much better than anyone expected given what we saw when he came up in 2024 and got hammered.

And of course Fried and Rodon at the top were outstanding as they each finished in the top six of the Cy Young balloting with nearly identical statistical seasons that carried the Yankees all season.

The rotation produced a cumulative 3.61 ERA which ranked fourth in MLB, the batting average against of .224 was second-best, and their 100 home runs allowed was fifth-fewest. The WHIP of 1.200 was only eighth because while the starters allowed just 730 hits which was tied for fourth-fewest, the one thing this group was not good at was walks as they issued 320 which was fourth-most in MLB.

Max Fried: A

In the first year of his eight-year, $218 million contract, the lefty was tremendous. In 22 of his 32 starts he allowed two or fewer earned runs, he got through at least six innings in 21 starts, he yielded just 14 home runs, and he earned the fourth Gold Glove of his career.

He had a baffling stretch from July 1 through Aug. 16 where he made eight starts and the Yankees lost five of the games during which his ERA was a horrendous 6.80 and that was pretty important because while it wasn’t all Fried’s fault, that was the turning point of the season for the Yankees.

On July 1 he got hammered by the Blue Jays and the Yankees lead in the division dwindled to one game. On July 23 the by then division-leading Jays crushed him again, and in the last shit start in that run on Aug. 16 he gave up a season-worst seven earned runs to the Cardinals. Even though the Yankees still won that game, they were 6.5 games out and while they eventually tied Toronto, the season series went to the Jays.

All that said, Fried had a great year and I’m certainly not blaming him for the Yankees failing to win the division.

Carlos Rodon: A

Sometimes it felt like in 2025 that Rodon was kind of just getting by in his starts, but then you looked up when Aaron Boone took him out and by and large, he had a pretty damn good outing. He and Warren tied for the AL lead with 33 starts each and Rodon’s .188 batting average against and 6.1 hits-per-nine were both second-best in MLB behind only Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers. Crazy, right?

His 1.049 WHIP ranked 10th, he had 21 starts where he went at least six innings after doing that just 19 times in his first two seasons with the team (albeit 2023 was only half a season), and he had 22 starts where he allowed two earned runs or fewer. The Yankees went only 19-14 in his starts, but he was 18-9 which shows that in a few of those games, the bullpen failed him leading to five losses.

Rodon can be a bit polarizing, but he’s been really good for the last two years and his six-year, $162 million contract is now looking a little bit like a bargain.

Will Warren: B-

I did not see this coming after his ugly 2024 MLB debut season when he made five starts across one month late in the summer and had a 9.55 ERA in those games. I think we were all thinning that if this is one of the guys the Yankees truly believed was a future rotation piece, then their farm system must be in a world of trouble.

However, Warren stepped up when Gil was unavailable at the start of the season and wound up staying in the rotation all season, tying Rodon for the AL lead with 33 starts. His average of 9.48 strikeouts per nine innings ranked 15th among all MLB starters and he matched Fried with 21 starts with two earned runs or fewer.

His ERA of 4.44 was inflated, but that’s because he had three colossal clunkers against the Blue Jays, Dodgers and Red Sox where he allowed a combined 21 earned runs. Otherwise, his ERA would have been under 4.00. And his WHIP of 1.374 was too high because teams did hit him as he allowed 8.8 hits per nine, but all in all, Warren was probably better than any other team’s No. 5-type starter.

Luis Gil: C+

Gil’s season was basically ruined because he got hurt in spring training and when he returned, he simply wasn’t the same pitcher that won the 2024 AL rookie of the year award. But what’s a little troublesome is that Gil’s has been trending the wrong way since the end of May 2024 when he won the AL pitcher of the month award. His ERA from June to the end of that season was 4.92, and while this season it was pretty good at 3.32 in his 14 starts, his command was mostly terrible.

Look at that walk rate of 5.2 per nine innings; that’s untenable, and for his career it now stands at 4.9 across his 47 starts. He has to get that under control, literally. And another thing I didn’t like is that after striking out 10.1 batters per nine in 2024, that dropped to 6.5 in 2025. He just didn’t have the same zip on any of his pitches. This is a big upcoming year for Gil as he needs find some consistency.

Clarke Schmidt: B-

This guy drives me nuts. There is no doubt he can be a very good No. 3-type pitcher for the Yankees, but he simply can’t stay healthy. He’s made just 30 starts across the last two years, and when he’s out there, he’s terrific as he has a combined ERA of 3.07 with a WHIP of 1.140 and a hits allowed per nine of 7.0. That’s almost All-Star worthy stuff.

But Schmidt does the team no good when he’s rehabbing, and he’ll be doing that probably through July of 2026 and by the time he returns, you have to wonder how much he can actually give the Yankees in those last couple months and then October. Tommy John usually take time beyond their return to actually get back to 100%, meaning 2027 for Schmidt.

Before he got hurt he had a five-start stretch from May 28-June 21 where his ERA was 0.84 as he gave up no earned runs in four of those games. That’s what he’s capable of, but we just don’t get to see it enough.

Cam Schlittler: A-

Oh, we can only hope that what he did in the second half of the season can be replicated in 2026 and beyond. He was a lightning bolt from the sky when he showed up after Schmidt went on the injured list. He made 14 starts and delivered a 2.96 ERA, a starter-best 10.4 strikeouts per nine rate which would have ranked sixth in MLB if he had enough innings to qualify, and then he dominated the Red Sox in that epic wild-card deciding Game 3 where he threw eight shutout innings and struck out 12.

It’ll be a tough act for Schlittler to follow as he heads into his first full season as now teams at least have a book on him. But with a 100 mph fastball, that’s power the Yankees haven’t had in a starter in quite a while. Now, the trick will be to find more consistency with his other pitches which would make that heater even more deadly.