Trent Grisham Staying is Positive for Yankees

It's less about Grisham's abilities and more about the fact that Hal Steinbrenner is the owner, and the prevailing thought is that he will have a self-imposed cap this winter. This is an owner who said you can win a World Series without a $300 million payroll. It's true, but coming from him, it sounds like he was trying to convince himself of that more than anybody else.

The Positives of Grisham

Budgets and Steinbrenners aside, there's upside to one year of Grisham. For one, there's reason to believe his 2025 wasn't a fluke. He may not hit more than thirty home runs again, but his peripherals showed that of a player legitimately clobbering baseballs.

Grisham had a 91.1 MPH average exit velocity, 14.2% barrel rate, a 46.4% hard hit rate, a .481 expected slugging percentage, and .366 expected w0BA. On top of hammering baseballs, few were better at drawing a walk than Grisham in MLB. He had a 14.1% walk rate.

Grisham wasn't a guy with a prototypical swing built for Yankee Stadium who ran into a few either. That short porch didn't factor into Grisham's season. He was a better road hitter than he was at home.

On the road, Grisham blasted 21 home runs. He hit .269/.367/.537 with a 151 wRC+. His home numbers looked more like his typical career numbers heading into last season. At Yankee Stadium, he had 13 homers and hit .195/.326/.376 with a 104 wRC+.

The funny thing about Grisham's profile isn't whether he'll hit again next year. It was his defensive numbers that took a dive. It's fair to wonder whether he's better suited as a corner outfielder at this point. At centerfield in 2025, Grisham had -11 defensive runs saved and -2 outs above average. What do those numbers look like in 2026?

Granted, if he's hitting over 20 home runs and his defense is good enough to pass the eye test, the Yankees will take it. That may be good enough for a two-to-three WAR season by Fangraphs and Baseball Reference.

Signing Cody Bellinger

If the Yankees should have any worries about their outfielders who hit free agency, Grisham's one year should come with little risk. If he's bad, then they'll give Spencer Jones a shot. That was going to happen without Grisham, and now the inevitable may get pushed back a bit.

The big worry should be what that Cody Bellinger contract may look like, and whether the Yankees will add years to it to drive down the AAV. They did it with DJ LeMahieu, and that hurt them from the moment the ink dried on that deal. It could happen with Bellinger.

He has been up and down since his MVP season in 2019. Following that year, Bellinger went through a 295-game stretch, where he hit .203/.272/.376 with a 78 wRC+.

He rebounded in 2023 with a 135 wRC+, crashed back to earth with a 108 wRC+ in 2024, then rebounded again as a Yankee with a 125 wRC+. In 2025, his 4.9 WAR, according to Fangraphs, was his highest since that 2019 season. Much of his value came from stellar defense.

Another red flag is that, unlike Grisham, Bellinger has weak peripherals. He had an 88.3 MPH average exit velocity, 7.5% barrel rate, 37.9% hard hit rate, a 417 xSLG, and .322 xw0BA.

Between concerning underlying numbers and his inconsistency from one year to the next, that Bellinger deal can age poorly, and it can happen fast. There is way more risk there, and any meltdown from fans at seeing him land a five-to-seven-year deal in the Bronx would be justified. It would be as if the ghost of Jacoby Ellsbury came back to haunt them.

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