Yankees To Open Season With Four-Man Rotation

The New York Yankees will open the 2026 season with a four-pitcher starting rotation, the team announced on Sunday. It will include, at least for the first two weeks of the year, Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, Ryan Weathers, and Will Warren, leaving out former AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil. The 27-year-old right-hander might even start the season with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, according to Manager Aaron Boone.

Boone cited the four off days New York has throughout their first 13 games as the main reason behind a four-person rotation. Gil, unfortunately, did not have a great spring: across 19 1/3 innings, he had a 4.66 ERA, which is not good but still much better than that of Weathers, who had an ERA of 11.68 in 12 1/3 spring innings. However, the Yankees have mentioned multiple times how excited they are about Weathers’ underlying metrics, so that leaves Gil as the odd man out.

Understaffed

The Yankees are notoriously understaffed in terms of starting pitchers, at least to start the year on Wednesday against the San Francisco Giants. Not only is Gerrit Cole unavailable until mid-April at the earliest, but Carlos Rodon and Clarke Schmidt are both also out to start the year. That leaves at least two spots open for at least the first month or so of regular-season action, which makes it an interesting move for the Yankees to purposely cut down their own number of starters.

Then again, New York should know by now that injuries, especially with pitchers, are far too common to take any risks. So, perhaps they will keep Gil on the big league roster in the case of an injury. It makes sense that the Yankees might be worried about Gil starting the season in the rotation, though, being that he missed the first four months of 2025 with a lat strain and struggled with finding his command towards the end of the season and into the postseason.

Decisions, Decisions

Deciding whether or not to use Gil out of the bullpen could affect another pitcher who is still vying for a spot in New York’s major league ‘pen. So far, Boone has stated that the guarantees for New York’s ‘pen are Paul Blackburn, Tim Hill, David Bednar, Ryan Yarbrough, Fernando Cruz, and Camilo Doval. That leaves Brent Headrick, Jake Bird, Cade Winquest, and Osvaldo Bido as the remaining potential relievers. With less than three days until the season begins, New York still has some big decisions to make that could affect the entire outcome of 2026.