If you polled 1,000 anonymous Yankees fans at random and asked them the biggest issue with the team in 2026, generalizing it that you could name a player, team figure, or even approach, you’d get a lot of answers.
There’d be a fair amount of Aaron Boone, Brian Cashman, Hal Steinbrenner, and “analytics” answers, but you’d also think that certain positional groups or players would be named as well. The most common player that would probably be individually named would be Austin Wells, who is having an unmitigated disaster of an season to the point where one of my fellow writers mused about the worst position players on a World Series-winning Yankees team.
Indeed, Wells is quickly approaching Yankees infamy. Entering Friday night’s series opener against Atlanta, the 27-year-old backstop has a 59 wRC+, tied for the lowest by a Yankee with at least 250 plate appearances since Austin Romine in 2017 and the third-worst by any Yankee since the last World Series title in 2009. It wasn’t too long ago that it was even worse, as the 33 wRC+ he had through early July would’ve been the worst by any Yankee with 200 PAs since Jim Mason in 1976.
As such, with his struggles encompassing nearly the entire season, it seemed inevitable that some right-handed catcher would come in to take a share of the reps behind the plate at the trade deadline. Names such as Ryan Jeffers, Adley Rutschman, Hunter Goodman, and Tyler Stephenson were all floated, but when the dust settled, the Yankees elected to ignore the catcher position in an absolute stunner.
As if the pressure wasn’t already immense on Wells to produce, the lack of reinforcement has only heightened it. In a lineup that still cannot find a way to get going even after the acquisitions of Luis García Jr. and Heliot Ramos, the scrutiny will only get louder on the parts that fail to get going.
But maybe that pressure can be a good thing for Wells. After all, his best three weeks of the entire season preceded the deadline when everyone and their mother thought he would lose the starting spot he seized from Jose Trevino for good in the summer of 2024. Since July 9th in a span of 19 games and 51 plate appearances, he’s slashing .256/.373/.558 with a 161 wRC+, the best on the team. While this sample represents just one-fifth of his season, the overnight switch flipped in Boston shows that things like these might not just be small sample nonsense.
I can break up Wells’ seasons into three parts:
Part I: Process/plate discipline improved from ’25, results lagged behind
Part II: Six weeks surrounding the cervical headaches that put him on the injured list, where he looks utterly lost
Part III: The revival over the last four weeks; process meets results.
Mr. Wells, who art thou?
Part I
Date: March 25 to May 7
Stats: .195/.336/.310, 87 wRC+, 17.8 BB%, 19.6 K% (107 PA)
The biggest reason why Wells regressed at the plate in 2025 from his strong rookie season was the sharp drop in his plate discipline. His chase, whiff, walk, and strikeout rates all plummeted from average to poor to flat-out bad. To me, improving that aspect of his game was the biggest priority for him in 2026.
And for a while, it worked. Wells was drawing walks, laying off bad pitches, and doing what you want from a guy like him. His quality of contact took a step back as he struggled to put it all together, but the process was where you wanted it to be for a guy with the thump he’s been proven to have:
This version of Wells was getting many hits fall in through May 7 and had an underwhelming slash line, but he had 19 walks to 21 strikeouts in 107 plate appearances. It was the kind of profile you could live with, even if it was disappointing for a guy who was supposed to be a good offensive catcher. But after that day, things went downhill.
Part II
Date: May 8 to July 8
Stats: .105/.141/.147, -24 wRC+, 4.0% BB, 37.0 K% (100 PA)
For two whole months, this looked like a guy who had been picked up from a local beer league and asked to hit in a major league game. He started chasing everything, doing significantly less damage in-zone, and was perhaps the easiest out in the majors. This was where his playing time began to be reduced and where things really started to get bad:
The key with this stretch was Wells going down with cervical headaches on June 6, just as the team aggressively looked to energize the unit with the promotion of Ali Sanchez. We know that said headaches were an issue for up to a week beforehand and that, as the team’s starting catcher, he has endured a beating this season behind the plate. When he came back, things didn’t get better at all in the short term.
It’s hard to blame all of this on the headaches, but when a player has six absolutely horrendous weeks of baseball centered around a neurological issue, you have to take it all with a grain of salt. Think back to the two months of sharp regression we saw out of Anthony Rizzo after his collision with Fernando Tatis Jr. in 2023 before we learned of his brain fog. While Rizzo never functionally recovered, we can see that Wells has.
Here’s a note that defines this stretch. In his first 104 plate appearances of the season, Wells drew 19 walks. He drew just four in these 100 PA’s, with all of them occurring in the first few weeks. He went 50 plate appearances between walks from May 31 to July 9, when a rebirth of sorts occurred.
Part III
Date: July 9 to present
Stats: .256/.373/.558, 161 wRC+, 13.7 BB%, 19.6 K% (51 PA)
The renaissance of Wells’ bat over the past four weeks has been predicated on, well, everything getting way better. His plate discipline has completely recovered and even reached another level. He’s no longer giving away at-bats with lousy strikeouts. He’s seeing pitches, hunting mistakes, and doing damage again. The peripherals back up the numbers.
Is this sustainable? Probably not, based on his true talent level, but the production gives you hope that he can be productive for the remainder of the season. Think of the current lineup and the hypothetical lineup when Judge, Bellinger, and Stanton return. It should be a lot deeper than it currently is, and imagine much the complexion of the bottom of the order changes if you have a Wells that hold his own at the plate.
Ryan McMahon is who he is at third base. George Lombard Jr. has boundless potential but is a rookie at shortstop. Wells, to this point, has been a black hole. For a lineup that will rely on its heavy hitters, they just need the guys at the bottom to not sink the ship, and Wells can go a long way towards achieving that standard. He’s been given all the trust in the world by management, and now he’s got all the pressure in the world on him. Wells must produce down the stretch, because the Yankees have given themselves no other options.
Read the full article here