Yankees news: Four-man rotation to start the season

The Athletic | Chris Kirschner: (subscription required) Following yesterday’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies, the New York Yankees announced their rotation to start the season: Max Fried, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren, and Ryan Weathers. Notably absent, of course, was 2024 AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil. With the number of days off during the first week and a half of the season, the Yankees can get away with a four-man rotation the first two times through the order.

At this point, it’s unclear whether Gil — who has been working with Matt Blake to change the release point on his fastball, in the hopes of turning it back into the out pitch it was in the first half of 2024 — will break camp with the big league club, working as a piggyback behind Weathers, or with the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, allowing the Yankees to bring an extra reliever.

SNY.com | Alex Smith: Facing a roster crunch, the Yankees traded infielder Jorbit Vivas, who is out of options, to the Washington Nationals yesterday afternoon (as Michael covered for us). In exchange, they received pitching prospect Sean Paul Liñan (Washington’s 27th overall prospect, according to MLB Pipeline), who was acquired from the Dodgers in their Trade Deadline swing for Alex Call, and whose fastball is lacking but whose changeup has screwball-like qualities and has been compared to Devin William’s famous Airbender.

MLB.com | Bryan Hoch: With Grapefruit League action coming to a close yesterday (the games today and tomorrow are, technically, not spring training matchups, but exhibitions), the Yankees announced this year’s James P. Dawson Award winner, given to the most outstanding rookie in spring training. To nobody’s surprise, pitching prospect Carlos Lagrange, whose performance put him on the map nationally and which forced difficult conversations about whether or not the Yankees ought to have him start the season with the big-league club, was this year’s award recipient.

Lastly, in case you’re curious, a few old Yankees friends on the bubble received some news over the weekend about whether or not they made their teams out of spring training. MLB Trade Rumors helps out on the rapid-fire:

• Jonathan Loáisiga cracked the Diamondbacks bullpen as a non-roster invitee to spring training.

• The Phillies picked up one erstwhile Yankees reliever and demoted another, with Tim Mayza joining their ’pen on a minor-league deal and Lou Trivino getting assigned to Triple-A.

• Also in the not-so-lucky bunch alongside Trivino, Gio Urshela and Austin Slater were released by the Twins and Tigers, respectively.

• These notes are a few days old, but Ian Hamilton did not make the Braves’ bullpen and was outrighted to Triple-A Gwinnett, and the Red Sox signed Tommy Kahnle to a minor-league deal after his appearance in the World Baseball Classic. It’s likely that the changeup specialist will need to open 2026 at Triple-A to tune up.

• The worst news might go to Mike Tauchman, who was on track to join the Mets as a fourth outfielder but instead suffered a meniscus tear in his knee. Ouch. Condolences to the ol’ Sock Man.