3 Yankees who will make the 2024 Opening Day roster but won’t last the season

Oswaldo Cabrera

Another possible Swiss Army knife, another bench spot that must be properly utilized if the 2024 Yankees are going to hit their peak.

Injuries will happen. Bench players will find the spotlight. Fourth-stringers will become inexplicably crucial for a team with a $300+ million payroll. Would you rather Oswaldo Cabrera be pressed into duty, or Adam Duvall, who's still yet to sign a big-league contract (Twilight Zone)?

In order to hold onto their roster spots in this particular free agent climate, with so many viable, experienced big-leaguers still on the shelf (Tommy Pham?!), players like Cabrera will not only have to prove that they can cover multiple positions, but that they can do so ably.

In 2022, Cabrera was a revelation, a spark plug who helped carry the Yankees out of their August doldrums and into the postseason, where he stunted on the Cleveland Guardians (and also ran into Aaron Hicks, and also swung-and-missed a ton outside of that one home run). It's now on Cabrera's shoulders to prove that 2022's second half wasn't a fluke, after a fleet of negatives carried over from the postseason. He was mostly limp in 2023, subtracting an astonishing 1.5 bWAR from the Yankees' pursuits.

Given how many things went catastrophically wrong for the 2023 Yankees, it really would be pretty tough for the 2024 roster to be much worse. Cabrera stands out among those with the most to prove. Does he have something special, or can a more experienced face do his job better after being signed off the scrap heap in mid-April?