5 forgotten free agents Yankees should chase (and 1 total wild card)

Free agency has officially opened. So where do the New York Yankees go from here? Well, they'll be championship contenders, obviously. If they can only rework the rotation, find lefties for the lineup, add a left fielder, craft a bench, and play better baseball across the board, they should be OK.

The Yankees will never tear it all down and rebuild from a baseline of dirt, but you'd be foolish to think a few $200 million contracts could paper over all of these roster deficiencies. No. 5 starters always seem to find crucial moments. The biggest at-bat of the biggest game of the year occasionally goes to the fourth guy on the bench. This isn't the NBA. You can't design things so Aaron Judge gets the last shot.

Championships are won with depth, and while the top of the free agent market is fairly brutal this winter (especially in left field), there are helpful names buried beneath the surface who can help the Yankees' championship pursuit -- or at least make the playoffs a fair expectation and add intrigue to the regular season again.

5 underrated free agents the 2024 Yankees should be targeting (and, yes, 1 crazy name)

Adam Duvall, Wherever You Want Him in the OF

The Yankees should've seen all they needed to see when the Red Sox signed this reliable launcher and watched him nearly lead their undermanned roster to the promised land singlehandedly last season.

Duvall shattered his wrist on an early April dive in frigid weather in Detroit, but if not for his premature departure, Boston might've accidentally made the playoffs on the back of a one-year flyer. That's what we call "Living the Dream."

Duvall, who can play center, left, or right if you demand it, hit .247 with 21 bombs and a 119 OPS+ in 320 at-bats. Properly evaluating his season required the Eye Test, though, much like Justin Turner's. If you needed a blast, Duvall would deliver. If you were a three-run homer away from making a game competitive, Duvall would smash the baseball exactly as far as you required him to. It was almost uncanny.

The Yankees might not get a replicant season from Duvall, but even if he were a lesser player than the one who hit a torrid .455 with a 1.544 OPS in April, he'd still be a money fit in an undermanned outfield for ~$10 million a year. Hopefully, they could convince him to take the call while plainly admitting that, no, they wouldn't be willing to move the Green Monster to the Bronx.

Martín Pérez, LHP

You may not want Martín Pérez taking the ball in the season's most important series, and his cameo in the 2023 World Series didn't exactly earn him a ring. But steadiness is the name of the left-hander's game, even if he isn't likely to repeat his All-Star 2022 season.

Yankee fans might want to aim higher, but you'd be foolish not to prep for a sixth starter who isn't named "Uhh, Who Started in Scranton Five Days Ago???" The worst-case in adding the 32-year-old Pérez is that he remains a ~4.40 ERA pitcher who absorbs innings in blowouts as he attempts to transition into a potential left-handed relief role for the final years of his career. The best-case? He soaks up 150 innings and turns the fifth turn in the rotation from a mysterious cesspool into something that's taken care of.

Pérez is a regular-season addition rather than a postseason option, but failing to plan is planning to fail, and there's 100% chance the lefty's number gets called if the Yankees sign him, even if they squeeze him out of the rotation and towards the bottom of the depth chart before Opening Day.

Kiké Hernández, Wherever You Want Him (But Preferably Not SS)

Unfortunately, this list is overflowing with Red Sox of the past like a bad dream. But what better team to plunder from than the one we've hate-watched for decades? Any Yankee fan who pretends not to follow the daily machinations of the Red Sox is kidding themselves. If that's "rent-free," then fine. They wouldn't pay rent if I asked them to, anyway. Too many English soccer stars to sign.

Hernández has long been viewed as a postseason catalyst, and rightly so. For whatever reason, Boston's beloved manager Alex Cora miscast him as a starting shortstop last season after Trevor Story's injury, and it went extremely poorly. He was a defensive liability with the weight of the fan base on his shoulders, and his versatile offense disappeared (like some kind of Bostonian IKF).

But just two years ago, he was a playoff dynamo, threatening to have the greatest postseason ever during Boston's improbable (and infuriating) run to the ALCS. After hitting 20 bombs during the regular season, most of them clutch, he hit .450 with a pair of homers to help defeat the Rays, then .385 with three more longballs in a doomed series against the Astros.

This fall, after being shipped back to LA, he regained his mojo, hitting .375 in the Diamondbacks' three-game sweep of the Dodgers and showing up when his entire team refused to. Los Angeles should re-sign him after he raised his OPS from .599 to .731 down the stretch in Dodger Town, but if they're too brazen to get that done, the Yankees should sprinkle some of his unique magic on their season.

Ji-Man Choi, 1B

We'll forgive you if you lost track of Choi after the Rays traded him away prior to Opening Day. Predictably, the 32-year-old had his first below-average offensive season since 2016 immediately after being ditched by the Smartest Guys in the Room.

Choi posted OPS+ marks of 141 (in a half-season), 120, 108, 114 and 113 in Tampa before falling to 68 this past season (92 with the Pirates, 8 in a doomed second half with the Padres in limited duty). He's no longer a starter in this league, but he'd be one hell of an insurance policy for a Yankees team that currently has no idea what they have at first base.

Rizzo is one of the league's best, when healthy. He remains a top-10 option when he can see the ball straight and react accordingly. Unfortunately, he's dealing with the toughest-to-predict injury of all, one that's derailed many fine careers. If the Yankees don't find a way to nab Jake Cronenworth in a Padres salary dump deal for Juan Soto, they should certainly inquire about Choi and cross their fingers he doesn't become their everyday option.

And speaking of unpredictable lefty-swinging talents...

BONUS FORGOTTEN PICK: Jared Walsh, 1B

Jared Walsh, a 2021 All-Star who still lives in Yankees fans' nightmares for what he did to a rain-soaked Aroldis Chapman, has a swing tailor-made for Yankee Stadium. If only he could find it again.

Walsh was outrighted off the Angels' roster a few weeks back, rejecting a Triple-A assignment in favor of testing the free agent waters. Just two years ago, he was hitting 29 homers with a 127 OPS+ in a breakout season. Now? He's struggling to come back from neurological complications, battling headaches and insomnia in the wake of a thoracic outlet syndrome diagnosis in 2022. He believes his symptoms spiraled after a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Things snowballed for the smooth lefty swinger, and he might be the only first baseman in baseball with a more unpredictable future than Rizzo. But the Yankees love handing out redemptive minor-league contracts, and based on Walsh's ceiling and previous experience in the Bronx, he should be atop their list (as long as he doesn't require major-league assurances).