7 Yankees who are fighting for their futures heading into 2024 season

Oswaldo Cabrera

Yankees fans want nothing more than Oswaldo Cabrera to succeed in pinstripes. When he helped spark the team down the stretch in 2022, many were excited about his future. In 44 games, the versatile slugger hit .247 with a .740 OPS. That'll play.

But then came 2023. The cursed season. Everyone was terrible, but Cabrera was especially bad. Despite most of his experience coming as a middle infielder, the Yankees, who refused to address their outfield heading into 2023, thought Cabrera would be a viable solution, and they thought wrong.

Cabrera's returned to infield duty this spring, but he's 1-for-21 across eight games. Spring stats don't necessarily matter most of the time, but if a player needs to make an impression they do. And this certainly doesn't help.

Oswald Peraza

How about another Yankees top prospect with no discernible future? Ask any Yankees fan and they'll probably tell you Peraza should have been traded the moment Anthony Volpe won the starting shortstop job last year. Why? Because his value was only set to decrease as a part-time player at the big league level or if he was wasting away at Triple-A.

And here we are. A few Peraza errors this spring, zero hits in seven at-bats, and a shoulder injury have thrown his Yankees (and baseball) future fully into flux. The Yankees promoted him to MLB first, then put him in a "competition" with Volpe, who was always the top choice for shortstop, and have left him role-less without a paddle.

The classic Yankee way of handling prospects. Now Peraza's future couldn't be more up in the air. And his 2024 showing feels like it'll be more of a nail-in-the-coffin-type deal rather than a building block.