Yankees must weigh signing recently-released Mariners catcher amid terrible season

Only the 2026 Yankees. Only the 2026 Yankees would have us weighing, "Should we take a chance on one of the worst-performing catchers of the year, a player whose departure the Seattle fanbase is celebrating? He's a righty, though!" Such is the case with slugger Mitch Garver, formerly of the Minnesota Twins and formerly in the Ryan Jeffers boat - he hit 31 bombs with a .995 OPS in the juiced ball year of 2019 and 19 with an .870 mark in 2023 with Texas. He was 32 then. He's 35 now. Has he hit the wall and passed it, or are Seattle's hitting conditions partially to blame?

Ask a Mariners fan, and they won't care about context or conditionality. Ask a Yankees fan, and they just need to know if he's better than Ali Sánchez and how liable he is to throw the final out of an extra-innings war into left field or demand David Bednar try a pitchout when he has no intention of doing so.

The Yankees didn't acquire a catcher at this week's trade deadline. They didn't acquire a reliever, either, and will probably be plundering the waiver wire for both. Garver, if you believe the initial report, was released, not placed on waivers. This means no claiming is necessary. If the Yankees want him, they merely have to call him and work something out, rather than crossing their fingers that he falls to them.

So ... do they want him? Should they?

Mitch Garver is a narrow upgrade over Yankees' Ali Sánchez (at best)

One thing's for sure: Garver faced far too many right-handed pitchers in Seattle, hitting .139 in 85 plate appearances against them, as opposed to .222 with a 111-point higher OPS against left-handed pitching in 64 plate appearances. Why the platoon wasn't stricter we'll never know. His road numbers would also indicate that escaping T-Mobile Park may provide an instant bump, as he was a respectable .232 with a .731 OPS on the road this year (again, we're talking about a backup catcher).

That said, the Sánchez vitriol obscures a little bit of his value. He's hitting .273 on the season for the Yankees, and a .295 wOBA and .285 xwOBA indicates that's just about where he should be, based on quality of contact. If you removed the name "Ali Sánchez" and all the associated baggage and renamed that profile "Mitch Garver," you'd be interested in keeping him.

But we can't do that. We know Sánchez has cost the Yankees a game quite directly in the past week, struggling to keep the ball in front of him at Wrigley Field and disrupting Bednar in a one-run save attempt (which he mercifully finished off). The question doesn't come down to, "Keep the name you know or add an absolute STUD in Garver." The question is, "Do you trust every man on your roster to make the right play when the lights are brightest?"

It's a very tough call, and there's not an obvious "win" here, but we'd look past the modest offensive production from Sánchez and go for Garver - by about a 55-45 split.

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