Yankees reveal key promotion for former pitcher with full 2025 coaching staff reveal

After an offseason marked by coaching staff exodus, from the lower levels of the minors all the way up to the big-league dugout, the New York Yankees surprisingly released a 2025 staff update on Tuesday that pretty clearly resembled the group that glumly watched the Dodgers' confetti fall last October.

With less than a month to go before pitchers and catchers report, the Yankees announced Aaron Boone's (yes, he's back) official staff to open the year, with just one name flagging as unexpected: Preston Claiborne as the "assistant pitching coach," in the wake of Desi Druschel's departure to the Mets.

Some ambitious fans might've been hoping for a Luis Rojas blindside; unfortunately, the silence on that front all but confirmed the Yankees weren't planning a mid-January shakeup (though timing never was Rojas' specialty). Others might've been slightly surprised to see Pat Roessler, a Juan Soto favorite and clear sweetener to the Yankees' offering last year, returning without his star pupil. His experience served the Yankees well last year, though, and it's nice to see a wisened committee of hitting instructors agreeing to collaborate once again.

Druschel, a very experienced and insightful piece of Matt Blake's puzzle, will be tough to replace. Luckily, the Yankees have a pretty nice piece of the infrastructure moving on up in Claiborne, who you might remember as a reliever for the team in 2013 and '14.

Yankees add right-hander Preston Claiborne to MLB coaching staff for 2025

I always feel the need to apologize to any Yankee who debuted in 2013, then immediately had to absorb being railroaded by a Red Sox roster that had touched the hand of God, but luckily, Claiborne has independently made a name for himself.

The right-hander spent a year effectively developing the team's brightest pitching stars at High-A Hudson Valley in 2023, working with Drew Thorpe and Co. and coaxing breakouts out of a number of sources to the tune of a league-best 3.62 ERA. Things didn't go quite so swimmingly after he was transferred to Tampa last season, but that projected staff was decimated by injuries. The goal was to get Henry Lalane into Claiborne's hands; that never happened, but it was hardly Claiborne's fault.

Now, he'll get a chance to prove himself in big-league pinstripes once again as Blake's right-hand man. Ideally, the Red Sox don't have any new gimmicks up their sleeve to dominate the summer the same way they did 12 years ago in Claiborne's first opportunity to make an impact.