Yankees sign injured reliever who already bombed with Blue Jays to two-year deal

The New York Yankees cleared up five 40-man roster spots on Friday by non-tendering several bullpen arms they no longer believed in (one of whom was currently in active in Jake Cousins). On Monday, they added an arm for the first time since that wide-ranging shuffle, but thankfully did not commit a 40-man spot to the player in question.

Yerry Rodriguez, formerly of the Texas Rangers and dealt to the Toronto Blue Jays in the summer of 2024, is currently in the midst of Tommy John rehab, and intends to be back on the MLB mound this summer. The Yankees decided they wanted him in their lab whenever that date arrived; the righty, who underwent TJ while in camp with the Pittsburgh Pirates last year, just signed a two-year minor-league deal with the club.

There may be "no such thing as a bad minor-league deal," but there certainly is such a thing as a minor-league deal that gets you trolled online by Blue Jays fans. The Rodriguez deal currently qualifies as such.

Yankees sign reliever Yerry Rodriguez midway through Tommy John surgery rehab

Of course, the "Getting Trolled Online by People Who Hate You" quotient is rarely the defining metric of a deal's success.

Best-case scenario? The Yankees saw something correctable in Rodriguez's footage, and he finally reaches a ceiling he didn't know he had in their uniform. Worst-case? His rehab doesn't go swimmingly, Year 1 bleeds into Year 2, and we never see him again. If he somehow evolves into an arm who's trusted enough to get high-leverage work and finds himself in the baseball zeitgeist, that'll be a minor miracle.

His profile is familiar: 97 MPH heater, primarily a fastball-slider pitcher, strong minor-league K rates (28.3% strikeout rate in four partial Triple-A seasons), terrible control, and general MLB numbers (12% Triple-A walk rate, 11% in the bigs, 8.17 ERA in his 36-inning major league career). In essence, he's a slightly more mature replacement for the erratic Michael Arias, non-tendered last week.

We won't see him until midseason in Scranton, but even still, that didn't prevent our neighbors to the north from getting some yuks out upon his arrival to the system. Never feels fantastic, though fixing him would.