Yankees somehow ended up in precarious situation with 2026 center field picture

It's a bad time to need a center fielder. The New York Yankees are about to find that out the hard way. Cody Bellinger is the top option on the free agent market, and the clear best fallback plan is his Yankees teammate Trent Grisham.

If one were to turn to the trade market for an outfield general, they'd find that the best choice might be ... Luis Robert? Sounds really enticing to trade prospects for a guy with a .661 OPS and $20 million a year contract (assuming the White Sox pick up his option).

Re-signing Bellinger is the obvious choice, but after a strong season and with a dearth of alternatives on the open market, his price tag will likely be out of the Yankees' comfort zone. Experts believe he'll land a deal between six years, $168 million on the low end, and six years, $182 million on the high end. At a certain point, you have to wonder if it makes more sense to pony up for Kyle Tucker, even though that does nothing to solve the center field vacancy.

The Yankees' lack of future planning for center field has put them in a tough spot in 2026

If the bidding gets crazy and Bellinger bolts in free agency, the next best option is hoping that Trent Grisham accepts the qualifying offer (assuming they give it to him) for one year at the not-so-bargain rate of $22 million. That's a lot of money for a guy who hadn't broken the Mendoza line for three straight seasons prior to 2025. Same goes for a multi-year deal. It just feels like the Yankees would be paying an all-time high price for an outlier season.

The other in-house alternatives are moving Jasson Dominguez back to his natural position of center field. Despite 898 innings of work in left between 2024 and 2025, Dominguez has been brutal defensively. In 2025 alone, he posted -7 defensive runs saved and -10 outs above average.

Reading the ball off the bat and dealing with the spin in left field is different than center, but are we really to believe that someone with decent center field chops can't figure out the significantly easier position in left after all this time? It might just be time to face the music and admit that defense isn't one of the Martian's tools.

Lastly, there's top prospect Spencer Jones. The mountainous outfielder generated much excitement with his scorching hot summer stretch, but after clubbing a ridiculous 18 homers in 32 games, he posted a .210/.281/375 line with a 42.3% strikeout rate from Aug. 1 through the end of the season. Ideally, he'd be eased in as the fourth outfielder rather than handed the reins on Opening Day.

All of this leads to the question: how did the Yankees not prepare better for this inevitability? Surely, they didn't predict Grisham breaking out, and as a Scott Boras client, Bellinger was going to bet on himself and opt out with a strong season. But something could have been done to hedge against the prospect of losing both major league-caliber center fielders on the roster.

Offering Grisham a cheap extension last winter might have made some sense. He likely would've accepted it due to his tenuous position on the roster, and it would have turned out to be an absolute bargain given what he's looking at now.

Ultimately, this doesn't need to be a problem as long as the Yankees open up the checkbook. But as we all know, it's not a guarantee that they will.