TAMPA — The New York Yankees’ bullpen ranked 21st in value across all of Major League Baseball in 2025. For a franchise that had built a reputation on finding late-inning gems, that number was a gut punch.
The Yankees posted a 4.52 bullpen ERA last season, the highest of any team that reached the postseason. Only clubs like the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals, teams with no playoff aspirations, ranked worse overall.
The off-season only made things harder. Devin Williams and Luke Weaver crossed town to Queens. The Yankees passed on big names. They have not committed significant free-agent money to a reliever since January 2019, when they signed Zack Britton and Adam Ottavino to multi-year deals. That is a seven-year drought in a market that keeps getting more expensive.
What Cashman did instead is what he has always done best: hunt for value in overlooked corners of the market. He gambled on a 29-year-old right-hander who once looked like a steal and spent the past three years becoming baseball’s most puzzling cautionary tale. And it seems to pay him back.
The Yankees’ lab has produced bullpen gold before
The results of that method are hard to argue with. The Yankees plucked Clay Holmes and Lucas Luetge from scrapheaps in 2021. Both became reliable pieces of a dominant relief corps. Ian Hamilton and Luke Weaver arrived in 2023 under similar circumstances. Tim Hill and Jake Cousins joined the mix in 2024.
The common thread is pitching coach Matt Blake. He has revived careers through mechanical overhauls and pitch design work. The Yankees do not just sign struggling relievers. They diagnose why they struggled and fix it.
That pattern went mostly quiet in 2025. The signings were fewer and the results reflected that. Now, heading into 2026, Cashman has stocked the camp with bounce-back arms and low-risk non-roster invitees. At the center of that group, and the most intriguing name in the bunch, is Dylan Coleman.
Coleman’s fall from good to gone and the Rhode Island reset
Coleman entered 2022 with a live arm and a simple scouting profile: big righty, 100 mph fastball, legitimate strikeout stuff. In his first two seasons with the Kansas City Royals, spanning 2021 and 2022, he pitched to a 2.66 ERA across 74 and one-third innings. He struck out hitters at a 24.6 percent rate. He was not perfect, walking batters at a 12.8 percent clip, but the underlying talent was obvious.
Then 2023 arrived. His ERA ballooned to 8.84 in 18 and one-third major league innings. His walk rate climbed to 19.8 percent, nearly matching his strikeout rate of 21.9 percent. The Royals traded him to the Houston Astros that winter.
Coleman threw one inning at the major league level in 2024 before being released in August. He signed a minor league deal with the Baltimore Orioles last offseason and was cut in May after posting a 4.91 ERA in 14 and two-thirds innings in their farm system. He had as many walks as strikeouts in that stretch.
Most pitchers at that point quietly disappear. Coleman chose a different path.
He traveled to Rhode Island and spent several weeks with Mason Feole, who runs a pitching instruction company there. The results were fast and startling.
“Went up there [to Rhode Island] after I got released. Five days later, I was like 99, 100 or so.”
That kind of velocity jump in five days did not happen by accident, but by making small yet compounding mechanical corrections. And the Yankees are sure to benefit from this.
What Feole fixed and why it matters for the Yankees
The technical adjustments centered on three things: syncing Coleman’s arm and body so they worked together rather than against each other, improving the timing of his release point, and cleaning up his direction to the plate.
The last part was particularly important. Coleman had developed a habit of drifting toward the left side of the mound rather than driving straight at the catcher. That drift creates command problems and reduces the effectiveness of every pitch in the arsenal. When the direction is right, the arm speed and shape of each pitch follow naturally.
Coleman also added a sinker during his time with Feole. His previous repertoire included a hard four-seam fastball, a sweeper and a cutter. The sinker gives him a weapon to generate quick outs on the ground, reducing pitch counts and extending his effectiveness in tight situations.
“When my direction is good, the throw takes care of itself.”
The Yankees signed him to a minor league contract with a spring training invitation in January. It is the kind of low-risk, high-upside move that has built the franchise’s late-inning reputation over the past decade.
Early spring results give Cashman reason for optimism
In two Grapefruit League appearances through early March, Coleman has thrown two scoreless innings while allowing three hits and a walk and striking out two. The raw line is modest. What matters more is what scouts and coaches have seen in person.
Coleman said the velocity has begun climbing back toward where it needs to be, and he is confident in his mechanics in a way he has not been for several years. After a live batting practice session at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, he offered an assessment that Yankees fans will want to hold onto.
“I’m in a way better spot than I’ve been in a while.”
The Yankees enter 2026 with David Bednar as their most reliable bullpen arm. Camilo Doval and Jake Bird, both acquired at last year’s trade deadline, return for full seasons. Tim Hill provides left-handed depth. Fernando Cruz and Cade Winquest, a Rule 5 pick, round out the mix. FanGraphs projects the group as the eighth best bullpen in the league entering the season.
That projection carries a quiet assumption: that at least one reclamation project clicks. It almost always does in the Bronx. Whether Coleman is the one who clicks in 2026, as Luetge was in 2021 and Weaver was in 2023, is the question Cashman is betting on. Given the cost, there is nothing to lose. Given what Coleman has shown since Rhode Island, there may be quite a lot to gain.
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