The Yankees have signed utility player José Rojas to a minor league deal, per Jon Morosi of MLB.com. The deal for the Warner Sports Management client includes an invite to major league camp. Joel Sherman of The New York Post reports that Rojas would make $750K in the majors and $180K in the minors.
Rojas, 31, is returning to North America on the heels of a strong showing in Korea. He signed with the Doosan Bears of the KBO League for the 2023 season and appeared in 122 games for that club. He hit 19 home runs while drawing a walk in 11.9% of his 464 plate appearances, striking out in just 14.7% of them. His .253/.345/.474 batting line translated to a 126 wRC+, indicating he was 26% better than the league average hitter.
Prior to heading overseas, Rojas had put together a solid body of work at the Triple-A level but hadn’t been able to carry that up to the big leagues. He got into 83 games with the Angels between 2021 and 2022 but hit .188/.245/.339 in those. At the top minor league level, he hit .277/.343/.525 across four different seasons.
On the defensive side of things, Rojas has bounced all around. He has suited up at the three non-shortstop infield positions as well as the outfield corners. The Yankees were snakebit by injuries in 2023 and will go into the upcoming season with some of those concerns lingering. Rojas likely won’t have an easy path to playing time in the outfield corners, where Aaron Judge, Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo will be sharing the playing time.
The infield corners are projected to be taken by Anthony Rizzo and DJ LeMahieu, both of whom dealt with health concerns last year and are now into their mid-30s. Oswald Peraza, Oswaldo Cabrera, Jeter Downs and Jorbit Vivas are on the roster but the Yanks clearly feel a bit of non-roster depth is warranted. They have signed Kevin Smith and Josh VanMeter to minor league deals in recent weeks and now Rojas is on the list as well. If Rojas gets selected to the roster at any point, he still has one option year remaining.
Arguably the most underrated sports team in the country.
Angela,Pamela, Sandra, Rita, etc
We”re cornering the market on AAAA utility players.
I get that they need some depth but this is getting ridiculous.
it’s funny how they keep increasing their position player depth but not pitchers which is their biggest concern. Cashman really is living up to his last name as he keeps throwing cash in the dumpster like this. Waste of money again!!!
I think they lost around 20 pitchers through FA, trades and rule 5. They have signed 9 international FA and I don’t remember any being a pitcher.
If they go into next year with only signing Stroman and Weaver, it’s going to be a long season.
Yankees will be fine. Not dominant but in the playoffs with any luck with health. Enjoy
If you look at their transactions logs you can see they brought in like 4 pitchers on MiLB deals the past few days including Manzano, Sanchez, Ilarazza, and Tevera. These all appear to be IFA additions. Other arms that were brought in earlier with MLB experience are Nick Burdi, Poteet, and Cody Morris in the Florial trade. Victor Gonzalez was also added to the bullpen. I think they are expecting with Gil back and Effross coming back that some of the depth will be replaced with guys returning from injury. I hope they keep adding more but it isn’t like they haven’t made moves.
Yeah they have addressed depth more than I credited them for but I hope they aren’t relying on Gil and Efross too heavily. I’m not sold on Gil even before his injury. Efross is a good pitcher but he’s missed a lot of time and is most likely going to be on an innings limit and might be very rusty.
They signed one pitcher among the 9 IFAs so far, but it’s common for 17 and under IFA pitchers to sign later in the season for small bonuses. Look at the list of top 50 IFAs– they’re almost all position players, especially if you ignore the older Cuban and Asian players. The signings this week were for the highly sought prospects that are soaking up most of the bonus money. Pitchers at this stage are too physically underdeveloped to be able to project accurately.
They’re buying up all the minor-league players they can that might have some micro iota of potential with a hope of finding one that’s decent for a while. Cashman specialty. must’ve cost millions so far ,for all these dumpster diver pick ups. Why don’t they put all that money together instead and get one or two decent players? I
DR even if they don’t go after Hader, they should bring back Wandy and Middleton. And it would be hoping for too much to get Urshela.
True words, Joe, my friend. Tim IK still does not equal one hater or Montgomery or Freeman .Cashman has yet to learn that lesson. it appears he has been so snake bit with the mostly unsuccessful, signings of late, but he has lost confidence in his teams, ability to get good players, for good value. He prefers to fall back on his default model, get up as much garbage as cheaply as you can, and hope that one of them sticks, unfortunately he has success with his model at least for brief periods in the past, so he continues to rely on it
I never thought they should have gotten rid of Urshela, Joe.
Quantity instead of quality, my friend.
Related to Josh Rojas per chance??
I thought the same thing, ISOB, but I can’t find any relation between them so far.
SoCal local guy. Seemingly nice guy. One of the worst hitters I have ever laid eyes on though. His tenure with the Halo’s was not short enough.
Terrible hitter – Seems very Yankee-like, haha!
Lol I mean Clip, I hope the man pans out…But I had to sit in front of my TV and listen to the Halo announcers give this guy a 2 week intro for 2 weeks before he came up. I was already through with him by then…But he made his debut, and I gave him a chance, and I don’t remember seeing him ever get a hit, and he just looked soooo bad, and that is all I remember, but it has stuck with me, and I saw his name pop up here and I was just thinking: “Dear Lord!!!” And for the YANKEES to have got him, minors or not…I mean, that is a historic and respectable ball club lol This guy has NO business as a NY YANKEE of all things!!!
P.S. Clip, you’ll see this guy in spring training in a few weeks. Has a Jo Adell swing. As in, not even close. I am stunned the Yanks would be into this guy. Especially when his “rebound” #’s are from overseas. They would never have a need for this guy. I don’t even know how they found him..
-1.7 career war with a .188 BA. Much rejoicing.
@Clipper – Dumpster Dive Cashman
His specialty. Why he’s paid the big bucks.
Rick, so true, man. While I understand depth, it feels like the Yankees don’t understand the urgency or necessity of the moves that are still needed.
On a different note, I never thought I would see the day when Yankees fans talk about how we should be happy because of the amount they are spending on the team. But, mediocre seems to be the new acceptable bar to a growing number of Yankees Fans and I can’t understand it.
I was raised to expect more.
How you been clipper. But honestly, you know the answer to that. The Yankees may not be very good at building a championship roster, but when it comes to spin, they are top-notch they have done a great job, selling the fanbase, or at least a certain portion of them, That there are spoiled Yankee fans, and should be happy with the garbage they are spewing out.
Doc, that is perfectly stated.
Thanks Clipper. perhaps a small consolation, but at least there are some of us left, who are not drinking the Kool-Aid.
I’ve never found, “look how much we spent though” to be an adequate solution to losing.
Quite so Clipper. It’s just a thought, but perhaps the money could be better spent?
Small MLB sample size. Give the dude a 2nd chance.
Austin Voth is 1 of the last 2 major league free agent deals this week.
This offseason is hot farts.
Hal: “We signed SO MANY players for you Yankee fans. And you’re STILL unhappy?? You’re just a bunch of entitled little brats!”
We are, dynasty. And proud of it!
If you take all these “depth” players combined pay, we can sign Hader and re-sign peralta
No you can’t. Show me the math.
Look up the 12 nobodies that Cashman has signed and the potential mlb salaries…. Over 20 million…. So it would be close
OMG another utility player. Bring back Houdini for the Bullpen and sign Snell. The Yankees offered Yamamoto over 300 Million who has never played in the MLB but they low ball Snell. At least Snell has won 2 CY Youngs and has experience in the AL East.
True words, dude. I said that myself in an earlier post. The Yankees appear to value quantity rather than quality. I think it stems to the fact that Cashman has no confidence in his or his teams ability, to get a good player, so he grabs up every piece of garbage he can find, in the hopes that he will look out with one or two of them. Unfortunately, it has happened a few times, at least for a brief periods, so he continues to do it.
Rojas also was pretty unlucky in merely posting that slash line as he had just a .260 batting average on balls in play so if he had a closer to league average babip he would have done even better, closer to a .900 ops rather than an .800 ops
I hope he is making plans for the summer in Moosic.
So when all the injured Yankees infielders are out for the season AGAIN, they will have all 5 infield positions played by .130-.170 hitters AGAIN and look like a minor league team in the majors AGAIN. Yankees stick so bad. AJ, Soto & verdugo are going to carry the team? No. AJ barely hit .270 last season. And none on the Yankees hit .300+. The Yankees are running a team to profit. Not win. UNDERSTAND the Yankees are not trying to win more than half the games. They are just trying to make money. If they were trying to win they would have signed at least 2 stud infielders and ACE starter or 2 and Hader… they didn’t sign anyone. So looks like bad news for all the Yankees fans that think all threse minor league signing and signing Stroman was going to make them a playoff team. The orioles blue jays and Rays are going to have their way with the Yankees again this season. But don’t worry Yankee fans, the Sox are just as bad. It’s just comes down to who is finishing in last place lol Sox or Yanks.