The Yankees’ optimism levels entering 2025 are much lower than in prior years, as their owner is talking about his financial burdens and their high-priced stars are set to miss a whole lot of games. Sound like any other franchise you know — that may or may not play in Southern California? The New York Yankees, one of the league’s preeminent organizations, are starting to feel an awful lot like the dreadful Angels in that they are going to endure an entire season without Gerrit Cole and possibly even Giancarlo Stanton. The Angels know a thing or two about the players they pay most not playing at all.
There’s very little chance that the Angels and Yankees will boast similar records this season. However, the Yankees were already due to regress after losing the World Series last year, which opens the door for the Angels to gain ground on them in the American League standings! It does not feel like the margin could get any bigger after the Angels experienced their organizational nadir in 2024 and the Yankees are heading into the season without Cole and Stanton. By the way, Cole and Stanton are due to make a combined $58 million.
The Yankees fans will experience a similar sense of misery that Angels fans feel every year when they see their best and highest paid players go to the shelf. As ESPN’s Jeff Passan put it: “Sixteen players will make $30 million or more this year. Three of them will begin the season on the injured list: the Angels’ Anthony Rendon, and the Yankees’ Cole and Giancarlo Stanton, whose mysterious bilateral elbow injuries could cause him to miss the season as well.” Not a company you want to be in!
Anthony Rendon as an Angels player would be lucky to draw comparisons to Giancarlo Stanton as a Yankees player, but they sure seem aligned now if the Yankees’ slugger misses a large chunk of the 2025 season. The Rendon-Cole comparisons start and end with both signing at the 2020 Winter Meetings and both missing the entirety of this season due to injury. The Stanton contract does feel awfully comparable to the Angels’ Albert Pujols contract, in that they definitely underachieved on their deals but did provide many fun moments nonetheless.
Aaron Judge and Mike Trout have received career comparisons for some time now, and they are truly joined at the hip now. Both outfielders make an absurd amount of money to make baseball and desperately need a lot of players to break out in 2025 in order to get proper lineup protection. With Stanton without a timetable to return, the Yankees really need great production out of Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe, and Austin Wells. Judge and Trout are also both in-line to DH much more than in the past, albeit for different reasons.
Angels fans empathize with you, Yankees fans.
