Yankees news: No Black Friday Deals

Sports Illustrated | Noah Strackbein: Last week, the Yankees non-tendered a gaggle of bullpen arms, looking to make room on their 40-man roster to protect a couple of prospects from the Rule 5 Draft. Well, this week, they brought one of those bullpen arms back, signing Michael Arias to a minor league deal. The 24-year-old pitcher missed much of the 2025 season due to injury before turning in a solid performance in 21 innings for Double-A Somerset. The move does not come as too much of a surprise, as this sequence of events — injury, nontender, minor league deal — occurs quite frequently with minor league pitchers who are on the 40-man roster but lack an immediate path to the big leagues.

CBS Sports | R.J. Anderson: Thanksgiving weekend is a slow time in the baseball world: the beginning-of-the-winter previews have been written, rewritten, and beaten into the ground, the GM Meetings are behind us, the Winter Meetings are still ahead of us, schools are on a mini-break, and frankly, nobody wants to work with a food coma. As such, content-starved journalists, needing to write something, fall back on the age-old gimmick articles. This time around, R.J. Anderson previews four free agents as potential “Black Friday deals” — righty reliever Tyler Kinley, infielder Brendan Rodgers, and a pair of lefties Sean Newcomb and Justin Wilson. Between age, underperformance, former top prospect status, these four players represent, in Anderson’s opinion, potential buy-low players who could overperform expectations in 2026.

MLB.com | Anthony Castrovince: Speaking of the need for Thanksgiving weekend content, Anthony Castrovince of MLB.com makes a list of off-the-wall, absolutely bonkers, probably couldn’t even see this happen in MLB The Show trades that he thinks are theoretically plausible, and would shake up the league if they occurred. The Yankees don’t make an appearance on his list, and truthfully, this is a good thing — his list of suggestions include a three-way deal that sees Tarik Skubal sent to the Mets, Paul Skenes to the Tigers, and a small army of prospects to the Pirates. If you’re looking for a bit of entertainment, and a glimpse into what other teams might theoretically be looking to do, it’s worth a look. In the end, though, the Winter Meetings can’t come soon enough.