The New York Yankees have officially signed 37-year-old Kenta Maeda to a minor league deal. It’s a move that reeks of desperation rather than strategy, especially after letting Marcus Stroman walk on Friday. On paper, Maeda provides “veteran depth.” Still, under the hood, his Statcast metrics reveal a steep decline, a pitcher unlikely to offer anything meaningful to a team trying to stay afloat in the AL East.
Yankees’ Rotation Depth Just Got Shallower
Over the past three seasons, Maeda’s effectiveness has cratered. In 2024, opponents crushed his fastball to a .359 average and .667 slugging percentage, with expected stats backing that up (.307 xBA, .546 xSLG). He wasn’t fooling hitters either—his whiff rate dropped to 23.9%, and his strikeout rate plummeted to 19.8%. By 2025, things got worse. In limited action (171 pitches), Maeda posted a 7.88 ERA with an xERA of 5.61. That wasn’t a fluke—it was confirmation.
His average exit velocity allowed this year ballooned to 91.2 mph—well above league average—and his hard-hit rate hovered at 36%. He’s not getting chases out of the zone anymore (just 22.6% chase rate in 2025), and contact is coming loud and often when he’s in the zone. The sweeper, which he now throws nearly 18% of the time, got obliterated this year: .400 batting average against, .800 slugging, and a brutal .505 wOBA. None of that screams “comeback candidate.”
The Stroman Comparison Hurts
To make matters worse, the Yankees are acting like Maeda is a better roll of the dice than keeping Marcus Stroman. He had a 4.69 ERA and 1.48 WHIP across nearly 200 innings as a Yankee—not ace numbers, but at least he could take the ball every fifth day. Maeda hasn’t thrown more than 150 innings since 2019. Worse yet, his barrel rates over the past two seasons have spiked (8.2% in 2023, 8.0% in 2024), and he continues to allow high launch angles and hard contact.
Maeda’s splitter, once his best pitch, has lost its sting. In 2024, opponents hit .218 with a .423 slugging percentage against it. In 2025? The whiff rate dipped, and while the sample size is small, the swing-and-miss magic isn’t there. The velocity is down, the movement is flatter, and he’s been far too hittable early in counts.
The Yankees need solutions, not flyers. If this move was about rotation depth, better arms would have been available, or simply kept the one they already had. Letting go of Stroman, who at least offered innings and kept the team in games, only to bring in Maeda for a look at Triple-A, feels like a regression wrapped in nostalgia.
Maybe the Yankees hope Maeda can pull off a late-career Zack Greinke transformation. But this version of Maeda isn’t that guy. His xwOBA has climbed every season since 2020 and now sits at a painful .372 in 2025. That’s not just bad luck—diminished stuff and declining command.
Maeda’s signing may be low-risk, but it’s also low-reward. And if this is how the Yankees plan to backfill their pitching staff down the stretch, the fans deserve to be worried.
Maeda isn’t depth—he’s decline in disguise, and the Yankees are ignoring all the warning signs.
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