The Yankees signed Paul Goldschmidt to a one-year contract
The Yankees yesterday signed 37-year-old first baseman Paul “America’s First Baseman” Goldschmidt to a one-year, $12.5 million contract.
He was on the Diamondbacks for the first eight seasons of his career and has been on the Cardinals for the last six seasons. The Yankees now have the 2022 AL MVP in Aaron Judge and the 2022 NL MVP in Goldschmidt. In 2022, Goldschmidt led the league with his .578 SLG, .981 OPS, 177 OPS+, .427 rOBA and a 181 rBat+ while also having 35 homers, 41 doubles, 115 RBI, a .317 average and a .404 OBP.
In 2022, Goldschmidt ranked second with 115 RBIs, 324 total bases, and a .404 on-base percentage. His .317 batting average and 35 home runs were ranked third and tied for fifth respectively in the NL. Goldschmidt was named the 2022 NL Hank Aaron Award winner. Goldschmidt was also awarded his fifth Silver Slugger Award, giving him the all-time record for Silver Sluggers won among first basemen.
He is a 7-time All-Star, a four time Gold Glove winner, a two-time Hank Aaron award winner, the NL home run leader in 2013 with 36, the NL RBI leader in 2013 with 125, and a five-time Silver slugger winner. He has gotten MVP votes in nine different seasons (seasons that he has finished in the top 20). He has hit at least 22 homers 10 times in his career and has hit at least 30 homers seven times. He is likely a future Hall of Famer.
He proved he was a force to be reckoned with in his third MLB season when he led the league in seven categories including homers, RBI, SLG, OPS, OPS+ and intentional walks. Including the 2013 season, he finished top three in MVP voting in three of five seasons with a second place finish in 2013, a second place finish in 2015 and a third place finish in 2017.
The Diamondbacks drafted Goldschmidt in the 8th round in 2009 out of Texas State University where he was named the Southland Conference hitter of the year in 2008 and 2009, Southland player of the year in 2009, and was a third-team All-American as a junior in 2009 after hitting .352 with 18 home runs and 88 runs batted in (RBIs) in 57 games. He went 1–4 in his MLB debut on August 1, 2011.
He is a strong veteran bat to deepen the Yankees lineup. He is a smart short term signing. While he had a career low for him .716 OPS with 22 HRs & 65 RBI last year, he had solid numbers versus lefties and also performed better in the second half. In his 14 seasons, he has 362 homers, 1187 RBI, 446 doubles, a .289 batting average, an impressive .381 OBP, an impressive .892 OPS and a 139 OPS+.
His career-high in OPS+ is 177 from his MVP season. He is very athletic for a first baseman since he has had double digit steals eight times in his career with a career-high of 32 back in the 2016 season. He has had 11 steals in each of the last two seasons. His 11 steals in 2024 would have been third on the Yankees after Anthony Volpe’s 28 steals in 160 games and Jazz Chisholm’s 18 steals in 46 games after being traded from the Marlins.
He is very durable and it’s a positive that he has very rarely gotten injured since he has missed fewer than 10 games in each of the last 10 seasons. He played in 158 games in 2021, 151 games in 2022, 154 games in 2023 and 154 games last season.
In 2024, during his down season, besides his OPS, homer and RBI total, he also had 33 doubles, 11 steals, a 98 OPS+, which is essentially league average (100 is league average), a .245 average, a .302 OBP and 248 total bases, which was 17 fewer than the 2023 season. He is only two seasons removed from his only MVP season.
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The Yankees hope that he will have an OBP and OPS+ similar to what it was in the 2023 season. In 2023, he had a very good .363 OBP, a 120 OPS+ as well as 89 runs scored, 31 doubles, 25 homers, 80 RBI and a .810 OPS. He will likely be more similar to his production in 2023 than 2024 given that he had a .275 average and a .768 OPS in September and a .272 average and an .815 OPS in August, which were both better than his average or OPS in the previous four months of the season. This means he is not declining and it is a positive that he got batter in his age 36 season in the last two months.
On July 26, 2024, Goldschmidt hit his 2,000th career hit against the Washington Nationals by hitting a two-run homer run off Kyle Finnegan in the bottom of the 10th inning. With that hit, Goldschmidt became the 295th player in Major League history to reach 2,000 hits and the 4th active player to achieve that milestone. Goldschmidt ended the 2024 season with 2,056 total hits, which is 263rd all time. The next active player on the all time list is Andrew McCutchen, who has 2,152 hits in 16 MLB seasons. After McCutchen, the next active player is Jose Altuve, who has 2,232 hits in 14 MLB seasons. The next active player as well as the first place active player is Freddie Freeman, who was the 2024 World Series MVP (he had four homers and 12 RBI in the World Series against the Yankees), who has 2,267 his in 15 MLB seasons.
The Yankees needed to add a first baseman and he is a good stopgap for one season. The Yankees were interested in first baseman Christian Walker but he recently went to the Houston Astros. Even if he has the same stats in 2025 that he had in 2024, he will still be a good bit better than the Yankees production from the first base position during the 2024 season. He will be better on offense and on defense than what the Yankees had at first base in the 2024 season.
The Yankees got zero homers from their first baseman from August through the rest of the season. Goldschmidt had a 120 wRC+ in the second half last season. In 92 games last season, Anthony Rizzo had just eight homers, 35 RBI, a .222 average, a .301 OBP, a .637 OPS, a 0.2 WAR and an 81 OPS+. He has not been himself and has been worse than usual ever since colliding with Fernando Tatis Jr at first base in the end of May in 2023 (this gave him post concussion syndrome that they did diagnose until later). In his career in 1727 games in 14 seasons, Rizzo has a .361 OBP, an .828 OPS and a 123 OPS+. In 2024, he had a .301 OBP, a .637 OPS and a 81 OPS+ and in 2023, he had a .328 OBP, a .706 OPS and a 94 OPS+.
Rizzo had a very good 130 OPS+ with 32 homers and 75 RBI in his first full season with the Yankees in 2022. After the Yankees lost the 2024 World Series, the Yankees declined Rizzo’s $17 million option for the 2025 season, paying him a $6 million buyout instead, making him a free agent.
The Yankees other first baseman during the 2024 season was the rookie Ben Rice. In 50 games, he had a .171 average, a very low .264 OBP, a .613 OPS, seven homers, 23 RBI, a 71 OPS+ and a -0.4 WAR. He only played in one game in September and went 0–3 with two strikeouts in that game.
In August, in 12 games, he had a not good .057 average (2–35), a .171 OBP and just one RBI in those 12 games. On July 6, he had three homers and seven RBI against the Red Sox, but in his final 33 games of the season he would have just three homers and 11 RBI. He proved that he was not ready to be an everyday first baseman yet and needs more time with the Triple-A Scranton RailRiders.
Goldschmidt had a 98 OPS+ and a 1.3 WAR last season in 154 games and was a lot better in the second half than the first half. Rizzo had a 0.2 WAR in 92 games and Rice had a -0.4 WAR in 50 games. This proves how much better Goldschmidt was than the two Yankees first baseman. WAR is an all encompassing advanced stat that stands for Wins Above Replacement that measures a players overall value.
WAR measures a player’s value in all facets of the game by deciphering how many more wins he’s worth than a replacement-level player at his same position. For position players: (The number of runs above average a player is worth in his batting, baserunning and fielding + adjustment for position + adjustment for league + the number of runs provided by a replacement-level player) / runs per win.
After playing in the 2023 London Series, Goldschmidt became the first player in MLB history to play regular-season games in five different countries, having played in the United States, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Landing Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger to the offense and Max Fried and Devin Williams to the pitching staff after Juan Soto signed with the Mets has been a really good response. They have done well spreading out their allocation of money in resources to fill various needs. Goldy is one of the most respected players in MLB in the last decade and a half.
As of now, Judge is lined up to play his natural right field, Bellinger is lined up to play center, Jasson Dominguez is lined up to play left field and Goldschmidt will be the first baseman. The Yankees might still add a third baseman since as of now Oswaldo Cabrera will be the third baseman with Chisholm is lined up to be the second baseman.
