New York Yankees’ Trent Grisham (12) rounds the bases after hitting a three-run home run against the Minnesota Twins in the fourth inning of a baseball game, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
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Trent Grisham was almost an afterthought for the 2024 New York Yankees. He was a little-used reserve, accumulating all of 209 plate appearances as an outfield backup. Entering 2025, expectations weren’t all that different – Jasson Dominguez, Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge were expected to occupy the outfield, with Giancarlo Stanton the primary DH. Grisham would be a glue guy who would fill in as needed in the outfield.
“As needed” is a very flexible definition, as it turns out. Stanton was injured for a big chunk of the season, and despite another MVP-caliber campaign, Judge also spent an extended stretch on the DL, followed by another period when he was limited to the DH role. On top of it all, Dominguez hasn’t been as impactful as originally hoped. All of this has conspired to make Grisham a nearly full-time center fielder.
And to his credit, Grisham has taken the role and run with it. He’s hit 33 home runs and is batting .237-.345-.468 as the Yanks’ primary leadoff man. And wouldn’t you know it, his breakthrough season has come as he heads into free agency this offseason. There’s a very real possibility that some club – very possibly the Yankees – is going to hand the 28-year-old serious years and dollars.
To which I say – buyer beware. That’s not to say that I dislike Grisham as a player. Far from it – I’ve liked him quite a bit for a long time. Each season I prepare a list of top minor league prospects based on performance relative to league and level, adjusted for age. He made my list three consecutive seasons from 2017-19, when he was in the Brewers’ system, and finished all the way up at #3 in the last of those three seasons.
At the time, he projected as a hit-before-power type hitter, preferable to the power-before-hit prototype that he has drifted toward. I thought he had a puncher’s chance to be a star, and at the very least would be a league average regular with a balanced overall game.
Truth be told, he never really approached what I thought would be his floor until this season, when he appears to have exceeded it. He’s been an average center field defender this season, and his 130 wRC+ suggests that he’s been a well above average bat. But I see a number of warning signs within his batted ball profile.
I’ll start with one that you don’t need any expertise in advanced stats to see. He’s hit nine doubles. N-I-N-E. When players enter their respective decline phases they stop hitting doubles. Take Mark McGwire, for one. In his last two seasons in 2000-01, he hit 61 homers – and only 12 doubles. And he’s far from the only hitter who has followed that track.
The other, and perhaps more serious red flag has to be with his average exit speed. His overall 90.6 mph average exit speed is quite unremarkable. It fits snugly into the league average range. But when you split it out by batted ball type, things get weird. His 96.6 mph average fly ball exit speed is over a standard deviation higher than average, which is great. His 95.1 mph average liner exit speed is in the league average range, and his 82.9 mph average grounder exit speed is over a standard deviation below.
The first and less troublesome point here is the hard fly ball/soft grounder combo. It’s indicative of an uppercut swing that carries with it extreme batting average risk. On top of that, he’s an extreme ground ball puller, inviting even more risk in that area. Not a surprise, as Grisham is a career .218 hitter – potential suitors in the free agent market will see this one coming, and might decide he’s still worth the risk.
But hitting your fly balls harder than your line drives is extremely rare, and is highly indicative of a “harvesting” power hitter who is nearing the end of his useful baseball life, and squeezing every last bit of power out of his game.
I’ll go way out on a limb and say there is a puncher’s chance that Trent Grisham might not hit another 33 homers in his CAREER, and I’m positive that he’ll never mount a serious challenge to his new single-season high as he moves forward.
There are some things I like about Grisham as a player. He can play all three outfield positions quite well. Pitchers need to respect his power potential – he can hurt you if you make a mistake. He doesn’t have a meaningful platoon split. His plate discipline is quite good, as his BB rate is over a standard deviation higher than league average this season.
He’s still fairly young, and given his fairly complete skill package, is likely worthy of a three-year deal. I wouldn’t be comfortable paying him any more than the going rate for a quality 4th OF or fringe starter, say a late-career Kevin Kiermaier-type deal that might net him $10-12 million per year. He’s going to command a lot more than that, and likely will get it.
Trent Grisham has been and will be a large part of whatever success the New York Yankees experience this season. My gut tells me he’ll be back in pinstripes in 2026, but that the deal won’t turn out to be a cost-effective one from the club perspective.