Last season, former New York Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo was one of the most reviled men in baseball, finishing the year slashing just .233/.291/.356/.647 with 13 home runs. Now, just a week away from Opening Day, he remains a free agent.

Besides tying his career-high in homers, the rest of his numbers are the worst of his career. From 2019 through 2022, Verdugo posted batting averages of .280+, exceeding that mark comfortably prior to 2022. Nonetheless, the numbers clearly indicate a decline since 2021 that rapidly accelerated last season. Perhaps unsurprisingly, new reports show there is a lack of a market for Verdugo. On Tuesday, Brendan Kuty of the Athletic broke the news that Verdugo hasn’t yet received a major-league offer.

The Yankees picked up Verdugo from the Boston Red Sox in the winter of 2023 after a reported spat with manager Alex Cora seemed to dampen his relationship with the team. While it seemed like a decent acquisition at the time, Verdugo’s favored method of hitting, a contact-oriented approach hitting to the opposite field, seemed to have hindered his productivity. At Fenway, hitting to left field is rewarded generously with base hits thanks to the Green Monster. At Yankee Stadium, the same success is harder to find. But even with his lackluster numbers and no offers, he still has a vote of confidence from his old squad.

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Verdugo receives no contract offers but still has the support of his former Yankees teammates

The latest report from Kuty not only details his market, or lack thereof, but also the kind words from his former teammates in New York. Aaron Judge, Trent Grisham, Marcus Stroman and Anthony Volpe chimed in giving their thoughts on Verdugo’s performance and commitment to the game. But probably most telling were Aaron Boone’s comments, which addressed not only what he brought to the team every day, but also how he handled adversity. Boone had this to say when asked if he was surprised Verdugo was still a free agent:

“Maybe a little bit surprised because he’s without question a big-league player and a big-league starting player, for me. It just probably hasn’t lined up money-wise and team-wise and need-wise, but he was great with us.”

“I think he can really hit,” Boone added. “That hasn’t changed. But he went into some struggles there in the middle of the season, but also, I think there was some unluckiness there, too, where he had days where he was squaring the ball up a lot. I think he put together a lot of at-bats in the postseason for us and obviously was terrific in our left field. I think there’s more upside in there offensively, too.”

To Boone’s point, Verdugo squared the ball up 33.4 percent of the time, according to Baseball Savant, ranking him in the elite 96th percentile in that metric. He was also a plus defender in left field and he rarely whiffed (93rd percentile) or struck out (88th percentile) during his one-year stint in pinstripes.
However, his abysmal numbers from last season vastly overshadow his somewhat solid underlying metrics giving teams an uneasy feeling about tendering him an offer. With a .233 average, a sub-.300 OBP and little power potential, the risk here doesn’t seem entirely favorable.