Access the Yankees beat like never before

Join Post Sports+ for exciting subscriber-only features, including real-time texting with Greg Joyce about the inside buzz on the Yankees.

The Yankees will have a revamped bullpen next season, but it won’t include a handful of pitchers who had varying levels of success but more disappointments for them over the past few years. 

The club on Friday non-tendered relievers Mark Leiter Jr., Scott Effross, Ian Hamilton and Jake Cousins, along with minor league reliever Michael Arias ahead of the deadline to offer players contracts for 2026. 

The Yankees also agreed to one-year contracts with utilityman Oswaldo Cabrera ($1.2 million) and right-hander Clarke Schmidt ($4.5 million) to avoid arbitration. 

The most notable name to be non-tendered was Leiter, who had been projected to make around $3 million in his final year of arbitration next season. The 34-year-old righty saw a tick up in stuff early last season, which elevated him into a higher-leverage role, but ended up falling out of favor by the end of the season, posting a 4.84 ERA across 59 games and 48 ¹/₃ innings. And for a second straight October, he was left off the Yankees postseason roster for the ALDS. 

Effross, who like Leiter arrived in a trade deadline deal from the Cubs (but two years earlier, in 2022), could never overcome injuries that consistently threw him off track. He underwent Tommy John surgery in October 2022, then had back surgery in 2023, which delayed his return.

He made it back for three games in 2024 (with a 5.40 ERA), then strained his hamstring on his first pitch of his second spring training game this year, limiting him to 11 games (and an 8.44 ERA), with his stuff never getting all the way back. 

Cousins, who had emerged as a high-leverage reliever on the way to the World Series in 2024, underwent Tommy John surgery this June, which will knock him out until at least next summer. 

And Hamilton, who was a nice find in an otherwise brutal 2023 season, struggled this season to a 4.28 ERA in 36 games before being optioned to Triple-A at the trade deadline and never coming back up.