Although the last few weeks have not gone particularly smoothly, the New York Yankees will be active buyers at the trade deadline. They are every year. New York is in wild-card position and there's still plenty of time remaining to make a run at the AL East title, though the Yankees need reinforcements. Injuries and underperformance have thinned the pitching staff in particular.

"I'd certainly love to import a starter, some relievers, and an infielder as well, if possible," GM Brian Cashman said earlier this month. "But that's a long list. I'm not sure if this will be a deep deadline or not, so I don't know how active we can be. But we will try to be active, I can tell you that, and we will try to import improvements. That's the gig."

Within the next two or three weeks, the Yankees are expected to get back reigning AL Rookie of the Year Luis Gil, who has yet to pitch this year because of a lat strain. They're still down Gerrit Cole and Clarke Schmidt though, both of whom had Tommy John surgery, and their usual trick of plucking one or two good relievers off the scrap heap each summer hasn't panned out yet. 

Aaron Judge is in his age-33 season now. Max Fried turns 32 in January. Cole is out for the season, and with his 35th birthday coming up in September, he's likely has already had his very best years. Cashman and the Yankees should have real urgency to improve the roster in an effort to get over the hump this year, while Judge is this and after losing the World Series last year.

They currently sit three games back in the AL East behind the surging Blue Jays but and have a two-game lead over the Mariners for the top wild-card spot (-2000 to make the playoffs, per Caesars).

As Cashman said, the deadline shopping list is long, perhaps so long that it won't be possible to address everything before 6 p.m. ET on July 31. The bullpen has to be a priority. The Yankees simply do not have enough able-bodied major league-caliber relievers. Their third base production has been among the worst in baseball too.

With a trade deadline a little more than one week away, here are three moves the Yankees should make to strengthen the roster for the stretch run.

1. Do what it takes to land Merrill Kelly and Eugenio Suárez

Suárez is the guy this trade deadline. The big rental bat who fits so many contenders. The Blue Jays, Cubs, Mets, and Tigers all make sense for Suárez in addition to the Yankees. He's on pace for more than 50 homers, and although his third base defense leaves something to be desired at this point in his career, the power makes up for it.

I do think Suárez is likely to perform worse for his new team after the trade deadline than he has for the Diamondbacks simply because his home runs rate, particularly his home runs-per-fly-ball rate, is out of line with his last few years. Roughly one out of every four fly balls is leaving the yard for him this year. It was 15% from 2023-24. That said, the 15% HR/FB version of Suárez is still really good and would be an enormous upgrade for the Yankees at the hot corner.

Kelly, 36, is having yet another terrific season, one in which he's again outperformed ERA estimators that are based on exit velocity and other measures of contact quality allowed. Do it once and it might be a fluke, but Kelly has done it for close to 1,000 innings now. It's a skill. Zac Gallen is the sexier name. Kelly is the better pitcher right now though and, unlike Gallen, his new team won't have to "fix" him. Kelly is plug-and-play. He'd slot in nicely as New York's No. 3 in October behind Fried and Carlos Rodón.

Barring a surprise addition to the trade market (always possible), Suárez will be the best power bat available at the deadline, and Kelly will be one of the top starters available. Winning a bidding war to get one of them will hurt. Getting both would really put a dent in New York's young player pipeline. Both would fill needs and fill them very well though. They're worth the price.

The Yankees currently have 2 ½ reliable relievers: Devin Williams, who's been excellent the last two months or so, setup man Luke Weaver, and Tim Hill against lefties (not so much against righties). It's not just reliable relievers that the Yankees are lacking either. Their bullpen lacks velocity. New York has the softest tossing bullpen in baseball:

Average reliever fastball velocity

30. Yankees: 93.0 mph
29. Rangers: 93.0 mph
28. Guardians: 93.1 mph
...
MLB average: 94.7 mph
...
1. Padres: 95.4 mph

Velocity isn't everything but it is a big piece of the pie. Velocity equals margin of error and the Yankees don't have much of it in their bullpen. Their core righty relievers (Weaver, Williams, Mark Leiter Jr., Fernando Cruz) are all similar in that they sit 92-95 mph with their fastballs and use a changeup or splitter as their putaway pitch. It's the same look again and again.

Jhoan Duran, who is under team control through 2027, would bring triple-digit velocity to New York's bullpen as well as a healthy dose of strikeouts and ground balls. He's excellent, one of the most overwhelming relievers in the game, and the Twins have used him in the seventh and eighth innings at times depending on matchups. The Yankees could leave Williams in the ninth inning and use Duran as a Moment of Truth™ reliever who matches up with the other team's top hitters regardless of inning.

Those two additional years of control are important too because Weaver and Williams will be free agents after this season. Duran would help anchor the Yankees' 2026 bullpen and beyond. Adding him would be as much about building the 2026 and 2027 bullpens as it would be improving the 2025 bullpen. Great relievers like him would help every contender. That is especially true for the Yankees given their bullpen outlook beyond this season.

The players on the field keep telling the Twins to sell sell sell, though Duran's additional team control years mean they don't have to move him. The Padres gave up a hefty package to acquire three postseason runs of Jason Adam last deadline. Getting three postseasons of Duran will cost at least as much and probably more seeing how Duran is several years younger than Adam and has a cleaner injury history. Paying big for relievers is not always the wisest move because even the best can be unpredictable year to year (or even month to month), but if you're going to pay big for a reliever, you do it for a guy like Duran.

Unlike Duran, Danny Coulombe is a rental. The southpaw is effective against both lefties and righties and has run a very high strikeout rate. Hill, New York's only lefty reliever, is a ground ball specialist who's had home run issues with righties. The path through the AL in the postseason goes through Yordan Alvarez, Kerry Carpenter and Riley Greene, Jonathan Aranda and the Lowes (Brandon and Josh), and all those Red Sox lefty bats. A quality second lefty reliever is a necessity, not a luxury.

Also, I should note that if the Yankees are unable to land Suárez, Twins super utility man Willi Castro would make a strong Plan B. He's a switch-hitting rental who has played plenty of third base and brings solid on-base skills. You might even be able to convince me Castro is a better third base target than Suárez once you factor in the likely asking price.

3. Bring in Michael Soroka and move him to the bullpen

Somehow still only 27, Soroka has an unsightly 5.10 ERA with the Nationals, though underlying numbers are strong (3.22 xERA) and MLB's worst bullpen has done the man no favors. Soroka has left nine runners on base for the bullpen and eight have scored. Give him a league-average 32% inherited runner strand rate rather than 89% (!), and he has a more respectable 4.48 ERA.

For a rebuilding Nationals team, giving Soroka another chance to start was a worthwhile roll of the dice, though it's really tough to ignore what he did in the bullpen for the White Sox last year. The numbers:

It's a small sample as a reliever, to be sure, but when you see the velocity jump that much and the strikeout rate jump that much, it's not hard to think the bullpen is where Soroka belongs at this point in his career. He's had injuries, most notably two Achilles tears, and it could be that he's best equipped to work one or two innings at a time rather than trying to turn a lineup over two to three times.

Soroka is another rental player and moving him to the bullpen does not necessarily have to mean working one inning. He's stretched out to start, so perhaps he could fill a multi-inning role and face 6-9 batters at a clip. Michael King filled that role very well before the Yankees used him to get Trent Grisham and Juan Soto last offseason. The multi-inning reliever is a valuable bullpen piece. My guess is a smart team trades for Soroka and uses him as a reliever the rest of the way. Why not the Yankees?