The New York Yankees enter this winter with a quiet but real decision on Clarke Schmidt: tender him a contract and pay a projected $4.5 million in his final year of arbitration, or non-tender him and let him walk.
Matt Swartz’s model at MLB Trade Rumors puts Schmidt at $4.5 million for 2027, the same figure he earned in 2026 after the sides avoided a hearing.
That number is not especially large for a pitcher who, from 2023 through mid-2025, looked like a useful rotation piece. In 2025 he was 4-4 with a 3.32 ERA in 14 starts before his elbow gave out.
Over a longer stretch, from 2023 into 2025, he posted a 3.85 ERA across 323 innings. At full health, $4.5 million would be a bargain.
Health is the problem. Schmidt underwent Tommy John surgery in June 2025, his second such procedure, and spent nearly the entire 2026 season on the 60-day injured list. The Yankees activated him on September 16.
He worked two-thirds of an inning out of the bullpen, then felt a cramping sensation in his right biceps while warming up for a second appearance.
Schmidt then landed on the 15-day injured list with biceps neuritis, retroactive to September 21, and Aaron Boone shut him down for the postseason.
Boone has said the issue should not affect Schmidt long term and that a normal winter and spring buildup is still realistic. Even so, the Yankees are buying a pitcher who has thrown two-thirds of a major-league inning in a calendar year and a half.
Roster math makes the tender less automatic. Schmidt now has more than five years of service and cannot be optioned to the minors without his consent.
A $4.5 million salary stuck on the big-league roster is a different proposition from a pitcher who can be stashed. New York’s 2027 rotation already projects to include Max Fried, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Cam Schlittler, Will Warren, Ryan Weathers and others.
Schmidt does not have a clear path to a start, and paying him to wait in the bullpen after two lost seasons is a harder sell inside a payroll that has been pressed against the luxury-tax line.
A non-tender would not have to be the first move. The club could try to trade him, though selling low after almost two missed years is unattractive, or offer a take-it-or-leave-it deal below the projection before the late-November deadline.
If Schmidt’s camp holds at something near $4.5 million and the medical outlook stays uncertain, walking away is a plausible outcome. He would still draw interest elsewhere on a cheap one-year deal.
For the Yankees, the question is whether a pitcher they once developed into a mid-rotation arm is still worth the guarantee when the innings have disappeared and the roster spot has not.
