The Yankees have signed veteran utility man Pablo Reyes to a minor league deal, per a report from Gary Phillips of the New York Daily News. The infielder will presumably receive an invite to big league Spring Training in a few months.
Reyes, 31, made his big league debut with the Pirates back in 2018. That 18-game cup of coffee in the majors went quite well for him, as he slashed an impressive .293/.349/.483 in 63 trips to the plate down the stretch that September. That strong performance earned him a larger role with the club as part of the club’s Opening Day roster, but he struggled badly and found himself optioned to the minors for much of the summer as he ultimately slashed just .203/.274/.322 in 71 games. A PED suspension wiped out Reyes’s 2020 season, but he resurfaced as a member of the Brewers in 2021. He spent two years as a depth piece for Milwaukee, shuttling between Triple-A and the club’s bench, and hit a middling .258/.330/.344 (84 wRC+) in 103 trips to the plate with the club.
He elected free agency following the 2022 season and initially signed on with the Athletics on a minor league pact for the 2023 season. He ultimately did not make it to Oakland, however, failing to crack the club’s Opening Day roster before being shipped to the Red Sox in mid-May. He was quickly selected to the big league roster in Boston, and his time with the Red Sox proved to be the most productive of his big league career. Reyes appeared in 64 games for the Red Sox last year, slashing a roughly league average .287/.339/.377 in 185 trips to the plate.
That was a sufficiently strong performance that Boston decided to bring Reyes back for the 2024 campaign, but things took a turn for the worse this year as he posted a paltry 27 wRC+ in the first month of the year before being designated for assignment by the Red Sox in late April. Reyes was outrighted to the minors initially but quickly found himself on the move again as he was dealt to the Mets the following month. Reyes only made one appearance in Queens as a pinch runner without stepping up to the plate, but he did slash a strong .300/.385/.504 in 68 Triple-A games between his two clubs’ affiliates in Worcester and Syracuse.
Now, Reyes will enter 2025 looking to crack a Yankees bench mix that current figures to feature Oswaldo Cabrera, Oswald Peraza, DJ LeMahieu, Jon Berti, and Jorbit Vivas. While Reyes offers little in the way of offense, he does provide value in the form of quality baserunning and the positional flexibility to play everywhere on the diamond except behind the plate. Should Reyes find himself on the outside looking in of the club’s Opening Day roster next year, he could be a valuable source of non-roster depth for a club that currently projects to feature a bench without many optionable players.
