As the Yankees approached last season’s Trade Deadline, they’d squandered an early division lead and sat in need of reinforcements. The most logical area of the roster to augment was the bullpen. Devin Williams, acquired in a preseason blockbuster to serve as the team’s closer, had been a massive disappointment, closing out July with an ERA above 5.00, and few other Yankees relievers fared much better. GM Brian Cashman acted with heartening urgency, adding not one, not two, but three relievers to the mix. Alongside David Bednar and Jake Bird, he swung a trade with the Giants to acquire their off-and-on-again closer, Camilo Doval.
2025 Stats (with Giants and Yankees): 65.1 IP, 3.58 ERA, 3.47 FIP, 1.32 WHIP, 9.9 K/9, 4.8 BB/9, 0.6 HR/9, 0.6 fWAR
2026 ZiPS Projections: 64.3 IP, 3.64 ERA, 3.45 FIP, 1.26 WHIP, 10.5 K/9, 4.3 BB/9, 0.7 HR/9, 0.7 fWAR
Doval burst on the scene in 2021, posting an exemplary 37:9 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 27 innings for a surprising 107-win Giants club that dethroned the Dodgers as NL West champs for the only time since 2012. They fell back as a team the next year, but Doval secured San Francisco’s closer job, establishing himself as a ninth-inning stalwart before leading the NL with 39 saves in 2023. The Dominican Republic native appeared poised for a steady run as one of the game’s premier relief arms.
But, as has been proven time and again, the reliever is baseball’s most fickle creature. Doval regressed dramatically in 2024, recording a 4.88 ERA that called into question his long-term viability. While he fared better in the first half of 2025, his inconsistency—as well as the middling Giants’ inability to get back to October in an uber-competitive NL West—made him expendable at the deadline.
Doval’s Yankees debut came in a game that could not have been scripted better to shatter the hearts of the team’s fans everywhere. Riding high on the strength of their deadline additions, New York watched Bird allow four runs and Bednar allow another two to blow a comfortable lead against the lowly Marlins. New York’s third shiny new object, Doval, entered in the ninth with a two-run lead, promptly allowing three baserunners before, aided by an error from fellow newcomer José Caballero, Miami walked the game off on a dribbler.
Receiving an opportunity to enter the setup mix in a wide-open Yankees bullpen, Doval continued to flounder in his new uniform. Through his first 16 appearances with New York, the right-hander posted a 6.59 ERA. By the end of that run, he’d fallen largely into mop-up duty while an unfazed Bednar seized the closer spot and Williams settled in as setup man.
In this lower-leverage role, Doval started to turn things around. In late September, he allowed just one hit in six scoreless outings to end the season. Crucially, for a pitcher whose struggles with control had led him to give free passes in half of those first 16 appearances, Doval allowed walks in just one of those final six. He wasn’t used in the Wild Card Series but pitched reasonably well in three ALDS appearances. This included Game 2 in Toronto, where Doval entered with the Yankees down 2-0 in the fifth and tossed two perfect innings, making him one of a precious few hurlers able to keep the relentless Jays lineup at bay.
With Williams and Luke Weaver both departing in free agency, Doval would appear in line to get a crack at the setup job once again behind Bednar unless the Yankees add another top-end arm. The pressure is on, as Brian Cashman has on multiple occasions pointed to his Trade Deadline additions as a primary reason why the team didn’t add much to the bullpen this past offseason. The front office is optimistic about what they’ll get from a full season of Doval.
The big question is whether his inconsistency the past two seasons is an aberration or his early dominance has faded. ZiPS expects the latter, projecting a remarkably similar line to Doval’s last season, a performance that would land him more in the middle reliever category. Many of Doval’s peripherals remained strong last year — including a 53.6-percent ground-ball rate — but his 12.6 percent walk rate held him back from being reliably effective.
Entering 2026, expect control to be a focal point of Doval’s scouting report. If the former All-Star can keep traffic off the bases, Doval still has the stuff to be a back-end option. If not, the 28-year-old could once again cede his role and find himself in mop-up duty — and possible non-tender territory.
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