Veteran infielder Paul DeJong has opted out of his minor league contract with the Yankees and is now a free agent, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports.
DeJong is only hitting .203 in Triple-A, but he’s clobbered six homers and walked at a 19% clip in 83 plate appearances, leaving him with an overall .203/.361/.516 batting line (127 wRC+). New York brought him in as a depth option in the offseason, knowing Anthony Volpe would miss the beginning of the year recovering from shoulder surgery. However, the Yanks also have Jose Caballero and Oswaldo Cabrera as infield options, and after signing DeJong they also acquired infielder Max Schuemann from the A’s. Volpe is set to return in the near future, and all of Caballero, Schuemann and Cabrera are still on the 40-man roster, leaving DeJong little path to a big league promotion.
A veteran of nine big league seasons, DeJong is a slick fielding, right-handed hitting shortstop who’s capable of playing anywhere on the infield. He strikes out too often (career 27.9%) and doesn’t walk enough to completely offset that (7.1%). DeJong has plenty of power though, evidenced by 146 round-trippers and a .187 ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average) in the majors. He’s a career .229/.294/.416 hitter in exactly 3500 big league plate appearances.
DeJong has played in each of the past nine major league seasons and logged at least 208 plate appearances in every 162-game season in that time (plus 174 plate appearances in the shortened 2020 campaign). He spent the 2025 season with the Nats and hit .228/.269/.373 in 208 trips to the plate. He’d have logged more playing time were it not for a fractured nose — suffered when an errant fastball hit him in the face — that sidelined him for two months.
There are plenty of teams with starting infielders on the shelf at the moment, which could lead to a new opportunity for DeJong. The Astros (Jeremy Peña), Athletics (Max Muncy), Orioles (Jordan Westburg, Jackson Holliday) and Mets (Francisco Lindor) are among the clubs dealing with prominent infield injuries. There are surely several other teams that might have interest in adding a quality defender with some pop to help out the big league bench or to stash in the upper minors (with a clearer path to the majors for DeJong).
