{"id":948650,"date":"2026-10-27T22:26:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T22:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/948650\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T22:26:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T22:26:17","slug":"yankees-castoff-alex-verdugo-out-of-mlb-for-483-days-after-earning-23-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/948650\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees Castoff Alex Verdugo Out of MLB for 483 Days After Earning $23 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Alex\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Former Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo has been out of MLB for 483 days despite earning $23 million during his career. Will he return to the majors?<\/p>\n

Alex Verdugo played for the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, and collected $23,125,201 in career earnings through 2025<\/a>, according to Spotrac. But as of Tuesday, 482 days have passed since he last played baseball in a major league game.<\/p>\n

The former outfielder who also appeared in MLB with the Atlanta Braves last appeared on July 1, 2025<\/a>, going 0-for-3 with a walk for the Braves against the Los Angeles Angels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Born May 15, 1996, Verdugo went to the Dodgers in the second round of the 2014 draft, 62nd overall, and signed for a $914,600 bonus. By 2019, MLB Pipeline ranked Verdugo<\/a> as the Dodgers No. 1 prospect, and the 35th-best prospect in<\/a> all of baseball. But the Dodgers sent him to Boston on Feb. 9, 2020, alongside Jeter Downs and Connor Wong in the trade that brought Mookie Betts and David Price to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Through 2025, he owned a .270 average with 831 hits<\/a>, along with 70 home runs and 328 RBI.<\/p>\n

Boston shipped him to New York on Dec. 5, 2023, after a series of reported clashes with then-manager Alex Cora<\/a>, for pitchers Richard Fitts, Greg Weissert and Nicholas Judice. Verdugo signed an $8.7 million deal with the Yankees on Jan. 11, 2024, avoiding arbitration.<\/p>\n

Red Sox manager Alex Cora benched Verdugo after a late arrival<\/a> during the 2023 season. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my worst days here in this organization,\u201d Cora said, according to Yardbarker.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Verdugo\u2019s Career Earnings by Year and Team<\/p>\n

The ledger starts with a $914,600 signing bonus from the Dodgers in 2014. Verdugo then earned $90,613 in 2017, $137,710 in 2018 and $560,000 in 2019, for a Los Angeles total of $1,702,923, according to Spotrac.<\/p>\n

Boston paid him $222,778 in 2020, $649,500 in 2021, $3.55 million in 2022 and $6.3 million in 2023, totaling $10,722,278 across four seasons.<\/p>\n

The Yankees paid him $9.2 million for 2024, made up of $8.7 million in base salary and $500,000 in incentives. The Braves paid $1.5 million for 2025.<\/p>\n

Those four teams account for the full $23,125,201 in Spotrac\u2019s figures, and Verdugo enters the offseason as a free agent.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Verdugo\u2019s Season With the New York Yankees<\/p>\n

Verdugo played 149 games for the Yankees in 2024 and hit .233\/.291\/.356 with 13 home runs<\/a>, plus 28 doubles and 61 RBI.<\/p>\n

Long slumps led fans to demand prospect Jasson Dom\u00ednguez in left field, but the club kept Verdugo in the lineup largely because of his defense.<\/p>\n

\u201cFans booing me, getting on me, I understand it. I was booing myself, too,\u201d Verdugo said after the Yankees\u2019 6-5 win over the Kansas City Royals<\/a> in Game 1 of the American League Division Series, as quoted by Sports Illustrated.<\/p>\n

He reached base three times that night, and his two-out single in the seventh inning drove in Jazz<\/a> Chisholm Jr. with the go-ahead run.<\/p>\n

The Yankees chose not to re-sign him<\/a> after the season. Verdugo went into mid-March 2025 with no publicly known big league offer, as slipping production, clubhouse questions and a deep pool of outfielders worked against him, according to Yardbarker.<\/p>\n

The Atlanta Braves signed him to a one-year, $1.5 million contract on March 20, 2025, down from the $9.2 million he earned in 2024.<\/p>\n

He hit .239\/.296\/.289 without a home run in 56 games, and the Braves designated him for assignment July 2 before releasing him July 5.<\/p>\n

The San Diego Padres<\/a> gave him a minor league contract March 1, 2026, and he was released in May after a shoulder injury<\/a> expected to require season-ending surgery.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tJonathan Vankin<\/a> JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist who covers MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, boxing, golf, and Olympic sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Newspaper and Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering the Olympics, pro baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty Former Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo has been out of MLB for 483 days despite earning $23 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-948650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}