What is the Future for the Newest 40-Man Roster Addition?
With the MLB off-season officially underway, the Yankees have already had to make a couple key roster decisions. While the choice to offer David Bednar the Qualifying Offer and let Jazz Chisholm Jr. walk were the headline moves, there was another under the radar move made by the organization. Marco Luciano, who was picked up on waivers in 2025, DFA’d from the 40-man roster, and successfully floated to the minor leagues, has now found his way back on to the 40-man roster a year later. There are some interesting ramifications to this move, so let’s get to know Luciano, how he performed this season, and what this may mean for his future.
Marco Luciano was signed as an International Free Agent in the 2018 class by the San Francisco Giants. After a really strong 2019 campaign, Luciano immediately shot up towards the top of prospect lists, peaking at 9th by Baseball Prospectus in 2022. Luciano would make his MLB debut in 2023, playing 14 games. He would come up for another 27 in 2024, but really struggled with a 59 wRC+. After an unspectacular 2025 season in AAA, Luciano was DFA’d. After being picked up and DFA’d by the Pirates and then the Orioles, the Yankees successfully slid him off the 40-man and into the minor league system this past winter.
Luciano started the season with AA Somerset, where he made an immediate impact. In 28 games, Luciano slashed .327/.410/.713 with 10 home runs, 27.4 K%, 11.1 BB%, and a 188 wRC+. It was an offensive explosion for a very strong AA offense. Luciano quickly earned his way back to AAA, joining Scranton in early May. While he cooled off from that torrid start in AA, Luciano still had an excellent season, finishing with a 129 wRC+. Amongst hitters with 300 or more plate appearances in the International League, Luciano ranked 17th out of 150. This was ahead of top prospects such as Joshua Baez, Seaver King, and Max Clark. So, what changed with the Yankees? Let’s look at Luciano’s data between his time with the Giants vs the Yankees.
2025 (SF): 555 PA |.214/.335/.413 | 23 HR | 30.6 K% | 15.3 BB% | 96 wRC+
2026 (NYY): 376 PA | .282/.380/.492 | 17 HR | 23.9 K% | 13.6 BB% | 129 wRC+
Hitting the ball hard has never been the problem for Luciano, as his 107.7 90th percentile and 113.7 max exit velocities carried over to 2026, sitting at 106.5 and 113.8, respectively. Additionally, Luciano has maintained good swing decisions. While there was a rise in his swing rate by nearly 4%, his Z-O swing rate remained similar, shifting from 43.4% in ’25 to 42% in ’26. This means that while he was swinging more, the increase was close to proportional to both swings in the zone and outside, maintaining similar strong walk rates.
The first major difference maker was the amount of contact made by Luciano. With a 74.7% z-con and 36.9% overall whiff rate, Luciano was one of the worst at making contact in 2025. It led to a K rate over 30%. His time with the Yankees saw a nice boost to his contact, seeing his z-con rise to 77.8% and his whiff rate drop to 30%. While his walk rate did fall a bit because he was putting the ball in play more, the combination of more swings and better contact led to a massive decrease in his K rate, dropping by nearly 7%.
While making more contact certainly helped, it wasn’t the only reason his batting average took such a large jump. Luciano has seen a healthy improvement in his batted ball distribution. While getting the ball off the ground was never a big issue, his 42.3% ground ball rate in 2025 was not bad, the Yankees helped him improve his bat path slightly. With a 10% change in his launch angle sweet spot, Luciano saw a ~1.5% drop in his ground ball, fly ball, and pop-up rates redistributed into a nearly 5% gain to his line drive rate. Hitting more line drives increased the number of singles on the season by a wide margin.
From a power perspective, while his ISO only saw a slight bump, going from .199 to .210, it Is notable that Luciano saw a big shift in his pulled fly ball rate, going from 11.7% to 18.9%. while the ISO doesn’t seem to endorse the fact that the pulled fly ball rate made a big impact to his game power, it must be mentioned that the Pacific Coast League, in which San Francisco’s AAA affiliate participates, is a very high offensive run environment. Due to this fact, the best stat that shows Luciano’s improved power performance is wOBA, in which Luciano saw a jump from .329 in the PCL to .378 in the International League. All in all, the Yankees helped improve Luciano’s contact and batted ball distribution to see his offense improve to levels like when he was a top prospect.
So, where does this leave Luciano in 2027? The major caveat with his 40-man roster inclusion is that he has no remaining minor league options. This means if the Yankees didn’t have Luciano on the 26-man roster on Opening Day, he would have to clear waivers and be at risk to be picked up by someone else. If there wasn’t a legitimate belief that he could contribute on the major league roster, I’m not sure he would’ve been added.
What role could he play? Well, it is no secret that the Yankees have an open spot at 2nd base. While his defensive ability is not a strength, he could be an option at the spot. However, I would be surprised if the Yankees wanted to entrust a starting spot to the 25-year-old who has yet to find Major League success. Luciano seems like a great internal candidate to fill the Amed Rosario spot on the roster.
While both his stats against lefties and righties were good in 2026, the underlying supports more consistency vs LHP. Most notably, Luciano made better swing decisions and superior contact vs lefties, cutting his whiff rate by 5% compared to his season average. The most staggering stat is a 13.6 K% against lefties as opposed to the 26.7 K% against righties. His slash line vs LHP at AAA was .319/.443/.565 with a wOBA of .428 and xwOBA of .418. If Luciano can continue to be this much of an on base threat with good power, that weakside platoon infield role could be his for the taking.
The offseason has barely begun, and will come to an abrupt stop when the lockout begins on December 1st. The front office will surely be busy improving the roster in some capacity, as the lineup has clear holes at 2nd, 3rd, and center. With Luciano here, maybe it allows Cashman and co. to focus on bigger targets first.
While he many not be a big splash acquisition like some fans want, we have seen the last few seasons the production the Yankees have found from homegrown talent. We have also seen a Brewers team win the world series by maximizing players’ strengths, taking reclamation projects like former Yankee Jake Bauers, and turning them into legitimate contributors. A right-handed infielder who can get on base at a high clip and provide some power is something the Yankees need, so the path is there for him to make the team. We will have to wait a bit longer to see how sincere their belief in him is.
Every Prospect. Every Leve. Every Day.
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