Yankees beefed up biggest area of need with tall task lying ahead

At long last, the Yankees found some relief for their beleaguered relief corps.

Before Thursday’s trade deadline passed, the Yankees pulled off a three-headed makeover of the back end of their bullpen, acquiring Pirates closer David Bednar, Giants closer Camilo Doval and Rockies righty Jake Bird to address the club’s biggest weakness.

They also added Rays utilityman José Caballero to improve their depth and speed off the bench — while trading away Oswald Peraza to the Angels — which came on the heels of trading for third baseman Ryan McMahon, utilityman Amed Rosario and outfielder Austin Slater over the past week.

The one area they did not address from the shopping list GM Brian Cashman laid out earlier this month was adding a starting pitcher, though Cashman said they “knocked on many doors” and just were not able to match up.

So now the Yankees have the group they will move forward with for the final two months, trying to erase a 3 ¹/₂-game deficit in the AL East after they skidded through a 16-24 stretch over their last 40 games before Thursday’s win.

“I think we’ve had a good team,” Cashman said on a conference call. “You can have a good team that’s not playing well, so I think that would characterize what the most recent stretch has been. But I do believe that that team, which is now different than this team, is good and has a chance to do good things. It was our job to try to find a way to improve upon it.”

Most notably, that came through beefing up the back end of the bullpen, with the trio of new relievers set to join closer Devin Williams, setup man Luke Weaver and lefty Tim Hill in the late innings to form what the Yankees hope is a newfound strength of the team.

Aaron Boone indicated that Williams would remain the closer, but the manager now has much better options to navigate the late innings with a lead.

“Shortening the game’s been a little bit of a challenge for us over the last month and a half with some of the injuries we’ve had,” said Boone, who added he had been pounding the table for Bednar in particular. “I know we got some high-powered guys now to go with what’s already a pretty good flock of guys, too.”

All three relievers are under team control beyond this season — Bednar through 2026, Doval through 2027 and Bird through 2028 — which is notable with Williams and Weaver set to hit free agency this offseason.

The Yankees’ bullpen entered Thursday with a 4.24 ERA, which ranked 21st in the majors. Since July 1, their relievers had combined to post a 6.29 ERA, which was the second-highest mark during that stretch, as they became overworked and exposed with injuries to Fernando Cruz (expected back in late August) and Mark Leiter Jr. (could be back next week).

In a market where the prices for top-end relievers was steep, the Yankees gave up three prospects for Bednar (catchers Rafael Flores — the biggest name the Yankees gave up Thursday — and Edgleen Perez and outfielder Brian Sanchez), four for Doval (catcher Jesus Rodriguez, right-hander Trystan Vrieling, infielder Parks Harber and left-hander Carlos de la Rosa) and two for Bird (infielder Roc Riggio and left-hander Ben Shields).

For Caballero, the Yankees shipped outfield prospect Everson Pereira and a player to be named later or cash consideration to the Rays.

Bednar, 30, is a two-time All-Star who had a rough 2024 and was even demoted to Triple-A early this season before coming back and thriving. Overall, he had a 2.37 ERA with 17 saves and 51 strikeouts in 38 innings.

Doval, 28, is a former All-Star who had a 3.09 ERA with 15 saves and 50 strikeouts in 46 ²/₃ innings. He is known for a cutter that sits in the upper 90s

And Bird, 29, had a 4.73 ERA with 62 strikeouts in 53 ¹/₃ innings this season, numbers that were inflated by a bad July in which he gave up 14 earned runs in his last eight games (spanning 5 ¹/₃ innings).

“I think we definitely got better today. They’re three incredible pitchers,” Williams said. “You got a lot of options for Booney now. It’s kind of hard to go wrong.”