Bullpen depth is never sexy in August, but it's the kind of move that keeps a contender from panicking when the injury bug hits. The Yankees added Justin Topa on a minor league deal, per MLB Trade Rumors, slotting him into Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's Triple-A bullpen.
This isn't Topa's first stop of the summer. He got released by the Twins in mid-May after a brutal run, then bounced through minor league deals with the Blue Jays and the Royals before New York became destination No. 4. That's a lot of movement for one calendar year, and it tells you exactly what kind of signing this is: organizational depth, not a bullpen savior.
The Twins numbers explain the churn. Topa got shelled for 17 earned runs across just 19 appearances with Minnesota to start the year, a stretch ugly enough to get him cut loose mid-season. It's a rough fall for a guy who was pitching meaningful innings for a contender not that long ago.
Because Topa has been good before, and recently. In 2023 with the Mariners, he threw a career-high 69 innings with a 2.61 ERA, a big enough breakout that it helped Seattle feel comfortable trading closer Paul Sewald at the deadline that year. He's also survived two Tommy John surgeries dating back to college, so the arm has taken a beating even on the good years.
The Yankees' timing lines up with need. Angel Chivilli, who'd been holding down a middle-relief role at Triple-A, landed on the injured list with an elbow issue -- his second IL stint of the year -- after a rough deadline-day outing. Topa steps into that vacated bullpen spot in Scranton, and if he can rediscover the sinker-heavy, ground-ball form that made him useful in Seattle, he's a phone call away from Yankee Stadium if the big league pen springs a leak down the stretch.
Don't expect this to move the needle in the AL East race by itself. But these are the moves that decide whether a team is scrambling in September or has a warm body ready to go. For Topa, it's another shot to prove the 2026 season with the Twins was the outlier, not the new normal.