The New York Yankees will have a familiar face on YES Network in 2026.
On Tuesday, the network announced that Willie Randolph is joining its Yankees coverage. Michael Kay later clarified on Yankees Hot Stove that the 71-year-old Randolph will work in the studio. The six-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion effectively fills one of the openings created by the departures of Jeff Nelson and Dave Valle.
While the network recently moved on from John Flaherty, Nelson, and Valle, those changes were felt more in the studio than the booth. David Cone remains an integral part of the analyst rotation and is expected to call upwards of 60 games in 2026 — after dropping his ESPN responsibilities — alongside Todd Frazier, Joe Girardi, and Paul O’Neill.
According to The Athletic, Kay is slated to handle roughly 135 games next season, with Ryan Ruocco calling around 15 and Justin Shackil filling in as needed. Beyond Cone, how YES deploys its deep bullpen of analysts remains to be seen. One long-running criticism of the network’s Yankees broadcasts has been the sheer volume of voices cycling through the booth. It was never an indictment of any one analyst, but the constant rotation often disrupted chemistry, which is presumably why the booth ranked No. 23 in Awful Announcing’s 2025 local MLB announcer rankings.
For now, Randolph is expected to work primarily in the studio, giving YES another Yankees voice with institutional knowledge without further bloating the booth. Whether that leads to occasional game appearances remains to be seen, but the network’s immediate focus appears to be shoring up its pre- and postgame coverage.
Randolph spent 13 seasons anchoring second base with the Yankees from 1976-88. After retiring, Randolph returned to the Bronx as Joe Torre’s bench coach from 1994–2004, adding four more World Series rings during the Yankees’ late-90s run. He later crossed town to manage the Mets from 2005–08, guiding them to the ’06 NLCS before being dismissed midway through the ’08 season.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.