Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the New York Yankees. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Low-Velocity Arms
Zach Messinger, RHP
Sean Hermann, RHP
Matt Sauer, RHP
Mitch Spence, RHP
Edgar Barclay, LHP
Steven Jennings, RHP
Messinger, 23, has undergone deprogramming after spending his college career at UVA. The 6-foot-6 righty now has a 92-94 mph fastball that plays up due to big extension. If he can throw harder and/or locate his slider more consistently, he could breakout. Hermann, 19, was a 2022 high school draftee. His fastball sits 91-92 with uphill angle and he pounded the zone with it last year, throwing strikes at a 71% clip after he signed. His mid-80s slider is more average right now but this org’s core competency is developing those, so he’s a likely 2023 helium guy. Sauer, a former high-profile high school draft pick, is now 24 and sitting mostly 92-93 with vulnerable shape. His secondaries (especially his mid-80s slider) are all pretty good, and he’s a fine emergency depth option. Spence (cutters and slurves) and Barclay (changeups and sliders) are 24-year-olds who sit 90-92, throw plenty of strikes, and try to get by with their superior secondary pitches. Jennings, a former high draft pick of the Pirates, has also thrown lots of strikes with 40-grade stuff in the upper minors.
Potential Late-Breaking Catcher
Mickey Gasper, C/1B
Anthony Seigler, C
Carlos Narvaez, C
Josh Breaux, C
Gasper, who barely catches anymore, is a switch-hitter with great feel for contact. Seigler, a former first rounder who is now 23, has struggled with injuries and spent most of 2022 at High-A, where he performed above the league average. Recall that he’s a funky, switch-hitting former switch-pitcher. He has unique baseball skills that make me want to stay on him to a degree. Narvaez and Breaux are both upper-level power-over-hit types who might get a cup of coffee due to injury.
Toolsy, Volatile Young Bats
Daury Arias, CF
Dayro Perez, SS
Marcos Cabrera, 3B
Alan Mejia, OF
Madison Santos, OF
Christopher Familia, OF
Felix Negueis, OF
This entire group has yet to play above A-ball. They all flash power and speed, and scouts can dream on how their power might grow as they mature. But each of them also has sizable hit tool question marks.
Knockout Breaking Balls
Joel Valdez, LHP
Tyrone Yulie, RHP
Juan Carela, RHP
Yorlin Calderon, RHP
Josue Panacual, RHP
Aside from Panacual, this entire group leans on their sliders more often than they do their fastballs. Valdez (acquired from Philly) is 22 and his uphill 93-94 mph heater has bat-missing traits, which isn’t true of most of this group, but he struggles to locate it and it’s why he needs to throw his plus slider a ton. Yulie, 21, has thrown harder in the past but sat 93 in 2022. He threw his mid-80s slider 43% of the time. Carela (slider, fastball, cutter) has plus-plus breaking ball spin but struggles to throw strikes with his 92-mph heater. Calderon is a wispy 21-year-old righty with a nasty two-plane slider and a below-average low-90s fastball. He’s loose and projectable enough to hope that he can throw harder with training. Panacual is a low-slot starter with a sinker and slider that have a nice horizontal split.
Hitterish Up-The-Middle Types
Engelth Urena, C
Jared Serna, 2B
Keiner Delgado, 2B
Urena is an athletic, well-rounded, medium-framed catching prospect who raked in the 2022 DSL. Serna, 20, tracks pitches beautifully and barely strikes out, but he makes relatively low-impact contact. Delgado’s DSL numbers were ridiculous and he has a really cool, left-handed version of Jose Altuve’s scissor kick swing, but some of his 2022 OBP is due to sheer passivity.
Hard Throwers
Lisandro Santos, LHP
Tanner Myatt, RHP
Jack Neely, RHP
Eric Reyzelman, RHP
Santos, 24, signed as a minor league free agent after he showed a huge K% uptick with the Braves in 2022. He has rare lefty velo, sitting 93-96 mph and mixing in a short, mid-80s cutter. Myatt, 24, sits 95 and gets above-average whiff rates on his slider and changeup, but he struggles to throw strikes. Neely is a gigantic guy who hopped around to a few schools (Texas, San Jacinto, Iowa Western, Ohio State) before pro ball. He now sits 95 and has a low-spin slider that dominated Low-A in 2022. Reyzelman was just drafted out of LSU. He sits 95, touches 99, and needs to find a second pitch. Like, at all. Seriously, he was like a 90% fastball guy in college.
System Overview
The Yankees continue to be great at developing pitching. Every year, a couple of college pitchers they’ve taken on Day Two or Three of a recent draft take a gargantuan leap forward. There are often arm strength upticks, but more and more frequently now you see fresh sweeper sliders akin to the one the Dodgers taught Blake Treinen and Evan Phillips. Will Warren was the big riser of this variety from 2022. This core competency almost ensures that New York will always have in-house depth to deal with bouts of pitcher injuries at the big league level.
There are the big names at the very top, but the middle of this system is thin on position player prospects. The Yankees’ approach to the international market (where they tend to put most of their bonus pool eggs in one $4 million-plus prospect basket every year) is perhaps contributing to this. Their tendency to target physical, lefty-hitting corner bats in the draft has littered the group with a handful of solid if monochromatic role players of modest upside. The org needs an injection of up-the-middle talent even with the Peraza/Volpe combination poised to hold down the middle infield at the big league level for a while.
The overall quality of the system is near the middle of the pack right now, and it will probably finish the calendar year in the bottom third due to graduations (especially if Gleyber Torres and Isaiah Kiner-Falefa don’t hit and require Volpe to be pushed) and trades. Oswaldo Cabrera is a Dude and should have been a Top 100 prospect last year, but he doesn’t have the hands for the infield (just put him in an outfield corner and let him rake), so New York will probably need to upgrade third base and possibly catcher at some point during the season. That’s probably going to cost the club prospects, but when center field was the need in 2022, the front office found a way to move some of the team’s big league pitching surplus to patch the hole, so perhaps they can take that line again.
