Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Meet A Prospect : Manny Banuelos

I know this is probably silly to do, mainly because everyone already knows who Manny Banuelos is, but after coming off the DL Manny has been absolutely filthy again. His control is back, his velocity is back, and his dominance is back. Manny Banuelos was born on March 13th, 1991 in Monterrey, Mexico and was one of four international free agents the Yankees signed out of Mexico in 2008, including Afredo Aceves. Manny Banuelos gives the Yankees the best prospect they have may have ever developed.... a scary thought. Meet Mr. Manuel Banuelos. 



Manny Banuelos, or Man Ban as more commonly known as on the interwebs, is a young and small framed left hander that easily touches 92 MPH with his fastball. His changeup already looks like a plus pitch and possibly the strike out pitch. He has also been adding a curve and/or slider to his repertoire which would make him one scary individual on the mound.  He, in my prospect humping opinion, reminds me a lot of Johan Santana. 

Manny B was named the #1 prospect overall for the Yankees in The Greedy Pinstripes Top 20 prospect list, among others, after being 4th and 6th best in the two seasons prior to 2012 respectively according to Baseball America. Even after struggling with command in parts of his last two seasons he still looks like a potential Ace at the top of a rotation and is still far and away the best Yankees prospect, let alone best pitching prospect in a rich system.



The great Mariano Rivera even , seen here, said that Manny Banuelos is the "best pitching prospect he has ever seen". That is saying a lot considering how many young arms he has seen coming through the Yankees system in his 16 seasons, although we should take a step back because the last pitcher he donned as the "best" was Brien Taylor... and we all know how well that worked out.  Either way this is very high praise from the greatest closer of all time. 



No comments:

Post a Comment

Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)