Many of the minor league affiliates for the New York Yankees are done playing this season with just the Scranton/Wilkes Barre RailRiders, the Staten Island Yankees and the Pulaski Yankees making the postseason. Pulaski has since been eliminated but the story of the season has not been the Yankees prospects that are down on the farm as much as the story evolving around the top prospects that have seemingly taken the league by storm. With players like Luis Severino and Greg Bird lighting up and exciting the Yankee Stadium faithful the look of the Yankees Top Prospects list is expected to get a major face lift after all MiLB games are wrapped up. I wanted to get an early jump on this with my own Top 10 Post MiLB Season Prospects List for the New York Yankees.
1. Aaron Judge
2. Jorge Mateo
3. Gary Sanchez
4. Robert Refsnyder
5. James Kaprielian
6. Jacob Lindgren
7. Luis Torrens
8. Eric Jagielo
9. Ian Clarkin
10. Rookie Davis
The threshold for being a prospect or taking the next step is 50 innings for a pitcher or 130 at-bats for a positional player. A player can also take the next step out of the prospect arena by spending more than 45 days on the active roster with the exception of the month of September when rosters ar expanded. With that in mind you can realize why you aren't seeing Luis Severino who is just 14.2 innings away from the 50 IP mark and Greg Bird who is less than 50 at bats away from 130 for the season. If these two were to be shut down for the remainder of the season, which will not happen with Nathan Eovaldi and Mark Teixeira injured and likely to miss the remainder of the regular season, Severino would easily be #1 and Bird would probably be my #4 but that's the way the cook crumbles unfortunately.
What's your Top 10 without Bird and Severino?
My list would pretty much be the same with one exception. I would move Clarkin out and add Brady Lail. Concerning Clarkin, he's nothing more than a projection based on high school stats. He has virtually no pro experiance. He may be the best pitcher in our system one day, but so far he's shown nothing.
ReplyDeleteI could get on board with that Levin. A lot of these lists are made up on projections, hence why you see guys who just got drafted get slung into the Top 10 or so on most teams, not just the Yankees. Lail has had a great season so I'd be okay with flip flopping them, I probably had Lail around 11th or so anyway to be completely honest.
DeleteI would flip flop Judge and Mateo and move Kapriellian up to 3 and drop Sanchez down to 4 and Refsnyder 5. Sanchez will never catch a game for the Yanks
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I am ready to put a 20 year old ahead of Judge in Triple-A. Sure Judge has struggled in Scranton but only for a month or two, if it carries over to 2016 then you make the change in my opinion. I love Mateo but when he's stealing 40-50 bases in Double-A or above I'll pay more attention, not to take away from pushing 90 stolen bases in A-Ball combined.
DeleteEveryone knows how high I am on Refsnyder, truth be told he probably deserves to be lower. I'm not sure if I put Kap ahead of him but it wouldn't be worth arguing the fact in my opinion, they are close.
Sanchez may never catch a game for New York but I honestly think that's more because of the depth in front of him and less about what he is doing as a catcher. He's made leaps and bounds defensively and made more leaps offensively in 2015. He's not Yadier, but he's not Montero either. Not anymore.
I still think Jorge Mateo will end up at 2nd base if Didi shows he can hit. 2018 is the year IF Mateo can improve as his talents warrant he should.
ReplyDeleteThere are other SS in the system that may also end up at 2nd base IF Mateo ends up as a better SS than Didi. At Meteo's age, we can only project how good he will be in 2018. There are a lot of IFs with anyone of his age.
It could happen. At one point the Chicago Cubs had three shortstops in their infield. That's a good way to build an athletic defense.
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