New York Yankees Top 30 Prospects

Lombard was the Yankees’ first pick in the 2023 draft, and he’s a departure from New York’s tendency to focus on safe, higher-floored first-round talents. Instead, the Miami native is a projectable athlete with a chance for above-average power and defense at shortstop, albeit with hit risk. All the good and all the scary was on display last year, when he hit .215/.337/.358 in 108 Double-A games, with eight bombs and a bunch of hard contact, but also a 26.4% strikeout rate.

Some hitters need to be coaxed into swinging a little harder to tap into their power; Lombard is not one of those cats. He’s up there to do damage, and he has a violent, high-effort upper cut that produces hard contact (45% hard-hit rate, which is great) as well as swing and miss — 71% contact, and 77% in zone, which is on the lower end for a guy in Double-A with 45 present power. He isn’t a hacker: He’ll take his walks, and for someone with an effortful swing, he has pretty good pitch recognition skills, and is able to adjust to spin and lay off it when it’s in the dirt. Like a lot of players with his bat path, Lombard tends to hammer balls in the lower part of the zone and struggle with heat upstairs. For the hit tool to reach our projection, he’s going to have to find a way to handle fastballs above the belt better than he has thus far.

Defensively, Lombard is a powerful, explosive, tightly wound athlete who requires more visible effort to make plays in the hole than most shortstops with his projection, though he’s talented enough to do so. His footwork looks a little better going to his right, and his arm facilitates plays deep in the six hole. Lombard’s arm stroke is frequently longer and sometimes a little messier than most shortstops, and there are a couple of instances where his throws nearly pull the first baseman off of the bag. But for the most part, his throws are strong and accurate from a number of different platforms. We’re split on whether he’s going to be an above-average or a plus defender there, but either way, that’s really good.

It’s important to contextualize Lombard’s season. The batting average and strikeouts are scary, but he was just 19 when he was promoted to Double-A. He’s a good defender at short, and he produced an above-average line at the plate even with a few warts. He’s been promoted quickly thus far in his career, and perhaps it’s time to take him off the fast track and let him really whack the competition around for a few months before the next challenge. We’re confident he has the talent to do so.

Rodríguez is a good example of why it pays to stay on athletes with projectable frames, even when the stuff and arm strength look a little light. Rodríguez was sitting in the low 90s just a few years ago, but now holds 94-96 comfortably and touches 98 mph, and he has seen a corresponding uptick in the crispness of his secondaries. He was able to maintain his stuff while tossing 150 innings last year, his first in the Yankees org after being acquired from Boston for Carlos Narváez, and averaging five and a half innings per start, which is about as stretched out as you’ll see a minor leaguer get these days.

Rodríguez has both fastballs, but he leans on his sinker, a bowling ball with late drop that has proven incredibly difficult to lift. He pumps strikes with it, and it occasionally misses bats, but the real benefit is that it ran a negative launch angle last year. On the whole, he posted a 54.5% groundball rate and allowed just three homers all of last season. The rest of the secondaries finish in different quadrants of the strike zone to do their part to keep hitters guessing, and both of Elmer’s breaking balls generated plus miss last year. There isn’t a monster, plus offspeed pitch, but the deep arsenal, velocity, and movement all help Rodríguez limit damage on contact.

It looks like Rodríguez will be a control-over-command pitcher. Part of that is because his ball moves so darned much, but some of the markers in his delivery — he’s a tall guy with a fairly long path, and while he’s under control, he isn’t especially fluid — hint that he’s going to work regions more than hit spots. Perhaps he’ll grow into a half-grade more command than we’re projecting if he stays healthy and accumulates reps, but even if he doesn’t, he should generate enough contact on the ground to eat up frames and avoid huge innings. He projects as a lower-variance no. 4 starter.

Kilby was a good high school prospect whose evaluation took a post-draft leap, though perhaps not for the reason prospect-hound readers might think. During BP sessions at showcase events in high school, Kilby was able to produce impressive power in a short mechanical distance (especially for such a lanky, long-levered hitter), and his bat-to-ball track record on the prep circuit in 2023 and 2024 was excellent (87% combined contact rate). He participated in fewer events than many of his best peers, which made that data point a little less reliable, but for such a big-framed, projectable hitter to have that kind of bat-to-ball track record in high school is uncommon. Kilby ranked 23rd on our 2025 Draft Board and was picked a bit later than that at 39th overall, where he got a bonus just shy of $2.8 million to eschew a commitment to Clemson. After the draft, Kilby popped off at Low-A Tampa, where he hit .353/.457/.441 with more walks than strikeouts. His Hawkeye contact data during that 18-game post-draft window was amazing (85% overall contact rate, 92% in-zone, 8% chase), but the sample is too small to really care about even before considering the context (late-season Low-A pitching is effectively complex-level pitching) unless you think Kilby is really twice as selective as Juan Soto.

Where Kilby did look different is on defense. In high school, he was a tightly wound athlete, especially in the lower body, and had an awkward throwing stroke unlike that of your typical big league infielder. It’s why, at FanGraphs anyway, pre-draft Kilby was projected to eventually move to the outfield. But late last summer, Kilby looked much more passable at shortstop than we could have expected. His actions take a little longer to unfold than most big league shortstops, but his range, hands, and throwing strength and accuracy all looked like potential fits at the six. There are still things for Kilby to work on — his swing cuts down at the baseball, and he may hit so many grounders that his power plays down across a bigger sample — but those issues are more palatable when we’re talking about a projectable teenage shortstop instead of a future corner outfielder. Don’t be alarmed when Kilby’s numbers (especially his OBP) come back to Earth in 2026 — he’s still got a very exciting profile as a big-framed, lefty-hitting potential shortstop with a great bat-to-ball track record.

Lagrange (pronounced “la-GRAWN-hey”) had walk-prone rookie ball campaigns in 2022 and 2023, then worked just 29.2 frames (including 8.2 AFL innings that saw him issue 15 walks) due to bouts with lower back inflammation in 2024. He entered 2025 as a 40+ FV prospect with enormous stuff and an exciting ceiling, but a sketchy track record of on-field performance (he was coming off a year in which he threw just 56% strikes and posted a 6.69 ERA). Then he went out and logged an incredible 120 innings in 2025, mostly at Double-A Somerset. A better-conditioned Lagrange held upper-90s velo for the entirety of that slate, and threw much of his four-pitch arsenal for strikes more reliably than ever before.

The headliner of Lagrange’s arsenal is his radar-gun-testing fastball, which peaks at 103 mph. A tight power slider, a longer, sweeping breaking ball that’s still pretty sharp, and a sinking, 90-mph changeup are all deployed with at least a fair amount of frequency, which typically isn’t the case for arm strength standouts like Lagrange. This isn’t an effortless operation; Lagrange is trying to throw hard, and his delivery features lots of head movement and spinal tilt. That makes him a little wild. Though the in-zone percentages with everything in his arsenal all hover around 50%, which is fine, he walked 4.65 per nine in 2025, which is a little high. It came alongside a 3.53 ERA, and he did generally manage to toss five innings per outing, but he’ll need to limit the free passes or he’s not going to start in the long run. It’s reasonable to dream on better future control for a guy this big and young, and who throws this hard, but we have him projected as a reliever here to illustrate what we consider to be the more likely outcome.

While Lagrange’s relief risk is high, so is his ceiling in the bullpen. He projects to have multiple plus pitches in the rotation, and in short stints, everything ticks up, and the fastball in particular might just be an 80 if his role changes. Moreover, his mix is deep enough that he wouldn’t be a two-trick pony down there; he’d have elite arm strength, a 70 snapper, and unpredictability on top of that. We think it’s worth continuing to develop Lagrange as a starter, and that he has a puncher’s chance of developing into a five-and-dive type. But if nothing else, using those extra reps to further hone his weapons and command in service of a relief career also works just fine. It’s almost needless to say at this point, but he’d have premium closer upside out of the bullpen.

Hess was a three-year starter at ‘Bama, but he was limited to just 30 career starts and about 50 annual innings (including his Cape Cod time) due to injuries, and he posted a 5.80 ERA during his draft spring largely because of elevated walks. Though some teams were concerned about his health and conditioning, the Yankees liked the quality of his stuff (especially his breaking ball) and mechanics enough to use a late first rounder on him, and felt free to hit the gas on Hess’ workload during his 2025 debut. And Hess responded, posting a 2.50 FIP across 103.1 innings while allowing just 65 hits.

Listed at 255 pounds at the time of the draft, Hess was slimmer at the end of 2025 than he was at the beginning and looks leaner still at the start of 2026. He’s an incredibly fluid hip-and-shoulder athlete who can power way down the mound and generate stuff-aiding extension, but he is still searching for the kind of body control and repeatability that will allow him to cut his walk rate into the single digits. That will be one of the chief developmental variables to watch from Hess in 2026 as he aims to conquer the upper levels of the minors. The others involve Hess’ changeup development and improved breaking ball demarcation. Hess’ bread-and-butter secondary pitch is his awesome mid-70s curveball, which has so much depth that it’s a dominant, plus-plus offering even though it’s much slower than most effective big league breaking balls, sometimes as low as 73 mph. Hess also has a sweeper-style slider that occupies a velo range that overlaps with that of his curveball, though at times it is as hard as 84-85 mph. If he can find a way to keep it north of 80 mph on average, that will be an improvement. His changeup feel is growing, both in terms of his ability to locate it and create movement with it. If either of those pitches takes a step forward this year, along with Hess’ innings load or control, he’ll end the season as a Top 100 prospect and have near-term mid-rotation role projection.

Jones has been a prospect of note for several years now. He was a big — literally and figuratively — two-way prospect in high school and was on Vanderbilt’s CWS runner-up team in 2021. He developed into one of the top college hitters a year later, which prompted the Yankees to take him with the 25th overall pick. His immense power and chance to cover center field quickly propelled him through the system and up top prospect lists until 2024, when his whiff and strikeout rates exploded following a promotion to Double-A. He turned in a similar power-over-hit, eye-of-the-beholder type season in 2025.

Jones’ swing has undergone a few changes over the years. These days, he’s starting open, then swings his front foot into a closed stance as the pitcher starts to deliver. He’s otherwise very quiet, more than you’d like to see, as there isn’t a whole lot of rhythm here. His path isn’t quite direct (though it’s shorter than it was a couple years ago), and while he whips the bat through the zone with violence once he gets going, velocity presents a challenge. When he connects, his power spans from pole to pole and he can mishit balls and hit them out by 10 rows. You’ll even occasionally see him do something hitterish, like keep his hands back on a backdoor breaking ball and slap it down the line for a double. Good timing is important for any hitter, but in Jones’ case, his lever and swing length makes it essential. When he’s right, the production has been silly. Last July, just after his promotion to Scranton, he hit .419/.477/.946 with 11 dingers and 20 strikeouts in 88 plate appearances. His cold streaks, unfortunately, are equally prodigious: In August, he hit .180/.250/.306 with 47 whiffs in 124 plate appearances.

Jones is a prospect who divides opinion, and there’s an analytical and scout split at play here. Some analysts are completely out on him as an impact player. His strikeout rate jumped from a high-but-viable 28.9% in 2023 to 36.8% in 2024 and more or less stayed there again last year. His contact rate was just 58% and, perhaps worse, his zone contact rate was only 68%, figures generally well below the threshold at which a player can whiff and project as an everyday player. And of course, those Ks are coming against minor leaguers. For their part, scouts don’t disagree that he’s going to strike out, but think that he has so much power he’ll be productive even if he leads the league in punchouts. Joey Gallo is a common comp here, though some will point to a fellow long-levered Yankee as an example of someone who just needed time to figure out how to fully leverage his immense physicality into well-rounded production.

Even though Jones can handle center, regardless of where you place your bets, you’re doing so based on how you think he’ll hit. For us, this grade tries to split the extremes, assuming too many punchouts for him to consistently project as an everyday guy, while allowing Jones to still be a useful player in some capacity, with room for a big year or two when he’s in form. For obvious reasons, the range of outcomes here is as large as Jones himself.

Cunningham split time between starting and relieving as an underclassman before rooting into Vandy’s weekend rotation as a junior. He nearly doubled his career high in innings pitched, but still held 93-95 mph fastball velocity all season and pitched his way into the second round. He broke camp with High-A Hudson Valley in 2025 and pitched well for two months before his season was derailed by shoulder inflammation, which cost him 10 weeks. While his statistical performance was underwhelming upon returning, Cunningham looked fine during his Arizona Fall League stint and remains projected as a big league rotation piece, though his lack of raw breaking ball nastiness likely caps his ceiling to some extent.

For a relatively soft-bodied guy, Cunningham is a very athletic mover who generates just shy of seven feet of extension on release and has a loose arm action. His fastball generated above-average miss last year and is backed by an excellent changeup that Cunningham deploys against both left- and right-handed hitters. It’s cloaked by his arm speed and has plus action, making it a potentially special weapon if Cunningham (who threw it for strikes just 56% of the time last year) can find slightly better feel for locating it. Cunningham threw more sliders than changeups in college, but his usage has flipped in pro ball, and for good reason. His slider has short, blunt movement, but his feel for locating his breakers to his glove side is quite good and will help keep this pitch out of trouble despite it lacking nasty break. He can mix in a 12-to-6 curveball on occasion, though this was more a feature early last year when Cunningham was working deeper in games before his shoulder barked. He’s tracking like a solid no. 4/5 starter on pace for a 2028 debut.

There have been times since Hampton turned pro when his stuff has been up, mostly in 2023 when his heater resided in the 93-96 mph range. At others it has been down or Hampton has been hurt, which was the case for the bulk of his 2024 and 2025 seasons. A flexor tendon strain and a strained groin limited his 2024 output, then Hampton blew out in February 2025 and needed Tommy John.

Hampton mixes in a healthy dose of his secondary stuff as he navigates opposing lineups. He bends in a 12-to-6 curveball in the 75-79 mph range, a two-plane, low-80s slider, and an upper-80s cutter. The curveball can sometimes have enough bend back toward his arm side to act as a defacto changeup versus lefties, and Hampton can get ahead of hitters with his secondary stuff and then get them to chase his fastball above the zone. His breaking balls all have distinct shapes and velocities, giving him enough of a mix to consider him a starter even though he doesn’t have a changeup or a split. There’s a version of Hampton that returns with the velocity he’s had for most of his career — a fastball in the low 90s — and projects as a no. 4/5 starter, and then there’s the apex version we saw for a few months in 2023 who would more cleanly fit in the middle of a rotation. Because of what Hampton has tended to be throughout his career, here he’s projected as the former.

Injuries have limited Facundo’s pro reps, and the 48.2 innings he threw in 2021 remains his single-season career high. Shoulder issues cost him all of 2022 and a May 2024 Tommy John kept him shelved until June 2025, but when Facundo has been healthy, including when he returned in the middle of last year, he has been awesome. He has a career 1.13 WHIP and 2.86 ERA, and he’s allowed just 96 hits in 148 career innings. His stuff is good enough that it wouldn’t have been crazy had a team popped Facundo in last year’s Rule 5 Draft and tried to hustle his development as a reliever, a role he is ultimately more likely to settle into over the long haul.

Facundo has rare lefty velo and a plus slider, but he isn’t the sort of fluid athlete or craftsman typically found in the rotation, though the latter might simply be due to a lack of reps. He was deployed as a starter last year and was stretched out to as many as five innings. His fastball velo slipped at the very end of the season and was more in the 93-95 mph range instead of the 95-97 he showed in his first couple of (shorter) outings. Though his command is fairly crude, Facundo’s changeup feel is in a good enough spot to justify continued development as a starter, if only to give him more reps with his secondary pitches. Here he’s projected as an abnormally nasty bullpen lefty who we think is likely to be pushed through the system fairly aggressively in 2026 to put him in position for a postseason 40-man addition.

Smith is a breaking ball merchant who has dealt with multiple injuries (forearm, shoulder) dating back to college, but has also been effective pitching as a starter when healthy. In 2025, he was shelved until July with a shoulder injury but pitched well as he got stretched out late in the season, ending with two 5-plus-inning shutout starts before he was again deployed conservatively (but pitched well) in the Arizona Fall League.

Smith controls his low-90s fastball to the top of the zone, where it thrives due to its above-average vertical break and shallow approach angle. He has two good breaking balls, the better of which is a comfortably plus low-80s slider with nasty bite and break. Some of Smith’s breaking balls back up to his arm side, but when that occurs against lefties, they act as a de facto changeup, something he needs to either harness or develop to avoid drastic platoon splits. Eric saw some good changeups in Arizona, but Smith threw them sparingly. The Yankees will have to decide whether or not to add Smith to their 40-man roster after this season, and our hope is that he’ll finish the year at Double- or Triple-A and have had his innings load stretched to the triple digits to see how his stuff responds. If he looks like he did last year, we expect he’ll be rostered.

Kent had what was easily his best season at A&M in 2025, with a .942 OPS and 13 homers. His max-effort, low-ball swing produces uppercut power, and he struck out surprisingly little (13.9%) considering how hard he swings, though his rate was considerably higher than that versus SEC opponents. Kent is still a possible fit at shortstop. His range and internal clock are currently barriers, as he gets to balls that become singles because he doesn’t get rid of them quickly enough, but he’s athletic and has a great arm. Third base would be next in the pecking order of positions to try were he to continue to struggle. Realistically, this is a lefty-hitting utility guy. The Yankees sent him to Hudson Valley after the draft and he struggled in a limited sample. He’ll look to rebound in 2026.

Of all the pitchers taken in the 2025 Rule 5 Draft, Winquest might have the best long-term chance to remain a starter. The former eighth rounder out of UT-Arlington reached Double-A in 2025 and worked 106 total innings with a 3.99 ERA. He’s a bouncy 6-foot-2, and has both starter-quality athleticism and physicality at a well-composed 205 pounds. Winquest also consistently locates his 94-97 mph fastball to the up-and-arm-side quadrant of the zone where it plays best, and then bends in several different breaking balls — cutters, curveballs and sliders — off of that pitch. He’s better at landing his breakers in the zone than he is at dotting them for chase, and he’s comfortable pitching backwards, which he may need to do against big league lefties since he lacks a changeup.

Winquest’s control gives him a good chance to stick on the Yankees’ roster, and his pedigree as a minor league starter puts him in position to provide length in the event that he makes the team. He can lean on his fastball/curveball combo an inning at a time and work in the other breaking balls if he eventually returns to starting. Either way, he should be a solid, lower-ceiling contributor to a pitching staff for the next several years.

Hurd was a famous high school prospect with a great breaking ball, and was a candidate to go toward the back of the 2021 first round. Instead, he ended up at UCLA for a year before he became one of several high-profile players to transfer to LSU in 2023. The team was so good during his time there that Hurd never got his footing in the Tigers rotation, moving into a swingman role as a junior after two bad starts in early 2024. He posted a 1.06 ERA at UCLA, but he struggled with walks and had an ERA closer to 6.00 in Baton Rouge. But Hurd’s build, lovely delivery, arm strength, and natural breaking ball quality made him a good prospect nonetheless, and the Yankees gave him $836,000 in the 2024 third round. Hurd blew out during his first pro spring and had Tommy John as February turned to March, putting him on track to return during the first couple months of the 2026 minor league season.

Hurd sits 93-95 mph, even as a starter, and has two plus breaking balls. His curveball almost has too much movement and can be easy to spot out of his hand. His slider became a more frequent part of his mix as the 2024 season went on and will likely be his primary breaking ball as a pro. Hurd has prototypical starter’s size, and while his delivery requires quite a bit of effort, it’s also a fairly standard look both mechanically and athletically. It’s worth developing him as a starter, and the Yankees have tended to coax starter traits out of college relievers less talented than this right-hander, but it’s also been three years since Hurd was last any good. We’d like to see him develop a kick change (typical now among natural supinators) and throw more strikes than he did at LSU before juicing his FV grade into the area where Eric had it while Hurd was in high school.

At $275,000, Almonte was a fairly big signing for a pitcher on the international market. He’s a big, physical righty, a little tightly wound and not especially twitchy, but strong with an innings-eater’s build. He has a long, circular arm path, loose enough to project on his command, though he’s a little wild right now.

Almonte has four pitches that all at least flash average. He touches 97 with the fastball and sits 93-95 early in starts. He has average carry or a tick more on the four-seamer and can also hit the box with a sinker. The slider is his best secondary, a sweeping, low-to-mid-80s offering that ran a 40% miss rate in the DSL. While his curve can run into the slider and the change doesn’t consistently have a ton of fade, he’ll execute often enough to project four viable offerings at maturity. He’s eons away and a lot can go wrong, but you can dream on a no. 3 or 4 starter, while the arm strength and slider feel give him a relief fallback.

De Pena had a power breakout in his second DSL season but was still often buried toward the bottom of the Angels’ lineup down there, and he was hitting seventh the day he was traded to the Yankees for Oswald Peraza. De Pena is a projectable corner outfield prospect with plus buggy-whip bat speed; his swing often features a helicopter finish over his head à la Miguel Andujar. De Pena’s measurable power was way up compared to his debut season; his hard-hit rate rose from 22% in 2024 to 41% in 2025, and his EV90 climbed from 99 mph to 104 mph, which is a shade below the big league average.

De Pena is a well-built athlete and a plus runner underway, though he mostly played the outfield corners in 2025. His feel to hit is still a bit crude and he is very chase-prone, but he’s absolutely tooled out and would probably be a well-known draft prospect were he a domestic high schooler. This is a high-variance athlete with exciting power potential and a sketchy contact profile because of his poor ball/strike recognition.

Lalane put on a show during FCL play in 2023, when he struck out 34 hitters in 21.2 dominant innings. At the time, he was long and lean, with decent body control and projectable mass and velocity. Two years and all of 31.2 innings later, he’s still long and lean, but injuries have stalled everything else. Offseason shoulder surgery kept him on the shelf for the first several months of the 2025 campaign, and when he returned, he was sitting in the low 90s and touching 95 — down, not up, a tick or two from his prospect peak. Not surprisingly given the layoff, the gap between his present and his projection hasn’t narrowed. There’s latent upside if he can fully shake off the rust, but at this point Lalane looks more like a middle relief prospect than a starter.

Marte is a super projectable 6-foot-5 righty who laid an uncommon strike-throwing track record across three rookie-level seasons in 2022-2024 before an elbow surgery cost him all of 2025. He was throwing off flat ground during the offseason and appears on track for a normal 2026, which is important because this is Marte’s 40-man platform year.

Healthy Marte is more about polish and projection than present stuff. He locates his slider consistently enough for it to have produced plus miss and chase rates in 2024 despite lacking bat-missing depth, though his size and the downhill nature of all his pitches helps create an artificial depth of sorts. He also has good changeup feel and throws plenty of strikes with his fastball, but Marte had below-average velocity and his heater plays down some due to the same downhill plane that aids his slider.

It’s important for Marte to develop more velocity if he’s going to be an impact starter, as his current stuff is more akin to that of a grounder-getting backend innings-eater. To that end, juxtaposed against Marte’s exciting size and frame is his vanilla athleticism; his delivery is more about ease and consistency than explosion, or at least it was pre-surgery. He threw just shy of 50 innings in 2024 and would probably need to not only nearly double that, but also traverse Low- and High-A this year to be seriously considered for a 40-man spot. He’s likely on more of a two-year plan to get his innings count back into starter territory and compete for a roster spot.

Arias was promoted from the DSL to the FCL near the end of the 2023 season after he struck out 39 hitters in his first five DSL starts, often working five or six innings at a time, much more than is typical for a rookie ball pitcher. He began the 2024 season on the IL with shoulder inflammation, was activated in July, and then made just three regular season appearances. His stuff was up across the board during that window, but it’s been impossible to tell whether Arias will be able to sustain it across an entire season because he missed all of 2025 due to elbow issues that eventually led to surgery.

During that peak window, his downhill fastball averaged 95 mph, up two ticks from 2023, and his slider experienced an even bigger uptick, morphing from an upper-70s offering into one that lived in the 83-87 mph range. A firm, 90-ish mph changeup was still Arias’ most-used secondary, and automatic pitch tagging often mistakes it for a sinker. You can dream on Arias’ fastball velocity and changeup quality because of his spindly build, relative youth, and the overall fluidity of his mechanics, but he enters 2026 as a very volatile prospect due to his lack of innings. He went on the full season injured list toward the end of June last year, so if that coincided with his surgery, it’s possible we won’t see Arias until very late in the season.

Had this list been completed in December, Selvidge would have been much deeper in the mix, if not buried in the Honorable Mentions. After surgery for a pinched nerve in his left biceps ended his 2024 season, Selvidge’s fastball sat 90-91 mph and he carried a 4.92 ERA, 18.9% strikeout rate and 12.2% walk rate at Somerset in 2025. Not a single one of Selvidge’s pitches generated average or better miss or chase, and it looked like he’d need a move to the bullpen and a prayer to reclaim a meaningful prospect grade. Instead, Selvidge came to 2026 camp throwing harder again. His fastball was averaging 94 mph, nearly three ticks more than it did last year, and he was emphasizing a cutter that he threw as hard as 92 mph, about four ticks harder than his hardest one from 2025. Sadly, just before list publication, Selvidge had internal brace elbow surgery and will miss the entire season.

Selvidge has long had better feel for locating his slider than his high-spin fastball. His arm stroke is fairly messy and violent, which makes it tough for him to control but also aids in his deception. An emphasis on the cutter (which he was throwing more often this spring) might allow him to throw more strikes than he would leaning on his fastball and also use his slider more as a chase pitch than a way of getting ahead. There are other tools here — a curveball and changeup — but they’re used sparingly, even against righties. When he returns from rehab in 2027, it wouldn’t surprise us if Selvidge were deployed in relief, which is where we would have him projected anyway based on his pitch mix.

Beck was an ultra-efficient starter at Stanford who signed for just over $1 million as a second-round pick in 2021. Multiple elbow surgeries cost him all of 2022 and 2024, but he was completely healthy in 2025 and was fairly effective at Double- and Triple-A, working 131.1 innings and posting a 3.36 ERA.

Beck throws a ton of strikes from a vertical arm slot and peppers the top of the zone with a low-90s fastball. His slider plays like an impact pitch because of his command, but the rest of his stuff is pretty light, and he might be homer-prone against big league power. His mid-70s curveball can be an effective way to steal a strike, and Beck can pitch backwards when asked to navigate a lineup for the second time. It’s nice to have guys like Beck around to come up and throw strikes when your big league staff is dealing with injuries, but his lack of either velocity or a viable changeup will likely to relegate him to no. 6 to 8 starter status.

Coleman was originally drafted by the Rays but decided to return to school, went unpicked in the shortened 2020 draft, then signed with the Yankees for $20,000 as an undrafted free agent. New York pretty quickly added four ticks to his fastball and Coleman struck out 14 per nine as he climbed to Double-A as a reliever in 2022. He had Tommy John early in 2023 and missed the whole year, but the Rangers decided to make him their Rule 5 pick that offseason anyway. Coleman had yet another surgery (this time on his shoulder), never pitched for Texas, and was returned to the Yankees in 2025, throwing his first affiliated pitches in three years. Coleman’s velocity was back in the 94-97 mph range last year and he generated a plus-plus rate of miss, albeit in a small sample and against some lower-level hitters as Coleman rehabbed. Always a fastball-heavy pitcher, Coleman threw his heater more than 90% of the time in those 17 innings. His low arm slot creates considerable uphill angle on the pitch, and he rips it past hitters at the belt. Whether Coleman can find a viable secondary offering (he’s working with a 78-82 mph slider at the moment) will dictate his ultimate role. His health track record factors into his grade somewhat, and here we have Coleman evaluated as a fastball-heavy up/down guy likely to debut this season.

Fox was his Waukesha high school’s valedictorian and a fourth generation Golden Domer. He moved into the Irish rotation part of the way through his sophomore year and struggled, then improved significantly during his junior year, when he carried a 3.58 ERA during a nutty offensive era for college baseball. The key to Fox’s current repertoire is his uphill fastball, which generated above-average miss despite sitting 91 for much of his junior season. It was up a tick or two late in the year and features 19 inches of induced vertical break on average. Finding an impact second pitch will be the key developmental variable for Fox’s pro path. He has a gyro-style slider that he frequently used at the top of the zone in college, a curveball, and a changeup that is well below average. He mixed in all three secondaries fairly evenly, but will probably lean on the slider more going forward. Fox enters pro ball with one big league-quality pitch and enough strike-throwing ability to develop as a starter.

Rossi spent time at Division-II West Florida and a junior college before he ended up at Charlotte for three years, one of which he missed due to elbow surgery. He entered pro ball at age 25 and had a great (if fairly walk-prone) first season in 2025 as he posted a 2.18 ERA and K’d 33.7% of opponents. Rossi throws pretty hard and has a great sweeper. Even as we’re cautious about over-assigning the “sweeper” label to breaking balls, Rossi’s definitely is one, as it features 13 inches of horizontal break on average. It was an utterly dominant pitch for him in college and generated a 52% miss rate last year, which is an elite mark. Lackluster fastball movement and poor control causes that pitch to play down, and Rossi probably needs another pitch he can throw for strikes. Last year that was his splitter, which was much more often an in-zone offering than it was in college. This pitch has bat-missing sink at times, but it wasn’t used as a chase pitch during Rossi’s debut. He looks like a future up/down reliever with a shot to root into a more substantial role if he improves his command.

Marinez inked a $1.65 million bonus with the Yankees and signed as part of their 2024 international class, though he didn’t debut until last season. He has the look of a compact and athletic line drive hitter. His contact rate was just okay, but the swing itself got shorter over the course of the season and, perhaps on a related note, he finished the year on a torrid run, batting .441 in August with only four punchouts in 39 plate appearances. Defensively, Marinez moves well laterally and he put some nice plays together on tape, including on balls deep in the six hole. Provided he continues to make an acceptable amount of contact, he projects as a solid utility infielder.

Peralta is a toolsy young shortstop who struck out a terrifying 29.4% of the time in the 2024 DSL, but he was one of the youngest players in pro baseball and had physical ability — shortstop fit, big arm strength, and explosive hitting hands — on par with a late-first or early-second round high school prospect. Surprisingly, the Yankees sent Peralta to the domestic complex in Tampa for his second full season and he struggled. He was hitting .097 on July 1 and then turned things on for the final three weeks of the season, across which he slashed .277/.352/.447, but still K’d at a 27% clip, which is too much for rookie ball. We still like Dexters’ tools enough to consider him a prospect, but we’re essentially viewing him like Eric did Roderick Arias a year ago: This probably won’t work, but let’s give the player some benefit of the doubt based on his youth and see how he responds to repeating the level.

Matic signed for a little less than $1 million in the 2024 international period. He was young for the class and needed a sophomore spin through the DSL, which he passed with flying colors, hitting .336/.487/.566 with five bombs in 46 games. His power is close to average already, and for a guy who’s quite big for his age, he’s pretty agile and has good body control.

Brendan is skeptical that the way Matic goes about his business in the box is going to work. He takes a massive upper cut hack, lowering the back shoulder, bailing out, and swinging for the downs in a way that often spins him off the plate. He clearly has good hand-eye coordination — he managed a 74% contact rate while making decent, if passive, measurable swing decisions — but it’s going to be harder and harder to replicate that kind of performance against pitchers who are better able to exploit the length and holes in his swing. We’re staying on the tools, but it’s very likely that he’ll need to make significant adjustments.

Cebert spent three years at South Florida before transferring to Texas Tech for his senior year. Tech is known to leave developmental meat on the bone, so it’s not necessarily surprising that Cebert got better in pro ball, but how much and how quickly he improved is pretty amazing. His fastball sat 91-93 during the Big 12 tournament in May, then was 93-98 after the draft, albeit in a very small sample. It’s possible rest is the only thing responsible for Cebert’s burst; he was a starter at USF and a long reliever at Tech, but he worked an inning at a time post-draft.

Cebert could stand to locate his fastball at the top of the zone more often; he was peppering the low-and-arm-side quadrant too often in college and barely generated any swing and miss. His upper-80s cutter and low-80s slider also played like below-average pitches, but they have above-average pure spin. Cebert moves well and is built like a big league pitcher at a strapping 6-foot-3, so the raw physical material for the Yankees to work with is here. The big velo boost is enough to put Cebert on the radar, but the context makes us want to see him prove he can throw that hard all year before moving him higher on this list.

Kean spent two years at Ranger College, which is halfway between Fort Worth and Abilene, and then was injured for much of his junior year at Monroe, a season that ended with a Tommy John after just a few innings. When he returned from rehab in 2024, he was utterly dominant on the complex and at Low-A even though he wasn’t throwing all that hard. Though he was not as dominant in at High-A in 2025, Kean still threw his riding fastball for strikes 70% of the time and carried a 1.23 WHIP. His heater has big riding life, he commands it to the top of the strike zone with regularity, and it plays up because of plus extension.

Though Kean is already 23, he’s a well-built 6-foot-5 and has a gorgeous arm action, the kind of athlete who might be able to throw harder as he continues to receive pro instruction and development. Whether he can develop a good secondary pitch is another matter. Kean currently works with a slurvey breaker in the 77-83 mph range and some cutters in the 85-89 mph band. He commands both, but neither is especially nasty. He either needs to throw harder so he can be a fastball-heavy reliever, or find a second weapon. We like his build and athleticism enough to forecast that one of these things will happen, and that Kean can work in a reliable low-leverage relief role.

Velasquez is a wild little righty reliever whose arm is too fast for him to control. He K’d 56 but walked 31 in 41.1 innings in 2025, and was pumping 97 this spring, but he injured his elbow and required surgery. His pitches are arguably both 70s on the scouting scale when they’re located, but too often they’re nowhere near where they need to be, and they play down as a result. Velasquez needs to develop another grade of control to be a big leaguer at all, but if his stuff returns post-rehab, he’ll be on the fast track to the upper levels of the minors.

Balboni is a sidearm reliever who experienced a two-tick velo bump in 2024. He was traded from San Diego to New York for Brandon Lockridge when the Padres badly needed outfield depth that summer, and then blew out and had elbow surgery, which kept him out for all of 2025. Balboni has a career ERA over 6.50, but he’s struck out 125 guys in 87 pro innings. He has big time arm speed for a low-slot guy, and generates six and a half feet of extension with a big stride down the mound. This type of low-slot rise/run fastball and slider combo platter is becoming more common across baseball, and Balboni is an older, developmental version of it. His slider spins at nearly 2,800 rpm, but he doesn’t command it well enough to garner many whiffs right now. Polishing his command and shaping his slider to have more two-plane tilt will be key to him seizing a big league bullpen job. The Padres haven’t been great at developing pitchers, but the Yankees have been, and Balboni should be monitored for notable changes upon his return from rehab.