New York Yankees Top 45 Prospects

Domínguez has played a little bit in the big leagues each of the last two seasons, but a late-2023 Tommy John surgery kept him out for most of 2024 and is why he hasn’t yet lost rookie status. Often described on this website as “Baseball’s Zion Williamson,” Domínguez signed for $5.1 million in 2019 as easily the toolsiest player in his signing class, a plus-running center fielder with huge switch-hitting power. He resembled Zion in both a hype and bodily sense. Domínguez had very mature physicality at a young age. It was and is where his prodigious tools come from, but he was so muscular so young that it was tough to predict what kind of mobility he’d have as he aged into his 20s. He’s built like the kind of tightly wound athlete you see grabbing at their hamstring at least once a year. To this point, though, he has been able to keep things in check and remain explosive and mobile, especially in his hips. He’s a career .274/.373/.444 hitter in the minors and is poised to assume the playing time left vacant by Juan Soto’s crosstown departure.

Domínguez is going to hit for power. Though he struggled with strikeout issues as a young-for-the-level player while he rocketed through the minors, Domínguez’s lefty barrel control was better in 2024 upon his return from TJ, and his contact metrics hovered around average. He’s looking to pull from the left side of the dish, while he’s a bit more opposite-field oriented from the right side. A shorter-levered guy, Domínguez can wait an extra beat to identify breaking balls, and he crushes the mistakes he sees.

Where he needs to improve is on defense. Perhaps because he’s missed extended time due to injury, Domínguez has sketchy feel for his position. His reads and routes can be wayward, and he looks uncomfortable at the catch point. He runs pretty well, but not well enough to play center field without good instincts and feel. The week of list publication, Yankees manager Aaron Boone told reporters that Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge will likely push Domínguez to left field, which is probably the best fit for him in a vacuum anyway. A more optimistic contact projection than a year ago outweighs what is lost from Domínguez looking like flub-prone defender, and he should be an above-average everyday outfielder and young, build-around bat.

Warren yo-yo’d between the bullpen and the rotation at Southeastern Louisiana and went unselected as a true junior in the shortened 2020 draft. He moved into the Lions’ rotation in 2021 and had a great season — 91 IP, 95 K, just 98 baserunners allowed — despite sitting mostly 90-91 mph. When play began in 2022, Warren had a new breaking ball and much more velocity, which he has sustained across the last couple of seasons en route to a couple of big league call-ups in 2024.

Warren had an elevated ERA in 2024, which was his second consecutive season with HR/FB rates twice the major league average. Some of that can be attributed to the hitting environment at Somerset and most of Triple-A, but it is a weird aspect of Warren’s sinker-heavy profile. The rest of what Warren brings to the table is stable and fairly exciting. He’s a kitchen sink type who can attack hitters in a myriad of ways, all with viable (and sometimes plus) big league stuff. Against righties, Warren uses a sinker/sweeper combination, and will occasionally run his four-seamer up the ladder. Against lefties, he becomes a four-seamer/changeup guy, with the occasional in-zone sweeper as a way of stealing strikes. Warren also has a cutter that, when he locates it, is brutal in on the hands of lefties; he barely busted it out during his half-dozen big league outings. Though his sweeper is easily his nastiest pitch, all of Warren’s pitches flash plus. He lacks surgical command, but his ability to get groundballs (his sinker generated them at a 63% clip in 2024) should bail him out of the occasional walk.

Guys with sinking/tailing stuff like Warren’s can tend to be more vulnerable to extra-base damage when they make a mistake, and it’s possible I’m underappreciating this aspect of his profile. But despite his 2024 ERA, Warren still looks like an big league-ready fourth starter. He has been remarkably durable and worked at least 120 innings each of the past three seasons, and he has five good pitches and a mature approach to their usage. Warren seems likely to start the season as the Yankees’ sixth starter, and is pretty clearly the most talented of the 40-man arms projected to begin the season in Scranton. He’s very likely to exhaust rookie eligibility in 2025 and entrench himself in the New York rotation for the next half decade.

Jones’ strikeouts have been steadily climbing as he’s traversed the minors, and they reached an untenable area in 2024, as he K’d at a 36.8% clip at Double-A Somerset. At this point, assessing Jones is less about scouting him and more about where you value his potential late-blooming profile as a prospect. He can’t keep striking out this much and still be a steady, successful big leaguer, so how much improvement does he have left in the tank? His background, of course, includes several traits that could account for Jones’ slow burn. He was a real prospect on both sides of the ball in high school, then serious injuries limited him to just 48 games during his first two years of college. He only began playing the outfield as a junior and center field in pro ball. Plus, Jones is enormous and could conceivably still be growing into feel for his body, even at nearly 24 years old.

These traits have been part of why Jones was so exciting a year ago. His strikeouts were manageable, he was getting to his titanic power, and he conceivably could have kept improving for those aforementioned reasons. Instead, he regressed and often looked stiff and imbalanced at the dish last year. Jones had a poor-but-viable 70% contact rate in 2023 and then posted a 59% rate (basically no big leaguers have such a low mark) in 2024. Per Synergy Sports, the average fastball he faced in 2024 (93.5 mph) was two-ticks harder than the prior season, and Jones’ ability to be on time against heaters took a huge nosedive. Jones is still a very dangerous hitter because his swing is tailored to produce enormous power when he actually makes contact. His 57% hard-hit rate was among the best handful in all of pro ball, and a high percentage of Jones’ contact is both hard and airborne. And power is not Jones’ lone plus tool; he’s also shockingly fast for his size and should be a good outfield defender at peak. This could mean his feel for center field improves enough for him to stay there, or Jones could be a plus corner defender with rare range. If Jones’ contact rate can rebound to the 70% area, then he’ll rejoin the Top 100 as a projected impact player. If it remains closer to 60%, then he’s tracking more like Matt Wallner or Sam Hilliard.

Lombard entered last season as a Pick to Click. He showed exciting defense and bat-to-ball ability as an amateur, and it seemed plausible that once on a pro strength and conditioning program, he might also add meaningful power pretty quickly. Given his overall feel for the game, which was relatively polished for a high schooler, that could have led to a rapid ascent through the minors. Instead, Lombard had an uneven 2024 during which he whiffed at in-zone fastballs much more than was anticipated. Lombard’s overall contact performance was just a shade below average, except for his performance inside the strike zone, which was way below the big league average. Driven largely by his on-base ability, Lombard was still able to produce an above-average batting line at Low-A Tampa and was promoted to Hudson Valley in August. Overall, he slashed .231/.338/.334 with a 23% strikeout rate.

Lombard is still a pretty good shortstop defender who’s adept at making throws on the run, no matter which direction he’s moving. His arm stroke is a little long and atypical, and it takes considerable effort for him to throw hard, which can impact his accuracy. With hit tool risk creeping into his profile, it’s become more important for Lombard to get strong and develop above-average power, something to carry his offensive profile. Until that starts to happen, he’s projected here as more of a good utility infielder.

Schlittler is an XXL, fastball-heavy starter who had a fantastic 2024 season in which he led the Yankees org in strikeouts. Schlittler worked 120.2 innings, K’d 29.8% of opponents, and generated a 51.2% groundball rate while reaching Double-A toward the end of the year. His size and arm angle create downhill plane on his mid-90s fastball akin to a runaway truck ramp, while the backspinning nature of the pitch also creates riding life that, combined with the plane, disorients hitters. Schlittler’s fastball lives right at the top of the strike zone, garnered strikes at 70% clip in 2024, and peaked at 98 mph. Off of that pitch Schlittler bends in a couple of different breaking balls. He has a low-80s curveball that drops into the top of the zone, a two-planed mid-80s slider, and an upper-80s cutter. The sliders and cutters are heavily used against righties, while the curveball is more of an arm-side weapon against lefties. These pitches are more average or a shade below, though all of Schlittler’s component parts fit together nicely to keep hitters off balance.

Schlittler is a below-average athlete whose style of pitching is somewhat inefficient. He looks like a lock to be put on the Yankees’ 40-man roster either toward the end of the 2024 season or after its conclusion, and should be in the mix for starts toward the back of the rotation starting in 2026.

Hampton was shut down after the 2022 draft and debuted during 2023 big league spring training with more velocity than he had in college, which he proceeded to maintain across 106.2 innings. He blew away Sally League hitters (40.5% K%) in the first half of the year before he seemed to lose his legs a little bit in the second half at Double-A Somerset. His line to the plate became less consistent, the timing of his fairly long arm stroke wavered, and he had some walk-prone starts in the mid-to-late summer. A flexor tendon strain shelved him for the first half of 2024. Hampton returned in July and pitched for a little over a month (never more than 3.2 innings at a time) before he was shut down again, this time with a strained groin. His peak velocity wasn’t present during his active window; Hampton’s heater averaged 92 and topped out at 94. It has enough riding life to be okay even with below-average velocity, but obviously it would be better if Hampton returns to the 93-96 range (his 2023 peak) in 2025.

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.

The Yankees have a ton of upper-level catching depth while the Red Sox are quite thin there, so the two clubs made a deal during the Winter Meetings that sent reserve catcher Carlos Narvaez to Boston in exchange for Rodriguez-Cruz. ERC was still shy of 18 when Boston picked him in the fourth round of the 2021 draft out of Leadership Christian Academy, the Puerto Rican high school that also boasts Heliot Ramos and Jose Miranda as alums. He signed for just shy of $500,000 rather than go to Oregon. He didn’t have electric stuff coming out of high school, but he did have a prototypical 6-foot-3 starter’s build, a smooth delivery, and a shapely breaking ball, allowing you to dream on his velocity, command, and changeup growth.

For the last couple of seasons, Rodriguez-Cruz has been on an upward trajectory in terms of his velocity and innings count. He rather impressively held his own as a teenage starter in full-season ball in 2023 before he was shut down with elbow inflammation. At the time, Elmer was sitting 92 and mixing in three secondary offerings. Then in 2024, he experienced a significant velo jump while also adding a cutter. Rodriguez-Cruz sat 95, touched 98, and maintained starter-quality walk rates during the first half of the season before he regressed and became walk-prone starting in July.

This is a bullish evaluation of Rodriguez-Cruz, who feels like he’d be in the late first round mix were he a college junior. Basically everything you could have hoped for when ERC was drafted has either happened or begun to. He’s parlayed his curveball feel into two other promising breaking balls — he has a mid-80s slider and a cutter that tops out around 89 mph — and he continues to have changeup (or maybe splitter) projection because of his loose, whippy arm action. There isn’t a dominant offering among them, but everything is average with a shot to mature above. The dip in strikes late last year feels natural considering ERC had blown through his previous career-high innings total and was also throwing harder than ever before. He’s still awfully skinny and will hopefully get stronger as a means of adding stamina; the Yankees have been good at helping their athletes do that. This is a sleeper Top 100 candidate for next year if Rodriguez-Cruz can sustain his 2024 stuff with another 20 or so innings added to his ledger in 2025, his 40-man platform year.

Perez holds serve in this FV tier after another outstanding year, this time on the Florida complex roster. Perez is a medium-framed, relatively mature, twitchy catching athlete with a quickdraw release and advanced bat-to-ball skills. He has the hands and lateral quickness to develop into a good receiver and ball-blocker over time, and he has impact arm strength. He looked fine catching rehabbers on the complex, who tended to have much better stuff than most rookie ball pitchers.

Perez also looks a good bit bigger and stronger than his official height and weight (5-foot-10, 155 pounds) suggests. He doesn’t have prototypical impact catcher size like an Adley Rutschman or Salvador Perez, but Edgleen isn’t small. And some of Perez’s underlying data is incredible. He chased just 8% of the time and 13% of the time with two strikes in 2024. Those rates will definitely increase as he climbs the minors and faces better pitching, but they’re elite for his age. Perez also has a rare combination of hard-hit (45%) and contact rates (83%), with the former generated more by consistency and physical maturity than actual high-end power. Still, Perez’s combo of contact ability and on-base skill should allow him to get to the power he has, even if that’s only average. Whereas it’s often fine for big league catchers to have one competent offensive attribute, Perez could have two or three.

Teenage catchers are notoriously risky, which impacts Perez’s grade, and he’s a skills-over-projection type of prospect who lacks enormous physical upside. The Yankees have tended to bring their catching prospects along very slowly, with the likes of Agustin Ramirez, Jesus Rodriguez, and others spending multiple years at a low-level affiliate. But Perez they’ve pushed, and it’s plausible that by the middle or end of 2025, he’ll have been promoted to High-A and proven that his plate discipline and contact ability can hold up against better arms. If that’s the case, then he’s a pretty good bet to be on next offseason’s Top 100 list.

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. Cunningham’s career ERA was a shade under 5.00, but his stuff was good enough for him to rank 47th on my Draft Board. The Yankees popped him in the second round and Cunningham didn’t pitch after the draft.

At a strapping 6-foot-5, Cunningham is an athletic mover who strides somewhat open as he pedals home. He throws from a three-quarters arm slot with a 1:00 fastball spin axis, and he might benefit from supination on release to create more carry on his fastball. A short, blunt, below-average mid-80s slider was his most used secondary in 2024, but a high-spin, mid-80s changeup is Cunningham’s best pitch. His strike-throwing was a little less consistent late in the college season, but that was to be expected considering his workload. Cuningham needs breaking ball augmentation, but he has realistic no. 4 starter upside if the Yankees can help with that.

Hess was a three-year starter at ‘Bama but was limited to just 30 career starts due to injuries, and he posted a 5.80 ERA as a junior largely because of elevated walk rates. He kept his walks under control as a sophomore, but not in his other two seasons, and his pre-draft grade was heavily influenced by this issue. Hess is a softer-bodied guy, but he’s fairly athletic, especially for his size. One could argue he has “reverse projection,” meaning that if he and the Yankees can improve his conditioning, it’s plausible Hess’ stuff and/or command will improve even though on the surface he looks like a maxed-out older guy.

Hess’ fastball topped out at 98 mph in 2024 and averaged 94 mph across the entire season, though it yo-yo’d toward the end. He was up for his SEC tournament game versus LSU (94-96 mph), and then down for his final two starts (92-94 mph). Hess’ size helps him create plus extension, and his fastball has rise/run shape. His monster mid-70s curveball, which generated a miss rate north of 50% in 2024, is Hess’ nastiest pitch right now. He also has a distinct mid-80s slider, but he lacks feel for breaking ball release and scatters the location of both, especially as far as the slider is concerned. Hess is definitely more of a dev project than most big program starters, but one could argue there’s meat on the bone here because he has missed so much time with injury. That said, one could also argue that those injuries make it tough to buy that Hess will sit 94 when he’s healthy enough to throw 120 innings. Hess performed like a guy with a ton of relief risk prior to the draft, but the Yankees’ ability to develop pitching gives him more ceiling than that.

Lalane was born in the Bronx and is a dual citizen of the United States and the Dominican Republic. His father played basketball at St. Francis College, and Lalane accrued experience at PG tournaments in the US when he was a child. He didn’t commit to pitching until he was 14 years old. In 2023, Lalane broke out on the complex and accumulated 34 strikeouts and four walks across a meager 21.1 innings. In 2024, he threw just 12.1 innings sandwiched between IL stints for shoulder inflammation. Lalane’s fastball ranged between 93-97 mph in the Yankees’ spring breakout game, and then was 89-93 during his brief “healthy” window of regular season activity.

Healthy Lalane routinely locates his fastball and his precocious changeup, which projects to plus at peak. At this size — body-wise, there are a lot of young A.J. Puk and Dax Fulton similarities here — it’s plausible Lalane could continue to throw harder as he gets stronger. And he’s probably going to need to in order to have a bat-missing fastball because, like Fulton, the downhill trajectory of Lalane’s heater causes it to play down. His entire skill set is more about feel and command than nasty pure stuff right now. I’m projecting that there will eventually be a finishing breaking ball here because the ball doesn’t pop out of hand from Lalane’s release point, but for now, he just has a looking-strike curveball.

Lalane and the Yankees are caught between a rock and a hard place because the left-hander is entering 2025, his 40-man evaluation season, having not come close to proving that he can maintain good stuff across a starter’s load of innings. He’s a two-year project who is pretty likely to be handled with care in 2025 so that he can be kept healthy, and so that teams won’t even think about sniffing him in next year’s Rule 5 Draft. In 2026, however, the restrictor plates will hopefully come off.

Rodriguez trekked slowly through the lower levels of the minors, much like Agustin Ramirez before him, posting well above-average offensive lines in rookie and A-ball. It culminated in a 2024 breakout that saw Rodriguez post a 160 wRC+ at High-A, though he came back to earth during his final 23 games at Double-A.

Rodriguez plays all over the diamond and has experience at all the non-shortstop infield positions, catcher, and in left field. He is best at the corner infield spots and has a shot to be an above-average third baseman, but Rodriguez is incredibly raw at all facets of catching. Even though he was added to New York’s 40-man after the 2024 season, he is still likely a multi-year defensive project as a catcher. The Yankees have helped guys with significant issues back there (Ramirez, Austin Wells) get their defense to a better, more viable spot. If Rodriguez can do the same, then he might hit enough to simply be a primary catcher.

Rodriguez lets the ball travel deep into the hitting zone before making lots of well-struck opposite field contact. He might have issues with tardiness against upper-level velocity, but he only faced a couple dozen pitches of 94 mph or more in 2024, so we just don’t know yet. Right now, Rodriguez has an average contact/power blend. A tendency to chase could make his hit tool slip against crafty, older arms, which is another thing to watch in 2025. There’s still a fair bit of volatility in forecasting Rodriguez’s offense, and he isn’t an especially projectable athlete, but he’s a good defensive third baseman, he might end up with special versatility, and he’s looked like a pretty well-rounded and competent hitter so far. There are some Russell Martin-ish aspects to Rodriguez’s profile (he’d have to get so much better on defense), and he has upside despite lacking big physical projection, be it as a primary catcher or top flight utilityman.

Beeter spent most of his college career either injured or in the Texas Tech bullpen until he came out of the gate as a Red Raiders starter in 2020. Prior to the shutdown, he was not only electric, sitting in the mid-90s with two plus or better breaking balls, but he was also throwing strikes for the first time in his life. Beeter was developed as a walk-prone starter by the Dodgers and Yankees (he was traded for Joey Gallo) until late 2024, when, after returning from a three-month shoulder injury, he was finally moved to the bullpen. His stuff was great for the final month of the year. Beeter’s uphill fastball averaged 95.4 mph, up three ticks from the period prior to his IL stint, including spring training. He also worked solely with his upper-80s slider as a secondary pitch. It has late, downward bite, and vertical shape that pairs nicely with the line on Beeter’s heaters (a free phrase that pays for any HVAC company in the Tri-State area). His fastball’s combination of velocity and riding life makes it a potential plus-plus offering, and his slider has rare velocity for a pitch that essentially has curveball shape. If Beeter can throw this hard for 50 innings or so, then he is going to have good enough stuff despite his below-average control to play a meaningful bullpen role, more than just a generic middle reliever.

It was so tough to make Reyzelman’s high school baseball team that he was cut a couple of times and had a Division-I offer before he could make the squad; when he finally did make the team, he was only ever used as a reliever. Reyzelman then played a swingman role at the University of San Francisco during his first two years of college. He also had a TJ during that time, from which he returned in less than a year. Reyzelman transferred to LSU for his draft year and had success as a fastball-only reliever. Not fastball-heavy, fastball-only — he threw something like 95% fastballs at LSU.

After he was drafted, Reyzelman began to feel back pain. It took a while to diagnose (it was a cyst in his lower back) and even longer to remedy, as it required three surgeries to fix and then deal with a subsequent infection. He missed basically all of 2023 and didn’t establish himself at an affiliate until June 2024, but once he did, it was like Reyzelman was shot out of a cannon. He dominated High-A and was quickly promoted to Somerset. His line in half a season: 38.2 IP, 18 H, 19 BB, 0.96 WHIP, 63 K. More importantly, Reyzelman showed he’s a totally different pitcher. He now has two good secondary pitches in addition to his 94-98 mph fastball. His 82-85 mph slider has plus-plus spin and tight lateral movement, while his changeup at times features 20 inches of horizontal break. Both produced huge rates of miss and chase in his first year of using them regularly. Reyzelman is tracking like an impact reliever with three plus or better pitches. He’s a potential setup man, especially if the secondary pitches keep improving.

Two of Arias’ three seasons have now yielded terrifying strikeout rates, and the one that didn’t was shortened to 27 games by injury and probably isn’t a reliable sample. It’s usually damning when a player K’s north of 30% of the time at the lowest levels, which is what Arias did in the 2022 DSL and again at Low-A Tampa in 2024. He has also backpedaled on defense, where his lackluster range turns ordinary plays into difficult ones. Arias has a big arm, which covers up for some of these issues, and in prior seasons he looked like a lock to stay at short. He has some bounce back potential in this area. There is also still enormous lefty bat speed here. Arias desperately needs to show bat-to-ball improvement in 2025, but he can have a below-average hit tool at maturity and still be a good player if he has the kind of power I think he will. There’s now a thick cloud of bust risk hanging over Arias’ profile, but his potential upside remains the same.

Peralta has a very exciting combination of tools and projection, and he has a shot to be an excellent defensive shortstop with meaningful switch-hitting power. He slashed a modest .219/.320/.325 in his DSL pro debut, which included a scary 29.4% K%, but Peralta was one of the youngest players in all of pro baseball and has great looking hitting hands that should become more precise as he gains strength and experience. Peralta’s loudest present skill is his arm strength, which might be elite at maturity. He’s lithe, agile, and athletic enough to remain at shortstop long-term. Right now, Peralta will hit some seeds into the gap, as well as some slasher-style doubles. He’s built in such a way that he’s very likely to add considerable power via strength training as his career progresses, enough that Peralta can strike out more than average and still be an impact player.

There’s definitely risk here because Peralta is very, very far from the Bronx, and if his contact rate doesn’t improve in 2025 (when he will likely repeat the DSL), then this will have been too aggressive of a grade at this juncture. But visually, Peralta is a really exciting prospect with everyday player upside. Were he a high school draft prospect, he’d be in the late first/early second round mix based on his tools.

Castillo is a very exciting, projectable center field prospect who worked out both on the infield and in the outfield as an amateur. He’s a cut, angular athlete built like a prototypical center fielder. Twitchy and fast, Castillo also has a plus outfield arm, and the way his body unwinds when he uncorks one is both beautiful and explosive. As a hitter, he has quick, fairly powerful hands, but his swing is really, really long. There’s hit tool risk here because of Castillo’s swing, but his up-the-middle fit and power projection give him considerable upside. He signed for a little shy of $1 million in January and is among the toolsier prospect to follow in this year’s DSL.

Perhaps the pitcher in the Yankees system with the greatest potential variance, Lagrange has a mustang of a right arm that generates upper-90s velocity while not having been tamed in the slightest. Lower back inflammation limited him to 29.2 innings combined between the 2024 regular season and Arizona Fall League, with Lagrange walking 35 batters during that span.

A relatively soft-bodied 6-foot-7, Lagrange has incredible arm speed, but the rest of his delivery is either inconsistent or relatively unathletic. He is highly unlikely to develop control sufficient to start, and he might be too wild to hold down a higher-leverage relief role, but he certainly has the stuff for the latter. In three-inning bursts, he shows you 96-98 mph fastballs and touches above; they have downhill plane and ineffective movement, but they’re still hard enough to be nasty. Lagrange’s breaking stuff has been tweaked a time or two over the last couple of years. During the 2024 season, he went from throwing a curveball to more of a hard, upper-80s cutter/slider, and then seemingly went back to a 77-84 mph curveball in the AFL; readers should consider this pitch type to be in flux for now. Both flash plus, but their movement and locations are inconsistent, and that’s true for Lagrange’s tertiary 90-mph changeup as well.

It’s worth it for the Yankees to develop Lagrange as a starter for at least the next two years to give him as many reps as possible in the search for some modicum of consistency. Holding out for as long as possible was the correct strategy to take with Luis Gil, and Lagrange looks similar to how Gil did at the same stage of his career. His realistic outcomes span from a wild, fringe reliever to a late-inning weapon.

Escarra has taken a scenic route through pro ball but enters 2025 as the odds-on favorite to break camp as Austin Wells’ backup thanks to his defensive chops. He was drafted out of high school by the Mets but decided to go to school at FIU, where he played for four years (his junior year was cut short by a shoulder injury that required surgery) as a catcher and first baseman. Escarra was drafted by Baltimore and spent a half decade in their system before the O’s released him just before the 2022 season. For the next two years, Escarra played pro ball in multiple domestic Independent leagues, the Mexican League, and the Puerto Rican Winter League. The Yankees signed him to a minor league deal in January of 2024, and Escarra split last season between Somerset and Scranton before going to LIDOM to fill out another square on his Winter League bingo card.

It was during this time that Escarra began to incorporate third base and the outfield into his defensive mix, though he is easily best behind the plate. Other Yankees might want to avoid playing cards in the clubhouse with Escarra if the sleight of hand he wields around the edge of the strike zone extends to other activities. He’s an awesome receiver and strike-stealer with an above-average arm, though Escarra isn’t great at backhanding pitches in the dirt. Offensively, it’s hard to contextualize Escarra’s 2024 stats — .261/.355/.434 — because of his age. If there’s an impressive, age-independent aspect of Escarra’s performance, it’s that he slayed 94-plus mph fastballs last year, and he’s often on time to pull them. By virtue of his defense and ability to put the ball in play, he looks like a good backup.

Flores played more games at catcher than first base in 2024, a flip of his 2023 full season debut. The strapping 6-foot-3 backstop has improved enough as a defender to be considered a viable big league catcher, albeit not a great one. Flores’ best attribute on defense is his pure arm strength, which he can show off from some tough platforms. He still allowed over 100 stolen bases at an 85% success rate in 2024 because of too many botched exchanges and inaccurate throws, as if he doesn’t always have a great grip on the baseball when he lets it go. Flores’ pitch framing looks incredible on paper — Synergy Sports has his shadow zone strike rate way up at 70% (though the pitch locations are subjective at Double-A, so a healthy grain of of salt is in order here) — but to the eye, he’s a little worse than average.

On offense, Flores slashed a cartoonish .279/.379/.495 in a season split between High- and Double-A, which is great for a small school undrafted guy in his second full pro season, but a little tougher to contextualize given his age and mature physicality. Flores has plus raw power and he’s able to create it in a fairly short mechanical distance. He crushes mistakes and is an explosive rotator, but he isn’t a skillful hitter who’s making contact all over the zone, as his swing is grooved middle-middle and isn’t in the hitting zone for very long. His contact data — 70% contact rate overall, only 76% inside the strike zone — is comfortably below average on the big league scale, and Flores performed that way as a 23-year-old in the mid-minors. I have reservations about Flores’ ability to make enough contact to access his power and think he’ll be a volatile bat-first backup.

Last year, I wrote about my substantial concerns with regards to Pereira’s ability to make contact and his long-term physical projection. I had him evaluated less enthusiastically than what readers may have anticipated given that he was coming off a season in which the 22-year-old slugged .548 and hit 18 homers in 81 games against upper-level pitching. That’s because Pereira, who briefly debuted in 2023, has struck out at a nearly 30% clip his entire minor league career, his hands aren’t particularly deft or precise, and his swing is kind of stiff and clunky in a way that leaves him vulnerable to several common pitch type/location combinations (especially fastballs up).

In 2024, Pereira was on a similar path when his elbow blew out and he needed the internal brace style of Tommy John, ending his season. Before that, Pereira slashed .265/.346/.512 and hit 10 homers in 40 games, but again struck out in about a third of his plate appearances. He swung and missed nearly 40% more often than he put balls in play (141 swinging strikes, 103 balls in play) when an even split would be a dicey sign. There is enormous bust risk here, though Pereira should get to enough power to be a relevant (but frustrating) extra outfielder. The 2025 season will be Pereira’s final option year barring some kind of exemption related to his injury.

Like a lot of Yankees pitching prospects, Selvidge has quickly leaned into throwing his best pitch most often, and he continued to track like a fifth starter/swingman type in 2024 before he was shut down with biceps inflammation in early July. Selvidge lacks pinpoint command, but all of his big, 6-foot-3 frame hurdles directly toward the plate, and allows him to land his slider in the zone consistently. It has tight enough movement to play like a plus pitch even though Selvidge lacks feel for locating it as a chaseable offering; his slider tends to live in the zone even with two strikes. Selvidge has flashed plus fastball velocity in the past, but as he’s worked a pro pitcher’s slate of innings, he has settled into the 91-94 mph range. He relies on his fastball’s rare spin and mechanical deception to get by, and lives on the arm-side half of the plate with his fastball and a decent, tailing changeup. Durability is a big part of Selvidge’s prospectdom. He worked 127.2 innings in 2023 and was on pace to go more like 140-150 before he was shut down in 2024; he was pitching fairly well at Somerset and was comfortably on track for a post-2025 40-man add before the injury. Here he’s still projected as a low-variance fifth starter.

Riggio became famous when he committed to UCLA ridiculously early (he was in eighth grade). He didn’t end up a Bruin and instead matriculated to Oklahoma State, where he hit very well for two years as he embraced a sort of grinder/heel persona. He ended up slashing .316/.438/.601 in two seasons for the Cowboys, then .221/.349/.397 with 11 home runs and 27 steals at High-A Hudson Valley in his first full season. Lefty-hitting infielders with this kind of bat speed are uncommon, and Riggio is no slouch as a defender, either, even though he is likely limited to second base. A lack of plate coverage and barrel control is a byproduct of the effort with which Riggio swings. While he sports hit tool risk, there are some Rougned Odor similarities here, though a Kody Clemens and Cavan Biggio type of role is probably more likely.

Marte is a walking construction crane at a high-waisted 6-foot-5, and he has uncommon control for a college-aged pitcher, let alone one his size. He led the Yankees’ complex roster in innings in 2024 with 49 and only walked 16 guys.

Marte is still 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 Marte’s 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 still has 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. I still think the fastball has helium, just not as much as I did a year ago. Marte’s big league ETA is probably three more seasons away. He’s a pretty good bet to be added to the Yankees’ 40-man roster after the 2026 season, assuming he adds about 20 annual innings to his ledger without losing any velocity.

For the last couple of years, the Yankees’ rookie affiliates have been full of enormous pitching prospects who make it look like the club is trying to start a basketball team. The broad-shouldered, 6-foot-4-ish Arias is among them. He was promoted from the DSL to the FCL near the end of the 2023 season after he struck out 35 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. Arias 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 impossible to tell whether or not Arias will be able to sustain it across an entire season. 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. His firm, 90-ish mph changeup is 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 2025 as a very volatile prospect due to his lack of innings.

Matheus missed most of 2023 with a broken thumb but was still promoted from the DSL to the Tampa complex group for 2024, hitting .321/.429/.488 en route to a late-season promotion to the Low-A affiliate. That slash line is a caricature of Matheus’ talent, as he’s more likely to be a good utilityman than an impact player, but he’s a skilled switch-hitter and versatile defender, talented enough to be a relevant prospect even though he’s years from the bigs.

Matheus fits the “short, but not small” prospect archetype, as he is very physical and strong for a hitter his size. He hasn’t seemed to lose any of his mobility as a result of beefing up, and he has the speed and range to continue to develop at shortstop. On offense, Matheus tracks pitches very well and guides the barrel all over the zone. He’s especially adept at staying on breaking balls and putting those into play even when they’re not in the zone. Despite his size and strength, Matheus isn’t producing high-end exit velocities right now, and he’s physically maxed out, so it’s difficult to project that he’ll develop much more power down the line. This is what limits his perceived ceiling and has him graded as a likely future utility type, one still several levels away.

Cedeno is a medium-framed shortstop with maybe the best infield hands in the class. His glove is like a frog’s tongue, and he has an unbelievably quick exchange. His range, footwork, arm strength, and overall athleticism are all closer to average. Cedeno has some pull power on middle-in mistakes, but is otherwise more vanilla in terms of his bat speed and physical projection. He signed for $2.5 million in January, but realistically, he’s utility fit without an obviously high ceiling.

Persistent injuries have kept Gómez from establishing himself as a consistent part of the Yankees’ big league pitching staff. He started at Triple-A Scranton all throughout 2024 but was used in long relief during his three brief big league call-ups. Unless the Yankees have been given an extra option year due to Gómez’s injury history, he’s out of them, and is therefore likely to be moved to the bullpen relatively soon.

Gómez essentially has a five-pitch mix because of his ability to vary the shape and speed of several different breaking balls. He has a low-80s curveball version to land in the zone, a sweeper that lives in the same velo range, and a harder slider/cutter. His fastball tends to sit 92-94 mph with average rise/run and he was up to 96 last year, both below Gómez’s prospect peak of a few years ago, when he was more comfortably in the mid-90s. It’s plausible a move to the bullpen will be accompanied by a return to that kind of arm strength. If so, then perhaps there’s more ceiling than the low-leverage longman grade Gómez has here.

Arias signed with Toronto as a shortstop but never took a pro at-bat for the Blue Jays. Instead, he was released in the middle of 2020 and moved to the mound around the time he signed with the Cubs in early 2021. He had a breakout 2023 season split between Low- and High-A, during which he made 22 starts, pitched 81.1 innings, struck out 110 batters, and was added to the 40-man in the offseason. The Cubs proactively moved Arias to the bullpen in 2024, and he had a pretty rough year, especially after he was promoted to Iowa, where he walked a batter per inning. Arias has always struggled with walks, but because he was so athletic and new to pitching, it was reasonable to project that he’d get better in this regard. Unfortunately, he hasn’t even progressed to 40-grade control yet, and he’s still wild enough that it detracts from the effectiveness of his stuff, which is electric.

This is a funky, low-slot righty with a mid-90s sinker, a potentially plus-plus changeup, and a righty-dowsing slider. Arias’ best changeups have devastating finish and are nasty enough for him to miss bats right-on-right. His slot makes it tough for him to get on top of his 82-86 mph slider. It has frisbee shape, but its late, tight movement still makes it an effective bat-misser. Arias has the weapons to deal with hitters of either handedness, and he has experience working multiple innings at a time. He’s still projected as a multi-inning weapon with plus stuff, but this is below where Arias, who was traded to the Yankees for cash considerations not long before list publication, has been the last two list cycles because his control just hasn’t improved.

Hurd was a famous high school prospect with a great breaking ball, and was a candidate to go in the 2021 comp 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 footing in the rotation, moving into a swingman role again as a junior after two bad starts in early 2024.

Hurd sits 93-95, 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 Hurd as a starter, and the Yankees have tended to coax starter traits out of college relievers less talented than the right-hander, but to this point he’s been most successful in long relief.

It felt like the Phillies (who drafted him) and then the Yankees (who traded Nick Nelson and Donny Sands for him and Joel Valdez) might be getting in on the ground floor of a tip-of-the-iceberg prospect in Rumfield, who barely played as an underclassman at Texas Tech and then had a great draft year in his only real college season of at-bats at Virginia Tech. Rumfield has posted slightly above-average batting lines at every minor league level with more robust power coming in the last couple of years. In a 2024 spent mostly at Scranton, he slashed .294/.370/.454 with 15 homers and posted very impressive contact stats — 81% contact%, 88% in-zone — that would be plus on a big league scale. This extended to hard fastballs, as Rumfield had an 87% contact rate against heaters 94 mph and above. He lacks the power of a typical first baseman, but he puts the bat on the ball enough to be considered a viable low-end option. He’s injury insurance for Paul Goldschmidt and could probably start for a small handful of teams toward the bottom of the competitive continuum.

One of the top prospects in the 2023 international class, Mayea signed with New York for $4.3 million and spent his first pro season in the DSL, where he slashed .276/.382/.400. Mayea looked like a speedy, glove-first center field prospect in his debut season. Last list cycle, I compared him to Albert Almora or Manny Margot, but he K’d too much in 2024 for those comparisons to continue. Mayea’s footwork in the box is often poorly timed, and his hands load deep and late, causing him to push an inordinate amount of contact the opposite way when he’s able to make it. His speed and defense are both plus, as Mayea puts down some jailbreak times in the 4.1s, and his reads and routes are decisive and polished. He currently looks like a glove-oriented fifth outfielder and probably needs a swing adjustment to be more.

Coleman had Tommy John in early April of 2023. The Rangers selected him in the Rule 5 Draft that offseason, then returned him to the Yankees on 40-man deadline day after the 2024 season; he never threw a pitch in Texas’ org. Last we saw Coleman, the Yankees were able to add about four ticks to his fastball relative to when he signed after the 2020 draft, and when you combine the mid-90s velocity with his heater’s nasty uphill angle and tailing action, healthy Coleman now has a vicious plus-plus fastball. That is almost solely why he was able to punch 95 tickets in just 63.1 innings throughout a 2022 spent mostly as Somerset’s closer. His command and secondary pitches were all well below average that season, and at least one other aspect of Coleman’s skill set needs to evolve if he’s going to an impact big leaguer.

After hitting for plus contact at the lowest levels of the Dodgers system, Vivas began hitting for modest power in 2021 and has hit 10-15 homers each of the last few years. During that time, he was traded to the Yankees and spent 2024, his first year in the org, at Scranton. Vivas broke his orbital bone during spring training and slashed .225/.348/.358 upon his return. Small but strong, Vivas doesn’t have big raw power, but he takes a pretty healthy hack for a guy his size and he’s maintained above-average contact rates as he’s climbed the minors. Where he hasn’t progressed is on defense. Vivas is not especially good at either second or third base. He is a bottom-of-the 40-man type who can play a low-impact 2B/3B platoon role on an active roster.

Vilorio signed for $1.75 million in January of 2024 as a power-hitting outfield prospect of considerable size. He had a strikeout-prone pro debut, K’ing about 33% of the time in the DSL. Vilorio’s physical prowess is sufficient to keep him on the main section of the prospect list despite his red flag contact performance, though his grade has obviously dropped way below his pre-signing 40+ FV mark. Vilorio’s hands are still incredibly powerful, and he shows feel for all-fields contact when he’s able to put his bat on the ball. A tendency to chase exacerbated his issues last year. He needs to show improvement in this area in 2025 to stay on here.

Matic, who signed for $850,000 last January, didn’t have a very good pro debut, but he was just 16 for all but the last few weeks of the 2024 DSL season, and he holds serve as a notable young prospect near the bottom of New York’s list. His swing is too ferocious to dismiss Matic even though he just hit .196 at the lowest level. Matic’s underlying contact data is closer to average, but he’s too passive a hitter and runs a ton of deep counts simply because he rarely swings. Matic has a young edge rusher’s build and has uncommon athleticism for a player his size. He has a shot to stay at third base even though players his size tend not to. A 2025 bounce-back candidate, Matic needs to improve in his second DSL go around to stay on here.

Gomez has an elite arm and will consistently pop below 1.8 seconds on throws to the bag. He also has power, slashing .241/.329/.419 with a 50% hard-hit rate at mostly High-A Hudson Valley after he returned from injury in the middle of the 2024 season. Gomez still has serious pitch recognition and bat control issues that will limit his offensive output. He’s also still not a very good ball-blocker, and for all his other merits on defense, this is still a pretty serious issue. If/when Gomez improves that issue, he’ll have a glove-first backup profile. Until then, he’s more on the 40-man fringe as a third catcher type.

Serna is an athletic, undersized righty who has struggled to leave the lower minors due to injuries. He suffered a shoulder injury in 2023 that limited him to just shy of 20 innings, and his 2024 ended on the full-season injured list due to elbow inflammation. Serna’s low-90s fastball is very vulnerable to extra-base contact because of its lack of movement, but his secondary pitches are great. His 80 mph changeup has an amazing amount of tailing action and can get a whiff even when it finishes on the plate. He can vary the shape and speed of his slider and curveball, which aren’t as nasty as Serna’s changeup but survive thanks to his advanced command. He may end up as a long reliever because Serna is small, he hasn’t demonstrated durability, and he needs to pitch backwards a lot of the time to shelter his fastball. The 2025 season is his 40-man evaluation year, so the Yankees might push him from Hudson Valley to Somerset at some point as a stress test for his stuff. Here he’s evaluated as a low-leverage long reliever.

A fairly advanced three-pitch lefty, Herrera had a good 2024 DSL season — 49.1 IP, 64 K, 17 BB, 2.01 ERA — in his third year on the circuit; he was likely still there because he threw just 20.1 innings combined the prior two years. Herrera is a spindly 6-foot-1 or so, has a deceptive, vertical delivery, creates above-average ride on his fastball, and uses two advanced secondaries to finish hitters. His slider has in-zone utility against lefties, but his changeup, which sits 82-85 mph, is his most advanced offering. Herrera projects as a secondary-heavy backend starter and might move quickly in 2025 and 2026 because he’s a fairly advanced strike-thrower.

Shields played six years combined between two different colleges, first UMass and then George Mason, where he spent 2022 and 2023. The Yankees reworked Shields’ delivery, gave him a lower arm slot, and he was dominant in 2024, his first pro season. Splitting the year between High- and Double-A, he pitched in 26 games, 17 of them starts, threw 106 innings, and posted a 11.63 K/9, a 2.80 BB/9 and a 3.01 xFIP.

Shields is now throwing a couple ticks harder than he was in college, but his meal ticket pitch is his low-80s slider, which has really nasty two-plane movement. The changes the Yankees made to Shields’ delivery give his fastball a little bit flatter angle. If he were to move to the bullpen and add another couple of ticks, that might be a second above-average pitch for him. Assuming he keeps living in the 91-94 mph range, he looks more like a solid lefty specialist.

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. When he returned from rehab in 2024, he was utterly dominant on the complex and at Low-A even though he wasn’t even throwing as hard as he was at ULM. That’s because Kean’s fastball has big riding life and he commands it to the top of the strike zone with regularity. At a strapping 6-foot-5, Kean and his gorgeous arm action look like he’ll at least rebound and sit 93-94 mph like he did during his handful of innings with the Warhawks, if not more. At that point, Kean will have a plus fastball, though he and the Yankees will need to polish his 78-83 mph breaking ball, which is currently a bit below average. Kean might also be able to conjure a changeup out of thin air — he certainly has the arm action for it. Kean is a fun small school sleeper who could reach Double-A by the end of 2025, especially if his peak arm strength returns.

Alejandro is a massive 18-year-old righty whose performance regressed in his second DSL season. His athleticism at his age and size is still remarkable enough for him to retain prospect value, but Alejandro’s command needs to improve in 2025. He struggled with high, arm-side fastball misses in 2024 and plunked 16 batters in 37.2 innings. The shape of his fastball’s movement was all over the place, though at its best, it has late sink and tail, and jumps on hitters thanks to Alejandro’s 6-foot-9 inch extension. Alejandro is a loose hip-and-shoulder athlete, and it’s too soon to expect that he’d have precise control of his limbs. His stuff and build are that of an innings-eating sinker/slider starter, but he needs to hone his fastball release and become a better craftsman.

Velasquez is a wild little righty reliever whose arm is too fast for him to control. He K’d 56 in 41.1 innings (almost of which came in relief) at Double-A in 2024, but he also walked 31. Velasquez’s 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 he wields nearly elite arm strength at age 23 and thus needs to be on this org’s prospect list.

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. Balboni has a career ERA over 6.00, 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 Balboni seizing a big league bullpen job.

Rosario signed as an old-for-the-class pitcher in 2022 and spent two walk-prone seasons in the DSL before having a third on the domestic complex in 2024. He is on this list because his stuff is very nasty. Rosario often sits 94-97 across as many as three or four innings, and his fastballs sometimes have 20 to 22 inches of vertical break, though just like his locations, their movement is all over the place. Rosario also has a plus 82-85 mph sweeper-style slider with big length and enough depth to play as a backfoot weapon against lefties when it’s located. Rosario is an older developmental arm with comfortably plus stuff. Every once in a while, a guy like this will become a Félix Bautista type and have a dominant peak, though most tend to hover on the roster fringe.