FULLY STOCKED
Yanks' system still embarrassment or riches
FARM system success isn’t measured in minor league postseason appearances, bonus baseball for trophies few care about. But still, the Yankees have that barometer covered, too.
September is here, and seven of the Yankees’ nine farm teams are playoff-bound. The Single-, Double- and Triple-A teams, despite an influx of youth at the major league level, are all in first place. In a season in which top prospect Gleyber Torres was lost for the year in June, in which Aaron Judge, Clint Frazier and Jordan Montgomery have left the bushes behind, in which several top chips were exchanged at the trade deadline, the leftovers have looked like a fresh entrée.
Here are the end-of-year awards for a system that, with all the graduations and trades, is still top five in all of baseball. Player of the year: Chance Adams
“He’s been a winner at every level,” Yankees vice president of player development Gary Denbo said over the phone this past week. “He’s definitely an option for us in the starting rotation going forward.”
Adams, a fifth-rounder in 2015, has dominated each level he’s seen with consistency. The righthander is now 31-7 with a 2.33 ERA in three minor league seasons, going from Double-A Trenton to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre this year without a hitch. Across the two levels, the 23-year-old has struck out 135 over 150 ¹/3 innings so far (after 127 ¹/3 innings last season, positioning himself nicely for next year).
Adams hasn’t surfaced in the majors just yet, the Yankees insisting he needs to perfect his command (58 walks this year). The Yankees also are conscious of his innings, so his continued excellence places him as a strong rotation option next spring. Revelation of the year: Estevan Florial Otherwise known as the man who made Blake Rutherford expendable.
The jewel of the 2014 international free-agency class has the arm, legs and bat that scouts drool over, a filled tool box. With speed that plays in center field and power that plays as a corner outfielder, Florial has come into his own this season, first in Single-A Charleston and then High-A Tampa. In 108 combined games entering Sunday, he slashed .299/.374/.482 with 13 home runs and 23 steals — all as a 19-year-old, playing against much older competition.
Comeback player: Dillon Tate Tate “has really come on as a starter,” Denbo said a year after the Yankees took a flier on the fourth-overall pick of the 2015 draft who had struggled with Texas.
Tate came over in the Carlos Beltran trade as a project, one whose mid-90s fastball and plus-slider weren’t performing, wielding a 5.40 ERA in Single-A with the Rangers. A season later, his stock is rising just as he is through the Yankees’ system, getting promoted to Double-A in August.
He’s 7-2 with a 2.81 ERA combined this year, a 23-year-old who’s already absorbed the hype, fallen and risen again. Stock dropped: Mason Williams The few-years-long plunge out of the system was completed, if briefly. Once one of the organization’s top prospects, Williams was designated for assignment in late June, which would have been his goodbye had another team claimed him.
Instead, he bounced back onto the Yankees’ Triple-A team, where he hasn’t impressed (.265/.311/ .321).
Now 26 and in a system overflowing with outfielders, Williams has been left behind. Biggest offseason question: Jake Cave, Billy McKinney
Denbo volunteered both as breakthroughs this season, now Triple-A outfielders tearing up the league while they still can.
Both are following the Ben Gamel route as promising outfielders lost in the shuffle of a deep system. Dustin Fowler and Clint Frazier were promoted before them, as high-ceiling prospects like Florial steal attention from below .
With each Cave home run — he had 20 (12 more than his season high), and McKinney batting .312 in 52 Triple-A games — the team’s offseason roster decisions get tougher. The Rule 5 draft is approaching, and both could be goners if not protected.
McKinney, who came from the Cubs in a trade last year and was once among the top-40 prospects in all of baseball, has “put himself back on the map as an option for us in the major leagues,” Denbo said.
As has Cave — but they’re on other teams’ radar, too.