2024 Yankees Prospects: Week 22 minor league review

Welcome to the final edition of the 2024 weekly minor league roundup series, where Ive reviewed each Yankees affiliate from the week prior and the prospects playing there.

Minor league playoff baseball is in the air, and all but one affiliate got the win-down-the-stretch memo.

Lets dig in! Record : 36-26 (2nd half), 1 GB in the International League East after going 5-1 against the Syracuse Mets Run differential : +67 Coming up: Home for six games against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs (Phillies) starting Tuesday, September 10th Though the RailRiders have the second-best record in the International League on the season and sit just three games back from Omaha (Royals), theyre actually four games removed from a playoff spot thanks to the unique minor league playoff structure.

In the minor leagues, the regular season is split into two halves, with the league winner of each half playing in a best-of-three series.

In Triple-A, whoever wins that series will play the winner of the other Triple-A league the Pacific Coast League in a championship game in Las Vegas on Tuesday, September 24th.

Even though four games seems borderline insurmountable to overcome in a two-week span once the regular season concludes, the RailRiders might think otherwise if they play like they did last week against Syracuse.

The amazing 5-1 series they just executed against the scuffling Mets was a much-needed boost to their playoff chances, even if theyre still dim.

Their staggering 60 runs scored in six games was led by a 19-0 shellacking on Saturday , where they scored nine runs in the final inning.

It was a collective effort by the entire team, as no one had more than three RBI, but eight players had two or more runs driven in.

Pretty much every batter ate in this series, with the numbers greatly boosted via their Saturday matinee.

J.C.

Escarra is not a prospect, but he had perhaps the single most impressive week a Yankees minor leaguer has had the entire year.

He slugged a remarkable six homers in five games en route to a ridiculous .471/.522/1.588 slash line.

Escarra doesnt hit the ball sensationally hard, but he is a launch angle king and makes a surprising amount of contact.

His swing decisions have also been outstanding since making it to Scranton.

He was previously a minor leaguer before spending several years in Mexico, but he signed a minor league deal with the Yankees in the offseason and has quietly put together a solid campaign.

He wont be marked as the player of the week since he isnt a prospect, but this was hands-down the most impressive weekly performance by a Yankees minor leaguer this year.

SUNDAY SLAM.

JC Escarras sixth homer of the week is grand 383 ft.

| 95.9 mph pic.twitter.com/qzSb6vut9b Of course, Escarra wasnt the only batter to have a monster week for the RailRiders: four other players had OPS north of 1.000 (thats elite), those being Jasson Dominguez, Ben Rice, Taylor Trammell, and the rehabbing Jon Berti.

I know there is veteran deference at play, but were at the point where the best options need to be out there for the Yanks: Rice and Dominguez need to be playing in the Bronx.

(Update: Jasson has been called up since this writing.) Jasson Dominguez since August 15th: 91 PA 4 HR .373/.429/.566 .995 OPS 160 wRC+ Its Martian time! pic.twitter.com/if1BhrOIub Ben Rice homers for 3rd straight game!! #RepBx #Yankees pic.twitter.com/qLacG1SCLs While the bats came to life, the arms scuffled aside from their shutout performance on Saturday.

Edgar Barclays up-and-mostly-down campaign continued with 12.0 very strong innings of two-run ball.

My boy Thomas Pannone, who is a regular in this series, spun seven shutout innings while allowing just four hits while not walking anyone.

He has been awesome , and I think he has a case to be in the Yankees bullpen or the next-man-up should a rotation need arise.

Record : 38-24 (second half), 1.5 GB in the Eastern League Northeast after going 4-2 against the Binghamton Rumble Ponies (Mets) Run differential : +67 Coming up: Home for six games against the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Blue Jays) starting Tuesday, September 10th The Patriots pitched, pitched, then pitched some more.

Their collective 2.19 ERA last week was easily the best of all Eastern League teams, coming in nearly 80 points below the second-lowest mark.

While the Rumble Ponies are not a good offense (second fewest runs scored and most strikeouts in the EL), there were a couple of notable performances amongst the starters.

Cam Schlittler had his first impressive outing with Somerset last week, going 4.1 innings and allowing just one run to go along with nine punchouts.

Schlittler had his slurve working against the Rumble Ponies, consistently getting chase-and-misses outside the zone after he established his high-spin fastball up in the zone.

As I mentioned last week, I would place Schlittler slightly higher than Zach Messinger at this point given his better stuff and age-adjusted production.

Yankees No.

25 prospect Cam Schlittler tied a career-high with 9 strikeouts in Binghamton tonight Final line: 4.1 IP | 6 H | 2 R | 1 ER | 1 BB | 9 K pic.twitter.com/3VsC2mWyQg Speaking of Messinger, the Virginia product was awesome yet again last week, as the towering right-hander allowed a single run across his 6.2 innings of work.

Especially encouraging was his K/BB ratio, which had taken a worrying nosedive in prior outings.

If I had to guess, he will not be protected on the 40-man roster this offseason, but I would be floored if a bad team doesnt pick him up and give him an audition to stick in the big leagues during spring training (hello, White Sox).

Side note, could the White Sox select up to five players in the Rule 5 Draft in December? Heck, that figure might be too low! ZACH ATTACK @Yankees No.

17 prospect Zach Messinger delivered again.

6.2 IP | 3 H | 1 ER | 2 BB | 6 K 96 Pitches (61 strikes) pic.twitter.com/XG8p0Ol0fs Rafy Flores keeps doing the dang thing! He went off last week, hitting .353/.476/.941 to pair with three long shots.

Flores has been the hottest Yankees prospect of note over the last month-plus, and I comp him to former Yankee Andres Chaparro (who I had a prospect crush on for a while).

In any event, hes up to an .886 OPS with 21 dingers between High and Double-A this year: heck yeah! RAFAEL.

FLORES.

IS.

UNSTOPPABLE.

The Yankees' No.

30 prospect smashes his 21st homer of the season 435 feet to take the lead in extra innings! pic.twitter.com/JhI1KTfyHk Anthony Seigler is quietly having a fantastic second half in his own right, but Im still not ready to call this a breakout despite his .300/.391/.500 line last week.

Hes an intriguing, unique prospect, at the very least.

Spencer Jones was, well, bad last week.

He struck out 13 times in his six outings, which ...

yeah, thats not good.

Somerset has one more series to overcome their 1.5 game deficit to Portland (Red Sox) in the division, or theyll be eliminated from playoff contention.

They have a golden opportunity to do so against the Fisher Cats, who are one of the lightest Double-A teams on talent that Ive ever observed.

In addition to their good-on-paper series, the Patriots will be rooting for the Rumble Ponies (Mets) as they travel to Portland (Maine, to be clear).

Record : 40-26 (second half), 3.5 games up in the South Atlantic League League North after going 5-1 against the Asheville Tourists ( Astros ) Run differential : +66 Coming up: Best-of-three SAL semi-finals against Greensboro Grasshoppers (Pirates) starting Tuesday, September 10th The Renegades completed their goal of making the playoffs last week with a 5-1 showing against a porous Asheville squad.

Though they only needed one win to secure their second-half division crown, Hudson Valley gave the Tourists the business all week long.

The Renegades pitching staff surrendered a microscopic 1.64 ERA last week, though I think most of that can be chalked up to just how bad Ashevilles offense was down the stretch (they were decent at scoring runs in the first half).

Though he only went 4.1 innings and gave up five runs (just two earned, the defense behind him was bad), Baron Stuart had the most dominant outing of any Renegade with 12 strikeouts.

For you math whizzes out there, that means he struck out all but one batter that he retired.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is dominance.

This recored 12th strikeout by Baron Stuart is your @Honda play of the game! pic.twitter.com/90gM6ZJCzc Trent Sellers wasnt far behind, with eight punchouts in 3.2 shutout innings.

Sellers is down to a 2.26 ERA and 100 punchouts in 86.1 innings this year.

Its remarkable when you consider the arms that the Yankees have unearthed from the undrafted ranks like Sellers and former Renegade Ben Shields.

Kyle Carr gave up four runs in four innings, but only one of them was earned.

Josh Grosz multi-week bout of wildness is behind him, and his K/BB rates have stabilized in the last few outings.

Aside from those rocky peripheral outings after he was promoted to Hudson Valley, he has been nothing short of marvelous over the last three months.

Brian Hendry continued his rehab and tossed three near-flawless innings, the most hes thrown in an outing since his return from the injured list.

I might be the most bullish of any public evaluator on Hendry.

I love his stuff, and I think itll carry into the upper minors and eventually, the big leagues.

The offense was fine enough, though they were more middle-of-the-pack from a production standpoint last week.

There wasnt a huge performance by any one hitter, but they had a balanced attack against an Asheville rotation that had the worst collective ERA in the SAL this season (5.11).

Dylan Jasso had the best series of all the hitters, including a walk-off single in one of the games that catapulted his weekly slash line to .333/.333/.611.

While he got off to a hot start with Tampa, hes been pedestrian the last few months.

His transition to High-A hasnt been pretty, but he had his first headline series as a Renegade.

DYLAN JASSO WITH THE GAME WINNING RBI SINGLE! THE GADES WALK IT OFF AND CUT THEIR MAGIC NUMBER DOWN TO 2! THIS TEAM NEVER FAILS TO AMAZE US! pic.twitter.com/qCRswpVrcm Record : 30-32 (second half), 6.5 GB in the Florida State League West after going 0-5 against the Dunedin Blue Jays Run differential : +6 Ouch.

Tampa had a chance to finish the season on a high note with a winning record after they entered last week three games above .500 in the second half.

Instead, they were swept in five games by a fairly talented Dunedin team and finished three games below .500.

In typical Tampa fashion, their pitching was a nightmare by FSL standards last week, as their league-worst 4.81 ERA indicates.

There arent many silver linings within the individual performances, either: Carlos Lagrange and Danny Flatt the two most electric arms for Tampa struggled to harness their command and consequently had short outings.

Bryce Warracker walked six batters compared to just one strikeout in 4.2 innings.

The bullpen was especially rocky last week, with bad performances up and down the staff.

Roderick Arias finished the season on a high note, making far more contact in the last month than at any point in his professional career.

He was barely eclipsing 70 percent zone contact heading into August, but as Ryan Garcia of Empire Sports Media points out, that number went up to a respectable number of late: Roderick Arias over his last 33 MiLB Games: .376 xwOBA 145 wRC+ 86% Z-Contact% 12.5% Barrel% pic.twitter.com/flhI3L1hFK So, what do we make of the enigmatic Arias? On one hand, he showed signs of improvement as the season progressed: specifically shortening his swing on high and inside heat.

On the other, hes still chasing way too much and will get exposed against offspeed low and away.

There are very clear strengths and weaknesses to his game.

Its fair to say some of the glaring weaknesses have lessened in severity as the season has progressed, but I am still skeptical over how Arias will look in the upper minors.

Basically every other hitter struggled in last weeks series, and their 16 collective runs scored were easily the worst in the league.

This was as disappointing a closeout to a season as Ive seen from a Yankees affiliate, especially since they had the chance to finish the second half with a winning record after severely struggling in the first half.

Until next year, I suppose.

Season over.

Check out my final remarks on the FCL Yanks from last month .

Season over.

Check out my final remarks on the DSL Yanks from three weeks ago .

Ive mentioned Baron Stuart a couple of times in this weekly roundup series, but Stuart has a volatile skillset that relies on precision.

When he isnt precise, he gets hit around.

When he is , however, he has the ability to rip off oddball performances like he did last week..

This article has been shared from the original article on pinstripealley, here is the link to the original article.