Is Yankee Player Development Back?
- E.J. Fagan
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
By E.J. Fagan
February 11, 2026
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A year ago, the Yankees farm system was in bad shape. There were scarcely any decent prospects to speak of in the high minors. Pitching had a particularly awful year in 2024, both due to injuries and players not being able to hack it. It looked pretty bleak. We heard a lot of grumbling by former prospects about the Yankees approach to hitting development.
The Yankees responded by firing a ton of their minor league coaches after the 2024 season. They had hired a ton of teched up Driveline baseball-types to coach their minor league affiliates. Cashman kept their senior leadership entirely in place, but a pretty significant shift occurred from the Dillon Lawson-led era.
I’d like to take stock of what happened in 2025 and see if they are getting better. The Yankees have traded a huge number of prospects for valuable MLB players over the last year and a half. Even if those players never end up in pinstripes, they are a valuable output from the farm system.
Young MLB Players
I’d classify the following non-prospects on the MLB roster still in the development stage coming into 2025. I’ll give them each a letter grade for how much progress they made during the year:
Ben Rice (A+)
Anthony Volpe (D)
Austin Wells (D)
Jasson Dominguez (B-)
Cam Schlittler (A)
Will Warren (B)
Luis Gil (D)
A bit of a mixed bag. Schlittler and Ben Rice had excellent years, jumping way ahead of their expected prospect status coming into 2025. Both should be major league regulars and have the potential to be true stars. Neither were high draft picks or international signings. Great job, player development department.
Warren and Dominguez had decent seasons with obvious flaws. Warren pitched a full season in the majors, but the results were seriously uneven. Dominguez was an above average hitter overall but may end up as a pure platoon hitter with poor defense. Still, both went from prospects to MLB players, so they get an above average grade.
Wells, Volpe and Gil were all worse MLB players in 2025 than 2024, so they get Ds. All were injured, but the player development department gets some of the blame.
Top 100 Prospects
The following players have made various top-100 lists:
Five-ish players in the top 100 range is pretty good! The Yankees have been very good at drafting in the first round lately: Volpe and Wells became major league regulars, Hess and Spencer Jones are on the cusp and Lombard and Kilby appear to be solid hits. That stands in sharp contrast to the “Yankees make too clever by half” era where they had a sub-50% hit rate (albeit with Aaron Judge in there).
All of these guys saw big jumps in development in 2025. Jones went from being a chronic underachiever to one of the better hitters in the minors. Lombard and Kilby advanced through the minors way ahead of schedule (maybe too fast in Lombard’s vase). LaGrange and Rodriguez (and to a lesser extent, Hess) were interesting pitchers who the Yankees crafted into some of the better starting pitchers in the minors. Good stuff.
Kilby was probably the best pick by value in the 2025 draft, although I’m not sure how much credit the player development people can take for him yet. The Yankees got Kilby all the way down at #39, but he’d probably go top-15 if the draft were redone today. Keith Law rated him down at #101 for The Athletic, but still had this to say:
“The Georgia high school shortstop went to Low A for 18 games and hit .353/.457/.441 in his pro debut, walking more than he struck out. That’s high school to full-season ball in about 90 days, going from metal bats to wood, Georgia prep pitchers to professionals, and Kilby didn’t miss a beat. He made extremely hard contact, too, averaging 91.9 mph and peaking at 108.9, while his chase rate of 11.1 percent was … well, Juan Soto had the lowest chase rate in the majors last year, and his was 18.1 percent. Kilby saw 106 pitches that were well out of the zone, meaning they were more than one baseball width away from the strike zone, and swung at seven.
*NBC’s list is for fantasy baseball, not MLB value
Farther Down the System
Here is where it starts to get bleak. The Yankees traded away a ton of guys at the deadline, but basically none of them are going to be missed. I guess it’s a victory when your farm system can bring back MLB talent, but you need better chips to make bigger trades.
There aren’t a ton of other near-misses. Bryce Cunningham was injured for much of 2025. Chase Hampton hasn’t been healthy in two years. They’ve brought in very little from the IFA market other than LaGrange in recent years, with not much progress from seven figure guys like Brando Mayea, Roderick Arias and Francisco Vilorio, although I think there’s some hope left in Mayea. They do have a few who have succeeded in the Dominican Complex League like Richard Matic, but overall not a lot of input there.
The Yankees have really struggled to churn out a healthy stream of MLB better-than-replacement players. Their 3rd and 4th round picks don’t turn into role players. They bet most of their IFA money on top-10, seven figure types, so they are left with mostly lottery tickets from Latin America when those don’t work out. It’s a major weakness for the team.
Did that change in 2025? Maybe. Their signature move has been “turn the guy who isn’t fast but can hit okay into a so-so catcher” with guys like JC Escarra, Rafael Flores, Agustin Ramirez, Jesus Rodriguez and Austin Wells, although it remains to be seen if any of those guys other than Wells are going to do much catching in the majors. They’ve had a lot less success with more athletic guys who can play in the outfield corners or infield.
And where are all the relievers? The Yankees bullpen is entirely constructed from old guys they acquired from other teams. The last MLB relievers they developed were Michael King and Jonathan Loaisiga. I get why they haven’t been very eager to convert starters to relief pitchers for reasons related to trade value and MLB depth, but the team could really use a few. A quick glance around other contenders finds a pretty healthy number of home grown relievers in their 20s.
The Verdict
I’d probably grade the player development system as about average with signs of progress since 2023-2024. Rice and Schlittler are huge wins for them as potential All Stars that came out of nowhere. Other hitters on the MLB roster showed less progress, but some of those problems might have been baked in from Lawson-era mistakes.
But they still aren’t churning out a ton of major league players. The team has really felt the lack of decent relievers, bench players and replacements over the last few years. Hitting on your top picks is great, but the Yankees seem to go for a boom-or-bust prospect strategy. They should be able to do better. If I’m Brian Cashman, I’m keeping my amateur scouting team but hiring someone from outside the organization to run player development.
