Yankees spring training report on Florial, Andujar, Torres and others

The Yankees are getting a look at several promising farm hands during the early stages of Spring Training. We’ve been looking, too, and this is how these baby bombers have done so far.

Yankees youngsters are getting their chances to shine.

That’s how it works this early in spring training. Established position players do not need as many games to get ready as the pitchers do, so they take few reps in the first week or so of camp.

Normally that makes first few days the least interesting. But not when you have as deep a system and as talented a roster as the Yankees do. And not when you have several promising players pushing hard to make an impression.

The most prominent of these are CF Estevan Florial, 3B Miguel Andujar and 2B Gleyber Torres.

All three come in with pedigrees and histories that make them worth watching. But while the latter two have a chance to break camp with the team, Florial is at least one year away.

But that hasn’t stopped the 44th ranked Estevan from making perhaps the best impression.

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He is hitting a healthy .308/.400/.769 while his OPS is an astounding 1.169. OPS is an excellent bench mark statistic as it combines how often a player gets on base with his slugging, or how much damage he inflicts when he makes contact.

Florial’s puts him solidly between Giancarlo Stanton (1.155) and Gary Sanchez (1.250); that is nice company to be in. Especially for a player who spent his 2017 in A ball.

What is driving his high OPS is something that never shows up in the box score, though: Speed.

Estevan has three triples already, easily leading the team. He probably leads all of spring training in the category. And his presence on first seems to already be unnerving some pitchers. Right now he looks like Jorge Mateo with much better plate discipline.

He has even cut down on his strikeouts; he has five in seven games, which projects to 100 in 140 games. Last year he struck out 148 times in 110 games. Again, this is in such limited action so far that every stat must be taken with a grain of salt, but it is all we have to work with.

He has also left another column blank, that of errors. Esteven is playing a well-rounded game at a high level in these first few days. Nevertheless, he is still a year away and this is just one week of camp.

But in his limited opportunities, Florial has continued to blossom and done nothing but increase the excitement about what this still-developing player can become.

Miguel Andujar has shot way past promising already, though, to delivering.