Yankees minor league baseball begins today with a prospect preview

A Rapid Riser

Freicer Perez, for instance, has some believing he is the most big league likely starter in the system today. The six-foot-eight, rail-thin right-hander was unheralded when he was signed out of the D.R., but he added weight to his frame and speed to his fastball.

He has three good-to-plus pitches already, his main weapon being his fastball, which occasionally sits at 97. Perez used those weapons effectively during his full season at Low-A last year to post a 2.84 ERA and 1.14 WHIP.

That helped him give up only 96 hits in 124 IP. And it propelled him to being ranked eighth in the Yankees system and 106th by Sickel, three spots behind Acevedo and well ahead of the Red Sox highly thought of LHP Jay Groome (120).

And one notch below those two is RHP Brian Keller. A late round pick back in 2016, Keller had some interesting college highlights, as the Journal Sentinel’s JR Radcliffe makes clear:

"Keller, who pitched Germantown into the 2012 state-championship game in the summer baseball season, had a record-setting career at UW-Milwaukee. As a senior in 2016, he…threw three shutouts and four complete games. He set the school record with 103 strikeouts and 107.1 innings of work."

Now, he’s doing it again, only this time for the Yankees:

"Keller finished his season between two teams with an 11-8 record and 3.13 ERA in 144 innings. He struck out 157 and walked just 28. He opened the year with the Class A Charleston RiverDogs of the South Atlantic League after he dazzled in a short amount of work last year. Keller allowed just four earned runs in 41 innings over three affiliates in 2016 (0.88 ERA), with 51 strikeouts and seven walks."

Last, But First

Still, Keller is unranked in any way and will have to keep proving it. Again, we are going to know a lot about Brian Keller by the end of 2018.

There are other good relievers here as well, like David Sosebee and Hobie Harris, but only one other high-level pitching prospect: Albert Abreu.

Abreu might have the hoped to come into camp and make a name for himself. Instead, an emergency appendectomy sidelined him almost from the first day. His line from last year had already announced him: 3.38 ERA and 1.18 WHIP with 61 strikeouts, 18 walks and 45 hits in 53 IP.

Brought over from Houston in the Brian McCann trade, Albert has continued to drop his walks-per-nine and improve his control over his secondary pitches. While his live fastball that sometimes hits 100 makes him a lock as at least a future big league reliever, his ceiling is still that of a front-line starter.

Perhaps all of that is why he is the Yanks fifth-ranked prospect, and 75th overall, as well as being ranked 86th by Sickels. Of all the pitchers profiled at this level, Abreu is the most likely to leapfrog some of the pitchers already at Trenton.

But while Tampa is swamp-deep in high-prospect pitchers, there is only one position player worth mentioning. He might be the best player in the entire system, however.