Yankees minor league baseball begins today with a prospect preview

A Single Shining Star

Kyle Holder is 24 and still can’t hit; Tim Lynch will soon be 25. The error-prone Hoy Jun Park, meanwhile, is on no one’s radar anymore. And those are some of the best position players at this level.

Except for Estevan Florial (.298/.372/.479; 13 home runs). Florial is either very well known to you, or you are reading a piece that goes far deeper into Yankees details than you could possibly care about, so we’ll keep this brief.

Florial is the Yanks second overall prospect, ahead of Sheffield and Andujar, Abreu and Perez. He was sent to Trenton from Tampa for their playoffs, just as he was advanced the year before from Charleston for Tampa’s postseason.

Then he spent his Fall in Arizona and his Spring as a twinkle in Yankees’ eyes.

MLB has the 20-year old at 44, while Sickels puts him at 47. That all means he will start where he spent most of his 2017 season but will not be there for long. He really could rise as far as the Bronx this year, although it is far more likely he ends in Scranton.

If you are only going to have one great position player at a level, Florial is the one to have. Charleston, however, has the opposite problem: A lot of good players but no great ones.