Yankees minor league baseball begins today with a prospect preview

Names of Note

J.P. Feyereisen was brought over in the Andrew Miller trade with high hopes, his 1.70 ERA from 2016 doing nothing to diminish those dreams.

But he seemed to struggle more as he climbed the talent ladder, pitching to a 3.53 at Triple-A with only 42 SO in 43 IP. Those would be decent numbers for a starter but not for what is supposed to be a shut-down reliever.

Giovanny Gallegos, meanwhile, acquitted himself well at Scranton last season—2.08 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 28 hits/69 SO in 43 IP—but was not as productive in the Bronx.

His 20 innings there resulted in a decent 22 SO in his 20 innings, but a nasty 4.87 ERA. Those went with his 21 hits, more than one per inning, and WHIP of 1.28. He is not the second coming of Dellin Betances.

And neither is recently signed former Met Oliver Perez. The 36-year old one-time starter has been working out of the pen for the last few years but without much success the last three. He put up a 4.64 last year and has not pitched below a 4.17 since 2014.

That the Yankees just added him for emergency depth shows how thin the pitching talent is at their highest level.

There is a recent addition dark horse candidate, though. The Yankees have been adding and shuffling players just in the last few hours—for instance, INF Cody Asche was brought in from the White Sox for future considerations—and one beneficiary is Raynel Espinal.