New York Yankees farm system continues to live on reputation
The New York Yankees are still widely regarded in national discussions among the elite farm systems in the game, but that’s no longer the case
A matter of just 3-4 years ago, the New York Yankees farm system was legitimately among the top 3-5 farm systems in the entire game. The farm system was consistently placing a half-dozen players on annual top-100 prospect lists with a development system that seemed to create prospects out of nothing at times.
After a few years of trading away top prospects and promoting those prospects to the major leagues, that ability to develop is still there and as strong as ever, but the New York Yankees are not one of the elite farm systems in the game. They still get discussed as if they are among the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves at the top of the mountain right now, though, which is odd.
Development
This is the area that still remains strong. The New York Yankees pay for one of the best development systems in all of baseball, and that’s what they get. Even when they no longer have the elite talent in the system to work with, they churn out top talent from the players that they are presented. At the very least, the development system creates quality players for the major league club to fill in for the bullpen or bench or for trades as needed.
The one area that the Yankees do better than anyone still is developing pitchers. When I do a team’s top prospect list, I consider between 30-50 players in order to narrow down to 10. The list I had was 38 players, and 29 of them were pitchers, which says plenty about the strength of that development program.
Top Prospects
This is where things have changed. Top prospect writer John Sickels put together his New York Yankees top prospect list before the 2015 and before the 2016 seasons. I went through those lists, and here’s what I found:
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- 2015 list
- In MLB with Yankees: 5
- In MLB elsewhere: 4
- Still in minors with Yankees: 4
- Still in minors elsewhere: 7
- 2016 list
- In MLB with Yankees: 3
- In MLB elsewhere: 4
- Still in minors with Yankees: 6
- Still in minors elsewhere: 7
That is really nothing on John’s ability to project in the New York Yankees system as his were pretty much the consensus top guys in the system in those years, and they’ve not really panned out to a lot of major leaguers 3 and 4 years later, but what is notable is that 11 of each list are no longer with the organization. That’s a fairly high number.
As I look to my top 150 prospects list this year, I am certain that there will not be a New York Yankees prospect in the top 75. At most, 3-4 may find their way into the second half of the list, which is an indication of where the list truly is.
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While fans in the Bronx should be excited about the team in the big leagues now and be comfortable that their development system will churn out at least the bullpen pieces needed to sustain a long run, if not a full pitching staff, the top-end talent for the New York Yankees is now wearing pinstripes in New York, not anywhere along the minor league chain.