Is New York Yankees Prospect Gary Sanchez a Bust?

Gary Sanchez will not be the backup catcher on the New York Yankees Opening Day Roster.

After hitting just .048  (1-for-21) in 13 spring training games, the Yankees assigned their 23-year old prized prospect back to Triple-A Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre, where he’ll start the 2016 season.

How does this effect the Yankees?

For starters, it’s starting to look more and more like Austin Romine – who was once an afterthought down in the Yankees pipeline – is the new front-runner to land the backup role behind Brian McCann. So far this spring, Romine is hitting .273 (6-for-22) with four doubles and four RBI in 22 at-bats. However, I still wouldn’t rule out the possibility of veteran backstop Carlos Corporan, who the Yankees signed to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training earlier in the winter. Corporan is hitting .190 (4-for-21) with one double and one walk in 21 at-bats, but he also has much more major league experience behind the dish than Romine.

Second, while a fair share of the always-vocal New York Yankees fan base might start to consider Gary Sanchez a ‘bust’, I would suggest otherwise. Sure, Sanchez’ spring training numbers were putrid, but I think he might have been pressing too hard to make the Yankees 25-man roster come April 4th.

Keep in mind this is the same 23-year old kid who tore the cover off the ball in 2015 during his breakout campaign. After slashing .262/.319/.476 with 12 homers, 36 RBI and 26 extra-base hits in 58 games played at Double-A, Sanchez was named to the 2015 All-Star Futures Game and was called up to Triple-A shortly after. At AAA, Sanchez didn’t miss a beat, hitting .296 with six homers and 26 RBI.

Sanchez was also named the 2015 MVP of the Arizona Fall League All-Star Game and was declared the second-best Arizona Fall League prospect by Baseball America, and make no doubt about it, his breakout numbers played a huge factor in the Yankees decision to trade away former backup catcher John Ryan Murphy to the Minnesota Twins for Aaron Hicks back in November.

In my opinion, Sanchez will regain his confidence in minor-league camp, get off to a hot-start in Scranton, and will be back in the Bronx before you know it.

If anything, this only benefits the future of the New York Yankees.

In order to keep Sanchez under team control and push his free-agency back a whole season, the Yankees must keep the young catcher down in the minors for at least 35-days. Sure his stats may have indicated that he wasn’t ready, but even if he was raking this spring, I still think the Yankees would have sent him down to Scranton to start the season for this very reason. At the end of the day, business is business, and we saw this with the Chicago Cubs and Kris Bryant last 0ff-season.

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What do you think Yankees fans? Is Gary Sanchez a bust? Let us know in the comments below.