Yankees To Promote Top Prospect Gary Sanchez

Following their series’ clinching victory over the defending champion Kansas City Royals, new broke late Thursday night that the Yankees are prepared to call up top catching prospect Gary Sanchez.

The news was first reported by Scranton-Wilkes/Barre RailRiders beat reporter Shane Hannigan:

Following a brief transition period from international baseball to professional minor league ball here in the United States that saw a younger Gary Sanchez struggle, the now 23-year old has developed into one of the premier catching prospects in all of baseball.

In 2015 Gary Sanchez earned himself a brief ‘cup of coffee’ with the big league club at the end of September after slashing .274/.330/.485 with 18 homers and 62 RBI in 400 plate appearances split between AA Trenton and AAA Scranton.

Sanchez entered 2016 as the 36th ranked prospect by Baseball America’s and the only Yankees prospect alongside Aaron Judge ranked by MLB.com in the Top 100 Prospects in this years class.

Despite struggling in Spring Training, the young backstop has done nothing but hit the cover off the ball down in Scranton. To date, Sanchez is slashing .280/.330/.542 with five home runs and 20 RBI in 115 plate appearances.

Still, its unclear how much playing time Sanchez will get once he arrives in the Bronx. The veteran Brian McCann and his backup Austin Romine are both well ahead of the streaking on the Yankees depth chart.

With the Yankees set to face two southpaws in their upcoming series against the Chicago White Sox, Chris Sale (7-0, 1.79 ERA) on Friday night and Jose Quintana (5-1, 1.38 ERA) on Saturday afternoon, it could be that the Yankees called up Sanchez to give them up a strong option off the bench.

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On the flip side, the Yankees have several key hitters on the shelf dealing with injuries, so perhaps Gary Sanchez will be here for an extended period of time to audition his talents.

Also, you can’t rule out the possibility of Brian Cashman working behind the scenes on a trade involving Austin Romine.

Either way, we should expect to see some major league at-bats for Gary Sanchez this weekend in the Bronx!.