Yankees Farm Report Part Four: Triple-A Scranton RailRiders

Ji-Man Choi

Tyler Austin might very well end up with a reserve role for the 2017 New York Yankees. If he does, he will take the only role Ji-Man Choi has on the club.

Choi is 26 and might be a Quadruple-A player. He has 627 Triple-A AB’s and carries a career slash of .304/.399/.446 at that level. But he has only 13 homers in that time. That spells back-up, but a good one, especially because he has only two errors this year and only five all of last season.

Choi, however, is an unproven player in the majors. He got his first chance last year for the Angels and hit a paltry .170/.271/.339 in 129 AB’s. The Angels eventually sent him down. Now the only way to revitalize his image is to give him substantial playing time in the Bronx, and that is not likely to happen.

All of that makes his trade value low. And as he is not better than Bird or Austin, he is not going to become the Yankees first baseman of the future.

No, Choi is on the farm for organizational depth, and that is paying off. His numbers this year are amazingly close to his average: .304/.401/.446. Now that’s consistency. We can chalk up his first big-league experience to butterflies, just as we did for Judge and Austin, and can project a solid, line-drive hitter.

The Yankees could do worse for a back-up and in fact are dealing with worse right now. Depending on trades, Choi might end up the back-up this year.