Yankees have one last chance to learn their lesson from Jorge Mateo

Red Hot

There are some similarities with Jake Cave. Jake has never had any attitude issues, but he has gone up and down as a prospect. He was so highly thought of by the Yankees that they promoted him to Triple-A at the age of 22. And the Cincinnati Reds thought enough of him that they took him in the 2016 Rule Five draft.

But Cave failed to impress and was returned to the Yankees and Double-A ball. With little power, and suffering from the comparisons to other top outfield prospects in the system, Cave has fallen from the Yankees eighth ranked prospect to its 24th.

It seemed as if Jake would be of little use to the Yankees.

Now, however, that might have changed. Cave was promoted back to Scranton earlier this year and is putting up astounding numbers. He’s had 139 at-bats—no small sample size—and is slashing .374/.428/.662. And he is hitting for power as he has ten home runs in those AB’s and fifteen overall for the season.

That makes now the right time to trade him. Jake is 24 and could just now be rounding into form. Or he could just be hot for half of a season. Evaluators all over baseball are wondering just that; the Yankees need to convince the Athletics that the former is the real Jake Cave.