Yankees prospect Estevan Florial continues to shine

If you aren’t familiar with Yankees outfield prospect Estevan Florial, what are you waiting for? The 20-year-old carried over an impressive 2017 season to the Arizona Fall League where he set the desert ablaze.

There’s a reason why the Yankees were willing to trade former first-round pick Blake Rutherford to the White Sox and outfield prospect Dustin Fowler to the A’s last summer to bolster their squad with veteran-laden talent.  His name is Estevan Florial.

The A’s had reportedly set their sight’s on Florial, the 6-foot-1, 185-pound native of Haiti — but Yankees’ general manager Brian Cashman gave a staunch NO!

Eventually, the deal for Sonny Gray went through with pitcher James Kaprielian, infielder Jorge Mateo and Fowler, all headed to Oakland, instead.

As for the 2017 season as a whole, Florial rewarded Cashman’s loyalty in spades.

Beginning the year at Low-A Charleston, Florial batted .297/.373/.483 with 21 doubles, five triples, 11 home runs, 43 RBI and 17 steals in 91 games.

He showed a huge improvement in terms of quality contact from 2016, resulting in a BABIP over .400 on the year. The extra attention Florial began to attract did little to pressurize his performance on the field, as he landed a coveted roster spot at the Futures Game in Miami during All-Star weekend.

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Florial soon earned himself a promotion to High-A Tampa where he simply kept on rolling. Following a flurry of trades, Florial became the organization’s No. 3 prospect and 78th best in all of baseball. 

Over the remaining 19 games at High-A, Florial stole six more bases, while batted .303 with two long balls and 14 RBI in just 76 at-bats.

Wanting to keep a good thing going, the Yankees sent Florial to the highly regarded Arizona Fall League, testing his mettle against some of baseball’s other uber-prospects.

This time, in only 19 games, Florial managed to not keep putting the bat on the ball with authority, but actually managed to show better patience at the plate.

In 19 more contests, the fleet-footed outfielder who signed with the Yanks out of the Dominican Summer League in 2015, managed to walk 10 times, while slashing 286/.383/.414 with five doubles, two triples, four RBI and two steals for the Scottsdale Scorpions. Florial just missed out being named to the All AFL Team.

Scorpions manager and former big leaguer Jay Bell spoke glowingly to MLB.com about Florial’s expanding ability.

“He’s as close to a five-tool player, in my opinion, as anybody in the game,” said Scottsdale manager Jay Bell. “He’s going to be a fan favorite for a long time. I think he’s got a chance not just to be a good player and not just an All-Star, but a great player and a perennial All-Star.“There’s a lot of things about Estevan that I can speak to and say, ‘This is a guy to watch,'” Bell said. “He can hit. He can hit for power. He can run, he can throw, plays a good defense and probably the sixth tool that he has is he’s a wonderful human being.”

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Though he’ll likely begin 2018 back at High-A Tampa to continue his understanding of the strike zone (149 K’s in ’17), you can bet your biscuits it won’t be long until Florial gets the call to Double-A Trenton. And from there, well, the skies the limit.