Yankees: State of the farm system

For the Yankees, a majority of last year’s unexpected success was due to the emergence of key homegrown talents such as Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Luis Severino, among others.

This bucks what was a troubling trend for the organization after the Core Four era entrenched themselves into Yankees lore, as the team often failed to produce any quality major league talent from their farm system.

This included high profile busts such as Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, and Jesus Montero (albeit we did win that trade, barely), with perhaps Brett Gardner and Dellin Betances (a failed starter) as their best results.

Thankfully, the narrative has now changed dramatically. After realizing that the team had little roster flexibility and limited potential due to their bloated payroll and advanced age shortly following a splurge on the 2014 free agent class, Hal Steinbrenner gave Brian Cashman a mandate to improve while getting younger and somehow cheaper.

And that he did. Cashman began a slow but methodical rebuild of the entire organization, enlisting the help of key front office personnel such as Gary Denbo (former Head of Player Development), Damon Oppenheimer (Scouting Director), and Tim Naehring (VP of Baseball Operations).

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In addition, he also placed a focus on staff continuity at the farm level. Rarely changing managers on their minor league affiliates allowed the organization to maintain a constant message to their prospects on how to improve. Just this year, the Yankees chose to promote from within to replace departing coaches, such as former Triple-A Scranton manager Al Pedrique, instead of looking outside the organization.

This is often an understated factor in player development as players will work diligently on certain mechanical changes only to be told to completely modify their approach when new coaches and front-office philosophies come in.

And so, the Yankees began investing heavily in their farm system, through first acquiring talent via the draft and international signings while later supplementing that talent with deft trades at the 2016 trade deadline. No matter which way, the Yankees have recently proven that they have a keen eye for big league talent through keeping the right prospects while trading off others that they were not as high on.

This talent was allowed to flourish in a consistent environment optimized to prepare them to be future major leaguers, with the team providing English classes to foreign players and helping their youth adapt to life as a professional baseball player.

The baseball industry has taken notice of the Yankees system, with ESPN analyst Keith Law recently ranking their system as the 2^nd best in baseball. Many others believe the depth of the system is unmatched, with a second wave of prospects filled with high-end tools brewing at the lower levels.

In fact, Jim Callis of MLB.com suggests that if there was a top 1000 prospects list, the Yankees would place 54 of their prospects on this list, while the average team should have around 35.

I believe it is important to consider these prospect lists from the team’s perspective as nobody knows more about their prospects than the Yankees themselves. Given the recent success of their farm system graduates, we should be very confident in who they value to be a part of their major league team.

Next: Gleyber Torres nearing his big league debut

With all of this in mind, in the upcoming days, I will be publishing who I think the Yankees themselves believe are their top 10 prospects. To do this, I will take into consideration a number of things, including how these prospects are perceived across the industry, along with how the Yankees coveted certain prospects in trade discussions. First will come prospects ranked #1 – 5, and then prospects ranked #6 – 10. Stay tuned.