Yankees: Will Clarke Schmidt and Deivi Garcia make their big league debuts this season?

This spring the Yankees top two pitching prospects Clarke Schmidt and Deivi Garcia will both experience big league camp for the first time in their careers. This is a big opportunity to make a strong first impression and put themselves in position for a potential call up at some during the regular season.

Heading into the 2020 campaign the Yankees rotation is much improved and as the season progresses it’s only going to get better. By May at the earliest we could see James Paxton come back from injury and then in early June Domingo German will be eligible to return from his suspension.

Compared to recent years the Yankees starting pitching depth is now a strength and that’s including the two young right-handers mentioned above. While it’s unlikely that either Schmidt or Garcia will make the Opening Day roster out of camp there’s a good shot they’ll both make their major league debuts this season.

This offseason the 20-year-old Garcia was added to the Yankees 40-man roster after putting together a terrific minor league season in 2019. Overall he had a 4.28 ERA in 111 innings with 165 strikeouts which gave him an absurd combined K per 9 rate of 13.3.

Schmidt also started his year in Tampa and after posting a 3.84 ERA in 13 appearances for the Tarpons he made it up to Trenton on August 15th. In three starts for the Thunder, the former 2017 first rd pick pitched his best games of the season, going 2-0 with a 2.37 ERA in 19 IP. In the postseason he made two starts, posting an ERA of 0.84 in 10.2 IP.

By the end of the season, it was pretty clear that Garcia and Schmidt are the top two pitching prospects in the organization and big things are ahead of them. Now entering spring training a lot of eyes will be on them to see how they perform against major league hitters for the first time.

According to Bryan Hoch of MLB.com Schmidt has already made it clear that his number one goal this season is to make it to the big leagues. He’ll likely have to conquer Triple-A before that happens but many believe that he is going to be a fast riser once the season gets going.

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When the Yankees drafted Schmidt out of the University South Carolina in 2017 he was recovering from TJ surgery so last season was his first full minor league campaign. Including the playoffs, he reached a total of 100.2 innings and towards the end of the year at Double-A he was dominating the opposition and really started to come into his own.

By the time this season rolls around, he’ll be 24-years-old and I think everyone expects him to take another big leap. Last year he had an innings limit early on but this year he won’t have to deal with as many restrictions which should give him more confidence.

As for Garcia, he’s already ahead of the pace at such a young age, however, he’s going to have to pitch a lot better at Triple-A if he wants to earn a call-up this summer. He certainly has the talent to do so but the Yankees can afford to take their time with him and not rush him because of all the starting pitching depth they have.

With the Yankees first spring training game this Saturday we won’t have to wait much longer to see these two in action for the first time. It’s been a while since the Yanks have had even one pitching prospect with this much hype surrounding him so it will be very interesting to see how things play out.