Yankees in Baseball America’s Top 100 include huge rise and tough fall

Do you want the good news or bad news first, Yankees fans?

OK, fine, the good news. Good news is good. In what’s widely perceived to be a bit of a down period for the Yankees’ farm system — lots of depth, but not a lot of sure-fire star power — the team still managed to place a prospect in the top 10 of Baseball America’s latest Top 100 rankings (subscription required).

They also placed three players in the rankings in total. Not upper echelon, but hardly pathetic.

The bad news? The fall of Jasson Dominguez continued on Wednesday after his first stateside action in 2021.

Fair? Doesn’t seem like it, but there’s a reason the rankings move.

If Dominguez impresses next year with his new swing, the charts will swing back. For now? BA’s scouts dropped him from No. 33 in the pre-2021 list all the way down to No. 87.

New York Yankees prospect update: Anthony Volpe rises, Jasson Dominguez falls

Sometimes it’s better for the hype to be shrouded in mystery, after all.

Before we languish too long on Dominguez, it’s worth noting just how amazing it is to have two shortstop prospects in the top 60, and Volpe’s meteoric rise from first-round mystery to top-10 prospect in just one year is nothing short of astounding.

There’s no doubt the kid earned it, hitting .294 across multiple levels in his age-20 season with a 1.027 OPS along with 27 bombs and 33 stolen bases — and that’s after a full season away from baseball in 2020. This was, like, the first we’d ever seen of him. And it was great!

And then there’s Dominguez, who also ostensibly debuted in the second half of 2021 and batted 258/.346/.398 at Low-A Tampa with nine doubles and five homers in 49 games. The scouting world seems to believe there’s still a very advanced ballplayer in there, but Baseball America’s experts are collectively down on him considering where they were before they got a consistent look at how his tools translated.

Adding insult to injury, the Red Sox saw a similar leap to Volpe’s from Nick Yorke, another unheralded recent draftee, and also added Marcelo Mayer, the blue-chip SS who fell to them because of Detroit’s fascination with pitching in the 2021 Draft.

What a successful tank job by the Sox!

How is Mayer nearly higher than Volpe despite never playing a single minor-league game? Anyone’s guess, but based on how things typically go for the Sox, don’t expect him to take a Dominguez-like fall next year, if you know what we mean.

The optimism for The Martian is still sky high in the Yankees’ building. Now would be a wonderful time to prove the outsiders wrong.

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