Baseball America Top 100 delivers more bad news to 2 prominent Yankees prospects

Entering the 2024 season, consensus opinion was that 2022 New York Yankees first-round pick Spencer Jones wasn't quite in the prospect assessment upper echelon, but that he'd likely get there with time. All he'd have to do was repeat his 2023 campaign and 1.5x it, and he'd shift from the 60-80 range into the top 10 or 20.

Um, so ... about that. Here are, uh, the Top 100 lists for 2025 from prominent outlets. Here they come. Let's just ... scan here for a bit and see if ... maybe some of these experts forgot to watch Jones in 2024 and ... uh, nope, they watched him. Dang. Ok.

Last season, both Jones (No. 46) and Chase Hampton (No. 72) ranked on Baseball America's preseason list. Hampton's 2024 was erased by injuries; he was felled by shoulder trouble and made just seven abbreviated starts, totaling 18 2/3 innings. His plummet off this year's Baseball America Top 100 list is completely understandable, and he must work doubly hard to recover prospect status after disappearing off the radar.

Jones? He played the vast majority of the season, but struck out 200 times in 544 plate appearances at Double-A, hitting 17 homers with a below-.800 OPS. There were months where he shined, and his ridiculous upside still netted him a Futures Game appearance. Unfortunately, there are very few success stories who run similar minor-league K rates. If he's going to break through onto the midsummer prospect list updates, or into the big leagues eventually, he'll need to uncover a stark contact increase.

Yankees land two prospects on 2025 Baseball America Top 100 list, but lose Spencer Jones

The Yankees' farm, often discussed like it's in a state of disarray, isn't in quite as dire shape as has been theorized. Two names in the Top 100 — Jasson Dominguez at No. 28, George Lombard Jr. at No. 88 — is nothing to sneeze at, especially after the graduations of Rookie of the Year Luis Gil, Anthony Volpe, and Austin Wells. Plenty of teams in purgatory end up with zero. The Yankees are being recognized, and Hampton, Jones, Brando Mayea and Roderick Arias all seem like potential top-100 names sometime soon.

Still, the biggest name in the system -- both in terms of size and upside -- has all but disappeared from the map entering a pivotal season. If his faults continue to be exposed, some of last offseason's trade discussions are going to look sillier and sillier. Fingers crossed we're singing a different tune next winter (and that Lombard's rapid rise is the dominant narrative rather than another top-100 regression).