Yankees top prospect George Lombard Jr.'s rise in latest Top 100 list just dwarfed rest of MLB

The New York Yankees occasionally set their internal hype machine to "Overdrive" and send a prospect's expectations off the rails. When that happens, you end up with Jasson Dominguez flashing "Disappointment!" as he drills three homers in a game simply because he wasn't a Mickey Mantle/Mike Trout hybrid at the age of 18. That's how people throughout the league get disdainful. Sometimes, though, in the case of George Lombard Jr., the blaring noise is coming from outside the house.

Baseball America and MLB Pipeline, the two most trusted sources in prospecting, both saw enough poise and panache from Lombard Jr. in camp to drop him towards the back end of their preseason Top 100 lists. Just a month and a half into the season — a season in which Lombard Jr. has already leapt a level to Double-A — the consensus is now that this dose of preseason optimism was not aggressive enough.

One week after Lombard Jr. flew up Baseball America's list all the way to No. 23, he rose 49 spots on Pipeline's list to No. 44.

That 49-spot jump was the largest upward shift of any prospect in baseball. Second place? Teenaged Brewers phenom Jesus Made, who leapt 26 spots from 49 to 23.

Yankees top prospect George Lombard Jr. ascended 49 spots on MLB Pipeline's Top 100 Prospects list

Now, yes, the caveat here is that it's easier to rise higher if you start from the relative bottom (if you consider "Top 90 prospect in baseball" to be the "bottom" of anything). But it's arguably even more impressive that, after both primary prospect expert master lists agreed to boldly sneak Lombard Jr. into their Top 100s after just a month's worth of spring training showcases, they quickly agreed after a month of regular-season action that they hadn't truly accounted for his star power the first time.

After hitting .329 with a .983 OPS to start the season in High-A, Lombard Jr. has felt the sting of promotion slightly in his first week at the Double-A level, starting 4-for-21 with four walks, four Ks, and two steals. That isn't terribly different from the way he began the season with Hudson Valley before he ignited, though; his first week of the regular season featured a 4-for-20 stretch.

Baseball America and MLB Pipeline are both betting that the tools continue to match the advanced comfort that Lombard Jr. showed off to open 2025, in every opportunity that he's been given thus far. If the rise remains this meteoric, a 2026 MLB arrival could be in play after all.