Late 2024 Yankees Top 30 Prospects: 15-11
The Minor League season is coming to a close (or in the case of rookie-level through Double-A, the regular season has already ended), so it’s time for us to renew our Top 30 prospects. Some players that you like may have been left out because this is a purely subjective ranking. Everyone will have their opinions on players, and that’s fine. I have also left off some players like Ben Rice, Oswald Peraza, etc., because they have “graduated”. For example, Rice and Peraza have played in more than 30 games; Will Warren and Yoendrys Gómez have been left off because they have pitched more than 10 innings. They may still be considered “rookies”, of which the official definition is as follows: “130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues. 45 total days on an active Major League roster during the Championship Season (excluding time on the Injured List).”
The acronym OFP you’ll see below is an “overall future projection” as to how the prospect is projected to turn out. It’s difficult to say how one player will pan out; there are superstar looking prospects that fizzle out before they get to the Majors, and there are very quiet prospects that aren’t really on anyone’s radar that surprise you when they make the Major Leagues.
Today, we continue with our 11th through 15th ranked prospects in the Yankees farm system.
15: RHP Cade Smith – ETA: 2026; OFP: 40; Risk: Low
Cade Smith was one of those players that I and a few others were baffled by why he was spending so much time in Low-A. In Smith’s last full month in Tampa (July), he put up insane numbers for the level: a 1.35 ERA, a 12.6 K/9, a 3.6 K/9, a .094 BAA and a 0.70 WHIP. I’ll get to why I don’t like using Major League player comparisons later, but he was as dominant as that of former FSL-er Orion Kerkering, who had a small part in the Phillies’ playoff run last season. If the Yankees were as ambitious as the Phillies were last season with Kerkering, Smith may have gotten the call up to the Majors… if he didn’t get hurt.
In a game where Smith had 10K in 5-2/3 innings, he threw a mix of a slider, four-seamer, curveball and sweeper. The slider was his most used pitch, leaning on it half of the time, inducing 13 whiffs on 42 pitches (31%). The slider was mostly in the mid-80s, but had a wide range of velo, going from 81 MPH to 89 MPH. The fastball was low/mid-90s with a max of 95 MPH, while the curve and sweeper were low/mid-80s.
Smith can show some incredible control, nailing the corners on a significant number of pitches, but other times gets really wild. It should be noted that the strike zone in the Florida State League is non-standard, so a ball or strike call here may not apply to the rest of pro baseball.
Look for Smith to potentially be a #2/#3 starter in a few years, similar to how Rodón and Cortes are used currently, if not in a mix-and-match role like what Stroman is doing going into the end of the regular season.
14: RHP Bryce Cunningham – ETA: 2028; OFP: 50; Risk: Extreme
This goes for both Cunningham and Rivas (who you’ll see mentioned next), but the jump from college to pro ball can be tricky. Carr is the closest lateral pick (Carr went in the 3rd round because Yankees didn’t have a 2nd rd. pick in 2023) to Cunningham, and you may notice that he placed at #29.
I don’t necessarily hold a ton of stock in collegiate stats. There are too many things that are different compared to professional baseball. College uses metal bats compared to wood bats. Pitchers can go longer in an outing; look at how Skenes went over 120 pitches with LSU.
That said, a strikeout is a strikeout, just like a 4-ball walk is a base on balls. Cunningham had a K/9 of 10.21 in his junior year of 2024 and a BB/9 of 3.61, both solid stats.
It remains to be seen how the Yankees use Cunningham, but he should place as a #1/#2 starter given how well he did with Vanderbilt.
13: LHP Xavier Rivas – ETA: 2027; OFP: 45; Risk: High
As mentioned previously, it can be difficult to place prospects making the jump from amateur to pro ball, but I think Rivas may have been the steal of the draft if he can stay healthy. If he hadn’t had “Tommy John” (UCL reconstruction) surgery, he may have pitched this season and gone top 3 rounds next year as a 5th-year senior. Instead, the Yankees signed him in the 16th round this past July.
In a previous article with Inside the [Ole Miss] Rebels, he noted that he should be ramping up to a throwing program again by this past August, pending whatever his draft team decides. Basically, his doctor, Dr. Keith Meister cleared him to begin the rehab process. It’s possible he’s a part of “fall instructs”, but with that closed to the public, we won’t know unless video is leaked out.
While Rivas had a 6.35 ERA in his Junior year (2023), he did record a 11.78 K/9 in 68 innings of work. The Ole Miss coaching staff thought highly enough of Rivas that they wanted to make him their ace.
Where Rivas slots in with the Yankees is yet to be determined, but it should be fair to expect them to handle him with kid gloves in at least the first season. If they manage to have acquired a gem lefty pitcher for a bargain, he could fly through the system.
(Rivas is the starter for Ole Miss in this compilation video from YouTube)
12: RHP Eric Reyzelman – ETA: 2025; OFP: 50; Risk: High
Despite starting the season late due to injury, Reyzelman had an incredible season in 2024. He only allowed 5 earned runs in the regular season, and didn’t allow any earned runs dating to August 15th. That’s a span of 10-2/3 innings without allowing an ER, and only allowing 3 hits, while striking out 16 batters. All of that works out to a K/9 of 13.51 and a BB/9 of 6.75.
That speaks to how Reyzelman has been throughout his career. He hasn’t pitched a lot given his role as a closer, but he has a career K/9 of 14.13; exceptional K/9 is considered anything over 10. And a lot of this is with the many injuries Reyzelman has experienced. He missed much of 2023, only throwing 7-2/3 rehab innings with FCL, and didn’t really start his 2024 season until the All-Star Break.
The most recent Statcast data we have for Reyzelman is from August 2022, where he threw 24 pitches with Low-A Tampa. He used a 4-pitch mix of sinker, changeup, curveball and four-seamer. I typically group the sinker and fastball together with Savant data in the FSL, so those pitches sat low-90s with a max of 95 MPH. The changeup sat around 80 MPH, while the curveball sat in the mid/high-70s.
Considering Reyzelman pitched all of 38-2/3 innings this year and he threw an ERA under 2 (1.93) in Double-A, it’s very possible we see Reyzelman in the Bronx next year if he’s not used as a trade piece at some point.
11: OF Spencer Jones – ETA: 2025; OFP: 50; Risk: High
Are we starting to see the cracks in Jones’ game? Possibly, as 2024 was by all accounts the worst year he’s had to date. That said, a .259 batting average and .789 OPS is nothing to sneeze at, but there are a few concerns worth noting.
First and foremost is that K%. Yes, it’s what the data nerds are drooling over, and striking out 200 times in 544 plate appearances is not great. The reason that number (the percentage, not the actual number of times) is concerning is that the pitching is only going to get more advanced from here on out. If Jones has any plan to be successful in the Majors, he needs to rein in the strikeout percentage and be a bit more patient at the plate. If there’s anything positive to look at with his plate discipline, it’s that he has maintained the same high walk rate of 9% or greater (9.9%, specifically in 2024).
Something that Jones has is power and hit ability, and while his batting average was the lowest in 2024 compared to the rest of his short pro career, his BABIP was at its highest since he’s played in full-season ball at .401. That also translates to a higher wRC+ over last year at High-A Hudson Valley; 124 in 2024 vs 114 in 2023. His slash was not great towards the end of the season, hitting 44 for 145 for a .233/.189/.418/.607 with a 31% K% and 6.9% BB%.
The comparison with Jones often is that of a “lefty Judge” and I was one of those who put his opinion in on that as soon as I saw Jones take his first pro at-bat in 2022. The similarities are there. But just as Anthony Volpe may not be “the next Jeter”, the same can be said for Jones. When Aaron Judge was in AA, nearly all of his stats were better than the year Jones had this past year. The only marks where Jones excels are speed and BABIP. Is it fair to compare prospects to other Major Leaguers? Not always. Let’s get rid of this one.
While the most significant talking point of Jones’ 2024 season has been his elevated K% (37.8%), that shouldn’t diminish the potential Jones can have with the Yankees, or possibly another team. The strikeout rate did set him a bit lower in the ranking, given the pitching in AAA will be better than that of what he faced in AA, that will likely be the true test in whether he’ll be capable of dealing with Major League-caliber pitching.
Jones absolutely has the talent to be an everyday starting outfielder, but as of now does not have the right path to get to the Bronx. It’s difficult to project him to go one way or another given his previous, albeit limited, history of an elevated K% and while the power is absolutely there, hitting one in less than 3% of at-bats is not necessarily going to make you an all-star. I hope Jones can prove me wrong next season, because Dominguez already has.