Baseball America Yankees Top 10 Prospects

Bingo.

That's what I've been saying all along.

He's going to be a deadly starter. Hughes and possibly Kennedy as well. Just more support for the "we don't need Johan" argument.

It's nice to see high ranks for outfielders and a catcher in our system. Those are our positions of need over the next 2-5 years.

 

The problem the Yanks have is the IP. You could push these guys too fast, and don't have any fallback options.

 

I agree. You can't expect 200 innings from a bunch of youngsters. That said, I think it would be a mistake to keep Joba in the bullpen another year. Why waste such dominant stuff?

I think Kennedy and Chamberlain are a bit more major league ready than Hughes. Sure, Hughes has better stuff than Kennedy, but I'm impressed with Kennedy's maturity and makeup. I wouldn't rush Hughes this season.

-X-

 

Maturity and makeup are two of the same things that had scouts drooling over Hughes. I think Hughes will be ready next year. I don't think you'll see him being rushed. All of them (minus maybe Kennedy, who had a full innings workload last season) will have semi-severe innings limits imposed on them.

There's only one thing I think holding Hughes back, and I think it was more mechanical/mental than anything: His changeup. When it was on (remember the Texas game?), it was nasty. When he came back from the injury, he wasn't throwing it nearly as much. Could be that it's not fully developed if he didn't have the confidence in it.

But I think a lot of it was that his general (not pitch-specific) mechanics were out of whack. He wasn't locating his fastball, and would spend three innings trying to get that under control, ignoring the changeup. So maybe... maybe... he could've used another season to get his mechanics perfected. I think it's more likely that having Eiland come back and work with him helped him get out of the funk, and that he was a little tentative returning from the injury.

In other words, he was ready last season, and hit an unfortunate road bump. He'll be just as ready next season (ignoring inning limits, obviously).

ETA: And the Yanks should have plenty of fallback options, if not exactly stellar ones. Rasner, Moose, Karstens... even *shudder* Igawa. At the very least, you can expect moderately to slightly below league average innings from the group (minus Igawa, until I see otherwise). Considering it'd be for the #5 slot, that's plenty. And it doesn't even include the possibility of other prospects making a name for themselves mid-season.

 

Which means towards the end of January/Beginning of February they need to jump on a veteran starter or two that can't find a job and give them a minor league deal... give them the incentive to compete for the job although everyone knows they'll only be useful if one of this guys gets overworked.

 

Marquez #7? Where the hell did that come from?

 

Well, the Twins like him. He is part of the Santana trade if it happens.

 

So if Melky goes in the Johan deal does that make Jackson the Yankees new CF???

 

Of the future...but not yet.

Color me skeptical on Jackson. Sure he put up pretty awesome numbers in A ball, but I want to see him play at that high of a level over the course of an entire year before I start anointing him the next Bernie.

And to whoever thinks the Yankees don't have any fallback options should anything happen to someone in the rotation, that's far from correct: 1. Mussina 2. Horne 3. White 4. Marquez 5. Rasner 6. Igawa

 

He's in there because the Yankees aren't giving up their better pitchers with potential. Marquez is like Wang but even more hittable and inconsistent without K ability.

 

the reason why we need santana is so that the red sox wont get him if they get him it will make it that much harder to beat them.

 

The question is, does he make them better long-term than our young guys we'd lose make us long-term?

My argument is that keeping our youth may force us to sacrifice this year, and maybe even the next year or two afterward. Suddenly after that, the Sox best pitching becomes significantly older, while ours would still be kids.

It's tough to say I'd sacrifice a year or two, but it would be a lot harder to sacrifice another decade because we just had to block Santana to Boston.

 

Well, the problem there is that with Santana the top of the 2009 rotation becomes Beckett, Santana, Matsuzaka, Buchholz, all of them 30 or under. Without him it's Beckett, Matsuzaka, Buchholz, Lester, all of them 29 or under. Age is not going to be a big problem for the Sox rotation for quite a while.

 

The whole premise of your argument is that the if the Yankees give up a couple of unproven pitchers now they won't have anyone else any good and will not have anyone good for the next decade. That's just ridiculous. Whether it's through the farm or free agency they will ALWAYS have new talent.

 

I can't wait to see some of these guys; hopefully a few of them will have a shot at the Stadium this year. I'm eager to see guys like Horne, Tabata and Jackson. I dunno how some of these guys like Kennedy and Joba are on there, being that they're now Major Leaguers.

 

Do you realize teams, not the Yankees but other teams, and not just one think of Marquez as a #3 starter.

 

I'm sure they do. But #3 starter is as high as his upside goes. This list should be based on who has the highest upside, in which case Brackman, Sanchez, and Betances are all well ahead of Marquez.