A breakdown of the Yankees' Arizona Fall League prospects

10/04/2024 02:30 PM

The ultimate Yankees primer for the 2024 Arizona Fall League.

The Arizona Fall League serves as an extra month of minor league baseball — a developmental league aimed at helping players gain additional reps heading into the offseason. Each team sends a handful of prospects to play on the same team alongside a collection of prospects from other organizations.

While the games are tracked, the AFL is primarily a time of evaluation and development. This is especially true for the pitchers, who oftentimes are those who missed a majority, if not the entire season due to injury — think Trystan Vrieling last year. The same can be said for position players, though a good chunk of them also attend as congratulatory recognition from their organization. The prospects who attend lean towards the upper minors, with a few lower minors prospects sprinkled in. For the Yankees, each of their representatives on the Salt River Rafters are prospects who played in levels no lower than High-A. You will recognize most of these names from my minor league weekly roundups, but there are a few who weren't as heavily featured.

This piece serves as a primer for the Yankees prospects playing there. I will break each of them down — some more than others — in advance of their first game on Monday, October 7th. Let's dig in!

INF Caleb Durbin

On a per game basis, Durbin has been one of the most impressive Yankees prospects over the last couple of seasons. That's the key word, though: per game basis. In spite of his outstanding slash line in his time as a Yankee, the infielder has played just 159 games since the start of the 2023 season. That includes an extended period of time this season when he landed in the injured list with a broken wrist via an errant pitch. In his 90 games of action this season, though, he reminded many why it'll be near-impossible to keep him off the 40-man roster this offseason: he slashed .275/.388/.451 with 10 home runs, 31 stolen bases, and 13 more walks than strikeouts.

Most of his offensive prowess is attributable to his near-elite swing decisions — great aggressiveness in the zone and selectivity outside of it — though his zone contact rates are good albeit not elite. While the home run numbers don't jump off the page, he's displayed a propensity for hitting the ball hard at lower launch angles, something which perfectly aligns with his plus speed to leg out extra-base hits.

While he's a versatile defender, he's best suited for primary work at the keystone. His arm is a tad stretched at the six, though he's capable of manning in a pinch and primarily played there when healthy this season. He's also gotten reps at third and brief cameos in the outfield, and it wouldn't surprise me if he gets further reps in center in Arizona. Injuries are the only major quibble in Durbin's profile, but there is sneaky upside to be the rare everyday utilityman ala Diet Coke Ben Zobrist.

C/1B Rafael Flores

An undrafted free agent signed by the Yankees in 2022, Flores emerged as a hulking catcher with some raw offensive skills worth dreaming on. His 2023 campaign was underwhelming on paper, but catchers are typically slower to develop than just about every other position. However, the Yankees' patience was greatly rewarded this season when Flores became a top-echelon breakout and legitimate prospect after hitting .279/.379/.495 between High and Double-A.

Flores was equally dominant at both stops, but he began lifting the ball with more regularity in Somerset and was more consistently tapping into the brute strength deriving from his 6'4", 220-pound frame. He finished the 2024 season with 21 home runs, displaying plus raw power and above-average in-game power. While he features a patient eye at the plate, he can get too passive in the zone and will show elements of a long swing that could get exposed in Triple-A. The quality of pitching in the AFL leaves a lot to be desired, though, so there's a chance that he lights up the Arizona night sky en route to MVP consideration.

The defensive outlook is where things get interesting. While he isn't the caliber of prospect that Agustin Ramirez is (Ramirez does everything Flores does, only he swings-and-misses way less), the same idea applies: I am uncertain if Flores will remain behind the dish as he climbs the ladder — he is literally massive — but he sports a cannon for an arm and calls a good game. His framing is quite rough, though, and he wasn't afforded a full season's-worth of reps because the Yanks have such an abundance of catching prospects. Flores should get a majority of his AFL reps behind the plate, aiming to silence the skeptics of his defensive acumen. If he sticks behind the plate, I will go so far as to say that Flores will be a borderline top-100 prospect this time next year.

OF Garrett Martin

Martin has had an interesting professional career. He started off as a draft pick of the Orioles back in 2018, but he went unsigned and played at three different colleges in four years. The Yankees signed him as an undrafted free agent soon after the 2023 draft, and the 24-year old proceeded to make his professional debut with Low-A Tampa. He struggled and wasn't on the prospect radar coming into 2024, but he showed interesting but inconsistent levels of offensive aptitude — mainly brute power.

The outfielder/first baseman doesn't have the same level of bat speed as Flores, but he can muscle balls out to the pull side. He posted one of the most impressive individual, weekly performances of any Yankees farmhand this season, but he wound up with an okay .216/.326/.422 slash line with 97 strikeouts in 87 games. Martin is an OFP 30 prospect, and is unlikely to have a major role in the big leagues.

RHP Carlos Lagrange

Lagrange was a last-minute addition to the AFL roster, and a welcome one. The towering right-hander has tantalizing stuff for such a young prospect, but like the other pitchers you'll read about below, he struggled with injuries all season long. When he returned to pitch in the complex and with Low-A Tampa, he showed plenty of promise but just as much rust. Despite owning a fastball that touched triple digits (rounded up), it got hit around way too much because it's straight. Despite its velocity, his fastball is merely above average.

Lagrange's slider and change were his swing-and-miss offerings when he was dominating with Tampa, but we only saw it in short bursts. While he might also pitch in short bursts in the AFL, I need to see more understanding of how to pitch: what pitches to throw in specific counts and where to locate the ball. Considering how massive Lagrange is (6'7") and how few innings he's thrown, it could just be a matter of healthy reps until he reaches exciting levels of prospectdom. Lagrange's command and consistency will dictate his future projection as either a wheels-up starter or a late-inning relief weapon.

RHP Jackson Fristoe

Fristoe entered the professional ranks after he was selected by the Yankees in the 12th round of the 2022 draft out of Mississippi State. Since then, he's had a hard time staying healthy. Frankly, that's been Fristoe's biggest wart as a prospect dating back to his days as a prep prospect, where his mid-90s fastball drew the allure of scouts across the showcase circuit. He's featured a sharp gyro slider in the past, but his curve leaks over the plate and has a sizable velocity gap from his slider, making it easier to identify out of the hand. He's tinkered with a change since his prep days, though it's still quite raw considering how few innings he's thrown over the last four years.

Fristoe has an ideal starter's frame and is very athletic when on the mound. Problem is, he's barely been on the mound. He threw 38 innings for Hudson Valley in 2024, but he is the perfect candidate for more work in the AFL. If he can prove his health woes are behind him, he could force his way into an OFP 50 projection in time: that translates to a solid, back-end rotation option.

RHP Ryan Harvey

Harvey was taken exactly a round before Fristoe in the 2022 draft, and the injury bug has been as big of a hindrance to his prospectdom as his 2022 draft counterpart. Harvey has hit the shelf for extended periods of time over his two seasons in pro ball, and his performance this year particularly left a lot to be desired. Harvey starts at hitters with a heater that sits 91-93 and can touch 96 in a pinch. The offering has a flat-ish angle to the plate, making it an ideal pitch to pair with a change. While he throws a change, his go-to secondary is a gyro slider: neither offering looked sharp in his 31.1 innings of 6.03 ERA ball, though. Like Fristoe, the AFL is the ideal opportunity for Harvey to prove he's healthy heading into this offseason. He has a lower ceiling than Fristoe, likely settling into an OFP 30 role.

RHP Harrison Cohen

Cohen immediately earns my respect as a fellow Long Islander, as the Cold Spring Harbor HS product went to George Washington and had a successful run there before being scooped up by the Yankees as — you guessed it — an undrafted free agent in 2022. Cohen came into the organization with a kitchen sink repertoire but has largely kept it to a fastball and sweeper since becoming a full-time reliever. He has some carry on his 93-95 fastball up in the zone, and his sweeper effectively tunnels until it breaks late and dives outside the zone. Cohen is purely a relief prospect without wipeout stuff, but he's good enough to get additional looks in the AFL. Depending on how he performs, he could be an intriguing Rule 5 target once he's eligible in the 2025 offseason.

RHP Luis Pacheco

You're forgiven if you've never heard of Pacheco: the 25-year-old Venezuelan was originally signed by the Phillies as an international amateur free agent in 2016, but was released in 2021 and wandered between various winter and foreign leagues in the proceeding years. After signing with a Mexican League team before this season, he eventually caught the eyes of Yankees evaluators, who signed him to a minor-league deal in June.

Upon joining the org, Pacheco immediately paid dividends with spectacular work out of Tampa's bullpen. The hulking right-hander has a thick frame that generates good velocity (he topped out at 97) and featured nasty secondaries that were unfair to Low-A hitters. The Yankees saw how overmatching he was and promoted him straight to Double-A Somerset, where he delivered another handful of impressive innings in relief. Both his slider and change got huge whiff rates in the minors, but much of that could be attributed to how old he was for most of his work in Low-A. Regardless, each pitch has characteristics conducive to at least above-average grades.

The AFL will be an interesting evaluation period for Pacheco, as he's a prototypical pop-up relief prospect who shows out in the Fall League, gets invited to spring training, and makes his MLB debut in June or July. I'm not saying that's exactly what'll happen here, but he has an exciting relief arsenal that will stand out amongst his AFL pitching peers. There is literally no new video of Pacheco, so enjoy this extremely-dated and irrelevant video from 2019: