(This story originally appeared in the Spring 2018 issue of Yankees Magazine.)
In the five months since I wrote this story, a few of the players have already been traded, so it was a bit funny to go back and read it last night. But I had a ton of fun reporting from the Arizona Fall League for the second straight year, and seeing some of the awesome prospects that are thriving in the Yankees’ system.
This year was a lot different from my 2016 visit, of course. In the course of that one year, the Yankees had gone from a team looking toward the future, to one very keenly aware of its arrival. Prospects are incredibly fun when you’re rebuilding, even if it’s a hyper-speed reload such as the one Brian Cashman put together during the 2016 season. But when I headed to Arizona this time, it was just a week after the Yankees’ season had ended in Game 7 of the ALCS. Times had changed, quickly.
And still, it was impossible not to be excited by some of the guys wearing the interlocking NY under the desert sun. Albert Abreu dazzled on the mound. Estevan Florial … the guy is special, and his talent screams out at you. Justus Sheffield sure seems like he’s going to be a star, and he took on something of an alpha-dog role mound the young future Yankees.
I did my best to highlight each guy out there, trying to show fans reading what they could look forward to in the months and years to follow. There was less immediacy than the year before, although Billy McKinney, one of the players out there this past year, would actually end up reaching the majors with the Yankees in the season’s first week, before a near-immediate injury cut down his time with the team. (He would then be traded at the deadline for J.A. Happ. Here’s hoping that he has a heck of a time in Toronto.
This is a light piece, a roundup, but I really loved checking in with these kids, and I’ll certainly be tracking their progress for years to come.
Hope you’ll read and enjoy.