The Yankees are careening toward a second straight dark October, which would mark the first time they would miss the playoffs in consecutive years since the 1992-93 seasons, excluding the strike-shortened 1994 campaign.
Making things worse is the fact there is a lack of ready minor league reinforcements. Entering Friday, none of the Yankees’ full-season affiliates sported a record above .500.
As some of the Yankees’ farmhands have taken steps back, the burden of success has fallen on the shoulders of the team’s top prospect, catcher Gary Sanchez. Though he is a work in progress, the team hopes one day he can be a viable major leaguer.
“He has a strong, accurate throwing arm, and a [good] bat,” said a scout who has seen Sanchez play. “He has strength and power in his swing.”
Sanchez has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise nondescript season for the Yankees’ top prospects.
Outfielder Slade Heathcott, who before the season was named the Yankees’ No. 2 prospect by Baseball America, appeared in only nine games before undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee in June.
Fellow outfielder Mason Williams, the team’s No. 3 prospect, is only hitting .215 for Double-A Trenton with a .572 OPS.
The 6-foot-3, 235-pound Sanchez, who will turn 22 in December, was signed as an international free agent from the Dominican Republic in 2009,. He has hit for power at every minor league stop, but isn’t quite yet a complete hitter.
“He still has to get better. He hits for power and I think he’ll eventually learn [to hit] for average,” Trenton hitting coach Marcus Thames said.
Sanchez is wrapping up his first full season in Double-A, and got off to a slow start, checking in at .224 in late May.
Since then, however, he has turned it around, hitting .299 in the past three months. Overall, he is hitting .271 with 12 homers and 61 RBIs.
“[He has done] a better job coming to me and watching video, studying,” Thames said. “Seeing more pitches is going to be useful. Knowing how guys are trying to get him out, if he figures that out, I think he’s going to hold his own.”
However, there are always two sides of a coin when it comes to catching prospects, and Sanchez’s defense is very much in question although he has thrown out 39 percent of potential base-stealers.
“[He] needs work behind the plate and [he] needs to catch more games,” the scout said. “His receiving skills need to be refined. [He] boxes pitches, has limited lateral movement. [He] needs to play to smooth out his crudeness behind there.”
If an “incomplete” Yankees catching prospect sounds familiar, you’re not alone — after all, the team did have good-hit, limited-defense Jesus Montero in their farm system, and currently has limited-hit, good-defense Austin Romine.
It remains to be seen how good Sanchez will be in the major leagues, and whether that chance will come with the Yankees, as the team has Brian McCann under contract through 2018.
However, the scout feels Sanchez has shown greater upside thus far, compared to Montero and Romine.
“Above-average might be a little stretch, but I feel he is better than the other two at the same stage of [his] career,” the scout said.