Three summers ago, George Lombard Jr. was a high school shortstop in Miami. Now he's 21, playing shortstop in October and part of the reason the New York Yankees still believe they can get past the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Rays won Game 1 of the American League division series 1-0 on Saturday. Drew Rasmussen struck out 10 and held the Yankees to one hit, the fewest in their 447 postseason games. Teams that win Game 1 of a best-of-five series go on to win it about 73% of the time.
Monday night at Tropicana Field, the Yankees hand Game 2 to another one of their own picks. Cam Schlittler, a seventh-rounder out of Northeaster in 2022, led the AL with a 1.95 ERA. He went 14-6 and struck out 239 in 193⅔ innings. Only Spud Chandler in 1943 and Ron Guidry
in 1978 posted a lower ERA for the Yankees as qualified starters.
Aaron Judge hasn't played since Sept. 16 because of a right calf strain. Without him, the Yankees have been winning with homegrown players. Ben Rice was a 12th-rounder out of Dartmouth in 2021. Spencer Jones went 25th overall out of Venderbilt in 2022, the same draft as Schlittler. Lombard went 26th overall out of Gulliver Prep in 2023.
Damon Oppenheimer's amateur scouting department drafted all four. Oppenheimer, the Yankees' vice president and director of amateur scouting, has run the club's draft since 2005. His department also took Judge 32nd overall out of Fresno State in 2013.
"I think it's been a very gratifying couple of weeks for our player development, and deservedly so," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said during a Zoom call Sunday.
Boone gave credit to Kevin Reese's player development staff for turning those draft picks into big leaguers, too.
"In a season where we've been beat up and banged up, we've had answers," Boone said.
Rice has been the loudest answer, and he made his presence known in 2025.
He went 4-for-5 in the wild-card opener against the Boston Red Sox with a double, a solo homer and an eighth-inning grand slam. His six RBI tied the franchise postseason record, and he became the first Yankees player with four hits and six RBIs in a playoff game. On Sunday, Boone joked that he almost pinch-hit Giancarlo Stanton for Rice right before the slam.
Matt Hyde, the Yankees' Northeast area scout, didn't find Rice at Dartmouth. He found him playing summer ball for the Worcester Bravehearts in the Futures League. The Yankees took Rice with the 363rd pick. This July he was an All-Star with 29 homers at the break and swung in the Home Run Derby.
Hyde also signed Schlittler.
Boston found that out first in the wild-card opener. Schlittler struck out 10 over 6 ⅓ scoreless innings to back Rice's performance. Both grew up in Massachusetts and played college ball in New England.
On Monday Schlittler goes against Freddy Peralta, the AL Pitcher of the Month for September. The Rays got Peralta from the Mets on Aug. 2. Boone said Tropicana Field really accentuates a good four-seam fastball, and that Tampa Bay has tweaked Peralta's mix so he uses his changeup "a good bit."
In Game 2 of the Yankees' wild-card series against the Red Sox, Jones became the first player in postseason history to score in an inning he started and ended the sixth with a strikeout. He reached on a dropped third strike, stole second, took third on a throwing error and scored on Lombard's single. New York put up six runs in the inning, which ended with Jones going down swinging.
Jones waited a long time for that. He hit 35 homers between Double-A and Triple-A in 2025, second most in the minors, and he wasn't called up this year until May. His first big-league homer on June 9 came off the bat at 112.2 miles per hour, the hardest-hit first homer by a Yankees player in the Statcast era. Yes, that includes Judge.
Lombard, the son of former big-leaguer George Lombard, debuted Aug. 4 and hit .237 with seven homers and 22 RBIs. In one inning against the Rays on Sept. 24, he jumped over the catcher to score on a pitch that got away, then came back and hit a go-ahead two-run homer into the second deck.
Boone said what impressed him most was how Lombard handled a bad week early on.
"He loves the game, which I think is always impressive," Boone said. "Like he loves the stuff that's not sexy, the behind the scenes, the grind the routine."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: With Aaron Judge sidelined, Yankees' next generation takes over October
