If the start of the MLB postseason isn’t enough and you find yourself longing for more minor league baseball, fret not — the desert will soon have you covered. The Arizona Fall League will kick off on October
6th and last through November 15th, allowing several of the most talented prospects in baseball to show off their talent for another six weeks.
The showcase in the southwest has served as a pit stop for many of the top minor leaguers in professional baseball as they continued their journey to the show. In recent years, many players who are now big leaguers made a quick stop in the AFL, including Colson Montgomery, Kyle Manzardo, Jackson Jobe, Carson Williams, Jac Caglianone, and Nick Kurtz. From a Yankees-centric point-of-view, Gleyber Torres won the 2016 AFL MVP during his ascent to one of MLB’s best prospects, and Caleb Durbin’s nice fall last year helped pave the way for his trade to the Brewers.
Indeed, many teams have again chosen to send some very talented youngsters to Arizona. The crop is headlined by two Top 5 prospects (per MLB Pipeline), Kevin McGonigle from the Tigers and Sebastian Walcott from the Rangers, but the AFL will also showcase the skills of Josue De Paula (Dodgers), Aidan Miller (Phillies), and 2024 first-round draft picks Charlie Condon (Rockies), Braden Montgomery (White Sox), and Hagen Smith (White Sox), among many other future big-leaguers.
The Yankees are electing to give most of their top prospects a break. That means George Lombard Jr, Spencer Jones, 2025 first-rounder Dax Kilby, and the breakout pitching trio of Carlos Lagrange, Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, and Ben Hess will all end their years alongside their respective Yankees affiliates. The team has instead chosen to get an extended look at a couple of promising pitchers who spent much of the 2025 regular season injured, and six guys who are relatively off the radar at this time.
The Yankees’ representatives in the Arizona Fall League in 2025 will be Bryce Cunningham, Cade Smith, Brady Kirtner, Coby Morales, Hueston Morrill, Manuel Palencia, Adam Stone, and Enmanuel Tejeda. They’ll be on the Mesa Solar Sox.
The headliner of this lineup is easily Bryce Cunningham, who was drafted out in the second round in 2024 and started the season in the same High-A rotation as Hess, Lagrange, and Rodriguez-Cruz. While those three all enjoyed breakout seasons and graduated to higher levels of the minors, Cunningham suffered an injury that caused him to miss more than two months of the season and spent all of 2025 with the Renegades. Much like Hess, his numbers were much better in his first season as a Yankee than they ever were in college (Vanderbilt in his case), as his ERA lowered from 4.36 in 16 starts during his final year at Vanderbilt to 2.82 in 12 starts at High-A.
If any AFL representative has a case to belong in the same conversation as the best prospects in the Yankees’ system, it’s Cunningham. The extra innings he’ll be getting in Arizona should only serve as a replacement for the time he missed with the injury.
The same can be said for 23-year-old Cade Smith, who didn’t make his season debut until July 7th. Not to be confused with the standout Cleveland reliever of the same name, Smith was drafted in the sixth round in 2023 out of Mississippi State, and has impressed during his time in the lower levels of the Yankees’ farm system. He features a daunting, lively fastball and two reliable off-speed pitches in the form of a slider and curveball. Smith threw 39 innings in High-A this season to the tune of a 2.50 ERA, with five of the 11 earned runs he allowed coming in one poor start on August 24th.
Like Cunningham, Smith will look to make up for lost time in the AFL and projects to begin the 2026 season in Double-A Somerset.
The rest of this crop consists of players who are not particularly well known, but clearly have impressed the Yankees’ internal development team more than any national scouts or prospect analysts. Brady Kirtner was acquired in free agency in 2024 after being drafted by the Mets in the 12th round of the 2023 MLB draft. He threw 41 innings with Low-A Tampa with a 2.59 ERA and 26% strikeout rate before a late-season promotion to Hudson Valley. The 25-year-old Hueston Morrill was on a similar path, posting a ridiculous 0.42 ERA in 43 innings at High-A before a much less successful 4.1 innings in a trio of games at Somerset. Adam Stone has not thrown an inning in professional baseball since 2023, when he struggled mightily with Low-A Tampa.
The three position players going to Arizona are Coby Morales, Manuel Palencia, and Enmanuel Tejeda. Morales held his own with seven home runs and a 114 wRC+ in 90 games with the Renegades in 2025, before hitting a wall and striking out 32 percent of the time after being promoted to Somerset. Palencia didn’t post any noteworthy offensive statistics in 2025, but he did make his way from the Complex League in Rookie ball all the way to Double-A in 66 games. The Yankees will try to add his name to the long list of serviceable catchers they’ve successfully developed over the last few seasons.
Arguably the promising hitter here is Tejeda, who signed as an international free agent out of the Dominican Republic in 2022 and displayed a mature plate approach (17.4/13.4 BB/K%) during the most recent Low-A campaign. He doesn’t have a ton of power, but three home runs in 35 games with Tampa isn’t nothing, and at 20 years old he can still add some thump as he continues to develop.
Tejeda also missed a lot of games with an injury this season, and will make up for lost time in the AFL after not making his season debut until July.
So while the Yankees won’t be sending their most elite minor-league talent to Arizona this year, this will still offer insight some high-upside pitchers and a number of players who hit the IL during the regular season. Cunningham and Smith will have a chance to display their talents and hold their own against several Top 100 prospects.
The Arizona Fall League begins next week on Monday, October 6th. I’ll be offering up weekly updates on the Yankees’ prospects, so stay tuned for more.
