The Somerset Patriots saw their season reach its conclusion this week, as the Yankees’ Double-A club was eliminated in the Eastern League Division Series by the Mets’ Binghamton Rumble Ponies. Both games were competitive until the very end, but Somerset dropped the first game 3-1 and the second game 5-4. Binghamton will now advance to the Championship Series and face the Tigers’ Erie SeaWolves.
While it’s disappointing to be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, the fact that Somerset earned
a spot in the postseason is a respectable outcome for a team that stumbled out of the gate in 2025 and hovered around .500 for a lot of the season. The Patriots began 2025 with a 14-19 record and fought their way back to .500 in June, before a red-hot July paved the way for a late-season push. Their final record was 73-65, which was good enough to finish second in the Eastern League, a full 18 games behind Binghamton. They earned a playoff spot by going 38-31 in the second half and being the only other team in the division with a positive record, second only to the 45-24 Rumble Ponies, who had already punched their ticket in the first half.
Since Binghamton was so clearly the best team in the league all season, Somerset entered the three-game series as underdogs. The Mets promoted a quartet of their best prospects (Jonah Tong, Carson Benge, Jett Williams, and Ryan Clifford) from Binghamton to Triple-A Syracuse late in the season, which could have opened a window for Somerset to take this series, but that was not in the cards. The Patriots hosted Game 1 with 2024 first-round pick Ben Hess taking the mound against Jonathan Santucci. Hess was effective, pitching five innings and allowing just two runs with two walks and four strikeouts, but after an early RBI single by Dylan Jasso the offense was unable to get anything else going and he was tagged with the loss.
The Patriots needed to win two straight games in Binghamton to advance to the finals, and Carlos Lagrange took the ball in Game 2 against Jack Wenninger. Lagrange has been one of the Yankees’ biggest prospect breakouts all season, but he didn’t have one of his best outings and allowed five runs (four earned) in five innings of work. Wenninger, on the other hand, was nearly unhittable and tossed six shutout innings with nine strikeouts and just one hit allowed. The Patriots were almost able to climb out of a 5-0 hole with a four-run seventh led by RBI singles from Jackson Castillo and Max Burt, but Brendan Jones and George Lombard Jr. struck out with runners on second and third to end the rally. Ryan Lambert worked a scoreless ninth for the Rumble Ponies, and that was all she wrote for the Patriots’ 2025 season.
Somerset was home to many of the Yankees’ top prospects at various points during the season. Masher Spencer Jones started the year still in Double-A after a disappointing 2024, and bounced back with 16 home runs and a 184 wRC+ in 49 games with the Patriots before earning a promotion to Triple-A Scranton. The team’s No. 1 prospect, George Lombard Jr, was promoted to Somerset early on after making light work of High-A pitching. Lombard, who turned 20 in June, acclimated to Double-A pitching over the course of the season and finished with a .215/.337/.358 slash line, eight homers, 24 steals, and a 111 wRC+ in 108 games at the level. There’s room for improvement of course, but the 2023 first-rounder impressed scouts with his approach, slick defense at the six, and intuition for the game.
A few of Somerset’s most consistent contributors were shipped out at the deadline, including Rafael Flores who spent most of his season in Double-A before headlining the return for Pirates closer David Bednar. Incidentally, Flores just made his MLB debut with Pittsburgh a few days ago. Roc Riggio, a fourth-round pick from 2023, also broke out at the plate this year before being included in the return for Colorado’s Jake Bird.
Toward the end of the season, all eyes were on the trio of right-handed starters who began the year in Hudson Valley and finished it in Somerset: the aforementioned Hess and Lagrange, as well as Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz. Hess justified his top 2024 selection by posting much better numbers in his first year as a professional than he ever did at the University of Alabama. Lagrange was a major project before the season and made remarkable gains in command and his ability to limit walks. He suffered the occasional erratic start which inflated his numbers a bit, but when Lagrange was locked in and had everything working, there was no pitching prospect in the organization who displayed more pure upside than he did.
Rodriguez-Cruz, however, might have been the success story of 2025 for the Yankees’ system. Acquired from the Red Sox in December 2024 for third-string catcher Carlos Narváez, few could have have imagined at the time that this deal would pay big dividends for both teams. Narváez seized the starting job in Boston and will likely get down-ballot AL Rookie of the Year votes, and Rodriguez-Cruz broke out in a big way to seriously raise hopes for his own big-league future. In 61 innings with the Patriots following a bump up from High-A, ERC pitched to a 2.64 ERA with a 30.3-percent strikeout rate.
Like Lagrange, Rodriguez-Cruz could stand to reign in the walks, but all three look like future big-league starters who could each debut in the Bronx at some point in 2026. Rodriguez-Cruz was just promoted to Triple-A following Somerset’s elimination, so his season isn’t over quite yet.
Although they fell to Binghamton this week, it’s easy to see 2025 as a successful season in Somerset. The Patriots turned around what looked like a mediocre year, and served as a crucial step in the development of the Yankees’ best prospects. Fans should pay close attention to where Lombard and the top pitching prospects in the system start the season in 2026; it’s possible the organization pushes them up to Triple-A for a new challenge, but it’s very likely that Somerset remains home to some of their best young talent next spring.
