Much has been said about the lack of quality homegrown position players at the major league level for the Yankees in recent years. The tradition of holding blue-chip prospects back from the summer (or winter’s) latest blockbuster, only for said prospects to not pan out, created a narrative that the Yankees have a terrible player development system. A narrative that, while eaten up by many fans (of opposing teams and of the Yankees themselves), just might not be based in reality.
Don’t believe me?
Read the comment section of this tweet quoting Jeff Passan, who said the Yankees had the ammo to execute whatever trade they wanted at the deadline:
Of course, they would go on to make seven trades, including acquiring All-Star relievers Camilo Doval and David Bednar for packages widely considered inadequate, and send multiple fanbases into frustration. “How do teams fall for Yankees’ prospects every year? Their farm sucks!”
The truth is, the narrative about the Yankees’ player development is outdated. The team had quite a few notable misses in the 2010’s (Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier spring to mind), but they’ve been excelling in the last half-decade. There’s former Yankees littered all over the league, there are nearly a dozen former Yankees’ catchers on MLB rosters, and, the most encouraging note, they’re starting to churn out productive starters for their own roster with late-round picks.
Prior to the 2024 season, the Yankees had gotten by far the least production from their draft picks selected later than the third round. While the team’s permanent contention status means they’re at a disadvantage in terms of pick positioning, it was still an abject failure. It was long overdue when the Yankees began to completely overhaul their player development around 2019-20, but it took a while for the fruits to bear.
The overhaul is bearing fruit. A former seventh-round pick has shone as a surprising fireballer in his first taste of the majors, a former eighth-round pick has made 28 starts at a near-league average rate as a rookie, and a former 12th-round pick has been one of the best young hitters in baseball in 2025, posting expected numbers on par with the likes of Kyle Schwarber and Shohei Ohtani. They’ve also been able to develop late-round picks into successful trade bait, something they weren’t always able to do in the past.
First, let’s look at Will Warren, who is tied for the major league lead with 28 starts in his rookie year. While length and consistency have been issues for the 26-year-old Louisiana native, he’s nonetheless been a stabilizing force in a rotation that has endured painful injuries all season, whether season-ending or just bothersome. He leads all rookies in games started and strikeouts and could get down-ballot votes for AL Rookie of the Year, not to mention get critical playoff innings for a team that only has two established postseason starters due to injuries to Clarke Schmidt and Gerrit Cole.
How does Warren stack up to not only recent Yankees’ eighth-rounders, but the ones in his class? rWAR really doesn’t like Warren (mostly due to his disastrous 2024 debut), but he’s been one of the best to come from the eighth round in the 2021 MLB Draft, up there with White Sox reliever Mike Vasil and Red Sox starter Hunter Dobbins. Only six of the 30 picks in this round have even debuted. In recent Yankees’ history? Warren will probably be the best eighth-rounder since Austin Jackson and Dellin Betances were picked in back-to-back years in 2005-06. Since then, only Donny Sands had even cracked the bigs.
Warren isn’t the only rookie currently in the Yankees’ rotation, as the Yankees may have found a gem in 2022 seventh-rounder Cam Schlittler. The big story with Schlittler with regards to the organization’s player development has been the sheer explosion of his fastball velocity. Just two years ago, he was sitting 91-92 in Low-A Tampa. Now? He’s sitting 98 in the major leagues, topping out at a blistering 100.6 mph on a strikeout of James Wood on Monday.
It’s way too early for a coronation of any kind, but there’s a lot to like about Schlittler as he continues to improve the command on his secondaries to compliment his dominant fastball. If he becomes anything, it’ll be a massive success for the organization to take a wiry kid from Northeastern University and turn him into a viable MLB starter. In the seventh round in 2022, only AJ Blubaugh of the Astros has made the majors aside from Schlittler, while the other 28 are still honing their craft in the minors.
In the last 35 years, the Yankees have picked plenty of future MLB players from this round, but the best of the bunch are Andy Phillips (1999) and Kyle Higashioka (2008). Schlittler has already thrown the most innings of any Yankees’ seventh-rounder since Russ Springer in 1989, and with the way he has looked so far in his first 42 innings, he might be a fixture in the Yankees’ rotation for years to come.
However, the crown jewel of this exercise might be the lone hitter of the trio. Like Schlittler, Ben Rice went to an acclaimed New England school after growing up in Massachusetts. Despite just 106 college plate appearances with COVID-19 cancelling two seasons at Dartmouth, the Yankees selected the backstop in the 12th round in 2021. Rice broke out in a big way to be the farm system’s top hitter in 2023, making his big league debut in June 2024. Despite a memorable three-homer game against his hometown Red Sox, Rice struggled in his first taste of the majors and was ultimately optioned back to the minors.
Rice had always been great at hitting the ball hard, but he got an opportunity to show it in 2025. Entering Friday night, the 26-year-old had a 133 wRC+ and was sixth in all of MLB in xwOBA. If not for slightly exceeding the rookie eligibility limit last year, he’d be a strong contender to win Rookie of the Year in 2025. Further helping Rice’s staying power in the Bronx has been his ability to serve as a capable catcher, which allows the team to get both him and the veteran Paul Goldschmidt in the lineup. With Goldschmidt set to hit free agency in the offseason, his long-term position might be first base, but his flexibility is undeniably an excellent bonus on top of his superlative skills with the bat.
It’s fair to say teams don’t expect much from their 12th-round picks. Rice is one of four players from the 2021 12th round to make his debut, with the Giants’ Landen Roupp being the most successful of the other three. For the Yankees, they’ve had a number of their picks in that round get to the bigs in the last 35 years, but those names have been Chris Gittens, Taylor Widener, Danny Burawa, and Manny Barreda. There hasn’t been any 12th-rounder to make a real impact in the majors since Bailey Ober in 2016, so the Yankees have to love what they’ve gotten out of Rice.
Just as important, the Yankees are also using these hidden gems as trade bait. At this year’s trade deadline, the team traded away numerous late-round picks and undrafted prospects to acquire their seven-player haul. Trystan Vierling, drafted in the third round in 2022, went out for Doval, 2024 sixth-rounder Griffin Herring helped fetch Ryan McMahon, while Rafael Flores, one of the best prospects the team traded this year, was an undrafted free agent who brought Bednar. Those are just a few examples of the Yankees leveraging their player development system, developing low-profile talent on the farm before flipping them for proven big leaguers.
Warren, Schlittler, and Rice combined to sign for just $480,000. That’s about the value of the No. 148 pick in the 2025 draft, which is an early fifth-rounder. That underscores the incredible strides this team’s player dev system has taken in recent years, taking such little draft capital and turning it into potential cornerstones. As much as it stung early in the Aaron Judge era to see a number of high-profile prospect flops, it’s time to change the narrative. The Yankees are finding ways to pick out diamonds in the rough and turn them into real production in the majors.