What the Yankees’ top 30 prospects list from 2021 says about development

The end of spring training is filled with various forms of lists. Which teams have the best lineup/pitching staff/bullpen/roster? Who are the best veterans who failed to crack the Opening Day roster and found themselves on waivers or as free agents?

Who looks primed for a breakout season? And conversely, who struggled the most, and is now a cause for concern? Among these many lists are, of course, preseason prospect rankings.

Over the last few years, the Yankees have not exactly fared well in this category — this year, for example, ESPN ranks them 23rd in baseball , while FanGraphs states that the Yankees farm “ resides among the bottom handful in baseball . ” The thing about prospects, though, is that ranking them while they’re still prospects only tells part of the story; to get the full picture, you need to return years later, and analyze them once more, this time with the benefit of hindsight. In that regard, let’s turn the clock back five years, and take a look at the Yankees’ top prospects at the start of the 2021 campaign, using MLB.

com’s Top 30 list as a starting point. Of the players on this list, almost two-thirds have cracked an MLB roster at some point, including 9 of the top 10, and 13 of the top 15. But what is more interesting, in my opinion, than just where they ended up, is how the Yankees opted to employ them.