The 2026 Baby Bombers: Tales of the Underwhelming
It's early, but the 2026 Yankees are looking like a very solid team. Sure, it was an uneventful offseason with no splashy moves, but let's not forget that they basically kept a 94-win team intact. As has been the case for over a decade now, we should expect another 90-plus wins this year and then hope they catch lightning in a bottle come October. Despite what the owner of the team says publicly, this is the blueprint he steers into.
One thing that stands out about this good roster is the lack of very young talent on it. The youngest player on the big league roster right now is 25-year old starting pitcher Cam Schlittler and the youngest everyday player in the lineup is 26-year old catcher Austin Wells. Otherwise, we're mostly looking at a team filled with grizzled veterans. That will work for this year, and maybe even the next couple, but sooner or later the Yankees will need to start supplementing the roster with cost-effective Baby Bombers. Is their farm system prepared to deliver?
Like we do every year here at Jimmy Sez, we'll answer that question by relying on the painstaking work of Keith Law via his MLB Farm System Rankings, his Top 20 Yankees Prospect List, and his Top 100 MLB Prospect List. In doing the research for this post, these gems from the early days of MADtv kept coming to mind...
The cupboard is still bare
Wanna hear some good news? In his summary of the Yankees' system Law makes the point that despite trading a boat load of prospects for ready-made major league players in the past year, they only parted with one that would have been in his top 20 for the organization. The bad news? Despite keeping all of their "good" prospects, Law sees this group of Baby Bombers as just the 20th best farm system out of 30 MLB teams.
Last year, I detailed four reasons why stock in the Yankee farm system was plummeting. Those points largely remain in play, so I won't re-hash them here. I'll simply state that Jasson Dominguez - last year's top prospect - failed to crack the major league roster this year after a disappointing 2025 and seems poised to become the latest in a long line of Yankee prospects that fizzles out. There's no reason to believe this trend won't continue.
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Things don't look any better when comparing the Yankees to their closest peers in the American League East. The Toronto Blue Jays are the only team with a farm system ranked worse than the Yankees. Still, they have three prospects in Law's top 100 compared to just two for the Yankees. One of them is Trey Yesavage who showed them what he's capable of in October. You could easily make the case that the Yankees have the weakest player pipeline in the division.
Each team ahead of the Yankees in the division have at least twice as many prospects in the top 100. The Orioles are basically the inverse of the Yankees. That is, they've had a top 10 farm system for years now and have exclusively relied on graduating those prospects to build a major league team - albeit with mixed results. They're hoping that the addition of Pete Alonso changes those fortunes.
After promoting a handful of everyday player prospects to the majors, the Red Sox now have a stable of quality arms waiting in the wings. The Rays, as always, have a deep pool of young players ready to fill in as needed for the big league club. Add it all up and the competitive landscape is only going to get tougher for the Yankees in the near future.
Lonely at the top
Floating at the top of the Yankee prospect pool I see only four players with a viable case to be a major leaguer. The highest hopes are with George Lombard, Jr., a 20-year old, well-rounded, big shortstop whose father was a major league outfielder and currently serves as the bench coach for the Detroit Tigers. There's a lot to like about the younger Lombard. He's a smart hitter, has good speed and the fielding skills to stay at shortstop should he ever get promoted to the big show. The biggest obstacle between Lombard, Jr. and a successful major league career will, of course, be the organization that's grooming him currently. Last year the Yankees rushed him up to Double-A Somerset after just a brief stint in high-A ball. He struggled at Somerset - unnecesarily - for most of the season. This doesn't bode well for the future of the promising young shortstop. Just take a look at the Yankees' gross mishandling of Anthony Volpe over the last three years or so as your blueprint for disaster here.
If you're looking for a prospect who's too young for the Yankees to ruin yet, we've got one of those! Dax Kilby, their top pick in 2025, is another big shortstop and at just 19 years old Law compared his command of the strike zone to Juan Soto. Um, yes, I think we can all get excited about that. Kilby doesn't seem nearly as well-rounded as Lombard, Jr., but if he can hit like Soto then DH seems like a fine position for him.
Rounding out the top four are two pitchers built like football players. Carlos Lagrange has a powerful 6-foot-7 frame and put together a healthy, effective season last year, earning his way up to Triple-A. At 23 years old, Law sees him as a potential top of the rotation starter in the big leagues, despite an arsenal that's not exactly dynamic. Even if he ends up in the bullpen, it would be a win for the Yankees. The other big arm is Ben Hess, another 23-year old who is just slightly shorter and stouter than Lagrange. While he doesn't have Lagrange's upside, Hess has the profile of a workhorse that can reliably hold down the back end of the rotation, maybe even this year.
The other guys
I'm sure that some Yankee fans just read the last few paragraphs and said: "What about Spencer Jones?!" Sure, Jones is a gigantic human that can hit a baseball harder than most people who ever lived. For that reason, he often gets compared to Aaron Judge, but heaping those expectations on Jones is unfair and foolhardy. Judge might be the greatest right-handed hitter in the history of baseball. Jones might not be the best hitter on his current minor league team. I don't want to be too harsh on Spencer, he's been a very good hitter for most of his minor league career, but there are some glaring weaknesses in his bat that need to be acknowledged.
As the pitching quality has increased on Jones' minor league journey, it's become clear that as a left-handed batter he struggles mightily against lefties. Last year he split time between Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and was nearly a .300 hitter with an OPS over 1.000 against righties. Facing lefties he hit .189 with an OPS that was well over 300 points worse. Even more concerning, Jones's strike out rates started out relatively high in the lower levels of the minors and have gotten increasingly worse at each higher level. Overall, he has struck out in nearly a third of his plate appearances over his four full seasons in the minors.
Law has watched Jones closely over the past few years and makes the point that after a hot start in Triple-A last year, the league figured him out pretty quickly. After July he hit just six home runs and struck out in over 40% of his plate appearances. Given all of this, it's not reasonable to expect Jones to dominate in the majors when he gets there. At best, we can expect a Kevin Maas-ian quick rise followed by a precipitous fall for the big slugger. I hope I'm wrong.
There's not a whole lot to get excited about when taking a look at the rest of the prospects in the Yankees' top 20. It's basically a long list of pitchers with varying degrees of red flags whether due to major injuries, lack of command, or a repertoire that needs more substance. Now, to the Yankees' credit, they have tended to turn a player or two from their farm system into a useful arm for the big league bullpen. So, we can expect a couple of these guys to show up in the Bronx for a couple years and provide cheap, effective production that will make Hal Steinbrenner very happy. It's not exactly a compelling story, but it's something.
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