New York Yankees’ 2014 Minor League Awards
September 17, 2014 · Peter F. Richman · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
Only a dozen games separate the New York Yankees from the culmination of a disappointing 2014 season. They remained in the wild-card hunt into the month of September, but at six games back of the second spot as of Wednesday morning, they’ve simply run out of rope and reinforcements.
When it comes to criticism and blame for the current state of the Bombers, no one has been immune this season—including the eyes and ears of scouting and development. The narrative, especially in 2014, tends to go like this: The Yankees’ best prospects aren’t strong enough to make real impacts; the front office then resorts to signing mediocre-at-best big leaguers before the deadline as a result; the additions are expensive and often fail to help.
The New York Post‘s Joel Sherman writes that the results of their farm “have defined underwhelming.” The Daily News‘ Bill Madden wrote, “Ding dong, the witch is dead! Yankees fans should rejoice,” after Mark Newman, the Yanks senior vice president of baseball operations since 1996, announced his retirement; Madden calls the system “feeble.”
Mostly unsuccessful? Yes. But totally bereft of high-caliber talent? Not the full story.
Former under-the-radar prospects like David Phelps and Shane Greene have played tremendous roles in keeping the Yankees alive this year, while in-house relievers David Robertson, Adam Warren and Dellin Betances have excelled. And all season, we’ve highlighted several bright spots in the lower rungs of the organization, noting pitching and positional prospects who could still very much factor into the Yankees’ future.
Just a week ago, we selected a 10-man All-Prospect team comprised of the Yankees’ best minor leaguers for the 2014 season. Alongside familiar names like catcher Gary Sanchez and outfielder Aaron Judge, though, a few surprise faces earned recognition for standout performances.
That trend continues this week, as we hand out five end-of-season minor league awards, a few of which go to some under-appreciated assets. Similar to Major League Baseball’s year-end categories, we’ll award the organization’s Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Top Reliever and Comeback Player of the Year before concluding with a “Breakout Star” category to round it out.
Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.com unless noted otherwise. Top prospect rankings from Baseball America and MLB.com’s Prospect Pipeline.
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