The New York Yankees have a pretty deep farm system when it comes to catchers. The Yankees used two of their top draft picks a couple of years ago on a couple of catchers and the Yankees have another prospect in their top thirty that sits behind the plate. This prospect without question has the best arm in the system, and might have one of the better arms in the minors. That prospect is the young Venezuelan catcher Antonio Gomez. The Yankees signed Gomez for $600,000 in 2018. The Yankees scouts saw him demonstrate his incredible arm which grades out at a 70 on the 20-80 scale. Gomez gets rid of the ball extremely quickly and his arm makes a lot of runners very hesitant to test him. He shows great potential defensively as well. Gomez hits from the right side and generates a good amount of power. The issue at this stage in his career is that he does not take the ball to all sides of the filed, but that is an issue that could be ironed out over a couple of years.
Shortened 2019
In 2019, Gomez made his debut in the Yankees organization. After just one game with the DSL Yankees, Gomez was sidelined with an injury. He came back to the Gulf Coast League towards the end of the season and played 14 games. In those 15 games, Gomez hit .288 and drove him 8 runs. While Gomez only hit one home run during that stretch, you can see that the power is there. He could definitely develop into an above average power threat from the catcher position. He’s not going to be a Gary Sanchez, but he can definitely be a threat with the bat in his hands. Again, the only issue I really see in his offensive game right now is the fact that he’s pull happy. I have full confidence that the Yankees will be able to work with him on tweaking his swing to enable him to take the ball to all fields.
Moving Forward
When the season does get started, I just want to see Gomez out there consistently. Again, he was only able to play in 15 games last year. I want to see Gomez stay on the field and stay healthy. 15 games is not a large sample size, so I would like to see what his numbers look like over the course of a season. The season will obviously be shortened with the ongoing pandemic, but I still expect him to play more than 15 games this year. I want to see Gomez make consistent contact and try working on driving the ball to the right side of the field. Gomez is a very solid catching prospect that has an arm that you can’t teach. If he continues to fine-tune his overall defensive ability and his approach at the plate, Gomez could become one of the better prospects in the entire Yankees system.