Ryan Garcia
The Yankees drafted RHP Jack Cebert in the 15th Round of the 2025 MLB Draft, and he immediately hit the ground running as a reliever with a 2.84 ERA and 44% K% in five appearances at the High-A level.
It seems the team will move him from a bullpen role to a starter role based on their usage of him in their Spring Breakout defeat at the hands of the Atlanta Braves Prospects.
Delivering four innings of two-run baseball, Cebert showed off a deep mix with some upside to become a pretty interesting pitching prospect in their system if he continues building velocity.
His funky arm angle and excellent extension paired with good movement on his pitches create a real backend starter outcome for the former Red Raider, and he was one of the standouts in this prospect scrimmage.
READ MORE: Ex-Yankees top bullpen arm finds news home with Diamondbacks
Jack Cebert Could Be a Pick to Click in the Yankees’ System
The Texas Tech Red Raiders utilized Jack Cebert out of their bullpen during the 2025 season, but he still logged 60 innings as he was more of a multi-inning hybrid than a pure reliever.
When he was selected by the Yankees he was moved into a more traditional relief role instead of being shutdown immediately which is rare for pitchers that the organization drafts.
He spent the offseason building up as a starter, and the Yankees had him build up to 72 pitches in his four-inning performance during the Spring Breakout Game.
Jack Cebert has an excellent feel for spinning the baseball which allows him to throw big sweeping sliders with a fastball that has plenty of ride, topping out at 96 MPH in this outing.
Having three different fastballs and a slider is a nice foundation for his mix, and I think there’s enough variety in his movement to envision him becoming a big-league starter.
There are some limitations that he showed in this game that he’ll need to finetune throughout the season, his fastball velocity fluctuated wildly throughout the game with four-seamers as slow as 90.6 MPH.
Location was also a big gripe, especially with his four-seam fastball, often missing to his arm-side which resulted in uncompetitive pitches and longer innings.
There were a lot of uncompetitive pitches in this outing especially with his fastballs, and if he’s going to last as a starter this issue will have to be corrected.
His Zone% numbers on the fastballs were very poor which allowed Atlanta’s prospects to stay patient and enlongate innings, these are the kinds of things that a reliever converting to a starter can tend to struggle with.
I also believe he’ll need another pitch to help him get lefties out, he used his four-seamer 70% of the time when facing opposite-handed hitters.
Jack Cebert could really benefit from honing in the cutter to have more velocity and adding a changeup, which would allow him to be a three-pitch guy to lefties rather than spamming fastballs in those situations.
With all of those flaws in mind, I’m really happy with what my first glance at Cebert looked like; this is a 15th Round Pick who has above-average stuff with some real upside.
There are some right tail outcomes where he’s a good reliever on the Major League club as well which the Yankees would happily take given how late they acquired him.
Cebert is expected to begin the season in High-A Hudson Valley, so he’s a pick to move up fairly quickly if he can reach Double-A before season’s end.
More about:New York Yankees
