While all of the focus for the Yankees should be on 2024, they’re also not too far away from having to address their plans for 2025. Regardless of whether they make a deep October run or not, in under two months we’ll all be in a cold sweat over Juan Soto’s fate and the front office will likely need to make internal promotions to shore up the roster. Their farm system hasn’t given them the level of depth that the Orioles’ farm system has provided their big-league roster, but we’ve still seen some strong homegrown talent contribute.
Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe, Luis Gil, and Clarke Schmidt have all been important parts of this team this year, and these three prospects could provide even more for the Yankees in 2025.
Turning Trade Acquisition Into a Key Swingman For the Yankees
This year looked like it would be a great one for Clayton Beeter, who fired seven starts to open his Minor League season with a 2.53 ERA. Triple-A is an unforgiving Minor League environment for pitchers, and yet Beeter looked about as sharp as he ever has with the Yankees. Command is still a problem, but his fastball added about two inches of vertical ride while he toyed with a curveball as his third pitch. The depth and quality of his pitch mix both improving is encouraging, but I’m not sure he could stick as a big-league starter.
His fastball-slider combination is devastating, but as he pitches deeper into games his poor command and lack of variety in movement profiles could make him more of a reliever. The Yankees need bullpen arms, so there’s nothing wrong with becoming a valuable multi-inning arm who can miss bats and get the team some big-time outs. Clayton Beeter has the kind of profile that could be devastating if he continues to sharpen his command and mechanical consistency, as he releases from a high angle which makes his slider look even sharper.
In a bullpen role, we could also see the velocity tick up, as Clayton Beeter has shown the ability to sit closer to 94-95 MPH with the fastball, and given the good vertical life on it that could be a good swing-and-miss pitch up in the zone. I think we’ll see Beeter at some point in 2025, but there’s a chance the Yankees develop him the same way they did Clarke Schmidt or Michael King, who struggled mightily as starters in the big leagues but were able to become more consistent and develop other pitches to help them.
Beeter does have worse numbers against lefties this season, but they have a .275 wOBA against him with a 40.7% Whiff Rate, so I wouldn’t consider him someone who struggles to handle them either. His stuff could play at the highest level in a bullpen role, and if he’s able to find a reliable third pitch, perhaps the Yankees could even get him some spot starts if they had an injury. There’s some versatility here, and considering they acquired him for half a season of Joey Gallo, being a solid reliever would be a great outcome.
Scrappy Infield Bat Could Win the Second Base Job
One of the funniest developments at the Minor League level has been Caleb Durbin, a 5’6 infielder, finding his power stroke in Triple-A. The undersized infielder has embraced pulling his flyballs and has generated a lot more damage contact as a result, combining elite contact rates with good spray angles to become a legitimate option for their infield in 2025. In 69 games last season, Durbin hit just four home runs and relied more on his ability to slap singles to generate offense, but this year he has 8 in 76 games and has hit five in his last 17 games.
He’s pulled 40.4% of his flyballs at the Triple-A level, an elite clip that rivals the likes of Jose Altuve and could result in more home runs than you would expect for someone his height. He hasn’t lost an ounce of contact ability either, striking out just 9.7% of the time this season and only 9.3% of the time during his power surge. An excellent defensive second baseman with great baserunning tools, Durbin is the kind of player who could almost immediately slot onto the Yankees’ roster and provide value.
The offensive skillset is obviously limited by a lack of raw power, but he’s built his profile in a way that allows him to maximize his tools and become a viable bat. I don’t consider Caleb Durbin to be the kind of player who ends up getting MVP votes, but a solid 2-3 WAR player is someone the Yankees would gladly take from someone making the league minimum. His versatility should also allow him to handle multiple positions such as shortstop, third base, and even the outfield.
This First Baseman Could Win Back His Job Next Spring
The Major Leagues didn’t treat Ben Rice all too kindly, but I believe the underlying data was very strong for the rookie first baseman. With a high barrel rate and good swing decisions, he showed an ability to generate damage contact and have good at-bats, but poor luck and a key flaw held him back. Timing seems to be something that Ben Rice has to work on, and while it’s hard to do that at the Minor League level, it’s something that Austin Wells adjusted to by quieting his leg kick into more of a toe tap.
Rice had a league-average Zone Contact% (82.7%) while being aggressive in-zone and passive out of it, and with an xwOBACON above .400 it would lead you to believe this could be a capable big-leaguer. A .188 BABIP seems unfathomably low for any hitter, especially one who has an above-average Sweet Spot%, and it felt like you could have argued the Yankees didn’t play him enough to work out of those struggles. Still, the job should be open in 2025 with Anthony Rizzo being owed $20 million in a club option that the team could decline.
He has some opposite-field power but the Yankees need to gear him to hammer everything in the air to right field, there’s no conceivable way for him to get the ball out to left-center in a ballpark like Yankee Stadium. There is not a below-average tool in Ben Rice’s skillset when you evaluate it from a contact, power, and plate discipline standpoint, so I think he just needs to find ways to simplify his swing and get back to the big leagues. I have very high hopes for him in 2025, and what’s encouraging is that he has gone down to Triple-A and almost immediately began hitting bombs again.