Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz was acquired over the offseason from the Boston Red Sox, with the New York Yankees sending over breakout catcher Carlos Narvaez.
It was considered a minor move at the time, but Narvaez has stabilized the catcher position for Boston, making the deal initially look like a massive win for the Red Sox.
Cruz had success, but he did so at the High-A level, which isn’t advanced enough for prospect evaluators to seriously consider him a top-flight prospect since he was repeating the level.
Now in Double-A, the 21-year-old right-hander has dominated for the Somerset Patriots, coming off of a seven-inning gem where he shutout a lethal Binghamton lineup.
Sporting a 1.73 ERA and a 2.65 FIP across four starts since his promotion, ERC is looking more like a potential middle-of-the-rotation starter for the Yankees.
Why Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz Is a Name To Watch For the Yankees
A tall lanky right-hander, Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz is an athletic pitcher who delivers the ball from a lower arm angle, ferociously whipping his arm through to generate excellent velocity.
The right-hander sits between 94-96 MPH on his fastball, with his primary heater being a sinker with late movement, allowing it to catch hitters looking on the first-base side of the plate and get weak contact when they do swing.
Rodriguez-Cruz has a four-seamer, cutter, sweeper, curveball, and splitter to go with that sinker, and it allows him to keep hitters off-balance by constantly changing the movement profiles and pitch speeds they see.
He can dial up a fastball at 98 MPH in the same at-bat where he slows it down with a curveball at 78 MPH, and in-between those two pitches there’s a wide array of different horizontal or vertical movement profiles.
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The deeper repetoire allows Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz to excel against righties and lefties, and it’s why he owns the ninth-best ERA among Minor League pitchers with at least 80 IP (2.13).
If you dig deeper into the underlying data, his 2.63 FIP is the sixth-best mark and his 55.1% GB% is 10th, indicators of a strong ability to manage the three outcomes of strikeouts, walks, and home runs well.
Command can be an issue at times, ERC has a 9.7% walk rate which isn’t great, but since being promoted to Somerset he’s down to a 5.9% walk rate.
Whether he can maintain that improvement or not remains to be seen, but the stuff is firmly above-average and the strike-throwing abilities are better than where he was at in 2024.
You could argue this is the most polished pitching prospect yet to debut in the Yankees’ system, his combination of an excellent repertoire and damage prevention make him an enticing arm to watch.
Eligible for the Rule 5 Draft at the conclusion of the 2025 season, it’s likely that ERC will be placed on the 40-man and have a shot to compete for big-league innings on the Yankees next summer.
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