Ryan Garcia
The New York Yankees had to see their 2024 third-round pick Thatcher Hurd hit the IL last season for the entire year due to a UCL tear that would require season-ending Tommy John Surgery.
His lively fastball and nasty breaking balls in college never materialized into elite results, but the strikeout rates indicated that there was a lot of upside in the the athletic righty.
Now healthy and pitching in Single-A for the Tampa Tarpons, Hurd has looked like one of the better pitching prospects in the organization over the last few weeks.
Twirling his best start as a pro last night, Hurd punched out 59% of the batters he faced as he shut down the Dunedin lineup to continue his recent four-start stretch of domination.
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Thatcher Hurd Looks Like a Slam-Dunk Top 10 Yankees’ Prospect
When the Yankees selected Thatcher Hurd in the third-round of the 2024 MLB Draft, I was excited to see how the organization would work with such a lively arm who couldn’t put it all together at LSU.
He underwent Tommy John Surgery in 2025 and looked rusty (as expected) when he returned to the mound in 2026, but his latest start showed what Hurd can look like when he’s dialed in.
The right-hander punched out 10 batters in 4.2 innings pitched as Hurd allowed just one hit, two walks, and no runs against the Dunedin Blue Jays.
Hurd’s fastball sat at 94 MPH with over 18 inches of ride, getting 7 feet of extension on the pitch which gives it some elite-level swing and miss abilities when packages together.
His fastball has typically sat around 92-93 MPH in his previous starts, so seeing him sit 94 MPH in this latest outing is a positive indication that the pre-surgery arm talent is coming back.
Batters had a 30% Whiff% in the dominant performance, which is way better than what we had seen at the beginning of the season where he struggled to miss bats.
Thatcher Hurd also flashed his elite slider and curveball which have tons of movement with a good feel for locating these pitches for swings and misses in two-strike counts.
Thatcher Hurd has an overhead deliver that allows him to get behind the ball and generate backspin or topspin effectively, as he has elite-level spin rates which create sharp movement.
His slider has good two-plane movement in the upper-80s, being classified as a cutter by Statcast but having much closer similarities to a breaking ball than a fastball shape.
We ranked Hurd as the ninth-best prospect in the organization entering the season despite spending all of 2025 on the injured list, and it’s starting to finally age well as his stuff has upticked in his last few starts.
Following a starter where he allowed 10 runs in 2.1 IP, Hurd has struck out 41.5% of batters faced with a 1.08 ERA across four starts, which leads me to believe that first start is an abberation that came about due to rust.
Expect to see Thatcher Hurd inside the next top 30 prospect update that we plan on dropping before July 4th, as he might have climbed on the list despite a limited sample size of action in 2026.
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