As I put together my list of the top 30 prospects in the Yankees’ organization every winter, some tough choices inevitably have to be made and a few players end up on the outside looking in. That doesn’t mean I don’t like them as prospects, it just means I like some other players better. This post looks at five such players, the five that I think have the best chance of jumping into next year’s top 30 list. I wouldn’t call it a list of sleepers (some of these guys were pretty high-profile pick-ups), perhaps a list of potential breakout players would be more accurate. Does that make sense? Yeah I think so.
Two players from last year’s Not Top 30 List jumped into this year’s top 30: Melky Mesa and Gary Sanchez. Mesa punched his ticket by taking home High-A Florida State League MVP honors while all Sanchez had to do was show up camp ready to catch. Two other players, Jimmy Paredes and Jon Ortiz, are now with a different organization. Paredes went to the Astros in the Lance Berkman deal and was recently named Houston’s seventh best prospect by Baseball America, and Ortiz signed with the Athletics as a minor league free agent after the season. The fifth player, DeAngelo Mack, just didn’t do enough to make the top 30 this year.
An important thing to remember is that these are not prospects 31 through 35, it’s just a list of five players on the outside of this year’s top 30 with a chance to jump into next year’s by showing improvement. They’re listed alphabetically, so don’t bother reading into the order, and ages are as of Opening Day, or thereabouts. Fun starts after the jump.