On a significant day for prospect movement, the Yankees remained stagnant.
As of Friday, there were 45 total days remaining in the season, which is the number a player cannot exceed on a major league roster and still be considered a rookie in a subsequent season.
Around the league, a few top prospects were promoted — Nolan Schanuel with the Angels and Masyn Winn with the Cardinals — as clubs grew a bit more aggressive with their best minor leaguers. A prospect still can lose “rookie” status by accruing 130 major league at-bats or 50 major league innings pitched, but the calendar is no longer a barrier.
The new collective bargaining agreement has incentivized rookie performance for both players and clubs: Players who finish in the top two of Rookie of the Year voting receive a full year of service time; and if a prospect on the Opening Day roster finishes in the top three in Rookie of the Year voting or top five in MVP or Cy Young voting, the club receives an extra draft pick.
So the Yankees can now summon players such as outfielder Everson Pereira and catcher Austin Wells while still hoping that they (and the prospects) still may be rewarded with excellent 2024 seasons.
But as the dividing-line day came and went, and Pereira and Wells remained in the starting lineup for Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
“Those guys are obviously knocking on the door,” manager Aaron Boone said before the Yankees opened a series with the Red Sox in The Bronx. “Those are guys that are pushing their way into the conversation. So we’ll see.”
During general manager Brian Cashman’s news conference at the trade deadline, he brought up Pereira twice as an internal player who could help this season.
The club’s No. 3 prospect, according to MLB Pipeline, is a righty-hitting outfielder in an organization that has needed a left fielder for several years.
Jake Bauers (who has been mostly solid) is now playing first base with Anthony Rizzo sidelined. Billy McKinney was starting in left Friday.
Isiah Kiner-Falefa has played left against lefty pitching, and Greg Allen is another outfielder coming off the bench.
The 22-year-old Pereira crushed Double-A pitching this season (.908 OPS in 46 games) before a promotion to SWB, where he hit .308 with six homers in his first 32 games.
A $1.5 million signing out of Venezuela in 2017, Pereira has long been a top prospect who seems to be putting everything together. Yankees bench coach Carlos Mendoza has heard about him since Pereira was a child.
They grew up in the same area and Mendoza knew many of Pereira’s coaches and trainers.
“He was at the Dominican complex when I first saw him [in 2017],” said Mendoza, who then was a roving minor league defensive instructor with the Yankees. “You could tell the way the ball came off the bat, it was different. He stuck out from the rest of the group at the time.
“That still is the case. It’s good to see him performing in Triple-A and putting himself on the map.”
As are other prospects, though Pereira has a leg up both because of need and because he already is on the Yankees’ 40-man roster.
Not yet on the 40-man roster is Wells, a 2020 first-round pick who reached Triple-A on July 21 and posted a .729 OPS in his first 22 games.
Better known for his bat than glove, calling up Wells likely would mean demoting Ben Rortvedt.
There are other options to help boost the lagging offense, including powerful corner infielder Andres Chaparro as well as Estevan Florial, the former top prospect who has not yet been able to hit major league pitching. The Yankees also could turn back to Oswald Peraza, whose rookie clock already has begun.
Promoting an influx of prospects might signal the Yankees are waving the white flag on the season. But if they find the right one or two and call them up now without worrying about their “rookie” designation maybe they can find help they did not locate at the deadline. The Yankees entered Friday having scored the ninth-fewest runs in baseball.
“We’ll see where we are as we continue to move forward,” Boone said of Pereira and Wells. “But it’s been good to see those guys kind of progress from Double-A to Triple-A and have varying degrees of success down there this year.”