There’s no getting around this. The 2025 baseball season in New York has been one of the most exasperating, confounding experiences that anyone can remember for both Yankees and Mets fans.
Maybe one of them has experienced such a roller coaster ride — think the Yankees in 2017 falling out of first place on Aug. 1, never to regain it after going 14-15 the rest of the month, or the Mets falling out of first place and contention by losing eight of nine in late September of 1999 — but never have both New York teams wreaked so much angst on their fans in the same season on their way to still making the playoffs.
While we maintain our doubts that either the Yankees or Mets have the chops to get to their mutual goal of a berth in the World Series, we are also seeing sufficient evidence that, despite their unsettling present, the future for both teams is extremely bright. Indeed, a half dozen of the top prospects in all of baseball happen to be on the cusp of arrival at Yankee Stadium or Citi Field — or in the cases of Cam Schlittler, Nolan McLean and Jonah Tong — they’re already here.
There is no more expensive commodity — or harder one to develop — in baseball than quality frontline starting pitching. Because of David Stearns’ shortsightedness, the Mets have gone all season with a patchwork starting rotation, struggling to pitch into the sixth inning — a major reason they have languished in second place since the beginning of August. All the while McLean and Brandon Sproat at Triple-A and Tong at Double-A were having standout seasons, but Stearns steadfastly refused to bring them up — until the season ending injury to Frankie Montas (a $17 million waste of money) in mid-August forced his hand on McLean, who’s moved right to the top of the rotation as the first pitcher since Hall of Famer Randy Johnson in 1988 to post a 3-0 record, with 20-plus innings, 20-plus strikeouts and a sub-.200 opponents’ batting average in his first three starts. On Friday, Tong’s 97-pitch debut against the Marlins was not nearly as dazzling as McLean, but impressive nevertheless, no walks, six strikeouts and a lot of deception, with one earned run in five innings.
Conceivably, the Mets could have three rookies — McLean, Tong and Sproat — in their starting rotation next year, which, with an eye on the near future, may have been part of the reason Stearns eschewed the high-end starting pitchers in the free agent market last winter and sought to cobble together a rotation behind Kodai Senga and David Peterson with short-term relatively inexpensive deals with Clay Holmes, Montas, Griffin Canning and Sean Manaea. Meanwhile, the Mets’ other weak spot this year — center field — could also very likely be solved from within next year with both Jett Williams, the versatile 5-7 whippet (.270, 12 HR, 33 steals) and last year’s No. 1 draft choice Carson Benge (.305, 42 extra base hits), excelling at Binghamton.
As for the Yankees, before Clarke Schmidt’s breakthrough season in 2023, you had to go all the way back to Andy Pettitte in the ‘90s to find a pitcher they’d drafted and developed into a quality frontline starter, and now the 24-year-old Schlittler, with a 2.76 ERA in his first eight starts since being called up July 9, has demonstrated he has both the stuff and the makeup to earn a place at the top of the rotation soon. But right behind Schlittler the Yankees have four bona fide frontline starting pitching prospects in righties Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, Carlos Lagrange, Ben Hess and Bryce Cunningham.
Of the four, Hess and Cunningham are probably a couple of years away but scouts are especially high on Rodriguez-Cruz, who was the return from the Red Sox for catcher Carlos Narvaez. “I know that deal was a head-scratcher when Narvaez won the Red Sox starting catching job right away,” said one scout who recently went through the Yankee farm system, “but the Yankees may down the road be the winners on it with Rodriguez-Cruz (150 strikeouts in 129 innings at High-A and AA this year). He’s small (160 pounds) but has three plus pitches, fastball, slider, curve, came fast this year and doesn’t scare. I can see him helping them next year.”
Lagrange, the 6-7 Dominican, is the one who’s most impressed at Double-A Somerset this year with his dominating 97-101 mph fastball and of whom the same scout said: “He’s a potential No. 1 with his overpowering stuff if he stays healthy which is always a concern with big guys like that. He just needs to further refine his command.”
In any case, with Schlittler and Will Warren having graduated to the varsity this year and the other kids nearing the Bronx, the Yankees could have an uncharacteristic wealth of starting pitching riches next year when Gerrit Cole and Schmidt return at some point. And finally, of course, there’s 6-7 Spencer Jones whose 32 homers led all of the minors as of last week and combined with 25 stolen bases made him the No. 1 overall prospect in baseball.
This year Jones has also cut way down on his strikeouts and appears poised to win a spot in the Yankees’ 2026 outfield, presumably in center, although Trent Grisham has complicated that by having a career 28-homer season in his free agent walk year. My guess is the Yankees make Grisham a qualifying offer so they can get high draft pick compensation for him if he walks but they will not get into a bidding war to keep him.
The only negative in all this “homegrown” Yankee prosperity is Anthony Volpe, whom most scouts seem to agree has become a liability that may not be able to be fixed. Unfortunately, his potential replacement, George Lombard Jr., has struggled somewhat at Somerset and is at least a year away.
IT’S A MADD, MADD WORLD
For years the analytics geeks have been telling us that batting average is a worthless stat and sadly it appears that more and more hitters are adhering to that, continuing to swing for the fences with no concern about strikeouts. A check of the batting leaders Friday showed only five qualifiers for the batting title with batting averages over .300 and only one — Freddie Freeman at .302 — in the National League. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, this will be the fewest number of qualifying .300 hitters since 1920! Previous fewest .300 hitters since 1920: six in 1968, seven in 2024 and nine in 2023. Conversely, however, the analytics geeks are at a loss to explain five of the six leading teams in batting average — the Blue Jays, Brewers, Phillies, Astros and Dodgers — were also leading their divisions as of Friday. … It’s still too early to determine whether Aaron Judge or the Mariners’ Cal Raleigh is the American League MVP. Despite his monster season (leading the AL in batting, runs, OPS, slugging and on-base pct.), Judge is no longer a lock. Since sustaining an elbow injury back in July and being relegated to DH duties after coming off the injured list Aug. 5, it’s fair to say that Judge has been the third most valuable player just on the Yankees behind Giancarlo Stanton and Clay Bellinger. On the other hand Raleigh is in the process of setting two significant records — most homers by a catcher and will soon eclipse Mickey Mantle’s mark of 52 homers by a switch hitter set in 1956. Perhaps the clinching factor for Raleigh would be if the Mariners are able to win the AL West, something they haven’t done since 2001 when they won a record 116 games.
