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Jim Callis used to be Baseball America's prospect expert, but now he's MLB.com's prospect expert and he recently talked about Yankees prospects on twitter.
On the Yankees 2013 draft class, Callis believes their best pick was first round draft pick Eric Jagielo, who hit .271/.381/.459 with six home runs in 215 plate appearances for the Staten Island Yankees. He also believes he will be the first Yankee prospect to make it to the big leagues out of this draft class.
Callis called eighth round draft pick Brandon Thomas the most underrated prospect of the team's draft. He hit .213/.318/.338 with six home runs and nine stolen bases in 277 plate appearances. Callis even complimented second round draft pick Gosuke Katoh and third round draft pick Michael O'Neil, saying the Yankees had a strong top of the draft.
When asked about first base prospect Greg Bird, Callis believes Bird has legitimate power and is interested in seeing how he handles the upper levels of the minors. Bird hit .288/.428/.511 with 20 home runs and 107 walks for Low-A Charleston in his first full year of professional baseball.
The Pinstriped Bible's twitter account asked him who would be a better option behind the plate for the 2014 Yankees, JR Murphy or Austin Romine. Callis believes that Murphy has more long term value, but he's not sure if he's ready to make the jump to major league regular. Murphy, of course, hit .269/.347/.426 with 12 home runs across Double-A and Triple-A this season and even collected his first big league hit after a September call up.
The Yankees minor league system is often declared to be underwhelming and their prospects overhyped, but if someone like Jim Callis has nice things to say about them, hopefully they live up to the hype this time around. Prospects like Jagielo and Bird aren't especially close to making a big league impact, so there's plenty of time for things to go wrong or go very very right.
