BALTIMORE – If they have a need and want to fill it, the New York Yankees can almost always scratch a check. That may never change.
Yet in this modern era where the Yankees are outflanked in the spending department by a handful of ballclubs and owner Hal Steinbrenner is both far less capricious and much more patient than his father, there’s an almost equal likelihood the Yankees will patch that hole internally: Through scouting and development and guiding to Yankee Stadium players who are ready to meet the moment.
Six of the Yankees’ current 14 regular position players and starting pitchers are products of the system, an output that places them tied for 11th among 30 Major League Baseball teams, according to USA TODAY Sports research.
More notably, three of them – franchise player Aaron Judge, young slugger Ben Rice and emerging ace Cam Schlittler – are well on track to rep the club at this summer’s All-Star Game in Philadelphia.
They’re the product of organizational consistency, along with coherent messaging that ensures they’re ready as they can be for the Bronx.
Even if you’re a former seventh-round pick who was once too skinny and did not throw nearly hard enough to hear his name called the first day of the draft.
“The Yankees are really good at what they do. They’re a superstar organization, they develop players well and they’re a winning organization,” Schlittler, the American League’s leader with a 1.35 ERA, tells USA TODAY Sports. “They give you the pieces for your success. You gotta be able to do it on your own, as well: ‘Here’s what we can do for you. It’s up to you if you want to put in the work.’
“They’re not going to baby you. This is professional baseball. I took advantage of the resources I had, the coaches and teammates I had along the way and that’s why I’m in the position I’m in.”
Schlittler arrived from Northeastern University with several red flags: He had trouble putting on weight and adding velocity. His mechanics were a mess. And his pitch mix needed an entire makeover, all the way through the Yankees system.
Thanks to the infrastructure the Yankees had in place, there was an answer for it all.
Cohesion and consistency
In an industry as volatile as baseball, continuity is elusive. Less than one-fourth through this season, three managers have already been fired. Support staff like pitching and hitting coaches are viewed as fungible should a rough patch come up during the season.
And from October through January, the annual ritual of expunging and recycling scouts, coaches, and other non-executive personnel is the sport’s grimmest ritual.
Under George Steinbrenner, Yankee managerial instability was legend. In this era, though, the executives responsible for funneling players to the majors are as entrenched as the plaques in Monument Park.
Damon Oppenheimer, the club’s vice president of amateur scouting, has been with the club 34 years, and run their amateur draft since 2005. Kevin Reese, the VP of player development, is in his 19th season as a scout or front office member and ninth year heading up player development.
While the phalanx of scouts, coaches and quants beneath them may rotate, continuity at the top shows up when the next rookie is ready for pinstripes.
At 27-16, the Yankees are once again on track for more than 90 wins and a 10th playoff berth in 12 seasons.
“It’s been really good, especially lately,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone tells USA TODAY Sports. “We’ve done a really good job the last four and five years developmentally, getting better and better on the pitching and position player side of things.
“They’re very much cohesive. I think it’s huge. It’s very important. And I feel like they’ve just continued to build on that cohesion.”
And, as Boone points out, the Yankees are hardly drafting the pick of the litter. They haven’t had a losing season since 1992, have made the playoffs nine of the past 11 seasons and often lose their first-round pick as free agent compensation for the stars they do import.
So their first draft pick often comes after the first two or three dozen players have already been selected. No matter: Their top draft pick has made the majors ever year from 2015-2022, with 2023’s No. 1, shortstop George Lombard Jr., expected to become a big league regular.
And since 2019, the Yankees have drafted and developed 17 major leaguers who have produced 36.7 WAR. That’s nearly double the 19.5 WAR Los Angeles Dodgers draftees – like the Yankees, perennial winners drafting late – produced from their 17 big leaguers.
The most recent Yankee to bubble up, 6-foot-7 slugger and speed demon Spencer Jones, was picked 25th overall out of Vanderbilt in 2022. He blasted through the minors, with an .848 career OPS and a 35-homer season in 2025.
With his strikeout rate slowly falling into place, Jones got the call for his major league debut May 8, knowing the process will continue.
“Our player development group does such an incredible job of not only helping us in the minor leagues but also the guys in the major leagues, being open and communicating the things we need to get better at, what we need to work on,” says Jones. “And we’re all trying to help each other get better. There’s no interference or static.
“Everybody’s pulling on the same rope as far as development and the belief it doesn’t stop when you get here.”
It doesn’t hurt to have a familiar face waiting when you’re ready to debut.
From Dartmouth to dominance
Like Schlittler, Rice was a lightly-regarded collegiate prospect from the Northeast, picked in the 12th round of the 2021 draft. A year later, Jones was drafted and the two made the minor league climb together, at least until Rice got the call to the Bronx in June 2024.
Since then, he’s evolved from intriguing lefty bat who can both catch and play first base to essential Yankee.
Rice leads the major leagues in slugging (.696) and OPS (1.113) and is tied for fifth with 13 home runs. These are not numbers expected from a Dartmouth draftee.
Yet regardless of pedigree, the simple message from player development resonated just as easily to Rice.
“They were very clear from day one how we were evaluated from an offensive standpoint and what would move you up from level to level: Control the strike zone. Hit the ball in the air. And that’s about it,” says Rice.
“For me, that communication was key. I knew what I needed to do to move up the system.”
It didn’t hurt that multiple coaches in the Yankees system climbed the ranks as Rice did and are now on the major league staff, such as assistant hitting coaches Jake Hirst and Casey Dykes.
The lessons do not stop once the pinstripes are donned. Even Judge has significantly benefited from the enhanced infrastructure of the past seven years, upping his game even as he approaches his mid-30s.
“They would, of course, love for you to be a finished product, but they don’t require that. They know there’s going to be adjustments at the big league level,” says Rice. “But their goal, what they’ve always told us, is they try to set you up for a transition that is a little smoother than most. Set you up for success.
“They’re not going to send you up to the next level if they don’t think you’re ready to handle the adjustments they think you’re going to need to make.”
Will Warren found that out this season. The second-year right-hander was an eighth-round draft pick in 2021, and enjoyed a decent rookie season a year ago.
Yet over the winter, the Yankees pitching staff discovered if he moved just a few inches on the pitching rubber, toward the third base side, his pitches would gain greater effectiveness, particularly his sweeper against right-handed batters.
“That move helped me tunnel stuff a little deeper,” says Warren after improving to 5-1 by hodling Baltimore to four hits over 5 2/3 innings May 12. “I can throw sinkers in and sweepers away and there might be 30 inches of difference, but the tunnel is the same to the hitter.
“Therefore, we get later swings. They have to guess a little more.”
Through eight starts, Warren has nearly doubled his strikeout-walk ratio, from 2.63 to 4.92, and his adjusted ERA has improved from a below-average 93 to 123.
All thanks to a few inches in his set-up.
“Your strengths aren’t really ever going to change,” says Warren. “It’s just honing in on the little things – we found something that was going to make a difference even if we were going to be throwing the exact same pitches.
“That’s what it takes to be at that next level here in the big leagues. Everyone’s the best. What’s going to separate me from whoever?”
The Yankees started making big moves on the pitching side in 2019, when they hired Sam Briend away from the Texas Rangers and Driveline Baseball, where he was director of pitching for the innovative Seattle-based lab.
Before leaving the Rangers, Briend took note of a Rangers pitcher retiring that year – and took Preston Claiborne with him to the Yankees.
Now, Claiborne is the Yankees’ assistant pitching coach. But in 2023, he had a different project: Turn a skinny, erratic, soft-throwing draftee into a major leaguer.
And Claiborne got to work on Cam Schlittler.
'He skyrocketed'
Schlittler barely cracked 88 mph at Northeastern. In his first full pro season at high-A Hudson Valley in 2023, he’d be fortunate to touch 90 mph.
Enter Claiborne, whose work relationship with Schlittler would prove mutually beneficial.
“He fixed my mechanics,” says a grateful Schlittler. “He’s really good.”
To hear Claiborne tell it, the credit goes to the pupil.
“He has a lot of underlying qualities we really liked,” says Claiborne. “As he’s going to physically mature, a lot of the strength aspects take care of themselves. That’s why I always say, credit to him for putting in the work in 2023.
“He showed up in 2024 spring training pumping 95, 97 mph and the rest is history – he skyrocketed.”
With Briend working to refine Schlittler’s pitch mix, the 6-6 right-hander posted a 2.96 ERA in 14 starts following his July 2025 debut.
By October he was starting the decisive Game 3 of the AL wild card series and beating the Boston Red Sox, hitting 99 or 100 mph on the radar gun 37 times.
And now, just might start the All-Star Game for the AL.
Schlittler views it as doing nothing more than expected of him from an organization that finds just enough gems to maintain their expected level of excellence.
And demand nothing less.
“The Yankees being the Yankees, some guys aren’t built for it,” says Schlittler. “You’ve seen guys come in here, leave and have a lot more success. That’s just part of the game.
“If you want to be a Yankee, you need to be able to handle that pressure playing in New York. And if you can’t, it will expose you. That’s what makes it exciting - relying on the fans, relying on the atmosphere. You’re in that stadium every other week. You’re making a playoff push. That’s the goal.
“There’s nowhere I’d rather be. If you’re gonna have pressure on you, and those are the situations I’m in, I’m going to take that over a team maybe looking for 75 wins and draft picks.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Yankees' dominance isn't just payroll as Schlittler and Rice shine
