Yankees’ Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz earns minor league honor for standout season
The New York Yankees scored a big win in an offseason trade with the Boston Red Sox, landing pitcher Elmer Rodriguez-Cruz, who’s now shining as one of their top minor league talents. While Red Sox catcher Carlos Narváez put together a solid rookie season that might earn him some American League Rookie of the Year nods, Rodriguez-Cruz stole the spotlight this year.
Baseball America crowned the 22-year-old right-hander the Yankees’ Minor League Player of the Year on Monday. He wrapped up a dominant season with a 2.58 ERA and 176 strikeouts over 150 innings across High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A levels. That’s just behind Mets prospect Jonah Tong’s 179 strikeouts for the most in all of Minor League Baseball.
Yankees pitching director Sam Briend explained why they targeted Rodriguez-Cruz: “That’s one of the reasons we went after him—we just thought there was a lot of upside. He’s a really aggressive strike thrower, throws really hard. He averaged 95-plus miles an hour. We really thought the secondary pitches were the pieces we could impact.”
Rodriguez-Cruz recently cracked Baseball America’s Top 100 prospects list, and scouts see him as the most polished in the Yankees’ next wave of pitching hopefuls. After Double-A Somerset’s playoff run ended, he made his final start of the regular season at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Saturday. He could open next year right there, building toward a big-league call-up.
Shifting to the majors, the Yankees grabbed a thrilling extra-inning victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Sunday, boosting their record in those games to 6-8. They’ve won their last three extra-inning contests on the road. Overall, New York finished the regular season with a strong 44-37 mark away from Yankee Stadium.
Ben Rice delivered the heroics again at Camden Yards with a massive grand slam in the 10th inning that sealed the win. It wasn’t his first clutch moment there—last summer, he crushed a three-run homer in the ninth to give the Yankees a 5-3 lead before the game slipped away. That one lives on in fans’ memories for Alex Verdugo’s infamous slip in left field while chasing the winning hit. Rice’s power keeps proving why he’s a rising star in the Yankees lineup.
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