Yankees Prospect Links: 3-7-14

There have been several articles on or about Yankee prospects the last couple days and some of them are linked below.

** In the first link, Fangraphs looks at the prospect status of Taylor Dugas. Dugas is an interesting prospect who I have written on before. I always liked Dugas's hitting ability, as he really has done well throughout his career. Dugas is a pesky hitter, who grinds out at-bats and really makes a pitcher work. You can think of him as a slower Brett Gardner. He may not have Brett's speed but he doesn't strikeout nearly as much. Anyway, the article is linked below, it contains some videos of his at-bats and features great analysis.

http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/taylor-dugas-on-base-machine/

** The second link is a part of Baseball America's 2013 intentional review series.  In this part of the series Ben Badler reviews some of the teams 2013 international free agent (IFA) signings. Badler notes that the team spent most of their money on one player--Leonardo Molina-- but that one player may have the best raw tools from the 2013-2014 IFA class.

He also wrote about Yonauris Rodriguez, who was the Yankees second biggest signing. Rodriguez was essentially described as a glove first shortstop who can hit line-drives. The only other signing Badler mention from the 2013-2014 class was Orby Taveras. Taveras is a very recent signing; he signed for 50,000 in October.. Based off of Badler's writeup, he sound like an intriguing pitcher. The 19 year old righty throws a 90 MPH fastball. His secondary pitch is a changeup, and he also throws a slider/cutter. 

Badler also mentioned two players from the previous year IFA class that might not have been signed by the time he wrote last years review. These two players are Frank Frias and Jhon Morban. Both of these players played in the DSL last season, and did pretty well.
 
Here is the link for the entire article: http://www.baseballamerica.com/international/international-reviews-new-york-yankees/

** Brian Hoch, from MLB.com, had a little info on Yangervis Solarte. It was a short interview that really painted Solarte as a player desperate to finally make it to the majors. One interesting note from the article was that the Rangers apparently promised to promote him to the majors last season but didn't. This is interesting after hearing what Ian Kinsler recently said about his former team, but this type of thing probably happens a lot.

http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140304&content_id=68703342&notebook_id=68704008&vkey=notebook_nyy&c_id=nyy

** Lastly, Chad Jennings reports that Tyler Austin is feeling a lot better. Hopefully his wrist is fine but I'm scarred that he will eventually need surgery. After all he has been struggling with this wrist injury for almost a year now.

https://twitter.com/LoHudYankees/status/440977835159609345

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Josh Sabo is minor league writer for Yanks Beat Blog

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