As various reports have indicated were coming over the last 48 hours, the Yankees in junction with their minor league affiliates announced a flurry of roster moves that involved 20 players across all four of the full-season teams. Most of the moves centered around Double-A Somerset where the Patriots accounted for 15 players either coming or going,.
Pitchers Ken Waldichuk, Luis Media, Hayden Wesneski and Zach Greene joined the Patriots on promotions from High-A Hudson Valley. Pitchers Nick Green and Addison Russ joined the team after being sent down from Triple-A Scranton.
Waldichuk, a 23-year old southpaw who was largely off the radar when the season began, has been arguably the biggest surprise over the first month-plus of the minor league season. The Yankees 2019 fifth-round draft selection out of St.Mary’s has gone 30.2 innings over seven starts without allowing a single earned run – he has fanned 55 and walked just 12 batters while holding the opposition to a .120 batting average. Our resident scouting expert and Hudson Valley beat writer Steve Alhona provided an in-depth scouting report on Waldichuk, which you can check out here.
The 22-year old Medina is ranked as the ninth best prospect in the Yankees system by Baseball America and he joins a dynamic Somerset rotation after going 2-1 with a 2.76 ERA with 50 strikeouts and 19 walks in 32.2 innings of work over seven starts. The righty has long been heralded for his elite pure stuff, but command issues have prevented him from taking the next step. Having pitched to a 1.61 WHIP over his first four seasons in the system, the Dominican-native is pitching to a very strong 1.13 mark in 2021. In his final start for Hudson Valley on June 9, Mike Ashmore clocked Medina on his radar gun at 101 MPH.
Wesneski, a 2019 sixth-round draft selection out of Sam Houston, is also off to a stellar start to his 2021 campaign after seven dominant starts for the Renegades. The 23-year old righty went 1-1 with a 1.49 ERA with 47 punch outs and just nine walks in 36.1 innings. In his first full-season, Wesneski, a Houston-native, has found himself on the MLB Pipeline organizational top-30. You can check out an exclusive interview that we did with Wesneski shortly after being drafted here.
Zach Greene is another 2019 Yankees draft selection, an eighth-rounder out of the University of South Alabama. The 24-year old right-hander has fanned 33 batters and held the opposition to just a .092 batting average in 20.1 innings out of the Hudson Valley bullpen.
Pitchers Luis Gil, Matt Krook and Greg Weissert promoted from Somerset to Triple-A Scranton. Infielder Oliver Dunn was sent down to High-A Hudson Valley along with pitchers Reid Anderson, Carlos Espinal and Shawn Semple.
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