My planned trip to Somerset for their doubleheader with Portland, which would have gotten me 14 innings of both Franklin Arias and George Lombard Jr. — the top prospects for the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees, respectively — didn’t quite pan out, as the Yankees promoted Lombard to Triple A on Tuesday night. It is the second year in a row Lombard moved up within 24 hours of when I was scheduled to see him, and I take that personally. I went anyway, getting two games of Arias, a rehab start from Gerrit Cole, and a look at a maybe-not-quite-washed-yet Marco Luciano.
Arias is off to an incredible start, coming into the doubleheader with a .407/.471/.831 line and just a 10.3 percent strikeout rate as a 20-year-old in Double A. I didn’t get the best outcomes, as he went 1 for 8 with two strikeouts (one against Cole), although he was also robbed of at least a double to end the first game.
He shows plenty of bat speed and mostly took good at-bats, sometimes adjusting to breaking stuff but also missing badly twice on sliders well out of the zone. He showed excellent hands at shortstop and made every play in Game 1, which was noticeable when he DH’d in Game 2 and his replacement struggled. It was just a meh day for him at the plate.
I do think this Cole kid has a future, although he was fairly old for his level. Returning from the Tommy John surgery that wiped out his 2025 season, Cole threw exactly 60 pitches — he was pulled in the middle of an at-bat, and, I mean, I understand having rules and limits and such, but there were two outs and two strikes, I think he could have tried to finish the inning.
He was 93-96 with four pitches, with everything looking plus aside from the velocity. He didn’t seem like he was working that hard, with very little effort in the delivery at all and what looked more like a plan to have him work through all of his pitches rather than setting hitters up and going for strikeouts. He retired the first 11 batters he faced, opening the game by striking out Arias looking, then gave up a weakly hit single followed by a hard-hit home run by Portland catcher Johanfran Garcia. Cole allowed one other hit, a solo home run, walking nobody and striking out three.
That’s obviously not the velocity we’re used to from Cole, but a) he might not have been airing it out and b) he’s got plenty of weapons to be effective even at 93-96.
Luciano, a former top 100 prospect, joined the Yankees this winter as a waiver claim and was later outrighted to the minor leagues. He spent all of 2025 in Triple A with the Giants, where he hit a very disappointing .214/.335/.413. He doesn’t really belong in Double A after playing two full seasons in Triple A and the majors, so while he’s doing a lot of damage, hitting his seventh homer during the doubleheader among multiple very hard-hit balls, he really needs to be challenged again in Triple A.
He’s very strong, and he’s moving around well after he seemed to lose some flexibility in the wake of his 2023 lower back injury. He’s shifted over to second base after playing mostly shortstop and then some outfield in the Giants’ organization. He’ll be worth revisiting if the Yankees move him up to Scranton-Wilkes Barre, or if another team with a path to playing time trades for him and promotes him.
Somerset started right-hander Cade Smith in the first game, and he was a machine, working extremely quickly while allowing just five baserunners in six innings. He’s 91-93 with a little carry up top, while his slider is close to plus, and several of those looked like sweepers rather than true sliders, which explains why he’s almost totally junked his curveball. He’s going to be a reliever, lacking enough fastball or a weapon for lefties to let him start, but could be a good one-inning guy.
Right-hander Blake Wehunt started the second game for Portland and threw strikes, unusual for him, in a three-inning outing. He was 95-96 on the two-seamer with a cutter, changeup (which he used to fan Luciano), and a sweeper that varied its shape a little, prettier when it had more curveball-like depth but a better pitch when he swept it harder at 85. A senior drafted in the ninth round in 2023 out of Kennesaw State, Wehunt was in Portland’s rotation last year but walked too many and lefties crushed him. He barely uses his changeup, but it has some fade to it, and if he uses it more to lefties he could end up a decent reliever.
On Tuesday night, I saw Asheville at Wilmington to catch Nationals shortstop prospect Ronny Cruz, who was just promoted to High A after hitting .333/.460/.627 for Low-A Fredericksburg in 14 games. Cruz has excellent bat speed and showed some ability to adjust between at-bats, striking out on breaking stuff in his first time up and then singling on a curveball from the same pitcher in his next plate appearance.
His pitch recognition isn’t great, and he wants the ball out more over the plate, getting very short and defensive when the last pitcher of the game came inside with 91. He’s an above-average runner and really looks like he can handle shortstop, with soft hands and plenty of arm. The Nationals picked him up at the trade deadline last year in the deal that sent Michael Soroka to the Cubs, with their analytics department and pro scout Jay Robertson (who was let go in the fall) helping target Cruz after he’d only played one season in the Arizona Complex League. Right now it looks like a steal.
Ethan Petry continues to hit, and the Nats’ 2025 second-rounder shouldn’t be much longer for High A, given that he’s a 22-year-old SEC product who’s now hitting .324/.448/.451 (through Tuesday’s game). It’s an easy, pretty right-handed swing that gets the ball in the air a ton; he was fooled by a curveball right-on-right, got way out in front, and still pulled it to the left field wall.
Defensively, he’s splitting time between first base and right field. I was skeptical about his ability to handle the outfield last spring, but I’ve seen him several times now and he can do it. If he keeps his strikeout rate from climbing when he reaches Double A, I’ll be all in on him as a future regular with above-average upside.
Second baseman Devin Fitz-Gerald, part of the return from the Rangers for MacKenzie Gore, continued his tremendous season at the plate. He homered off an 89-mph fastball, just barely clearing the right field wall, and then hit a ball to the wall in center field that the outfielder misplayed into a triple. He’s only 20 and played in 41 games all of last year around injuries; so far he’s hitting .293/.418/.507 in 18 games, with more steals than he had in 2025 and almost as many extra-base hits already. This helps ease the blow of Gavin Fien having a rough start on both sides of the ball — Fien’s throwing is a mess, and he’s on the IL now with inflammation in his non-throwing wrist.
That center fielder who misplayed Fitz-Gerald’s hit was Astros prospect Ethan Frey, their 2025 third-rounder who had a tremendous pro debut in Low A after signing. He looked like he’d never seen a breaking ball before in his life, and he misread a line-drive single right at him in center in addition to the Fitz-Gerald “triple.” Frey is big and strong and he moves well for his size, but he’s not hitting at all — he’s slugging .268, and you’d think someone his size would luck into more than that — and he’s definitely not a center fielder.