Is Yankees top prospect George Lombard Jr. ready to play in MLB right now? These four scouts sure think so

Just before this year’s All-Star break, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman spoke about the club’s top position prospect, George Lombard Jr.

The 21-year-old shortstop was on the minor-league injured list with two sprained fingers on his glove (left) hand but was about to start a rehab assignment.

“He might be a choice at some point,” Cashman said of a  promotion to the majors this season. “More importantly, we just have to get him playing again and turning him loose again in Triple-A. Really talented player that offensively was coming a long way of closing the gap despite his age. Defensively, he’s plug-and-play, ready to go.”

Scouts have been saying the latter for a couple of years now.

Lombard’s defense has always been considered slightly ahead of his offense during his climb through the minors (though he primarily is a shortstop, the Yankees have had him play some second base and third base with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre). That's not to say the prevailing thought is that Lombard won’t be a capable hitter once he reaches the big leagues.

With shortstop continuing to be a bit of a black hole for the Yankees — offensively more than defensively — with Jose Caballero and Anthony Volpe, this question is being asked with increasing frequency, both by the fan base and within the organization:

Is Lombard, hitting .260 with five homers and an .832 OPS in 47  Triple-A games, “ready” for the majors?

A Newsday straw poll of four opposing team scouts assigned to the Yankees’ system — all of whom have seen Lombard at Triple-A either before his injury or after his return — resulted in varying forms of the same answer: “Yes.”

“Definitely,” one National League talent evaluator said. “Because he just came back [from the injury], I would give him more time [in Triple-A], but if the question is if he can play [in the majors] now, for me, yes.”

As has been the case in each of his stops in the minors, the righthanded-hitting Lombard struggled offensively in Triple-A after his late April promotion there but soon began figuring things out.

After going 19-for-103 (.184) with one homer and a .608 OPS in his first 27 games with Scranton, Lombard went 17-for-53 (.321) with three homers and a 1.072 OPS in his next 15 games before the IL stint.

Since coming off the IL, he’s gone 9-for-17 with a homer, three doubles and a 1.461 OPS in five games entering Friday night.

“He routinely struggles at every level for the first few weeks, then he flips the switch,” said a second NL scout who has seen Lombard at each of his stops in the minors. “And I would say he looked comfortable quicker in Triple-A than [Class A and Double-A] . . . Even when the results weren’t there [early with Scranton], he wasn’t overmatched. The at-bats were still pretty competitive. He had a plan, looked confident in what he was doing.”

The scout added: “Defensively he can play there [the big leagues], and most of us [scouts] were saying that last year. There’s still things he needs to work on offensively, so I’d like to see him finish off some of that before he comes up because I could see him overmatched at first [in the majors] because the pitching is so much better. But eventually he’d adjust.”

An American League scout, generally not prone to contributing to the hype that can surround some Yankees prospects, said Lombard “for me has checked all the boxes.”

“Have loved everything about him since rookie ball [2023],” the scout added. “I know they [the Yankees] talk up the intangibles, the leadership, you’ve seen it at every level. The pregame work, a tough situation comes up [in a game] . . . You see his teammates kind of instinctively look to him.”

If the Yankees bring up Lombard — who spent spring training each of the last two years in big-league camp and is fully bilingual in Spanish and English — this season, they won’t be looking at him for leadership. There is no shortage of that in a clubhouse that has established veterans Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Cody Bellinger, Gerrit Cole, Max Fried and Carlos Rodon.

But while praising Lombard’s talent, many of those veterans  quickly pivot to other attributes.

“The composure he has, he’s built for New York,” Judge said after Lombard was promoted to Triple-A.

Lombard, the Yankees' first-round pick in 2023, is the son of former big-leaguer George Lombard (currently the Tigers' bench coach). Bellinger, who like Lombard has a father (former Yankee Clay Bellinger) who played in the majors, said this week that he was most taken with Lombard’s “baseball IQ.”

“It’s special,” Bellinger said.

How did that show itself?

“It’s hard to put into words,” he said. “The instincts. You just kind of see it. I’ve never played with him, but I think it’s the ability to stick him anywhere on the field. It just seems like he knows what to do on a baseball field no matter where he’s at.”

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.