Reliever Yankees lost in Rule 5 Draft progressing in Rays system

DURHAM, N.C. – For all the complaints about the Yankees inability to develop players, the organization sure does get picked apart in the Rule 5 Draft every year.

This past December was no different, but while Matt Sauer and Mitch Spence’s selections by the Kansas City Royals and Oakland Athletics, respectively, in the major-league phase of the Draft got all the attention, it’s one of the players taken on the minor-league side who’s been making some noise lately.

Michael Gomez, a 27-year-old middle reliever from Upland, California, had spent three relatively non-descript years in the Yankees system from 2021-23, including the entirety of that first season with the Somerset Patriots and a brief stay the following year before ending up in Triple-A Scranton for the remainder of his stay in the system.

With their first-round pick in the minor-league phase of this offseason’ s Rule 5 Draft, the Tampa Bay Rays spent $24,000 to select Gomez; unlike the major-league phase, he doesn’t need to stick on the 40-man roster or even be offered back to his original franchise.

Once the pick was made, he was a Ray no matter what.

“I found out, it was the day before, that there could be a Rule 5 chance (for me) here,” Gomez said from just outside the home clubhouse at the beautifully renovated Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

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“And I was like, ‘Oh, OK. That would be cool.’ It’s just nice to get a change of scenery every now and then, because you do kind of get locked into repeating the same thing every day. So, it’s just going into a new org. with a new mindset to continue with the goal that I’ve had before, but with just a little change of scenery.”

So far, so good.

Gomez has whiffed 31 of the 93 batters he’s faced thus far for the Bulls, good for a 33.3 K rate, best on the team among pitchers with five or more innings. Even if some of the more traditional numbers have lagged a bit early in the season – he’s 0-2 with a 5.03 ERA in his first 12 outings – the peripherals show he’s continuing to progress, including that career-best 14.2 K:9 ratio.

“We kind of looked at some of the data and saw there was potential for a little bit more swing-and-miss with some four-seam (fastballs),” Gomez said. “So, I started increasing the usage. It always helps being competitive in the zone, but it was increasing that usage and changing how I use my pitches. That was something we hadn’t really explored too deeply (with the Yankees), it was something where it was like, ‘Hey, maybe we could try throwing this,’ but we never really fully embraced it, and I also wasn’t executing it as well as I could have with them.”

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Still awaiting his big-league debut, Gomez also got a longer look in major-league spring training, getting into five games and striking out five batters in four innings of work. While many pitchers in Triple-A are still struggling with the adjustment to what seems to be an ever-changing strike zone, as well as the ABS pitch review system in some games – Gomez says it’s more important than ever to attack hitters and not nibble – he handled himself well in something of an audition for hoping to be able to prove himself to his new organization at the game’s highest level down the road.

“I feel like they really gave me a good opportunity to show what I can do, so I did feel like they value me in that sense,” he said.  “So far here, it’s been pretty good.”

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Reliever Yankees lost in Rule 5 Draft progressing in Rays system