Estevan Florial was frustrated, but he had to speak with his bat rather than his mouth.
The one-time top Yankees prospect destroyed Triple-A competition with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
His .945 OPS ranked fourth and his 28 home runs were sixth in the International League.
He also played a solid center field.
And then, he watched as teammates and fellow outfielders, such as Franchy Cordero, Jake Bauers, Billy McKinney, Willie Calhoun, and eventually Everson Pereira and Jasson Dominguez, received call-ups to the majors first.
“To complain was not going to solve anything. It was not going to do anything to help,” Florial said this week. “The only thing you can do is prove what type of player you are.”
Florial kept playing, proved himself at the highest minor league level, and now is trying to do the same — in a hurry — before the major league season comes to a close.
He was finally summoned Sept. 11, after Dominguez suffered an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery, and has shown flashes — but not extended ones — of production in his latest attempt to adjust to major league pitching.
Once a highly regarded, toolsy prospect, the now 25-year-old Florial has never put it all together and has not consistently hit at the highest level. He entered play Friday with a career .191 major league average and .582 OPS in his first 100 plate appearances. He has gotten brief chances that he did not run with in 2020, 2021, 2022 and now this season.
But he also was the Yankees’ leadoff hitter on Friday, a nod both to the team wanting to see more of his at-bats and Florial beginning to show more with his at-bats.
On Thursday, Florial drew an eight-pitch walk and smacked an RBI double against Toronto southpaw Tim Mayza — the lefty-hitting Florial’s first career RBI against a lefty.
After his 10th game of this major league season, his on-base percentage sat at .351.
“I think he’s done a good job of seeing pitches here,” manager Aaron Boone said before Florial went 2-for-5 with an RBI during the Yankees’ 7-1 win over the Diamondbacks. “He’s been getting on base a little bit, which has been nice.”
Seeing pitches and swinging at the right ones has been a focus for Florial, whose emergence at Triple-A coincided with his walking a bit more and striking out a bit less. A better ability to ignore pitches out of the strike zone and take his walks has shown up in the majors, and he had drawn five walks in his first 37 plate appearances this season, an improved 13.5 percent rate.
Florial said he has changed plenty, primarily with his approach rather than with his swing, since his last major league shot, in September 2022.
“There’s a lot of things going on,” Florial said. “The approach … I’ve been learning and adjusting through the year.”
Making better decisions of when to swing helped Florial nearly double his home run output, from 15 in 101 games with SWB last year to 28 in the same number of games this year. Translating that production to the majors has always been the hurdle.
Florial has eight more games to prove that he should survive the offseason on the 40-man roster, and to prove he at least could be a contender for a wide-open center field spot next season, with Dominguez set to miss a significant portion of the year.
It is a small amount of time, but Florial plans to take advantage of it.
“Every time you step in there is a tryout,” Florial said. “Every time you go to the field, it’s like: Show people what you can do and what you’re capable of.”
Thus far, he has shown the Yankees he can patrol the outfield well, has good power and speed, but also swings and misses too much. His at-bats have improved, which is a start.
“The competitive at-bats have been more consistent than we’ve seen before at this level,” Boone said.
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