George Lombard Jr. is tearing through Double-A Somerset, hitting.350/.420/.650 with a 172 wRC+ before Thursday’s game while piling up six doubles, four home runs and three stolen bases in 69 plate appearances.
The Yankees drafted Lombard in June 2023 as a shortstop, and he entered pro ball as an extremely toolsy but raw 18-year-old prospect who had not yet made his MLB debut. He is doing it again with a swing that looks cleaner than the one he brought into the year, when his hands sat higher and closer to his body in 2025.
The numbers are loud enough to matter because they come after a more uneven stretch at the same level. Last year, Lombard hit.185 with an 86 wRC+ in his first 24 Double-A games before finishing the season with a 111 wRC+ over 469 plate appearances. He had already shown what his bat could do in High-A, slashing.329/.495/.488 with a 194 wRC+ in 24 games, but the jump to Double-A tested him in a way that took time to solve.
That pattern is part of why the current run stands out. Lombard entered the year with a.243 batting average and a.376 slugging percentage in the minor leagues, a reminder that he was still learning how to turn raw tools into production. Now he is driving the ball with more authority, with 31.9 percent of his contact as line drives and an even split of 34 percent ground balls and 34 percent fly balls.
The tension is that the pace should not be taken at face value. A home run on every four fly balls is not sustainable, and his current production is likely to cool off as the season goes on. Even so, the shape of the performance matters more than the hot streak itself. Lombard looks like a player who could eventually profile as a high-OBP shortstop with 25 home runs and 40 stolen bases, which is the kind of ceiling that keeps the Yankees watching closely in Somerset.
