Prospect Cohen Shines in Yankees Farm System

Much to the delight of millions of Jewish residents of the Tri-State area, the New York Yankees organization has had a robust Jewish presence this summer. While the big-league team has ace pitcher Max Fried and bench coach Brad Ausmus, its Triple-A affiliate, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, currently have a stable of Jewish pitchers in Jake Bird, Scott Effross, Eric Reyzelman, and Harrison Cohen. However, it is Cohen, a delightful young man from Long Island who joined the Yankees as an undrafted free agent out of George Washington University in 2022, who has the most authentic homegrown connection to the fabled franchise.

Long Island — and Cohen’s hometown of Syosset — may be associated most closely with the New York Mets, who play their home games in nearby Flushing, but Cohen grew up in a nuclear and extended family of diehard Yankees fans. Though he missed out on the Bronx Bombers’ late-nineties dynastic years, Cohen retains vivid memories of the final days of old Yankee Stadium and the team’s last World Series title in 2009 when icons Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte (Cohen got to shoot the breeze with him for a few minutes during this past spring training) and Jorge Posada were nearing the end of their illustrious careers.

“The Yankees were always on in my house, and I grew up idolizing Jorge Posada and wore the No. 20 for my entire career,” Cohen shared when speaking to the AJT earlier this month. “Old Yankee Stadium, I was there all the time.”

There was one special time, in fact, when Cohen wasn’t merely a spectator at The House That Ruth Built, but also got the dreamy opportunity to score pregame field passes to meet the aforementioned legends during batting practice. The pinnacle of the afternoon, which to this day represents his fondest memory of his early fandom, was tossing some pitches to the eventual Hall of Famer Rivera in the cavernous outfield of a soon-to-be demolished Yankee Stadium.

Seventeen years later, it seems only a matter of time before Cohen is tossing actual pitches off the new Yankee Stadium mound. After acing his lower-level minor-league assignments over the past few years, Cohen earlier this summer was bumped up to Triple-A where, as of this past weekend, he’s posted a 1.35 ERA without giving up a single homer over 20 appearances. One stop from Yankee Stadium, Cohen has flashed signs of big-league readiness and could possibly get promoted, if not next month when rosters expand slightly, at some point early next year.

“The talent level is there regardless of what level you’re at,” added Cohen, who would certainly consider pitching for Team Israel during next year’s World Baseball Classic in Miami, if such an opportunity presented itself. “I think it’s a lot of learning about yourself. A lot of game planning has gone into my process. Really getting and sticking to a routine for me has been a really big difference-maker with going level to level.”

Cohen’s fellow relievers, Effross and Bird, who was acquired from the Colorado Rockies at the Trade Deadline, have spent time on a Yankees team whose injury-riddled bullpen has faced headwinds. It would be only natural for an up-and-coming prospect such as Cohen to pay close attention to the parent club’s crop of relievers as one injury setback or string of subpar performances could be his ticket to a high-octane pennant race. But as a dyed-in-the-wool Yankees fan who has befriended several of the recent call-ups, Cohen doesn’t have any self-serving reasons for being glued to Yankees games on TV — when they don’t conflict with his.

Old Yankee Stadium, I was there all the time.

“I know a fair number of the guys. I’ve met a lot of them through my time,” explained Cohen. “I keep up with guys but at heart, I’m a Yankee fan, so I always will still check in and watch the games. In a way, I try to separate myself from anything that I’m doing and just be able to sit down and watch a Yankee game.”

There was a time — just over three years ago — when the prospect of pitching in any major league ballpark, let alone Yankee Stadium, didn’t seem particularly likely. In late summer 2022, Cohen had one more year of college eligibility remaining and was mentally prepared to return to GW, a school in which he ranked 18th in program history in strikeouts (201) and 19th in wins (14). He had already gone through the draft process three times without hearing his name called — “In 2022, that was the year I really thought I had a good chance, and then seeing it go day after day with hearing nothing, it was disappointing” — but in mid-August, days before classes were slated to resume, the Yankees called him to come down to their spring training complex in Tampa to ink his first pro contract.

But since that uncertain juncture of his baseball career, Cohen has proven capable of consistently getting batters out all throughout his minor-league journey, one that has included stops in Fishkill, N.Y., and Bridgewater, N.J., in addition to his current home in northeast Pennsylvania. He may refer to joining Fried on the Yankees pitching staff as the proverbial dream come true, but truthfully, with each day that he continues to excel in high-leverage situations against quasi-big-league hitters, his career-defining moment appears to be a matter of when, not if.

The meaningfulness is hard to put into words, but Cohen’s able to succinctly articulate how he expects to feel.

“I would say that the first emotion would just be joy. It’s special regardless of [the venue], but the idea of making it and debuting at Yankee Stadium with the team that I grew up rooting for — and still root for — would be just an absolute dream come true.”