When the Athletics handed Johenssy Colome a $4 million bonus in January, they weren’t just buying upside. They were betting on a teenager whose tools had already pushed international evaluators into familiar territory, with one comparing his defensive work to a young Manny Machado and another seeing Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at the same age in the way Colome creates leverage.
That’s a lot for a 17-year-old to carry, but Colome comes with a baseball pedigree that makes the spotlight feel a little less new. He’s the son of Jesus Colome, a big league reliever for 10 seasons, and his older cousin Alex Colomé was an All-Star in 2016 and logged 450 major league appearances over 11 years. On his mother’s side, he also has two uncles who were top prospects.
The A’s clearly saw something special in the 2026 international crop’s No. 5 prospect. His signing bonus was the second-highest in the class, and after getting his pro career started this summer in his native Dominican Republic, he climbed to No. 5 on the Athletics’ Top 30 Prospects list. That’s the highest a homegrown international position player has ranked for the club since Robert Puason checked in at No. 4 in 2020.
The start wasn’t exactly smooth. Colome missed the opening of the Dominican Summer League because of injury, then opened his pro career in a rough patch at the plate, going 0-for-10 and then 1-for-16.
But the stat line didn’t tell the full story. Over his first six games, he drew seven walks and struck out only four times, picked up two RBIs and stole two bases while sticking with an advanced approach.
Two weeks later, he had pushed his OPS above .900 after a 10-game run in which he hit .353/.532/.618.
He kept building from there. By the end of the DSL regular season on Aug.
18, Colome led the A’s club with a .956 OPS. Across 32 games, the right-handed hitter showed the kind of strike-zone judgment that can separate a talented teen from a truly dangerous one, drawing walks in 21 percent of his plate appearances and finishing with a .471 on-base percentage.
The power is part of the attraction, too. Colome homered twice in the DSL, but he also added four triples and six doubles, and his 146 wRC+ ranked second among Athletics prospects this season with at least 100 minor league plate appearances, behind only big league outfielder Henry Bolte. He finished his first pro season slashing .283/.471/.485, with 29 walks against 24 strikeouts and a perfect 9-for-9 mark on stolen-base attempts.
Defensively, the A’s didn’t move him around much. Colome made 31 starts in the field, and every one of them came at shortstop. There will be a learning curve when he reaches the United States, but the arm strength that helped fuel those Machado comparisons gives him a real chance to remain on the left side of the infield.
Colome wasn’t the only player from the 2026 international class to make noise. Luis Hernández (SF No.
2 / MLB No. 27), Francisco Renteria (PHI No.
3 / MLB No. 81) and Angeibel Gomez (KC No. 3 / MLB No. 84) have already reached Top 100 prospect status.
Hernández skipped the DSL and started in the Arizona Complex League before moving up to Single-A, Renteria earned DSL MVP honors, and Gomez put together an 1.120 OPS.
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