UPDATE: 3:13 PM: I said two days ago that I expected the Yankees to approach signability guys with the Powell Doctrine – overwhelming force – in the middle rounds. They didn’t do a ton of that yesterday, but as has been reporting on twitter, the Yankees haven’t touched a single organizational filler type guy today. They’ve already drafted over a dozen guys who are going to ask for huge signing bonuses. This strategy is what we expected after the fairly cheap top-2 picks they made. I’ll have more information later tonight.
After two long days, the fun part of the 2011 draft is now over. Teams will draft more players today, but for the most part will focus on organizational filler – someone has to be a 2nd shortstop for Staten Island this year. They may draft a few project, difficult signing type players, but not as much as from 1-30. The biggest news: look for Mariano Rivera Jr, a potential walk-on at Quinnipiac, to earn an honorary draft spot at some point.
I get the sense that Yankee fans are mostly disappointed by the first 30 rounds of the draft so far. Dante Bichette was drafted despite some names available for high signing bonuses. Sam Stafford was mostly an unknown and barely ranked. Corner, bad-body bats in Duran and Bird have serious flaws and uncertain positions. Few big bonus guys immediately jump out, although some exist (Justin Jones, Rookie Davis are the most obvious.
I urge caution. We know very little about the vast majority of these players, but that doesn’t mean they are bad picks. The Yankees keep things close to the vest, and tend to be a rather unorthodox club on draft day. People were underwhelmed following the 2010 draft, but after one year its looking like a great effort by the Yankees. Give it some time, see who signs and for how much, and wait for then we’ll judge the Yankee draft day.
A couple of thoughts:
- Dante Bichette screams a couple of things to me. First, they probably paid some extra attention to him thanks to his father’s friendship with Joe Girardi. This does not imply nepotism in any way. Early reports suggest that they might have been impressed both with his hitting ability and his makeup and work ethic, causing them to draft him higher than most teams valued him. I’d be very surprised if they didn’t draft him with a pre-draft deal, brokered by Uncle Girardi, in mind. He should sign quickly for an affordable amount. We’ll know much more about him around when the GCL season starts.
- Sam Stafford is a high-upside gamble on the Yankees’ part – exactly the kind of pick a perennial contender should be making. He has great strikeout stuff, poor control, and a noticeable lack of in-game experience despite his three years in Texas. LHPs with great stuff (His both a solid low-90s fastball and two strikeout breaking pitches) don’t grow on trees. At the 88th pick, the Yankees went with about as much upside as they could ask for. Like Bichette, he should also be a fairly cheap sign. Cross your fingers and hope Nardi Contreras and company can fix his control issues. We might get lucky and see some televised CWS games in the coming weeks from Stafford.
- Overall, it appears to be a fairly low-budget draft. That can obviously change, since I don’t have a lot of information about the bottom half of the first 30 draft picks. However, there is no big-budget Mason Williams or Brad Suttle or Dellin Betances picks to pay seven figures to. There isn’t even a robust supply of college sophomores to buy out. I can think of three possible reasons for this. The first is unlikely: Damon Oppenheimer saw his budget cut. The second is that the Yankees did not see a lot of opportunities in this draft worth the investment. The third is that the Yankees are holding money back to beat up the IFA market in July. Some mix of all three is possible.
- The Yankees really loaded up on college quick-throwing RP-types. They have a mixed record with college relief pitchers in the past, seeing J.B. Cox and Marc Melancon fail, while David Robertson was a tremendous success and Thomas Kahnle is looking like a decent prospect.
This draft looks nothing like the 2010 draft, which was loaded with athletic, up-the-middle high school prospects. The Yankees have a few of those guys, but mostly went for raw, projectable starting pitchers and bad-body corner bats with power. People say bad things about drafting for need, but honestly this draft looks like a potential compliment to last year’s. The Yankees brought in a lot of high school players to fill positions that Angelo Gumbs, Cito Culver, Mason Williams and Ben Gamel, and plenty of college pitchers who won’t take up rotation spots occupied by Gabe Encinas, Evan Rutckyj, and Taylor Morton. It serves no one’s interest to go overboard and have too many players in the same positions. At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with bad-body power hitters. They can be sometimes.
Wait to judge this draft at all until the signing deadline in August. At that point, we’ll know who the Yankees actually successfully added to the organization, and more about those individuals. We’ll provide you plenty of coverage here at TYA up until then, but the picture will be incomplete until everyone knows the true result of the draft.
Use this as your open thread for Day 3 of the draft.
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So everyone says you take BPA, but at the same time you say “it serves no one’s interest to go overboard and have too many players at the same position.” Then to cap it off, the Yankees seem to always draft catchers, which would go against this logic also I think.
People could say what they want about this draft. I won’t even pretend to be able to judge it, because that would be ignorant. However, if Josh Bell is a consensus top 15 player in what EVERY expert deems an incredibly deep draft, and the Yankees pass on him, he better not sign with Pittsburg. Maybe Dante’s son is great, I don’t know. I just feel that if you strike out in this draft while Boston, Toronto and Tampa all crush the draft, the Yankees fall further back (they don’t improve their system while the others tremendously do). They could have easily paid Norris the 3.9 million he wanted, and compensated for their lack of a first round pick.
I hope I’m wrong. It just seems like they blew this, but again, I wouldn’t know if they did or not until results are seen in the bigs.
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EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Just to clarify: I intended that sentence as a slight denouncement of “Take BPA” as a strategy. In yesterday’s chat, I argued that in reality there are 5 or 10 guys on your draft board by the time you get past the 3rd round or so who are basically worth the same to you. You have to break the tie somehow, and need/balance/playing time figure into that thinking.
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YankeesJunkie Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
That is perfectly understandable. After the first 5 or 10 picks the BPA becomes larger and larger. However, there is no way that I can be convinced that Bichette was top 10 BPA in the first round and considering how deep the draft was even 88 was a stretch with Stafford. What is more upsetting is that I can look at BA top 30 prospects for teams like Tampa and Toronto and each have multiple guys in the top 10 or 20 drafted from the 2010 draft in the first round supplemental. On the other hand the Yankees choose Cito Culver. Either the Yankees are looking at it at an incredibly enlightened way or they are just missing with their scouting and at this point it is always a lot more possible to believe the second one.
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Jay Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 2:17 pm
I missed yesterdays chat, so that makes sense. Ky point though still holds true; when the Yankees have one pick in the top 50 and their rival teams have multiple picks, the ability to hit on their top pick becomes even more important. Theyseem to have missed out on a fantastic draft. Their finances could have made up for their lack of a first. They could have gone Bell and Norris, paying them ten million combined and picking org guys the rest of the way. I coach an AAU travel team, but I can’t pretend to be able to scout for major league talent.
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EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 2:28 pm
I think its not worth it to compare the Yankee draft to the other AL East teams. The Yankees had a pick at 51 and a pick at 88. The Red Sox had #19, #26, #36 and #40, the and the Rays and Blue Jays each had a million picks. There is no situation where the Yankee draft looks good compared to those monster picks. Yet another reason not to sign Rafael Soriano.
And really, its not like the Rays and Sox just signed a half dozen MLB free agents. They drafted a bunch of players, who may or may not work out 3-5 years down the line. Its a powerful move on each organization’s part, but its nothing too killer. The Yankees organization was already miles ahead of the Red Sox, and is still much better, and was pretty comparable with the Rays pre-draft.
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MJ Recanati Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Dunno about “miles ahead of the Red Sox” once you do the annual reconcilation process at the end of the year to take stock of the risers/fallers. Last year the Yankees had a stupendous year in the minor leagues: Betances/Brackman/Banuelos all broke out, Adams was distinguishing himself before he got hurt, Laird was raking, Jose Ramirez was doing his best to replace Arodis Vizcaino…
With Vitek, Ceccini, Ranaudo, Brentz, et al. from last year’s draft and the guys they pulled in yesterday (coupled with somewhat diminished results from the aforementioned Yankee prospects), we shouldn’t proclaim “NYY Farm > BOS Farm” just yet.
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EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 2:41 pm
I’m very, very ready to do that. The Red Sox are seriously short on star potential. The Yankees followed up last year with some disappointment (Brackman, Sanchez, Adams, Laird), some expected slow downs (Banuelos, Betances, Warren), and a whole bunch of potential big breakouts (The entire Charleston Riverdogs lineup, plus some of the rotation). Even if the Red Sox sign their top picks, they aren’t on the Yankees level at all yet.
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MJ Recanati Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
But if disappointment and expected slowdowns are occuring then it alters future expectations, no?
You can’t look at Banuelos today and feel exactly the same about him as you did on this date last year, can you?
Ranaudo doesn’t have star potential? He’s only in A-ball but has #1 upside, does he not? Hasn’t Bryce Brentz started hitting?
Both are a long ways off from Fenway but so are the Charleston kids, after all.
EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
I think the best way to characterize the net season for the Yankee farm system is, “Its just as good as it was at the start of the season”. Murphy and Heathcott (as we’ll learn in two weeks with my Top-30 mid seaosn ranking) have broken out in huge, huge ways, and solid, if unspectacular, performances out of guys like Noesi, Romine, Montero, Corban Joseph, David Phelps, Adam Warren, etc offset some disappointment from guys like Laird, Melky Mesa, Brackman, etc and the solid but flawed starts from Banuelos and Betances.
And yeah, the Sox added some guys, but the Yankees added some too. Plus, we’ve got IFA’s coming soon.
Seems to me that the Yanks have too many hands stirring the organizational pot… Freidman and Epstein run the show in Tampa & Boston period. Give Cashman free rein & stop with the Levine meddling. Not sure what Hank’s thinking is here. It seems that they still treat the draft like a necessary evil as opposed to embracing it as only this organization can.
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EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
While I agree that Levine needs to shut up and handle the business side of things only, there is no evidence so far that he or the Steinbrenners or anyone else is interfering with the Yankee draft room. Cashman pretty much lets Damon Oppenheimer handle things, and he’s been very successful for some time now.
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EJ, just a minor nitpick: why do you say Melancon was a failed draft pick? He came back from surgery in 2008 and made it up to AAA where he spent the next two seasons, in part for seasoning and in part because the Yankees still had arms ahead of him in the pecking order.
He pitched a total of 20 somewhat underwhelming innings for the big club between 2009 and 2010 (only four last year) before being traded to Houston in the Lance Berkman deal.
If you look at relief pitching prospects as generally fungible then Melancon served his purpose as trade bait to help solidify a Yankee weakness during their playoff run last year. And, in looking at his performance only, I’d say he pitched well enough as a farmhand to where he wasn’t a failure. Certainly not on the level of a JB Cox who can’t get anyone out anymore…
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EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
I mentioned this on Twitter: Failed is probably too strong of a word. “Disappointing” is a better one. He had some nerves problems in NY, so they had to trade him. If they had confidence that he would fulfill his potential in the big market, I can’t imagine they would have included him in a Lance Berkman salary dump.
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MJ Recanati Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
Even if he had not “failed”, it’s hard to see where he’d have fit in with the Yanks. Apparently Hank/Hal/Randy/Lon were intent on signing Soriano so there would’ve been no RHP vacancy for him this year.
I realize that they traded him last year but, at a certain point, it was time for him to either graduate or get a shot elsewhere and bring back something of value to the 25-man roster. As a guy touted as a future closer, it’s hard to fill that role when the guy currently holding down the job is a demi-God.
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EJ Fagan Reply:
June 8th, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Yeah, that’s basically how I feel. It really was amazing how different he looked in NY than in the minors. He went from a strike-throwing machine with a reputation for good makeup to a nervous guy who couldn’t throw one over the plate. He might just have needed an extended audition where he could adjust and get used to the pressure, but that wasn’t coming.
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