Day 2 In the Books

The Yanks made 29 more picks today and the overwhelming themes were Power and Velocity. Holy smokes, did they add a lot of both. All of the prep hitters have considerable pop, and almost all of the pitchers feature mid-90s or better stuff. A lot of folks who follow the draft get caught up in the names of players they've read about, but a lot of people don't have huge scouting departments who look for talent, rather than names. Just because one "signability" kid has a bigger profile right now than another, doesn't mean he's necessarily better.

Once again, the Yanks, who's farm system has improved by leaps and bounds since Cash turned more attention there, and Damon Oppenheimer started running the drafts, went their own way with the prep market. Today they popped several intriguing, huge upside kids who did not get a lot of pre-draft pub. I'll get into this more when we see the whole class, but the Yanks really are looking for Yankee types, and the way the criteria they are using to scout hitters has changed mightily, starting with the picks of Slade Heathcott and JR Murphy, who were both named Sally League All Stars today, at the top of the 2009 draft.

One of the organizational favorites from last years draft was Tyler Austin, who has really impressed the Yanks in extended. Well, several of the hitters the Yanks took today could well be called, "The Sons of Tyler Austin." They are all big power hitters, with great personalities who love to play the game. We even got a guy named Bubba!

On the pitching side, I think a few high upside lefties we were hoping for didn't quite make it to our picks, but we still got a couple very interesting lefties, and at least three righties with mile high potential.

Like last year we mixed in some college relievers, and some interesting college position players with pop. We picked a few more preps as the day was winding down, and it will be interesting to see what tomorrow's mix looks like. We have 20 more picks. Go Yanks!