New CBA Yankee Draft Thoughts

Just when you really get the hang of something -- they go and change the rules. That’s the position in which the Yankees find themselves going forward with regard to the Rule 4 draft. Fortunately, both lessons and strategies of the past should stand them in good stead as they move to a more and more farm derived major league roster.

The new rules essentially give each drafting team a hard and fast budget based on draft postion and number of picks with a consideration of the team’s previous year’s draft spending. Each team is allowed a 5% overance. But progressive first round picks can be lost for exceeding their budget plus 5. This sort of eliminates the Yanks’ chief market advantage which has historically been their willingness to pay.

Of course, there could be a way around this. The picks that could possibly be forfeited by teams going 10% and further over their budget will be awarded to bad teams in an as yet to be determined formula. What has been determined, is that those picks will, for the first time, be available for trade. In other words, a team like the Yanks could acquire an additional first rounder through trade, which would then increase the calculation of their annual draft budget. That’s not a bad market to start studying every year and would give teams that are “farther away” an opportunity to get a little closer, while giving teams like the Yanks a chance at a real Yankee type player to add to their system through a bit of clever trading.

Further, the free agent compensation rules will change going forward. The old A and B system will be out and teams wil only be able to receive compensation for players lost by offering the player a contract valued at the average of the top 125 salaries in baseball, about 12.5M right now.

Seems like a pretty bad bet, unless you really like the player and the loss is genuinely painful, then the compensation may not be enough. That said, they did close up the loophole that allowed teams like the Red Sox to trade for walk year players and pick up extra picks by offering arb to those players. Players traded in the last year of their deals will no longer bring compensation to their new teams if they sign with someone else.

This year doesn’t have much of an impact on how the Yanks do business as they’ve avoided the risk of players they no longer wanted accepting arbitration and staying.

Two more issues come up for the Yanks: one, the new draft rules seem to establish a period in which draft eligible players can be medically examined before the Rule 4 takes place; and the deadline for signing players moves from mid-August to mid-July.

They complicate things to a degree but both should be navigable. The concern with the physicals is not that they will reveal injuries and pre-exisisting conditions, but that they may reveal a team’s interest. So I think some time should be spent on subterfuge looking at prospects that BA might like, but the Yanks would never draft. It’s unclear how private the physicals will be, but if kids can just be checked out when they visit Tampa, subterfuge might not be necessary.

The mid-July deadline is both good and bad. It’s good that players can get into the system more quickly and less development is lost. It’s bad because summer draft and follows may become things of the past. Why wouldn’t agents just shut the kids down for a month while deals get made? How that plays out remains to be seen, but with a finite and fixed budget each year, many decisions will have to be made before or during the draft on who’s going to get the money.

A final tweek that really shouldn’t effect the Yanks is that teams will no longer be able to offer major league deals to drafted players, unless they are two sport athletes. It’s unclear if those bonuses will still be splttable, at the same time, the Yanks should probably stick to drafting baseball players. The Shea Morenz years seem to thankfully be long gone.

Because of the finite budget each team will have generated, it seems like the first ten rounds will be closely watched, while the back 40 will be catch as catch can with what you have left. So draft order might become more important in those first ten picks, ie, you might want to take a Mason Williams or Greg Bird first, or much later in the new format.

So how can the Yanks take advantage of the new rules?

The chief way will be by playing the comp pick trade market.

Otherwise, the Yanks should probably continue the things they have been doing in terms of spending on creating an overwhelming scouting advantage. Let’s face it, anyone can spot a top 5 player, but it’s trickier to find a kid who projects to be something good, and trickier still to spot a kid who projects to be a Yankee.

Here’s where it will be trickier for the Yanks. The Yanks have been moving to a more prep based model over the past few years, and it makes all the sense in the world for the Yanks for a variety of reasons, primarily because prep picks offer the Yanks the greatest possible return. What’s more, they don’t have the dings and haven’t taken the abuse of college picks. They’re also much more likely to make it to the bigs by their early 20s.

The problem is, the Yanks will have to hope they can get great players for slightly less. The ways to do this are a) keep finding kids like Dante Bichette Jr. who will be top prospects but will also sign for slot, b) come up with more system extras to offer prep parents - things like book clubs or something - that convey a human interest in the young players, and c) really get ahead of the drafts and choose certain years to go way over the 5% allowance to have the kids that must be had, with the idea that the forfeited pick or picks could be recovered or improved in trade.

In order to make the decisions that will have to be made in each draft, it’s essential that the scouts start looking for Yankees instead of looking for major leaguers.

So how do you pick the Yankees out of the future major leaguers out of the organizational types, etc.

For position players, it’s really rather easy and it seems to have been figured out over the past two drafts. You look for Yankee Bats. These are the kids with bat speed, that either have now power, or project to have power once they fill out, but already have the quick bat, the direct stroke and let the ball get deep.

Now where a lot scouts have made mistakes on “power” and “future power” is assuming every kid who can square up 92 is gonna add power. The thing is, a lot of these kids have to load up to do it, and the way you can tell who’s loading up, is by how much trouble they do or do not have with the curve ball and the change. Melky Mesa, for example, has terrific power, but must be loading for the fastball because he has a crappy average most years and isn’t making hay on the breaking stuff. Now that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have the talent to square up a fastball without cheating, but then you have to try telling HIM that because he’s the only one who doesn’t believe it, and is thus messing up his whole development. As an aside, I think it might be time to direct him to the pitchers mound.

Anyway, a kid like Dante Bichette has now power, uses the whole field and takes his walks. He has a Yankee Bat. At the same time, Mason Williams doesn’t have now power, but he has nice pop, and he hit .350 as a 19 year old in a college league last summer. Hitting .350 means he is letting the ball get deep, indentifying it, and hitting it. He has a Yankee Bat, and projects to have some pop. You can project that because he’s not cheating to hit fastballs, no one can stay as skinny as he is, and because his Dad gave him NFL genes.

But between the two of them, you have the Yankee models for a corner guy and an up the middle guy. So the position players the Yanks draft should fit those types.

The organization really shouldn’t waste too much time on kids they HOPE will hit. They should take the kids with Yankee Bats who don’t have to load up to hit the fastball, and are already identifying some pitches because they are able to swing later. It will be easier to get them to walk.

Speed is a helpful attribute, but it’s nowhere near as important as having a Yankee Bat and at least the traits of someone who is going to be able to see pitches well, take his walks and limit his outs.

What’s more, kids with Yankee Bats grow into real Yankees, and don’t have to be paid tens of millions to join the team, like a Mark Teixeira or Jason Giambi before him. They also don’t have to be replaced. And the Yanks keep looking to replace guys who don’t have Yankee bats, and it’s EXPENSIVE. Instead the Yanks can get 6 great seasons for cheap, unless they want to do something sooner, and can keep freshening the deals as the kids become vets and then are either moved for younger assetts or retired. Cano has a Yankee Bat, though he should walk more, and Montero has a Yankee Bat and he should not be traded.

On the pitching side, there hasn’t been as much of a Yankee Type. The Yanks have won with all sorts of pitching over the decades -- and largely because of their Yankee Bats. Anyway, the Yanks should be looking for kids with good arms, that strike people out. Projectable bodies are great, too, but smaller guys will be underrated and should not be overlooked.

The Yanks have been really smart about arms lately, and the new rules shouldn’t effect their strategy.

First, the Yanks have found prep arms in Northeast corridor, and though they haven’t signed them all, they have gotten kids like Cote, Maher, DeLuca, Checo and others over the past few years and all of them would have gone higher if they’d grown up in Florida or California. That’s been smart, and the Yankee Brand is strong for all of those parents, too, and that should continue to help them find common ground with the Yanks.

The other smart thing the Yanks have done is to take college relievers with stuff and strikeouts. College relievers are cheaper than college starters with comparable stuff, and that will help keep the cumulative budget down, what’s more, college seniors are cheapest of all.

The Yanks have found some good College Seniors lately, like Matt Tracy this past year, who were very much worth their while and a tribute to the scout who isolated him. Tracy was a position player and a mid-week pitcher, who really blossomed with very little pro-coaching. He’s a lefty with nice velo and a strong body, but he wasn’t overscouted because he was a mid-week guy and a position player. Well done!

That’s the sort of “buy” the Yanks should always be on the look out for.

Other pitching value can be found in pitchers who are maybe 6 feet tall or shorter, but are striking people out. Mark Montgomery is such a prospect and all he has done is go through the system like a hot knife though butter, with a knockout slider.

Guys like that are good buys, but under the new rules, probably shouldn’t be looked at until after round 10.

One thing the Yanks have been known for on the pitching side has been Lefties. While the Yanks should never, ever favor handedness over goodness, it does behoove them to search far and wide for quality lefties, remembering both Guidry and Ford were under 6 feet tall. Daniel Camarena, from the `11 draft is looking like he could fit that model of a shorter lefty who gets people out, as frequently as a big righty might. So whether it’s a big underrated guy like Tracy or a smaller gem like Camarena, you want to keep finding lefties with a chance to be Yanks, not just lefties who might make it to the show. Eventually almost all lefties make it to the show (unless they get hurt), so it’s a fool’s errand to bonus them and develop them just to throw them back in the pool.

This brings up another thing the Yanks have been doing right more often, and should continue doing, that is: not wasting picks!

In general, the organizational picks should come from the 5% allowable overage, with the entire budget going to prep prospects or college bargains with Yankee upside. You don’t want to let the org signings have any effect whatsoever on the prospects.

Oh, and really don’t bother with S2’s under the new rules, especially not on the position side. Taking someone like Suttle now, with the fixed budget is just a disaster waiting to happen. And what are S2’s anyway, but old sophomores? True Juniors who are the same age and have played more and are somehow less valuable and exotic? It’s a con that makes no sense. Now you can always make an exception for an S2 pitcher who you think can be a Yank, but don’t do it with hitters. They’re too expensive and they are older than their classes. before you know it, they are 26 and in AA. It’s a bad bet, and one that should be avoided under the new rules.

So, overall, the Yanks should keep doing what they are doing in terms of adding scouting talent and continuing their prep focus.

They should play the comp pick trade market.

They should look ahead to see if anyone or group is worth forfeiting a future (but possibly re-acquirable) first round pick over.

They should only look for future Yanks and not waste budget on typical major leaguers.

They should keep looking for corner Yankee Bats like Bichette’s and up the middle Yankee Bats like Williams.

They should continue to scout underscouted regions like the Northeast and Canada.

They should keep looking for college “bargains” like Tracy and Montgomery.

They should never waste picks, and only spend the allowable 5% or less on organizational picks.