Day 3: Patterns Emerged

They Yanks made 25 new picks on Day 3 of the Rule IV Draft. Some themes that were developing yesterday kept emerging. First, they went for more lefty power bats, taking Vincent Jackson, Ty Moore, and Saxon Butler. Jackson and Moore are preps and they'll be lucky to get one, while Butler is a collegiate 1B who may have catching potential.

They took a bunch of either slight, short, or short and slight RHP's, including Stefan Lopez, Brady Lail, Brett Marks, Charles Haslup, and Kevin Johnson. Lail is an intriguing prep with some velo, some spin and some pitchability. The rest are college arms, and we're probably looking to find more Robertson/Montgomery types.

They also found some lefty arms, including Tim Flight, Dietrich Enns, James Reed, Jose Diaz, and Eric Erickson, who may or may not be older than Phil Hughes. They didn't take the 10 I thought they might, but they took 6, and unlike the Yanks of late `90s, they don't just take every lefty they can find. They take LHP's that merit the pick and don't reach all over the place for them like they did back in the day.

Diaz is a prep from Puerto Rico who went to the Advantage Learning Institute. I hope they can get him signed for that reason alone.

And they took a bunch of signability cases like Vincent Jackson, Ty Moore, Bo Decker and Jose Mesa Jr! Mesa's quotes make him seem like a longshot, and Jackson, Moore and Decker are probably vying for one payment. Likewise, the prep catcher the the Yanks popped yesterday, Chris Breen, may be competing for one spot with Dalton Smith who was drafted today. Both are big kids with bats.

It will be interesting to see which of the signability kids the Yanks are able to coral using only the overage from the top ten pool +5%. Don't get too attached to any of them, it's going to be tight.

Overall, though, it was another strong, logical draft for Damon and the Scouts, where the Yanks, picking late as usual, still managed to add a bunch of talented kids to the mix. Over time, it looks like this new draft formula will net us fewer preps, though. Still, another strong class. Well done, Yanks!