Yankee Draft Review Pt. 5: This Was Not a Lin Garrett Draft

The preponderance of collegiate picks, no doubt, reminded many of the dark drafting days of Lin Garrett and the Tampa Mob.   Those were the days when football players were drafted under the notion that they could be turned into baseball players, tons of college players were picked and no money was spent.  Lin Garrett has gotten the brunt of the blame for that era, but it was the refusal of George Steinbrenner to spend on the draft, and loss of some of the scouts who had built the farm back up in the early `90s.   As scattershot as the Yankee approach became in that era, they actually did find some players, but most them got injured like Borrell, or traded like Clippard.   They also had a bunch of false starts, like with the drafting of Eric Duncan.  But, other than the preponderance of collegiate picks, this draft was nothing like the drafts of that era.

The reason why not, is that the more you look at this one, the more you see the rhyme and reason.   First, though the league has reformed the draft as another way of limiting the Yankees access to talent, the Yanks have spent money bringing back some of their scouts and grabbing some of the best of other peoples' scouts.  They've especially brought in scouts who are good at finding hitters, and who understand the difference between mashers of bad pitching, and guys who can work counts, get on base, and pound strikes.   That's a vast difference from the days stopwatch players they hoped would learn baseball, and drafting kids off of lofty batting practices.

And the collegiate picks they've been making have been pretty darn good.  Everyone is excited about Refsnyder, Dugas, Judge, Jagielo and O'Brien, but they forget how good David Adams looked before he destroyed his ankle.

Sure, Suttle was an injury prone misfire, but there are collegiate picks knocking on all the doors in the organization.

Where would the Yanks be this year without Warren, Phelps and Whitley?   Phelps has had a couple of rough ones, but we've all see him do much better. and there are more college pitchers on the way.

So this year, the themes were on base, and swing and miss.  And they drafted a bunch of that.  And in a year where they liked the college kids better (look how many had also been drafted in `11 and `12) than this year's preps, and it coincided with the year that their pool money was crap because they panicked and signed too many FA.

None of the college players feel like plain and simple organization bodies, and all have something that could lead to some success.  Even the senior catcher they drafted has a good bat and speed.  So even though it's not as preppy as we had become accustomed to, it's still a nice array of talent with some upside.

Then when you add in the big IFA class, the Yanks will have added a lot of talent this summer.  It won't help the abysmal big team, but perhaps some of those former picks and IFA's will.  

Cash needs to pull the trigger.