Yanks Now Have 6 Teams Below Full Season A

With the addition of Pulaski, and the maintenance of the two GCL teams, the Yanks, for the first time in a long time, have 6 teams below A ball. Broken down, the Yanks have 2 DSL teams, 2 GCL teams, Pulaski in the Appy league, and Staten Island in the NYPL.  So that's six rosters of kids and inexperienced players vs on 4 from A to AAA.  Thus, at any given time of summer - because most of the players on these team are either in EST or aren't Yanks yet in the Spring - the Yanks will have more players way down in the low minors than they do in A and up.

This represents a sea change from the days when Lin Garrett was running the drafts and they were using them, almost primarily, to stock the Staten Island team for the exciting NYPL season.  I'm not kidding you.  They used to go for prospects with fewer picks and go for more organizational guys with the balance of picks.  That clearly wasn't a tack that was going to produce a lot of major leaguers, let alone guys who could make it to AA, and it didn't.

Fortunately, over the past several drafts they have moved away from trying to stock SI and have moved more toward taking guys for "reasons." Ulitimately this will produce a lot more major leaguers.

Back in the old days, the Yanks also used to have a VZL team, but they got rid of that because of the political strife in VZ, so now the bulk of IFA's start out on one of the two DSL teams.

Also, good kids and IFA's used to make the move from the GCL one year to Charleston the next.  Now Charleston is only one of three places they can go after GCL.  Speaking of which, the Pulaski team should alleviate the need to throw college picks who are 21 or 22 into the GCL  because they're not ready for SI.  Instead they can send those guys to Pulaski and get back to using the GCL for teens and first year stateside IFA's.

In any event, they're gonna need more catchers.