Last night I tweeted that I was just hoping a Yankees draft pick didn't say "I hate the Yankees" on national television. While it was more of (an attempt at) a funny pun than anything else, there was some truth to it. It's hard to have any kind of expectations when a team doesn't draft until 55th. Who will be available? No clue. What might the team be targeting? No idea. There were some players I really liked that were still on the board like HS SS Ti'quan Forbes and HS pitchers Scott Blewett, Cam Varga, Dylan Cease and Alex Verdugo. How likely was it they'd take one of those players? I'd say less than 50%.
Ultimately what we got was Jacob Lindgren, Mississippi State's LHP closer. Arguably a top 3 reliever coming into the draft, Lindgren was ranked 60th on my final comp board, so he basically went in the area of the draft where he should. Among the 6 publications that I track with my board, he was ranked anywhere from 51st to 77th, which at this point in the draft is a pretty strong consensus.
In general, I didn't hate the pick but I didn't love it. Pundits are saying he'll move quickly and a conservative time table would still put him in the Bronx next summer. That's hard to knock. Sounds like a high floor, low ceiling guy. Mike Axisa at River Ave. Blues said he thinks he's already better than Yankees' current loogy Matt Thornton. We could definitely use that. I'm just not ever expecting to see him in the All Star game, which is fine and in no way pejorative.
This is complete conjecture, but I would bet they decided pre-draft they were taking Lindgren, or maybe in general just a fast moving college pitcher, no matter who fell to them. It's hard for me to believe they felt he was the best player available. Just a thought...
Prior to the draft I liked our minor league reliever depth. I still believe in Mark Montgomery even though he's lost some luster and I've always been a big fan of Nick Goody who's returning from injury. Jose Ramirez and Dellin Betances are already in the big leagues with the later pitching phenomenally. I think Chase Whitley's floor is a really reliable reliever. Adam Warren has exceeded my expectations. So we've got some good young reliever types, but you can never have too much pitching so we add Lindgren to the mix.
I'll take this opportunity, because it seems as good of a place as any, to reiterate my bemoaning of forfeiting three 1st rd draft picks in this year's draft. First and foremost, I thuroughly believe you do not forfeit 1st round draft picks for anyone that's not a "franchise player". (I put franchise player in quotes because that's a subjective designation, but one person's definition of a franchise player is probably not far off from everyone else's. For me, it's a top 20-30 player in the game). With the current system in place, the spending limits are very restrictive and forces the best signable players to be taken early in the draft, leaving little for the teams who aren't in line early. The draft is the lifeblood of an organization and should not be handled carelessly.
If you look at the three players we forfeited picks for, I'd say in a vacuum 1 was definitely not worth it, 1 was probably not worth it, and 1 was probably worth it. Carlos Beltran, while I have always appreciated him from afar and should have been a Yankee 9 years ago, is a few years beyond the point of being a franchise player. Brian McCann is not a franchise player either but could be close. The fact he was a lefty swinging, power hitting catcher made the signing palatable but ultimately not worth a 1st rd pick. Ellsbury probably is a franchise player though I'm not digging in my heels to defend him if someone says he's not. Plus I felt he was redundant since we already had Brett Gardner, who we signed an extension with that was a much better deal than what we got for Jacoby.
And on a macro level, I think the offseason strategy was a poor one. Losing Cano was so detrimental to the team that I don't think this was the year to spend big money and draft picks on free agents. They should've waited to see what was going to happen to Cano and when they didn't re-sign him, should have went conservative and just focused on getting Masahiro Tanaka, who is the kind of player you sign no matter the circumstances. They should have gone into the bunker with their three 1st rd picks and made this another great draft like the one they had next year. Instead they bull-headedly said "This is the year" and went threw money (and draft picks) into a free agent class that really was pretty weak.
Ok, rant over. I'll continue to watch the draft and may have some thoughts to post on anyone else they sign. And Sunday or Monday I'll put up my initial reaction to the draft as a whole with scores for all 30 teams based on my comp board. Have a good day!
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