The pomp and circumstance of the first day of the 2018 draft is now in the rear-view mirror. The high draft picks get all the attention and understandably so, but the second and third days of the draft are where organizational depth is built. Turning mid-to-late round picks into big leaguers and trade chips is often what separates contenders from pretenders.
The Yankees selected two players during Day One of the 2018 draft: Georgia HS C Anthony Seigler and Texas JuCo C Josh Breaux. Here is my Day One draft recap. The draft continues today with Day Two, which covers rounds 3-10. These rounds are all tied to draft pool space and, generally speaking, Day Two is the most boring day of the draft. Clubs select players they know they’ll be able to sign to keep their draft pool situation in order. The most exciting prospects are picked on Day One and Day Three. Here are some miscellaneous draft notes:
- Seigler and the other prospects in attendance at the draft toured Yankee Stadium yesterday morning. “I mean, yeah, it did enter my mind (that I could one day play here). But really, it was just like ‘If it happens, it happens.’ But I never figured it would come true,” he said to Sam Dykstra.
- Jim Callis, in his Day One recap, says Seigler “attracts a lot of attention because he’s a switch-pitcher and a switch-hitter, but that overshadows how good he is as a prospect … Seigler makes hard line-drive contact from both sides of the plate and might even profile as an everyday second baseman if he weren’t so valuable behind the plate.”
- In their Day One recap, Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen say they “love Seigler’s polished game, and his tools are mostly above average, too.” They add the Yankees were “also on Virginia prep catcher Adam Hackenberg for a seven-figure bonus. Would be interesting to see them spend big on three catchers.”
- Here are the best available players according to FanGraphs and MLB.com. One guy to keep an eye on: Stanford RHP Tristan Beck. The Yankees drafted him last year and could try again. At this point, pretty much any highly regarded high schooler still on the board is either going to a team with extra picks and thus extra bonus pool money, or they’re going to school. Such is life in the bonus pool age.
The 2018 draft resumes today with a short pre-draft show at 12:30pm ET and the draft itself at 1pm ET. There is no MLB Network broadcast today, but you can watch on MLB.com and follow along with their Draft Tracker. Talk about all things draft right here throughout the day.
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