Due to the coronavirus pandemic, high school sports across the nation were canceled this spring. The same went for college sports. That made scouting for the 2020 MLB Draft more challenging heading into Wednesday night’s first round.
When Red Sox Chief Baseball Operator Chaim Bloom selected high school middle infielder Nick Yorke with the 17th overall pick, he expected the pundits to be surprised. After all, this 18-year-old from Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, [...]
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, high school sports across the nation were canceled this spring. The same went for college sports. That made scouting for the 2020 MLB Draft more challenging heading into Wednesday night’s first round.
When Red Sox Chief Baseball Operator Chaim Bloom selected high school middle infielder Nick Yorke with the 17th overall pick, he expected the pundits to be surprised. After all, this 18-year-old from Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California, wasn’t in any mock drafts in the first round. Nor did Yorke crack the top 60 in any draft rankings.
The way Bloom feels, however, is that if a health pandemic had not wiped out the spring baseball season, no one would’ve been surprised by Boston’s selection.
"This is an unusual spring. Obviously we didn’t get to see the spring season play out. We love this kid’s bat," Bloom said. "We think he has a chance to be a special bat, who’s going to play the infield. We feel that if the spring had gotten to play out the way that it would have in a normal year, the pubic perception would have been a lot different."
Yorke is a 6-foot, 200-pound right-handed hitter with a strong bat and pure swing. Defensively, he played shortstop in high school, but was his team’s designated hitter in 2019 due to shoulder surgery. Yorke was announced as a second basemen when the Red Sox selected him.
In high school, he batted .457 with 134 hits, 100 runs and 77 RBI in 94 games over the last four years. Due to coronavirus, Yorke played just five games this spring, batting .533 with two home runs, eight hits, nine runs and six RBI in 19 at-bats. Last year, as a junior, he batted .505 with seven home runs. He was committed to the University of Arizona.
This marked the first draft for Bloom in Boston and the pick certainly surprised some analysts. Yorke was the 69th ranked draft prospect by ESPN, 96th by Baseball America, 139th by MLB.com, 165th by Fangraphs and 271st ranked prospect by Perfect Game. His MLB.com scouting report said that Yorke wasn’t expected to go as high as the last Archbishop Mitty draft pick, Mitch Haniger, who was drafted 38th overall in 2014.
"Personally, I feel like I was a first rounder," Yorke said. "I know a lot of rankings and sites didn’t have me there. But, I’m more of a blue collar, put your head down and go to work kind of guy. I didn’t go out and do all the Perfect Game things that a lot of guys get ranked on. It was kind of wherever I played ball, I played my hardest and the Red Sox fortunately saw me one of those times."
The Red Sox have been hot on Yorke’s trail since last summer. According to Paul Toboni, the team’s director of amateur scouting, it started with area scout Josh Labandeira and the Sox tracked the infielder into the fall, winter and spring. Toboni worked him out in December and saw him this spring. He compared him to Kevin Youkilis due to his "rugged advanced hit tool" and said from a maturity standpoint, this was one of the Red Sox favorite players in the draft.
"So we were able to log a lot of at-bats with the kid over the summer. And not just the summer, we were able to work him out multiple times over the fall," Toboni said. "Then when spring started and chatter was starting to get around on him. We were able to send high level scouts on him… I think our process was a lot more robust than any other team. That allowed us to gain comfort with him especially in that limited spring."
York said he feels like the Sox are perfect fit. In the end, he hopes to prove them right and the pre-draft rankings wrong.
"I felt like I was a first-rounder and felt very underrated coming into the draft," Yorke said. "I mean, I kind of shocked everyone when I was. It’s kind of exciting to me to prove everyone that I’m here to stay and I’m ready to get to work."
mdaniels@providencejournal.com
On Twitter: @MarkDanielsPJ