Damon Oppenheimer reveals Yankees’ draft strategy after pitcher-heavy approach
NY Post
After the Yankees picked college pitchers with their first seven selections of the MLB amateur draft, it seemed fair to wonder whether the organization was trying to make up for some of the pitching depth it lost in recent trades in an attempt to improve the major league roster.
Damon Oppenheimer, the team’s longtime vice president and director of amateur scouting insisted that wasn’t the case.
But he did acknowledge Thursday during a Zoom call that the Yankees do look at pitchers as easier to get to the big-league level.
“I think the strategy for us is to try to take the best available,’’ Oppenheimer said. “It could have been a couple of position players. We’ve done a lot of research on what gets to the big leagues and pitching, you can develop and get it there. You need a lot of pitching to hold up over time. Nowadays, it’s so hard to hit, why not attack something that’s hard?”
And he added it was more a product of how the draft fell that the Yankees ended up taking 19 college players out of the 20 drafted.
“It could have been four high school guys in our top 10,’’ Oppenheimer said. “It just flips this way for you.”
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