3 biggest Yankees draft mistakes of the past decade

2. Anthony Seigler, 2018

The Yankees’ Great Catching Blitz of 2018 had — and you’re not gonna believe this — some unintended side effects.

At the time, it was funky to watch the team’s 2018 draft room hoarding catchers, considering we had mentally locked Gary Sánchez into the spot for the next decade or so. Come on! 2017 El Gary?! How could you have any doubt about his long-term prospects?

Clearly, the Yanks couldn’t pass up Anthony Seigler with the 23rd overall selection, though. Early reports were he was a superfreak prospect, who pitched and hit in high school, and who would surely hit and defend at the next level. So far, so bad, as Seigler has barely appeared in organized baseball, hitting .219 with four homers in 151 at-bats at High-A Hudson Valley last season. In total, he’s played 95 underwhelming games across three minor-league seasons, losing all of 2020 as well for obvious reasons. The 22-year-old is still just … well, 22, but we haven’t seen any flashes yet, leading to the selection of Austin Wells two years later while the big-league catching options regressed.

Even more curiously, the team backed Seigler up with the selection of Josh Breaux in the very next round, another high school catcher. Breaux has proven to have a lot of swing-and-miss in his game and doesn’t get on base much (.298 OBP last year), but at least he’s found the power tool, rocking 23 home runs in 2021. Having a fringe second-round catcher after your first-round catcher bombed doesn’t salve the pain of missing out on … Triston Casas, though!

The hulking, slugging first baseman will be Boston’s solution to Bobby Dalbec soon enough. Remember, Dalbec was … pretty good! But not elite. And everything in Boston has to be elite. Dalbec would’ve been the Yankees’, like, fourth-best hitter last year, and he’s already on his way out. Pretty chill!

While Bobby D was playing the Monster, Casas spent 2021 starring for Team USA at the Olympics and qualifying events, destroying 14 long home runs in the minors, and OBPing .394. Why don’t the Yankees ever seem to target absolute offensive beasts? Why are we always sitting pretty with the Holders and Seiglers of the world while Casas is just hanging out there and moping around?

Again, these guys were clearly available! And only our rivals had the foresight to snag them. Serves us right.