Overlooked 2025 Yankees draftee has returned to piling up unconventional whiffs

If you're a real sicko, you've got a special place in your baseball-loving heart for the "I Don't Know How He Does It, But He Does It" Guy. The kind of pitcher that allows baseball to still feel a little bit magical, even in an era where every minute detail can be deconstructed and explained.

Sometimes, a "big fastball" is just a big fastball. An unorthodox release point can still be befuddling. And Yankees High-A left-hander Pico Kohn, free from the injured list and ready to resume his career missing bats, has debuted in the system by continuing exactly what got him drafted out of Mississippi State: inducing whiffs and looking strange doing it.

Kohn, a fourth-rounder and a potential sleeper from the jump last season, was MLB Pipeline's 122nd-ranked draft prospect in 2025 and began his career from the prototypical Yankees position of strength: high collegiate ERA, high collegiate K number, seeking attempted skill translation in the lab. While he began 2026 in the Pipeline Yankees Top 10, things swiftly turned sour; the 23-year-old was buried on the minors' devastating 60-Day IL, not the nebulous and never-ending 7-Day. When you hit the full 60 right away, you know things are bleak.

Thankfully, the demerit didn't result in a full shelving. Kohn has returned to make five starts (six games), posting a 1.99 ERA while striking out 31 men in 22 2/3 innings, allowing 14 hits and walking 12. Every appearance, seemingly, comes with a whiff rate like the one he posted in his likely finale on Wednesday:

Pico Kohn piling up whiffs for Yankees with awkward form

How does he do it? Look at this gloriously wrong-footed finish that somehow still works. For the analytics-obsessed, you'd think the Yankees would've disabused him of this immediately and turned him into an automaton.

Nope. They've harnessed what's always worked for Kohn, a fall-off stumbling off-center to the left of the rubber, and it's ... continued to work wonders, deceiving hitters and leaving them spellbound.

Objectively, the command still isn't all the way there; the 12 walks tell the story of what the Yankees hoped to correct this season, and will set to work chipping away at in the winter when they have more time and better health.

But it's encouraging that Kohn returned to the bump with the unorthodox traits that make him him still in tow, and immediately got to work blowing the opposition away like he'd never left the SEC. Expect to see him slide into a few more consensus system Top 10 lists next spring, too, but with a little more confidence this time.

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