3 recent draft picks Yankees got right and 2 they will regret

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The New York Yankees haven't been a draft-and-development machine for many years. Outside of Aaron Judge's monstrous leap, the Yankees haven't produced a regular MLB player since Brett Gardner. That's not a sarcastic reduction of their successes for comedic effect. That's a truth.

Ideally, shortstop Anthony Volpe (and fellow infielder) Oswald Peraza will help buck this trend with their forthcoming emergence. So far, so good for Volpe, who's shaken off some early-season doldrums to display many of the superstar traits the Yankees are banking on.

Considering his recent promotion, it feels fair to exclude the 2019 draft class from this evaluation. Volpe's made it, and the Yankees would very obviously pick him again if given the chance to do so at the bottom of the first round.

Beginning with 2020, though, things are still up in the air. The Yankees have cleared out these draft classes a bit by dealing names like Trevor Hauver, Cooper Bowman and Beck Way in trades for Joey Gallo, Andrew Benintendi and Frankie Montas. They're also relying on undrafted free agents Elijah Dunham and Aaron Palensky to make "2020" special, considering the draft was capped at five rounds.

While it's still "too early to judge," we're going to try regardless to assess the past three drafts. Even the "failed" draft picks still retain plenty of promise, but probably would've been more successful if New York had gone with the alternative.

3 recent draft picks the Yankees nailed, and two where they failed

Yankees Draft Pick They Got Right: Austin Wells, 2020 first round

Wells believes he's a catcher, and if so, that's dynamite. For what it's worth, the organization is giving off the public perception that they're dedicated to his success at the position, and that's exactly what they should be doing.

Regardless of where he fits, though, Wells remains a dangerous left-handed bat who's close to MLB ready, and will fill a dire need when he arrives in the Bronx. The Yankees haven't managed to get the whole "lefty" thing right for years, importing Joey Gallo (dark times) and Anthony Rizzo (good, but just one man) to help balance a lineup that was built with a crucial flaw. Wells returned a few weeks back from a freak broken rib and immediately started hitting, following up an .866 OPS in 2021 and an .897 mark across three levels in 2022 with home runs in three consecutive Double-A games to mark his 2023 arrival.

After 55 Double-A games last summer, Wells should be elevated to Triple-A Scranton mid-season and might get a crack at playing time down the stretch for the offensively challenged 2023 Bombers. Hard to call that a whiff pick.

Yankees Draft Pick They Got Right: Spencer Jones, 2022 first round

It's too soon to declare Spencer Jones the Next Great Gigantic Outfielder, following in Dave Winfield and Aaron Judge's footsteps.

It's not too soon, though, to declare selecting Jones to be a massive win, considering how rare it's been for a superstar talent to fall to the Yankees at the bottom of the first round.

If you believe you can develop Jones, you take him at No. 25. Every single time.

There's still a little too much swing-and-miss in Jones' game, even in a more liberal environment for swinging and missing. He's begun the season by posting an .853 OPS through his first 23 games, occasionally showing off absurd talent (his two-homer game and two-triple, two-stolen base showcase against Boston's affiliate last week both come to mind). Thirty-seven strikeouts in 98 at-bats is hefty, however, and will need to be drilled down on moving forward.

Warts and all, it would feel absurd to say the Yankees should've let Jones go elsewhere with last summer's 25th pick. He's a potential five-tool talent at a position of need. He's a college bat who might move quickly. He's the best-case scenario that late in the first round, as long as he goes to an organization that can handle the development challenge. Luckily, the Yankees did it with Judge, the 32nd overall selection back in 2013. This might be the thing they're best at.

Yankees Draft Pick They Got Right: Drew Thorpe, 2022 second round

Every 2022 selection of a pro-ready pitcher was a good selection, in our humble opinion. While it's true that the Yankees print pitching more than they craft position players, they thinned out the upper tier of their starting corps significantly at the 2022 trade deadline, dealing from a position of power to, uh, make the roster worse, ultimately. What can you do?

At the time of his selection in the second round, Drew Thorpe was supposed to be an intriguing arm with a near-perfect changeup who the Yankees believed they could get above 90-91 MPH on the fastball. So far, so good! Just a few months into his tenure with the organization, he already sits closer to 93-95, and has maintained a well-placed swing-and-miss change (while fattening up his slider offering).

A disaster start on Sunday in Hudson Valley (3.2 innings, 6 ER, 5 Ks) has pushed his ERA up to 4.56 and his WHIP up to 1.48, but even in that brutal game, Thorpe displayed flashes of dominance with his well-commanded breaking stuff; he's whiffed 34 in 25.2 innings overall. There's a chance he eventually becomes a reliever if he struggles to maintain his velocity increase deep in games, but this was still a good value pick, and netted the Yankees their current No. 7 prospect.

Yankees Draft Pick They Will Regret: Trey Sweeney, 2021 first round

The Yankees fell in love with small-school infielder Trey Sweeney, selecting him 20th overall in 2021 despite a glut of shortstop prospects in the current system. Ostensibly, they've been rewarded so far; Sweeney remains their sixth-best prospect, per MLB Pipeline, and he's been distinctly ... fine to begin his pro career.

Last season, Sweeney, a 6'2" left-handed hitter, batted .240 (eh), OBP'd .349 (good!), stole 31 bags (surprising), and popped 16 home runs (solid). This year, he's got the OBP up to .384 as a 23-year-old at Double-A, which is impressive for a small sample size. Despite the glut looking less intimidating than it used to (where is Roderick Arias these days?), the role of "shortstop of the future" appears to have been filled by Anthony Volpe, leaving Gleyber Torres and Oswald Peraza (and Oswaldo Cabrera) in limbo. With Sweeney stuck at Double-A, he's in an even more precarious section of that limbo.

There's a chance Torres is still traded, Peraza never takes hold of a big-league role, and Sweeney gets the chance to play second (or third) in the Bronx in 2024, with DJ LeMahieu slotting in elsewhere. But if the Yankees were dead set on adding another shortstop, it might've made more sense to grab someone who was further away in their development. High schooler Jackson Merrill went to the Padres seven picks later, and he's developed into Pipeline's No. 17 overall prospect.

We're not saying the Yankees should've added an arm here because their infield picture was so tightly compacted (though No. 29 overall pick Maddux Bruns, who went to the Dodgers, would've also looked nice...). It's just that they could've grabbed a higher-upside shortstop who was further away/wouldn't be knocking on the door of the big-league roster (in a best-case scenario) while Volpe and Peraza were still getting their legs under them. It still feels, deep down, like Sweeney's fated to be traded.

Yankees Draft Pick They Will Regret: Brendan Beck, 2021 second round

It's always a bummer when the Yankees go safe with a top pick, we applaud them for going safe with said pick, and then the pick turns out to be very much unsafe.

Such is the case of Stanford right-hander Brendan Beck, the low-ceiling, high-floor arm the Yankees selected 55th overall in 2021, two picks after the Cincinnati Reds selected University of Virginia ace Andrew Abbott.

Both were expected to be "pitchability"-focused college arms who knew how to get outs and could zip through their respective systems, despite having underwhelming pure stuff. Abbott, somehow, has turned into a maniac, striking out 159 men in 118 innings last season and 60 in his first 30.2 innings this season, rising to Triple-A Louisville already. Beck, the next college pitcher selected? He had immediate Tommy John surgery, and has yet to make a professional start. He is now 24 years old.

Clearly, the Yankees believed in Beck, and the immediate injury was unpredictable. But the point of selecting Beck here was to limit the variance and (hopefully) scoot him quickly through the minors to fill the No. 4/5 starter role in the Bronx before too long. He has yet to make any sort of impact.

If the Yankees had not gone with the safe selection, they could've made a splash pick here, too. 6-6, 240-pound physical freak James Wood was available here, selected by the Padres with the 62nd pick. He was eventually shuttled to the Nationals in the Juan Soto trade, and is Pipeline's 15th-best prospect. Considering the Spencer Jones selection was made one year later, the Yankees obviously might've felt comfortable doing this, too. Slugging Rays first baseman Kyle Manzardo went 63rd; he, too, is a top-five prospect in that organization, and may reach MLB soon.

And (sigh) ... if we want to talk about evaluating pitching, Blue Jays flamethrower Ricky Tiedemann went 91st overall out of "Golden West College," and was -- pre-extension -- the main differentiator between Toronto's hypothetical Bryan Reynolds trade package and what the Yankees could've put together. Toronto out-scouted the Yankees here, point blank.

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