With the 30th pick in the 1st round, the Yankees selected 6’4″ right-handed high school pitcher Ty Hensley from Edmond, Oklahoma.

Here’s some video:

And it’s worth remembering, when we interviewed Yankees SVP Mark Newman in November about how the new Collective Bargaining Agreement would affect the Yankees’ draft, he said this:

SJK: Back to this big market-small market argument again, if you look at spending in drafts, the small market teams dish out the most money. Granted, some of this is due to landing the top picks of the draft which demand higher bonuses, but they still have gone over-slot in other rounds. The argument is that the new rules will limit the aggressiveness of small-market teams who can’t compete with teams like the Yankees and Red Sox when it comes to free agency.

MN: Well, those teams are still going to draft high. They will have more money allocated to them to pay. We’ve been declawed. We don’t have the ability to pay over-slot now. Our ability to respond creatively to the landscape has been reduced.

SJK: Do you think these new rules essentially eliminate “signability” cases?

MN: Certainly. I think they’ll severely limit the amount of players who fall in the draft. At the same time, we’ll have a better understanding of all this in two years. There’s a whole bunch of TBD [to be determined]. There will be a lot of trial and error in how we respond to the new environment. Everybody will try to game the system. Nothing wrong with that, that’s competition.

SJK: Do you think the draft will start to look more like the NBA and NFL drafts, where the perceived talent level decreases with each pick?

MN: Yes, the perceived talent level will more closely follow the order of the draft. Now, of course, the key is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and nowhere is that more true than in baseball. There will always be opportunity to evaluate more accurately. Our guys aren’t obviously going right to the NFL and NBA. In baseball, there is more room for projection and more room for error.

You can re-read that interview in its entirety here. And here’s a list of how much each team can spend in the first 10 rounds.

We’ll be talking to Mark Newman when the draft is over to see how it all actually played out.


Welcome to your new room, kid*.

*assuming he signs.