The Yankees won’t be on the clock until No. 35, and that’s where the real draft-watching starts for their fans. New York dropped 10 spots after blitzing past the CBT’s highest threshold again, leaving the club to make its first selection well after the top of the board is gone.
This year’s MLB Draft is doing its usual act of rearranging the furniture. It opens in Philadelphia with Picks 1-through-10 airing on NBC and Peacock at 1:00 PM EST, then shifts to MLB Network for Picks 11-through-40 around 2:30.
After that, the rest of the draft - 41 through 135 - moves to MLB.com or MLB TV for a few more hours. The Futures Game is back to early Sunday, which is part of the broader shuffle around All-Star weekend.
For the Yankees, the middle rounds have become a familiar hunting ground. In recent years, they’ve leaned on those picks - especially rounds three, four and five - to stockpile projectable collegiate pitching. They also tend to grab a small-school bat around the 10th round, and sometimes they wait even longer than that.
That approach has paid off often enough to matter. For a team dealing with draft limitations from both financial restrictions and winning records, New York has still managed to find some gems in the odd spots of the board.
There’s also a warning label attached to this year’s class: it could get weird. Anyone claiming to know exactly how it will unfold may be guessing. College catcher Daniel Jackson, who starred at Georgia, was mocked to the Yankees a few weeks ago, though it would be somewhat surprising to see him last that long.
The Yankees haven’t exactly earned blind faith in every corner of roster building over the last few years, but the draft has been one of the places where they’ve done enough to keep people interested. Even when the numbers look rough - like Ben Hess’ did when New York stunned the board by taking him in 2024 - the organization has shown a knack for making those picks matter.
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For a Yankees team that has spent plenty of time weighing present needs against future plans, that creates a tricky kind of leverage. Volpes glove has made him more valuable around the league, but it also comes at a moment when the organization is looking hard at its next wave of talent and what that might mean for the middle infield. The result is a decision that could get uncomfortable fast, because the better Volpe plays in the field, the more complicated his long-term fit becomes. [Read more 🡒]