Major League Baseball’s amateur draft takes place this week. The annual guessing game is widely considered the most difficult of the four major sports. Prospects generally take at least several years to develop and if a team can find just two or three starting players—let alone All-Stars—in one draft it’s considered a successful event.
For the Yankees, who originally built this long-running, title-winning team through the draft some 20 years ago, finding players in the draft today isn’t as necessary to their success as it is for other franchises of limited means. Neither is it as possible, as Brian Cashman’s team of scouts hasn’t had a top-10 choice in years.
How have they done lately? Here we'll rank the best Yankee drafts over the last 30 years with the understanding that the latter ones are still incomplete.
8. 1982: Third Round—OF Dan Pasqua (117 home runs, 390 RBIs over 10 years), 21st Round—SP Jim Deshaies (84–95, 4.14 ERA), 25th Round—RP Jim Corsi (22–24 record, 3.25 ERA). Pasqua never reached 500 at-bats in a season but hit 16–20 home runs four times. He played in parts of three seasons before being traded to Chicago for Richard Dotson in 1987. Deshaies was a quality starter for Houston for a number of years after New York dealt him for Joe Neikro in 1985. Corsi never played for the Yankees after being released by the Yankees in 1984.
7. 1986: 8th Round—1B Hal Morris (.304 batting average, 1,216 hits over 13 years), 14th Round—SP Scott Kamieniecki (53-59 record, 4.52 ERA), 18th Round—OF Turner Ward (389 hits over 12 years), 22nd Round—1B Kevin Maas (65 home runs over five seasons). Morris was the best of the bunch here but had his best years with Cincinnati as the Reds fleeced the Yankees when they gave New York Van Snider and Tim Leary for him. Kamieniecki had some decent years as a middle-of-the rotation starter for the Yankees while Kevin Maas had a short but memorable time in New York hitting 21 home runs in 79 games as a rookie in 1990. Turner Ward was dealt for Mel Hall in 1989 and never played for New York.
