Did Going Big Make the Yankees Go Bust?

If you have ever participated in an auction draft for fantasy sports, you know that it requires significantly more strategy, deliberation, and perhaps self control than a standard snaking draft. Every dollar you spend on one player is a dollar you don’t have to spend on another. Do you go all in for Shohei Ohtani, or do you spread your money around trying to build a more balanced roster? Meanwhile, the rest of the owners in your league are bidding on the same players and you never know who will make a higher offer and leave you disappointed.

A fantasy auction draft is not an apples-to-apples comparison to the international amateur free agent market, since the fantasy players you draft can’t decline your offer, but there is a similarity in the strategy. If you are charged with managing the signing bonus pool for a Major League Baseball organization, you have to determine a strategy each year and decide whether to commit a large portion of your allotment to one player or divvy up the money among a group of prospects. Go the economical route, you potentially miss out on the best player. Sign the high-dollar prospect, you better be right. This is another place where the fantasy auction is not an apt analogy, because international scouting directors aren’t drafting the established best players in the sport. They are making agreements with kids who wouldn’t be old enough to legally drive a car in the United States.

Ultimately, choosing the right players to sign would justify whatever the chosen strategy was. But there is simply no way to guarantee success when you are operating in one of the most difficult prediction markets in sports. Because of the wild landscape that Major League Baseball permits, clubs send out their scouts to make handshake agreements with kids as young as 11 or 12 years old, and the boldest of us would struggle to have confidence in what kind of baseball player, or human being, that child will be in a decade.

One would think, then, that an international scouting director would be displaying a significant amount of conviction in recommending the commitment of millions of dollars to such a young player, as Donny Rowland did in securing Jasson Dominguez for a reported $5.1 million in 2019, Roderick Arias for $4 million in 2022, and Brando Mayea for $4.35 million in 2023. For context, each of those players received a higher bonus than Vladimir Guerrero Jr. or Juan Soto. Of course, if clubs knew Juan Soto would become Juan Soto, they would be lining up to offer him their entire bonus pool. It is tough to criticize a scouting director for failing to consistently predict the future, but it is fair to question his strategy in disbursing the finite dollars he has at his disposal.

The Yankees have been remarkably successful in the domestic draft for a team that routinely picks later in the first round, or in some cases outside the first round. Each of the Yankees’ top draft picks since 2013 has either spent time in the big leagues, is currently a Major League player, or represents one of the club’s top prospects. That may not seem like an accomplishment, but the baseball draft is different from the NFL or NBA, and just getting your players through the minor leagues is a big deal. Not only have the Yankees had success with their first picks, but they’ve become adept at identifying and developing players, especially pitchers, in later rounds. Of late, they’ve had outstanding results with players they signed as undrafted free agents. 

Some of these late-round draft picks, like Ben Rice, Cam Schlittler, and Will Warren, are expected to play significant roles on the 2026 Yankees. Others, like Dillon Lewis, Brendan Jones, and Griffin Herring, have been sent off in trades for big leaguers who also are primed to be major contributors this year. The same can be said of former amateur free agent signings Rafael Flores, Parks Harber, and Dylan Jasso. A healthy farm system not only feeds the Major League club, but it provides opportunities to trade for established players. If an organization makes enough of those trades, as the Yankees have over the last two seasons, the amount of talent in the farm system is depleted, which puts stress on another avenue of player acquisition - the international free agents.

In their annually thorough review of the Yankees’ system, FanGraphs authors Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski had this to say about the recent strategy of the organization:

Teams with good player development tend to feed their systems with depth, and then apply good coaching and training to as many viable prospects as possible. Since MLB adopted its current international signing format, the Yankees’ strategy has often been to pay just a couple of players, and sometimes just one guy, a huge chunk of their annual bonus pool. That approach makes it important for the high-dollar signees to pan out, or else you’ve whiffed on an entire class in a talent-rich market, and in the Yankees’ case, they’ve failed to hit on those guys too often of late.

Despite uneducated cries to the contrary, the Yankees do have a strong player development system. Their people are continually poached by other organizations (the Mets and Red Sox have been frequent raiders), and that indicates the quality of coaching they’ve had available for their prospects. The results have been terrific on the domestic side. They’ve developed depth that’s allowed them to make a high volume of trades and stock the Major League roster with talent.

The international side has not followed suit. The players who’ve been traded away have not been replaced by another wave of prospects. Pitchers and position players have been slowed by injuries. Hitters with the loudest tools have made far too little contact, and the ones who have put the bat on the ball have not done it with enough impact. Perhaps the most glaring issue are the most recent signings who have taken up the greatest portion of the bonus pool but have not emerged as top prospects. This could all be due to a stretch of bad luck, but a lack of success invites questions.

Is the approach in the international free agent market aligned with the player development group? Are the traits of the players being signed aligned with the organization’s developmental proficiency? Are they giving the development group enough at-bats, so to speak? It would seem a team in a never-ending competitive window, especially one showing the urgency to win in the era of Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole, would prefer to continually add depth to the farm system and have a healthy amount of tradeable players to supplement the big league club. That’s what the Yankees are doing on the domestic side. Are they taking the same approach internationally?

It is easy to see the argument for pursuing the marquee players on the international market. By virtue of their success, the Yankees don’t have access to the players at the top of the domestic draft. They can, however, go after the top talent from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela without the constraints of a draft order. It would be interesting to see how Damon Oppenheimer might answer this question: would you rather have the number one overall pick in the draft or have extra picks in the first round? The response might depend on who is available, of course, but generally the preference could be to get more bites at the apple.

Hiring Mario Garza to replace Donny Rowland implies a desire to further tighten the branches of the Yankees’ baseball operations. Garza has experience up and down the system, and he already has an intimate idea of the way the player development group works. It would not be a surprise to see the Yankees exhibit more prudence in their international acquisition strategy as they attempt to avoid the unfortunate outcomes that may have cost Rowland his job. The scouts are in place, the will to leave no stone unturned is still intact, and now the systems will follow. It will take time for the dust to settle on the upheaval that occurred in the transition, with several future commits backing out of high-dollar deals, but when it does, there will be great interest in seeing the approach the Yankees take. The farm system more desperately needs an influx of talent than it does a potential savior, so the days of going all in for the big ticket player could be in the rearview mirror. It hasn't worked.

Maybe it isn't as exciting, but hedging bets improves your chances of coming out a winner. Case in point, the talk of the Yankees' camp this year is Carlos Lagrange. He signed for a $10,000 bonus in the same year Roderick Arias signed for $4 million. At the time, fans were drooling over Arias' talent. Lagrange was an afterthought because he didn't even count against the bonus pool. How does that look now? Like a fantasy auction, the money you paid for a player stops mattering once the games start, because that's when reality takes over. And in reality, it is too difficult to predict the way a teenager is going to develop, so giving yourself more chances to be right lowers the impact of being wrong.

---

Every Prospect. Every Level. Every Day.