The Red Sox reached for Nick Yorke in the 1st round of the 2020 Draft. Or did they reach?…
- Born: April 2, 2002
- B/T: Right/Right
- 6’0″, 200-lbs
- Drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the 2020 June Amateur Draft from Archbishop Mitty HS (San Jose, CA)
The Numbers
His raw numbers are listed above courtesy of baseball-reference.com. Let’s aggregate by year then focus on the important numbers for minor leaguers:
2020 was a lost year, of course, so the first time Nick Yorke got to see competitive play was this year where he started at Low-A as a newly turned 19-year-old. The power was good, the bat control was fantastic, and he got on base at such a great clip they were forced to advance the teenager to High-A where everyone else is almost four years older than he is.
That’s where his power showed up in the late summer months. While his strikeout rate almost doubled to reach a not-great level, his walk rate was steady as she goes and so was his OBP.
So, take a kid (still a teenager, remember?) with a great batting eye. Add to that the ability to get on base at a prodigious clip even when he strikes out a bit too much. Throw in world-beating power. At High-A. At 19. Yeah, I’m not thinking he was much of a stretch as a 1st-rounder after all. How many other 1st rounders did this well?
At Low-A, Yorke hit righties just great, but he struggled a bit against lefties. Not the end of the world, but not something you want to see.
Then he goes to High-A and he hits lefties and righties the same, but with more power against righties. Now it’s just 14 plate appearances against LHP, so the jury is still out until we get more data, but it’s a good start.
So, for all of 2020, Yorke hit .325/.412/.516. What sort of company does that put him in among other teen hitters in full-season ball? Take it away, Matt Eddy:
Whoa! That is all.
Whoa, again! He’s now the 15th-best batting prospect on the PARSlist. Yeah, not a reach. Not a reach at all. Betcha lots of other GMs wish they had drafted Yorke in the 1st round.
The Scouts
- Rotowire: #20 on their Top 400
- BaseballHQ: Not on their Top 100
- Fangraphs: Not on their Top 133 originally, but somewhere on the Top 100 now.
- Fantasy Six Pack: Not on their dynasty list
- Imaginary Brick Wall: #264 on their Top 474 list
- Fantrax: #68 on the Top 250
- PARSlist: #15 on the batters PARS list with a score of 77.7
Warnings
Will he have trouble against LHP?
How will he do in Double-A, the real test of a player?
Conclusion
The scouts who update frequently were all over Yorke as summer came to an end. Even FanGraphs, which hasn’t updated it’s Top 100, noted that Yorke will be on the list the next time they do update it. I think that will be true of all of the scouts by the time we get to next spring.
He’s the real deal, folks.