MLB Draft 2022: Yankees’ picks rounds 11-15

After 10 rounds of picks across a couple frenzied days, we’ve reached the home stretch of the 2022 Major League Baseball Draft. If you missed Day 1 and Day 2, you can catch up via our results tracker here, which has links to all of our write-ups on the selected players, from top pick Spencer Jones to 10th-rounder Will Brian.

However, there is a whole second half of the draft class ahead! Given that there tends to be less publicly available information on the types of players who are selected in rounds 11 through 20, Madison and I will recap the Day 3 action with a pair of articles that will each cover five rounds apiece. Afterward, you can offer some feedback on the Yankees’ final 10 picks in Kunj’s survey post. As a reminder, there are no specific draft slots associated with each of the Day 3 picks, though if a team exceeds $125,000 in its offer, then the overage will count against the total bonus pool.

We’ll update this post with information on the Yankees’ draft picks from rounds 11 through 15 as they are announced. There will be no time between pick announcements on the MLB.com broadcast.

Round 11, Pick 340: Ryan Harvey (RHP)
UC Santa Barbara, 6’3”, 195 lbs.

The Yankees’ 2022 draft class has been flooded by experienced arms, and they grabbed another with their first selection of Day 3. Harvey was Baseball America’s No. 468 prospect in the organization’s pre-draft rankings. The 21-year-old was UC Santa Barbara’s closer in 2022, posting a 3.68 ERA, 1.364 WHIP, 11.4 K/9, and 2.6 BB/9 in 29.1 innings, notching 11 saves. Harvey has also posted nice numbers as a starter for the Ridgefield Raptors of the West Coast League, a summer league that uses wood bats, with a 2.50 ERA and 9.5 K/9 in 50.1 innings between 2021-22.

BA notes that Harvey’s fastball/slider combo “sits in the 91-93 mph range, though he can run the pitch up to 96-97 at peak.” His slider will need work, but the strikeout numbers that he’s posted out of the bullpen for the Gauchos are certainly solid.

Round 12, Pick 370: Jackson Fristoe (RHP)
Mississippi State, 6’4”, 210 lbs.

How about 8 college righties in the Yankees’ first 12 picks? Fristoe was not ranked among MLB Pipeline’s Top 250 or Baseball America’s Top 500, so the 21-year-old is a bit of a wild card and the numbers reflect that. On the positive side, he’s used a fastball/slider combo to strike out 116 batters in just 86.1 career innings — out of the bullpen for the most part since this past season began — across two years with the Bulldogs, who won the College World Series in 2021.

On the negative side, Fristoe hasn’t demonstrated much control, and his 4.6 BB/9 in 2022 actually represented an improvement on his 6.8 BB/9 in 2021. His career ERA in college is 6.67 with a 1.633 WHIP, and he has not had a good showing in the Cape Cod League this summer. Fristoe can fairly be classified as a project.

Round 13, Pick 400: Geoffrey Gilbert (LHP)
Clemson, 6’0”, 215 lbs.

The Yankees veered away from college righties for the 13th round ... to a college lefty. Variety!

Clemson’s Geoffrey Gilbert was their second southpaw pick after 10th-rounder Will Brian. The 21-year-old Gilbert was not ranked among BA’s Top 500 or MLB Pipeline’s Top 250, and like Fristoe, he has posted good strikeout numbers (10.8 career K/9 in 102 innings, plus 56 strikeouts in 45 innings in 2022) without much else going his way. In a way, Gilbert’s 3.35 college ERA masks that he had a 5.20 mark in 45 innings in 2022, plus a 1.333 WHIP. It is worth noting though that the lefty pitched exclusively out of the bullpen from 2020-21 and two of his five starts in 2022 were absolute rocks (9 runs allowed in 5.2 combined innings) that sunk his season numbers, so Gilbert should be better in relief.

Round 14, Pick 430: Kris Bow (RHP)
College of Southern Nevada (JC), 6’4”, 225 lbs.

Bow is sort of another college righty (and also 21), but he’s actually a junior college arm. He’s allowed just 4 runs in 17 frames of Cape Cod League play for Yarmouth-Dennis, albeit with three homers and eight walks. Bow has fanned 19 batters, continuing a trend from his season at Southern Nevada, when he had a 2.16 ERA and struck out 64 in 41.2 innings of work — a 13.8 K/9 (though his BB/9 was 4.9, which is not so great).

On the strength of his 2022, Bow earned Reliever of the Year honors for his region. His fastball sits 94-95 with good spin rates per MLB Pipeline, and he has a low-80s slider. Bow committed to transfer to Arizona after completing the junior college level, so he has options if he doesn’t like the Yankees’ offer.

Round 15, Pick 460: Tayler Aguilar (OF)
Grand Canyon University, 6’0”, 205 lbs.

The Yankees decided that it was time for a little break from the pitching, and they nabbed a masher in GCU’s Tayler Aguilar. The lefty outfielder hit .326/.397/.719 with 13 doubles, 3 triples, and a school record 23 homers in 59 games, good for a 1.116 OPS. The Western Athletic Conference is not considered the cream of the crop in college baseball though, so take those numbers with a grain of salt. Still, crushing that many bombs and hitting balls like the one below will attract anyone’s attention, and Aguilar showed development too, as he improved from an already-solid .331/.411/.529 triple slash to post those aforementioned gaudy numbers in 2022.

That’s it for the rounds 11 through 15, and five picks remain. As previously noted, Madison will have you covered for rounds 16 through 20 once those get underway.