MLB Draft 2023: Yankees select Kyle Carr 97th overall

With the 97th pick in the 2023 MLB Draft, the Yankees have officially selected Kyle Carr, a left-handed pitcher out of Palomar College, a junior college in San Marcos, CA.

Carr went 12-1, with a 2.31 ERA, 111 strikeouts, and 19 walks in 78 innings this season and emerged as one of the top junior college prospects in the nation, according to Baseball America. The outlet ranked him No. 123 in their Top 500 draft prospects (MLB.com had him at No. 174). While the ranking of players in publications matters little to the Yankees, what they likely see in Carr is a lefty starter — something you can only find in their farm system in Tampa’s Brock Selvidge, who was also a third-rounder in 2021. Teams don’t draft for need, but adding southpaws is something the organization surely would like to address, and the 21-year-old Carr gives them the opportunity.

With a fastball that sits in the 92-95 range and can bump up to 97, Carr offers rare velocity from the left side. He doesn’t fit the Yankees’ recent lean toward pitchers with more developed secondary pitches, but he throws consistent strikes because of his athleticism. Carr was a two-way player at Palomar, and he was a successful hitter with plus bat speed, but his future is on the mound, and his athletic ability will be put to use in repeating his delivery and maintaining velocity late into games.

While Carr is 6-foot-1 and listed at 175 pounds, he has some room to add strength, which will be necessary as the Yankees surely intend to send him out as a starter when he begins his professional career. He will also need to develop his breaking ball and changeup as he works his way through the minors.

According to the MLB Pipeline team at MLB.com, Carr’s “slurvy breaking ball is inconsistent but has some sweep when he stays on top of it and can miss bats, and his changeup is a third pitch he doesn’t use often that is behind the other two.”

The Yankees can likely help Carr polish a sweeping breaking pitch, and the changeup will probably come along slowly. It will be interesting to see if they send the lefty out to pitch if and when he signs, or if they take their time and go to work on training him behind the scenes to have him debut in 2024 (similar to what they did last year with Drew Thorpe and Chase Hampton). In the unlikely event he does not sign, Carr is committed to TCU for the fall.

The Yankees did not possess a second round pick in the 2023 MLB Draft after forfeiting the pick as penalty for signing Carlos Rodón, so Carr becomes the second player they selected after taking high school shortstop George Lombard Jr. in the first round last night.

The third round has not been kind to the Yankees of late, with only two of their recent third rounders, pitchers Selvidge and Trystan Vrieling, remaining in the organization, and since Vrieling got hurt in spring training, he has yet to make his official debut. The most successful of the Yankees’ recent third-round picks is Trevor Stephan, who the Cleveland Guardians took away in the Rule 5 draft a couple years back. Stephan has become a key reliever for the Guardians in the last couple of years after the Yankees tried developing him as a starter out of Arkansas.

Make sure to get your grades in on the Yankees’ third and fourth-round picks in Matthew Provenzano’s post here.