If everything goes according to plan, the Yankees will be draining more talent from Vanderbilt University.
For the third time in the last five years, the Yankees are hoping to sign a player away from the SEC powerhouse with their top draft pick after they chose high school shortstop George Lombard Jr. — who has committed to Vanderbilt — with their first-round selection in the MLB draft this past Sunday.
In 2019, the Yankees signed Anthony Volpe out of Delbarton School in Morristown, N.J., before he could join the Commodores.
They also nabbed Vanderbilt outfielder Spencer Jones with their first-round pick last year.
“It says something about Vanderbilt. They recruit good players, they have a good program, just like we do, they do their deep dives into what kind of human being they recruit,” Damon Oppenheimer, the Yankees’ vice president of domestic amateur scouting, said Thursday on a Zoom call. “So when it comes to Volpe, when it comes to Spencer, when it comes to this year with George, there’s a common theme that we’re getting guys with talent that have good intestinal fortitude, they have work ethic, they’re kind of advanced mentally.”
Oppenheimer said he felt good about the Yankees’ chances of signing Lombard.
This also marked the third time in the last five years that the Yankees have drafted a shortstop with their top pick (after Volpe in 2019 and Trey Sweeney in 2021).
Oppenheimer chalked it up to drafting the best player available.
“There’s a lot of things that intrigued us about [Lombard]: his athleticism, the fact that he was a two-sport guy as an elite soccer player also, the way he plays shortstop … his power and his contact skills,” Oppenheimer said.
“You top that off with elite makeup — the guy has grit, he doesn’t take any pitches off — and you get major league bloodlines, having his dad [George Lombard] being an ex-major league player and his mom being an elite soccer [player] and gymnast. Those kinds of things all add up for us to what we think we can get as a special prospect, special major league-type player.”
The Yankees, who had the second-lowest pool money this year with which to sign their draft picks, selected 14 college players and four high schoolers.
Among the notable picks:
- 13th-rounder Josh Tiedemann, a TCU commit, is a two-way player whom the Yankees plan on giving a chance to play infield and pitch. “We’re going to give this a shot and exhaust it to see if it works out,” Oppenheimer said.
- Fourth-rounder Roc Riggio, a second baseman from Oklahoma State, has some swagger — his emphatic trip around the bases on a home run against Arkansas made the rounds on social media after he was drafted. “He’s a guy that the opposing team and opposing fans are probably going to dislike and his own teammates are going to love him because of how hard he plays the game and how intense he is and how much he wants to win,” Oppenheimer said.
- Third-rounder Kyle Carr, a left-hander out of junior college, throws 92-96 mph in an effortless way that Oppenheimer described as “a little of the Tom Glavine look.”
The Yankees will begin the 2024 season against their postseason nemeses.
As part of a seven-game road trip, they will open 2024 with four games at Houston, beginning March 28, according to the schedule MLB announced on Thursday.
The Yankees will then play three games at the Diamondbacks before heading to The Bronx to play their home opener against the Blue Jays on April 5.
Highlights of the schedule include a visit by the Dodgers to Yankee Stadium for the first time since 2016 for a three-game series on June 7-9, weekend road series against the Padres (May 24-26 in San Diego) and Giants (May 31-June 2 in San Francisco) and a visit to Wrigley Field to play the Cubs on Sept. 6-8.