Kevin Baker's book is here!

Kevin Baker's book is here!
"... an exemplary sports book..." Kirkus Reviews

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

This stinks: Jagiello is going to miss the fall instructional league

Our top pick - back in 2013, when we actually had first-round picks - was a college kid named Eric Jagiello, a 3B out of Notre Dame.

He represented one of our few top picks who wasn't immediately questioned as a stretch (Andrew Brackman, Cito Culver, Dante Bichette) or as unsignable (Cole Gerrit.) We had three first-rounders that year, and they were all "safe" in terms of receiving consensus applause. Because of the "success" of this draft, the Yankee farm system directors kept their jobs.

Last year, Jagiello hit 16 HRs at Tampa in 85 games. Not bad. In fact, after Peter O'Brien (whom we traded for Martin Prado) and Kyle Roller, (who has Jose Pirela disease, and thus is invisible to Yankee scouts), Jagiello was probably our top minor league HR threat.

BTW, when talking about Yankee HR threats, keep in mind that the team leader this year was Brian McCann, with 23. No misprint. Twenty-three. McCann was tied with seven others - including Neil Walker, Marcell Ozuna, and JD Martinez - for 30th place in the HR listings.

So Jagiello, 22, went to Arizona this fall - having missed part of the regular season, and recently took a bean ball in the chops. He has a broken bone, and he'll miss 4-6 weeks. That really sucks, because he was one of a handful of our players to receive the choice Arizona placement.

Damn.

Maybe the Yankees are just snake-bitten. Did Joe Torre use up all our luck for the generation?

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