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To wrap up this afternoon’s slate, the Yankees selected 21-year-old shortstop Benjamin Cowles with the 303rd pick overall. This breaks the Yankees’ streak of four consecutive selected pitchers, and means the team used six of their top ten picks to pitch, with the remaining four going to infielders.
Cowles is 6-foot-1, 180 pounds and has spent the past three seasons with the University of Maryland. The swinging right-hander has really had his junior season, cutting down a solid .287 / .409 / .632 while leading the Big 10 with 18 dingers in just 48 games. The Rochester, NY native had only managed six combined homers in his first two seasons as a Terrapin. Cowles hit 57 times in 2021, good for a K rate of 26%, suggesting there are some swings and duds in his game.
Although Baseball America named Cowles to America’s third all-star team and ranked him fourth-best prospect in Maryland, neither BA nor MLB Pipeline ranked him on their big pre-draft tables. That said, the intermediate rounds of this draft were always going to be deep, with the 2020 draft being reduced to just five rounds, sending loads of talented players back into the pool. That the Yankees have released a player who just ran a 1,041 OPS against strong competition with their 10th pick seems like a good result, even though Cowles hasn’t made it to the top public tables.
With that, the Yankees’ job on day two of the draft is over. Our coverage will continue tomorrow, as round 11 starts at noon.
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