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The Yankees drafted Slade Heathcott six months ago and signed him four months ago. Very little news has happened in relation to Heathcott over this time period. We don’t have a lot more information to judge the young outfielder by other than what we knew at the draft. Still, I’d like to share some thoughts after six months of reflection. This isn’t meant to be a prospect profile, but more of an open-ended thought.
Scouting
He’s a five-tool guy, and deserves that label. For his first few years in High School, Heathcott was often called one of the best athletes in Texas. That’s not a small honor – its not like being the best athlete in New Jersey. He was a star two-way athlete, playing both center field and pitcher. He hit like a monster, saw his fastball top out at 94 mph, showed great speed and instincts in the field, and generally showed no weaknesses in his game.
Had all else remained equal, Heathcott would probably be one of the top-5 high schoolers taken in the draft. He actually ended up being the 12th high school hitter taken in a fairly deep high school draft, but was rumored to be valued by most teams as a supplemental roud pick. For some reason, character issues have been deemed the cause of his drop by conventional wisdom, but the reality is that Heathcott fell due to injury concerns. He had to stop pitching due to shoulder issues, and had major ACL surgery a year ago. Heathcott’s performance didn’t suffer at the plate as a result, but the two injuries definitely scared a lot of people off. There were not a lot of teams rumored to be interested in drafting Heathcott in the first round other than the Yankees.
The first thought that I (and I’m sure a lot of other Yankee fans thought the same thing) had was “C.J. Henry”. Heathcott is the first position player picked in the first round by the Yankees since Henry quickly proved to be a colossal failure, and they don’t have much of a positive track record before him. We’ve heard some quotes from people that Heathcott is more than just an athlete with strong instincts on both sides of the ball – something that was never said about C.J. Henry. But besides that, they’re really very similar prospects: raw young athletes who possess the skills to be major stars, but enough question marks to drop to the Yankees.
Moving Forward
We’ll probably see Heathcott playing center field for the Charleston Riverdogs when the season begins. A lot of people have speculated that his ultimate position will be right field, because his arm is so strong. However, I’m not sure if we should ultimately be banishing him to a corner outfield spot in our minds just yet. We’ve heard that he has the speed and instincts to man the position, at least while he is young. For now, I would consider him a center fielder.
With Austin Jackson gone and Jesus Montero on the way to the majors, there is a good chance that Heathcott will enter the 2011 season as the top Yankee prospect – position or otherwise – in the system. A lot of this is due to poor 1st round picks in recent years. Gerritt Cole didn’t sign, and Andrew Brackman’s saga has been flawed at best. The aformentioned C.J. Henry is playing college basketball, and Ian Kennedy is in Arizona.
As far as 1st round picks go, it would be refreshing to see the Yankees finally develop a big time hitter. We’re already hearing rumblings of an international draft being negotiated, (H/T RAB) which could cut off a huge source of Yankee young talent. Sooner or later, the team is going to have to learn to find players like Heathcott and turn them in to legitmate major league stars. Jesus Montero was a guy born to hit, but players like him are few and far between. The real backbone of any all-star team are guys like Heathcott – 5-tool mega athletes who could probably play football or basketball professionally: guys like Austin Jackson – whom the Yankees were mostly successful at teaching to play the hardest game to play in sports. It will be interesting to see what techniques the Yankees use to try and make the man a real ballplayer.
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10 Responses to Thinking About Slade Heathcott
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TIQ IQ
I’ve read he has good speed, not elite CF’er speed.
By definition, not every CF has elite CF speed.
The fact is, the odds are high that Heathcott will bust. I am not trying to be negative, but players have a very small percentage of becoming solid big league players, let alone what we as Yankee fans are used to. I totally agree with you, the Yankees need to work on the draft/sign/finding of position players. I get the idea of taking the best available, and I understand that it’s easier to find position players. It still doesn’t make it any easier to swallow that a team as wealthy as the Yankees has a player who has yet to play a full season of SHORT SEASON BALL is their best position player that isn’t a catcher.
I don’t think there is any reason to believe that Heathcott is any more likely to flame out than your normal late-first round pick. The injury concerns are basically it – I don’t buy the character stuff at all. But balance the injury stuff with the good quotes scouts have said about his overall baseball instincts and I think we’ve got a pretty good pick on our hands.
The Yankee farm system isn’t is bad shape. Its actually pretty amazing how many good players we have left considering what we’ve traded away. And really, our #1 prospect is the #2 hitting prospect in baseball. I can’t complain.
I’m not trying to complain. All that I’m saying is that it seems like there are not many in the organization that can identify position players (outside of catcher) with high upside, the way they do with pitchers. They are incredibly deep at both pitcher and catcher, however with the massive budget that they operate with, it would seem to be smart to buy up 2 or 3 high impact positional IFA’s each season, like Sano from last year. As I said, I would rather them take a pitcher that is best available rather then reach for a hitter just to take one, but they also seem to go an incredibly safe route with some picks (like Warren last year). For example, Ryan Westmorland was taken in the 5th round and David Renfroe was in the 3rd. Both seemed to be on the Yankee radar, but they passed to go safe. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say the Sox have a much better scouting department then the Yankees. Take away the Joba draft class, and the Yankees have been bad at drafting.
I understand. I think that we need to give them some credit though. Austin Jackson is probably a major leaguer, and no other teams were interested in him in the draft, and he took a lot of work by coaches to rework into a baseball player.
On IFAs – the Yankees are definitely spending a lot of money on that side of things. Gary Sanchez was paid twice what Montero got, but Kelvin De Leon was a big time IFA too. They’re definitely lottery tickets, so we’ll see who works out.
I don’t think this kid busts.Fact is many busts are drafted high.This is a gamer, a left handed hitter with a lot of tools who plays hard and is a throwback.I’d guess his bust quotient is much lower than many other kids drafted in the first rd..
Are you serious? You can gauge all that because he’s a “gamer?” How often how you seen this kid play? What have you seen that separates him from the rest? Bullington, Gruler, Loewen, Everets, Moore, Meyer, Ring, Brownlie, Mccurdy, Grigsby, Fritz. Know what they all have in common? All were drafted in the first round in the 2002 draft. I assume that you could build an All Star team here right? I mean, they were all first round picks!
Why did the best baseball athlete from NJ (Mike Trout) get drafted before Slade? I wonder if the Yanks would’ve selected Trout had he been there.
The Yankees dropped the ball compared to the Red Sox for a number of years in failing to target high ceiling OFs in the early rounds. Westmoreland and others come to mind. Last year one quality OF in the top three levels of the minors pinpointed the problem. Yankee scouting is weak in drafting position players, they had to bring back Livesey. Suttle, Sublett, Adams, Joseph – all expensive, all lacking the high ceiling – safe picks but low projections. Angelini was a bust but at least it was at SS.