ATLANTA — The perpetually penalized Yankees need to choose wisely in the draft, hurt often by their spending and winning habits.
To that end, they are gambling that Dax Kilby and Kaeden Kent — the son of longtime major leaguer Jeff Kent — will be a couple of finds.
To begin their Sunday night, the Yankees used the 39th overall pick to select Kilby, a shortstop out of Newnan High School in Georgia.
Kilby, who will have to be signed away from a commitment to Clemson, is a 6-foot-2, 190-pound lefty swinger who reportedly hit .495 in his senior season, when he led his school to a Georgia state championship.
Two rounds later, the Yankees used the 103rd pick to grab Kent, who was a Texas A&M star who emerged in his junior season. In what likely was his last year in College Station, the infielder, who was announced as a shortstop, owned a .943 OPS with 13 home runs in 56 games.
The Yankees — whose original first-round pick was 29th because they lost in the World Series, and who saw that spot set back 10 spots because they exceeded the threshold of the Competitive Balance Tax by $40 million last season — have to maximize their choices in part because they are further back in the draft and in part because they will not choose as often as others.
They were stripped of two picks and did not own a second-round pick because they signed Max Fried, to whom the Braves had extended a qualifying offer. They have $5,383,600 to distribute as signing bonuses to their draft picks — the least in baseball.
Last year the Yankees used their first-round selection on righty Ben Hess, who owns a 4.08 ERA with 80 strikeouts in 53 innings with High-A Hudson Valley.
The Yankees have trended toward using their top picks on position players over the past several years, selecting just one pitcher — Hess — in the first round since 2018.
After taking Clarke Schmidt in 2017, the Yankees have gone with Anthony Seigler (’18), Anthony Volpe (’19), Austin Wells (’20), Trey Sweeney (’21), Spencer Jones (’22), George Lombard Jr. (’23), Hess and now Kilby.