The New York Yankees are planning to potentially have a two-way player on their roster in the future. No, this doesn't have anything to do with the rumors suggesting the Yankees could be more motivated than any other team to trade for Shohei Ohtani. The success of Shohei Ohtani has inspired New York to select a player in the 2023 MLB Draft who will try to pitch and hit at the major-league level.
The Yankees used their 13th-round pick in this week's MLB Draft on Josh Tiedemann, a high school player from Arizona. On the heels of Ohtani morphing into baseball's greatest player, New York will try to develop Tiedemann as both a third baseman and a pitcher.
“I think a lot of teams are becoming more open to it, and us being one of them,” Yankees vice president of domestic amateur scouting Damon Oppenheimer told reporters on a conference call, via The Athletic. “We’re going to give this a shot and exhaust it to see if it works out. But we’re seeing it in college. We see it with college players. If we’re taking a high school player, we try this for three years and it works out both ways, great. But if one way starts to work out better than the other, then you move in that direction. Most of these guys are really good athletes to do this. Why not give them that opportunity to compete in both spots? That’s kind of the way we’re seeing it.”
As a high school senior in the 2022-2023 season, Tiedemann hit .394 in 31 games, according to MaxPreps. The Yankees' draft pick went 6-2 with a 3.34 ERA in 11 games as a pitcher.
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