2020? HS classroom. '21? Spring Training
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- It is a little after 8 a.m. on a beautiful Friday in late February, and Nick Yorke is sitting in a seat halfway up the Green Monster with a perfect view of JetBlue Park, where he hopes to do some damage in his first Major League Spring Training.
All of 18 years old, Yorke is the youngest of the 70-plus players in camp by more than two years. It is less than nine months since the Red Sox surprised many of the “experts” by making him the 17th player selected in the 2020 MLB Draft.
Though Yorke, an infielder with a big right-handed bat, impressively defines tunnel vision in his approach, he took a few moments to reflect on how things have changed for him in a year.
What was Yorke, now the team's No. 11 prospect, doing exactly a year ago at this very same moment in time?
“I was getting ready to go to school. I was on my way to school and then practice after school,” said Yorke. “It’s nuts. It’s a big difference. I’ve been focusing on just baseball now. It’s a lot more work, but it’s a lot more fun. We’re sitting on top of the Green Monster looking down at one of the greatest fields. It doesn’t get better than this.”
While things are unusual this Spring Training due to the pandemic and many teams are inviting more top prospects than usual to big league camp, it is still highly rare for a player to get such a prestigious invite less than a year after graduating from high school.
So why did the Red Sox do it?
“As you note, it’s not that common to bring a recent high school Draft pick to big league camp. If you’re going to do it, you need to feel very good about how that player is going to handle himself around veteran players, how mature he is, how he’ll mesh with the group,” said Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom. “Needless to say, if we didn’t feel great about those aspects with Nick, he wouldn’t be here.
“This is a unique time, and the pandemic has really impacted what we’ve been able to do with our Minor League players, especially those right out of the Draft. We got some development time with Nick last summer in Pawtucket and instructional league, but not as much as we would have liked. Having him here allows us to make up for that a little bit, and it should be a great experience for him.”
Yorke got his first eye opening experience of the difference between high school and pro baseball at instructional league last fall. He thought he was in good shape, and then the Red Sox gave him a dose of reality.
“I wasn’t in the greatest shape. We set some goals here to lose about 15 pounds before I came back for Spring Training and then I came back and I’ve lost 25 since then,” said Yorke. “Yeah, I put in a lot of work this offseason. I ran a lot, I lifted a lot. Whatever goals they set for me, I hit them, and I’m going to try to set new ones and keep hitting those.”
Manager Alex Cora noticed Yorke’s physique. In fact, when Cora got his first glimpse of him in the batting cage, he didn’t realize he was looking at the 18-year-old who was drafted. Cora was looking at someone with a physique and a swing that would suggest he was older.
“It made me feel old,” quipped Cora. “[My daughter] Camila turns 18 in March. It’s like, ‘Wow, this is unreal.’ I saw him a few days ago in the batting cage and he’s lost some weight, he’s in a better place physically. He's a tall, strong kid. That was impressive. I looked and was like, ‘Who’s this kid?’ They told me, and I was like, ‘Wow, that’s impressive.’”
Cora then quizzed the kid and asked him who he was going to follow around this spring. Yorke batted .500 on the question, answering with Enrique Hernández and J.D. Martinez.
Martinez, Cora noted, is way too complex a hitter for Yorke to properly emulate at this point in his development.
“[Cora] was like, ‘Yeah, follow [Xander] Bogaerts around. Have Bogaerts put a leash around you. Just follow him around, and you’re going to pick up as much as you can,’” said Yorke. “I’m 18, and I’m playing with the best that baseball’s got. It’s amazing. It’s fun.”