FORT WORTH, Texas — In the draft and perhaps nowhere else, the Yankees routinely are charged with doing a lot with a little.
Their initial selection has not landed in the top half of the first round since 1993.
Their finds — like Aaron Judge at No. 32 in 2013 — are found after plenty of other clubs pass on that player.
The Yankees have to locate the gems that others overlook.
Their strategy Sunday appeared to be identifying what they hope is a market inefficiency: pitchers built like workhorses and with elite stuff, even if their command has not been harnessed.
First the Yankees lassoed pitcher Ben Hess from the University of Alabama with the No. 26-overall pick before taking another big righty, Bryce Cunningham out of Vanderbilt, in the second round of the draft at Cowtown Coliseum.
Both are strapping, and both will be projects.
Hess, a 21-year-old Illinois native, struck out 106 batters in just 68 ¹/₃ innings last season, but his control (35 walks) is an obvious area in need of improvement and helped lead to a 5.80 ERA in his junior season.
The Yankees have excelled in developing pitchers and tend to like the bigger and stronger arms.
Hess is listed at 6-foot-5, 255 pounds and has stuff that made him the best strikeout artist (13.34 per nine innings) in Crimson Tide history.
He also finished with a 4.81 ERA over three college seasons.
The Yankees continued the trend of grabbing sturdy, towering pitchers at No. 53 in selecting Cunningham, an Alabama native.
The 6-foot-5, 230-pound right-hander can reach the upper 90s with his fastball and owns a changeup that is hailed as his best pitch.
Like Hess, Cunningham is known for stuff over control, having struck out 168 in 160 innings over three seasons with the Commodores but also walking 71 and posting a 4.95 ERA.
Hess became the Yankees’ first righty pitcher selected in the first round since Clarke Schmidt in 2017, a selection that began a fairly solid run of Yankees first-rounders.
Since the Schmidt draft, the Yankees have turned three late first-round picks into major league contributors in The Bronx.
Schmidt, Anthony Volpe (2019) and Austin Wells (2020) have graduated into big-league help, and there is hope with Spencer Jones (2022) and George Lombard Jr. (2023). T.J. Sikkema (2019) and Trey Sweeney (2021) were used in trades.
This year the Yankees made the job of Damon Oppenheimer, vice president of domestic amateur scouting, harder.
Their first-round pick — originally 19th — dropped 10 spots as a penalty for exceeding the second competitive-balance tax threshold by more than $40 million last season.
