Draft Links: Mock Drafts, SoCal, Memo, Ages

The 2014 amateur draft begins a little less than five hours from now — the Yankees will make only one pick tonight — so here are some last minute draft links to get you ready:

• Mock Drafts: Here are the final mock drafts from Keith Law (subs. req’d), Baseball America, and MLB.com. All three still have the Astros taking San Diego HS LHP Brady Aiken first overall. It would be a surprise if he wasn’t the top choice at this point. The last high school pitcher to be taken first overall was … Brien Taylor. How about that? The Yankees are not included in any of the mocks because they cover the first round only.
• In this afternoon’s chat, Law says he continues to hear the Yankees connected to high school catchers and Indiana 1B Sam Travis. He also says we should never rule out Southern California prospects given scouting director Damon Oppenheimer’s roots and tendencies. You can filter Baseball America’s top 500 draft prospects list by state, if you want to check out the SoCal prospects.
• Jeff Passan obtained a copy of the memo MLB sends to teams outlining what they can and can not ask prospects prior to the draft. They can explicitly ask the player what kind of bonus he’s seeking, but there are rules against trying to use other players as leverage as stuff like that. It’s silly because teams ignore all of it and do whatever they want. It’s just interesting to see.
• Clint Longenecker listed the youngest and oldest prospects available in this draft, broken down into pitchers and position players, high school and college. Want to feel very old? There’s a kid in this draft who was born in 1997.
• As a reminder, the Yankees don’t pick until the second round (55th overall) because of their offseason spending spree. Their spending pool for the top ten rounds is $3,202,300, including $1,018,700 for that second round pick. None of their other picks are slotted for seven figures.
• Click here to go back through our draft archive to see all the draft prospects we’ve profiled. I selfishly hope the Yankees select one of them. It was pretty neat when they drafted three players I wrote up in the first round last year.