Tuesday, July 22, 2008 | By Alex Eisenberg

Breaking Down the Draft -- Scouting Gerrit Cole

Edited on August 20: With the draft signing period now over and knowing that Gerrit Cole ended up not signing with the Yankees, I wanted to give my thoughts. First, this is obviously a big blow for the Yankees...Cole had legitimate top of the rotation stuff and it will be extremely unlikely for them to get a player of Cole's caliber in the same spot in next year's draft.

With that said, I'm not so sure this is a good move for Cole either. This isn't like Aaron Crow signing with an Independent League team where he'll at least be able to control how much he pitches. Cole is going to an established college program that is concerned with winning and not with Cole's career as a professional.

Cole is somebody I would want handled with kid's gloves, but I'm not sure he will get handled that way. He better hope his arm holds up should UCLA give him a heavy workload and he'll be losing a ton of money. Everything I've read about Cole said his decision to go to college wasn't about money--he just had a preference for going to college, which is something that is extremely admirable. Let's just hope he made the right decision.

Continuing our 2008 Baseball Draft Review, I recently provided the Hardball Times with an article profiling Yankees draft pick Gerrit Cole. Below is an excerpt:

Gerrit Cole

...One thing that Cole does well is firm up his glove to prevent his front shoulder from opening (this also improves off-speed pitches), and you also see him leave the glove out in front of his chest, allowing his chest to move into the glove rather than tucking the glove into his side. This allows the pitcher to achieve a better upper-body tilt and extension out in front, which should allow Cole to release the ball just a little bit closer to home in addition to giving the arm more room to decelerate. However, by landing stiffly on his front leg, he neutralizes some of the advantages he gains with his very good front-side mechanics, such as the extra distance for the arm to decelerate and the release of the ball closer to home plate.