EL PASO, Texas — The Yankees walked into the 2026 draft short on money and short on leverage. A luxury-tax penalty pushed their first selection down 10 spots, shrinking their bonus pool to one of the smallest in baseball.
That math shapes every choice a club makes after the fourth round. Cheap college seniors sign quickly. High school players with strong college commitments do not, and they cost more than the slot suggests.
The Yankees took the gamble anyway. In the sixth round they spent their pick on a prep infielder rather than a safe college bat, betting they could pull him away from a Big 12 program that had already signed him in February.
Three days after the draft closed, that bet has no resolution. The player has not signed, and by his own account he has not decided. The clock runs to July 27.
The pick that carries a condition
The player is Andrew Gonzalez, an 18-year-old infielder out of Americas High School in El Paso who often goes by Drew. The Yankees selected him at No. 189 overall, the first prep bat of their class and their sixth-round choice.
The credentials are real. Gonzalez hit 13 home runs with 54 RBIs and 46 walks as a senior, earning first-team all-state recognition from the Texas High School Baseball Coaches Association in Class 5A. The El Paso Times named him its all-city player of the year.
He carried the Trailblazers to a 27-10-1 record and four rounds deep into the Class 5A Division I playoffs, where they lost to eventual champion Aledo. He is listed at 6-foot-1 and 195 pounds and bats left-handed.
The complication arrived months before the draft. Gonzalez signed with Texas Tech in February after decommitting from New Mexico State last November. He was the first Red Raiders signee taken in this draft.
Scouts see the appeal and the risk in the same profile. Jim Callis said on the MLB Network broadcast that Gonzalez has real power potential, but questioned whether he sticks at third base, with first base or the outfield plausible outcomes. He was not ranked in Baseball America’s top 500.
Two paths and a deadline
The choice in front of Gonzalez is binary and permanent. Signing with the Yankees starts his professional career and forfeits his NCAA eligibility. Honoring the Texas Tech commitment sends him to Lubbock, where he would develop for three years and become draft-eligible again after his junior season.
He told KTSM, the NBC affiliate in El Paso, that he has not made a decision. That was the state of play as of the station’s report, and no signing has been announced since.
The money is the lever. The slot value attached to pick No. 189 is $341,800, according to MLB Pipeline. That figure sets the baseline, but the Yankees can exceed it by reallocating pool dollars from picks that sign under slot.
Their capacity to do that is limited. The 10-pick penalty for exceeding the second luxury-tax threshold left the Yankees near the bottom of the league in bonus pool money, alongside the Dodgers, Mets, Blue Jays and Phillies. Every dollar spent buying out Gonzalez is a dollar unavailable elsewhere.
Why the Yankees spent the pick anyway
Front offices do not use a top-10-round selection on a player they expect to lose. The pick itself is the signal, and evaluators reading the Yankees’ board took it that way.
The organization needed bats. Years of trades thinned the position-player ranks, and Gonzalez was the first high school hitter they targeted in a class that leaned heavily on arms. Perfect Game rated him among the top third basemen in the 2026 high school class.
The fit with the ballpark is part of the calculus. A left-handed swing with developing pull-side power is a profile the Yankees have chased before, for obvious reasons involving the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium.
Local reporting has already leaned toward an outcome. KVIA in El Paso reported that Gonzalez now appears set to begin his professional career in the Yankees organization, framing the draft as the fulfillment of a longtime goal. That assessment sits against his own statement that the decision remains open.
Where the signing stands
Nothing is official. Gonzalez does not appear among the Yankees picks who have agreed to terms, a group that includes first-round left-hander Hunter Dietz, who reached a deal within roughly 50 hours of being selected.
Gonzalez is not the only prep gamble in the class facing this math. Outfielder Lee Garris, taken in the 13th round out of a Virginia high school, and shortstop William Cutshall, a 15th-round pick committed to Ole Miss, carry commitments of their own. The Yankees drafted 20 players and signed two undrafted free agents.
The deadline does the rest. If Gonzalez signs by July 27, the Yankees add a projectable left-handed bat with a long developmental runway. If he does not, the sixth-round pick returns nothing, and the Red Raiders get a first-team all-state infielder who spent his summer weighing a professional contract against a college locker room.
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