{"id":749240,"date":"2026-07-11T21:57:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T21:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/749240\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T21:57:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T21:57:20","slug":"yankees-take-arkansas-lefty-hunter-dietz-in-2026-mlb-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/749240\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees take Arkansas lefty Hunter Dietz in 2026 MLB Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 The Yankees made their first selection in the 2026 MLB Draft on Saturday, selecting Hunter Dietz with the 35th overall pick.<\/p>\n<p>A left-hander out of the University of Arkansas, Dietz didn\u2019t pitch in a ton of games for the Razorbacks. The 21-year-old suffered an elbow stress fracture that required surgery in the Fall of 2023, and he totaled just 1.2 innings and four appearances from 2024-2025.<\/p>\n<p>However, Dietz knocked some rust off with a handful of summer ball games in the Cape Cod League last year before enjoying a breakout 2026 campaign. With a 7-4 record, a 3.57 ERA, 31 walks, and 131 strikeouts over 16 starts and 85.2 innings, he earned All-SEC first-team and All-American third-team honors.<\/p>\n<p>Dietz was also a semifinalist for the Golden Spikes Award.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The New York Yankees select LHP Hunter Dietz with the 35th overall pick out of the University of Arkansas<\/p>\n<p>Dietz is a Tall, hard-throwing southpaw who has had some injury issues in college, appearing in just 4 games (0 starts) across his first 2 seasons before his breakout season\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Cai Rogers (@cai_rogers7) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/cai_rogers7\/status\/2076039592046919844?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow\">July 11, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/milb\/prospects\/draft\/hunter-dietz-806059\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">MLB.com\u2019s scouting report<\/a>, Dietz has a fastball that sits 94-96 mph and reaches 98 mph. His arsenal also includes a curve, slider, cutter and changeup.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDietz presents an unusual look for hitters, delivering pitches from a 6-6 frame with a high three-quarters arm slot,\u201d the scouting report added.<\/p>\n<p>MLB.com listed Dietz as the 17th-best prospect in this year\u2019s draft, so he fell off the board later than expected. That worked out for the Yankees, as they received a 10-pick penalty on their first selection for the second straight year after they exceeded the second surcharge threshold of the Competitive Balance Tax last season.<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Jays, Dodgers, Mets and Phillies received the same penalty.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to his collegiate career, Dietz pitched for a stacked Calvary Christian High School (Clearwater, Fla.) rotation. That group also featured future Blue Jays fourth-rounder Landen Maroudis and Liam Peterson, who was drafted 19th overall by the Guardians on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2014 The Yankees made their first selection in the 2026 MLB Draft on Saturday, selecting Hunter&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[3788,5,22841,4,1586,1690,62,2548,2547,142],"class_list":["post-749240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-yankees","tag-arkansas","tag-baseball","tag-hunter-dietz","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-draft","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkyankees","tag-yankees"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116903584958048057","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}