Baseball 1st Round Pick Gerrit Cole Picks UCLA Over Yankees

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Orange Lutheran HS pitcher and Yankees first rounder Gerrit Cole spurns the Yankees for UCLA per the New York Times:

When the Yankees drafted pitcher Gerrit Cole in the first round of the June draft, they believed that Cole would sign with them and forego a college scholarship. It turns out that Cole has changed his mind and will go to U.C.L.A. instead.

According to a person involved in the negotiations, the Yankees have learned that Cole intends to go to college, no matter what they offer. The person was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly before Friday’s deadline for teams to sign drafted players.

Cole is represented by the agent Scott Boras, who is known for asking for lucrative bonuses. But the Yankees have reached deals with first-round Boras clients the last two seasons, and the person said the failure to sign Cole had nothing to do with him.

Instead, Cole and his father had a change of heart and decided to go to college rather than negotiate with the Yankees.

“It was not a negotiating issue,” the person said. “It was not a number issue.”

This is a huge coup for UCLA, he's one of - if not the best HS recruits and would bring a mid to upper 90s mph fastball and devastating hard slider to UCLA.

Cole does have till 9 pm tomorrow to change his mind. We'll see if this is just posturing, Scott Boras does know all the tricks in the book.