Archbishop Mitty baseball coach Brian Yocke said he never watches the MLB Draft and was just going to tune in casually on Wednesday, given that his team’s star, Nick Yorke, wasn’t projected to get selected until the second day — if at all — because he had already signed with Arizona.
But the man who has coached the infielder since sixth grade decided to watch, delaying a walk through the neighborhood with his wife because she reminded him that the Boston Red Sox seemed interested in Yorke.
“I had zero expectations it was going to be Nick,” Yocke said. “Then all of a sudden, the Red Sox came up and it was Nicholas Yorke’s name. I literally started running through the house, screaming, ‘Let’s go!’”
The Red Sox strayed off the board on draft night, selecting Yorke with the 17th overall pick, about 80 spots higher than most pre-draft projections.
Yocke said the excitement in his living room stemmed from “how long I have known this kid and how close our families have gotten. I became part of his family, and he became part of my family. This isn’t like a player getting drafted. This is like a son getting drafted.”
Yorke, who graduated from Mitty this spring, is the middle of three baseball-playing brothers.
His older brother, Joe, graduated from Mitty in 2019 and now plays at Boise State. His younger brother, Zach, is halfway through his Mitty career. Their mother, Robyn, was four-time softball All-American at Fresno State. She taught her sons how to play.
“There was just something different about him,” Yocke said of Nick. “All the Yorkes are really good baseball players. It runs in the family with his mom. They have that lineage of good baseball. But his obsession with working through the game. This is not a joke. We spent every day of every spring for the last four years hitting in the cage after practice.”
Nick Yorke is primarily a middle infielder with an exceptional power bat.
It’s worth noting that Boston scouting director, Paul Tobini, has Bay Area ties: He is a San Francisco native who graduated from one of Mitty’s West Catholic Athletic League rivals, St. Ignatius.
Yorke was named the WCAL’s MVP as a sophomore in 2018 after batting .494 in 28 games.
In five games his senior year, cut short because of the coronavirus pandemic, Yorke batted .533 with two home runs. His junior year, he hit .505 with 40 RBIs, nine doubles, three triples and seven home runs.
“I told somebody that I am going to have some really happy emotions for the next couple of hours and then it’s going to hit me that I don’t get to coach him next year,” Yocke said.
In a Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday night, Yorke said, “Personally, I felt like I was a first-rounder. I know a lot of rankings and sites didn’t have me there. But personally I’m more of a blue-collar, put-your-head-down, go-to-work kind of guy. I didn’t go out and do all the Perfect Game things guys get ranked on. Wherever I played ball I played my hardest and the Red Sox, fortunately, saw me at one of those times and the rest is what just happened.
“I felt very underrated coming into the draft. I kind of shocked everyone when I was. It’s kind of exciting to me to kind of prove to everybody that I’m here to stay and I’m ready to get to work.”
Naturally, it has been “crazy” for the Yorke family since the Red Sox chose Nick. Robyn noted Thursday that she has received more than 200 text messages.
She added that she has no doubt that her son “will do great things” for the Red Sox organization.
“Nick has a special drive on the baseball field,” Robyn said in a text. “I am so proud of how hard he has worked and he deserves this opportunity.”
