Kevin Reese is the Yankees’ new director of player development

Kevin Reese, who had been the senior director of professional scouting for the Yankees since November of 2017, was promoted on January 12 of this year (2022) to be the team’s vice president of player development.

He has a vast background in scouting, which means he will be dedicated to going around the minor league system and helping the prospects develop and improve in any way possible at Low-A Tampa, High-A Hudson Valley, Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton. He will also oversee the coaches at the various levels and assist them in how they develop and instruct the players.

He is a 43-year-old former outfielder who played in 12 Major League games, all with the Yankees. He played well in a very limited sample size as a pinch hitter but the Yankees had a lot of talent back in 2005 and 2006 and he was more of a 4A player who could not stick beyond Triple-A.

In 2005, when he was 27, he got two plate appearances in two games and went 0–1. In 2006, he appeared in 10 games and performed well. He was 5–12 (.412) with two runs scored, and RBI and a steal. In 12 games in his MLB career he had a .385 average (5–13), a .500 OBP and two runs scored.

He went to the University of San Diego and played in the prestigious college Cape Cod summer baseball league in 1999. He was drafted in the 27th round in 2000 by the San Diego Padres, which meant that after growing up in San Diego, and going to college in San Diego, he got to start his professional career in San Diego as well.

Reese was in the Padres organization for only two seasons (he had a .329 average at Single-A Fort Wayne in 2001) and then he was traded to the Yankees in exchange for Bernie Castro on December 18, 2001.

Reese had a .290 average with 22 steals at Double-A Norwich in his first season in the Yankees organization and then in 2003, in 101 games at Double-A and Triple-A, he had a .264 average with 28 steals. He played at Double-A and Triple-A once again in 2014 (Double-A was now in Trenton instead of Norwich, Connecticut), and in 131 games, he had a .308 average with 14 homers, 68 RBI and 17 steals. Those are actually fairly impressive stats for 131 games, but it was not enough to have a sustained amount of games at the Major League level.

He made his debut on June 26, 2005 after outfielder Hideki Matsui, who was the MVP of the 2009 World Series championship team, got injured and had to miss some game action. Reese drew a walk in his first Major League at-bat. In his first official at-bat, he struck out. Later in the same week, the Yankees sent him back down to the minors.

Another Matsui injury (broken wrist) led to him being promoted from the minors again in 2006. He was recalled on May 12, 2006, to be a backup outfielder and he would get his first MLB hit on May 20, 2006. He played in 53 games that season with the Columbus Clippers and he declined from previous seasons as he had a .283 average with five homers, 21 RBI and four steals.

In 2007, the Yankees Triple-A affiliate moved east to become the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees (this made sense logistically since it made it so that a player being called up to the Yankees could have a faster trip to The Bronx). Reese had just a .249 average with nine steals 115 games that season at Triple-A, which led to the end of his professional baseball career.

In 2007 at Triple-A, Reese’s teammate was Shelley Duncan. Duncan led the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre Yankees in homers that season with 25 and he also led the team with his 79 RBI. Brett Gardner, who was an outfielder for the Yankees for 14 seasons (he might or might not return in 2022), was second on the team with 21 steals after playing in only 45 games at Triple-A. Kevin Thompson, who only played 41 games in the majors, led the 2007 team with 24 steals.

Duncan showed a propensity to hit a lot of homers in the minors as he hit 34 at Double-A in 2005, those 25 in 2007 and in 2009 he had 30 homers and 99 RBI in 123 games at Triple-A.

In 459 career games at Triple-A, Duncan hit 91 homers and had 337 RBI. He was not nearly successful in the majors since in 330 career games in Major League Baseball he had 43 homers and 144 RBI. He had a .351 on-base percentage at Triple-A but just a .305 on-base percentage in MLB. He played a combined 34 games with the Yankees in 2008 and 2009 and had one homer and seven RBI in those 34 games.

Duncan also played in the majors with the Cleveland Indians and the Tampa Bay Rays.

The Yankees designated Reese for assignment on August 14, 2007, but he was still returned to Triple-A a day later. However, this did show that he was not in their plans going forward to continue playing but he did stay with the organization.

He did not get any Major League spring training offers going into the 2008 season, which led him to retire from professional baseball. The Yankees obviously liked his baseball IQ and thought he could find talent since he accepted a job with the Yankees as a scout for the South Atlantic and Carolina leagues.

He was a scout in the organization until 2016 when he was promoted to being the director of professional scouting. The Yankees continued to like his eye for talent since he was promoted again in November of the following year to be the senior director of scouting.

As senior director of player development, Reese spent the majority of his time at the team’s minor league training complex across the street from George M. Steinbrenner Field. Reese took over the director of player development position from Gary Denbo, who ran the system from 2014 until he left for the same job with Derek Jeter’s Marlins organization. Denbo and Jeter were close from their time with the Yankees.

In 2019, Reese and Reese’s former assistant Dan Griese were interviewed about why his background as a scout and player in the minor leagues helped him be named director of professional scouting.

“He’s had boots on the ground,” said Giese, who pitched parts of three seasons in the majors, including 2008 with the Yankees. “He can float into (Triple-A) Scranton-Wilkes-Barre and understand the struggles of a player who hasn’t been to the bigs and be able to speak to them on their level. I think guys will respect him knowing that he made it to the big leagues and was one of them and was a Yankee.”

Reese, who is now 43, also thought his six seasons in the Yankees organization and his eight seasons overall in professional baseball would help him relate to the up and coming players in the minors who are “always king of looking for that edge.”

“I was kind of doing it blind a little bit,” he said. “That’s always been intriguing to me. I can’t turn back the clock, but I can have a positive impact on people and give them the best information and equipment and guidance and help them reach their individual ceilings.”

Billy Eppler, who was the Yankees pro scouting director in late 2007 (he would later be the team’s assistant GM and is now the Mets GM), was a major reason Reese got into scouting. Eppler talked to Reese and hired him as a scout but in some ways he had been a scout during his playing days. Eppler and Reese were close when Reese was an active player and Eppler wold ask him his opinion of his teammates.

Reese and Robinson Cano, who was an All-Star five times in nine seasons with the Yankees and finished second in Rookie of the Year voting in 2005, were roommates at Double-A Trenton in 2003. Reese was able to confirm the thoughts by the front office that the team had something special in the emerging Cano.

“When I had the conversation with Kevin about it,” Eppler said said about Reese, “Kevin was speaking from a different lens. He didn’t have any training in evaluating players. … He was just such a smart player, a pretty mindful guy. … He said, ‘That guy’s going to play in an All-Star Game some day.”

This proves that Reese really does have an eye for talent and can really predict the future since Cano has been an All-Star eight times in his career and he is the active leader in homers among second baseman with 334. Cano, Jeff Kent and Rogers Hornsby are the only three players to hit at least 300 homers while playing at least two-thirds of their games at second base.

“He’s got the aptitude, the work ethic, the character, the mindfulness, the even keel to deal with the number of issues you deal with,” Eppler went onto say about Reese’s positive attributes. “Those characteristics will be strengths with him going forward. Ultimately, the Yankees, they’re better off."

His mission will be to ensure that the Yankees get continue to get impact players from their minor league system and that the develop steadily each year. He prove his knowledge early on with Cano and the Yankees have liked his insights since 2008 since he started as a scout.