‘Pinstripes again’: Modesto-area baseball star happy to be Yankees’ fourth-round pick
Paul Contreras thought he was done keeping track of this year’s Major League Baseball Draft.
He should have eaten earlier in the day, but he was too anxious. So when he thought the first-day rush of the draft was over on Saturday, the former Gregori High and Modesto Junior College baseball standout and Salida native put some of his mom’s enchiladas in the microwave.
But then, he got the call he has waited for his entire life.
“I was like, you know what, I’m done now, I’m not gonna get picked in the fourth (round). I can eat now,” Contreras recalled Sunday afternoon in a phone call with The Bee. “And then as I was warming it up, it was like boom, dang, all right.”
Contreras’ life changed Saturday, as did the lives of over 600 baseball hopefuls across the world over the weekend. Day 1 of the MLB Draft was just the first four rounds, while rounds 5-20 were on Day 2.
A 6-foot-3, 205-pound outfielder, Contreras was drafted in the fourth round, 127th overall by the New York Yankees. He was the team’s fourth pick on Saturday and the second position player the team selected in the 2026 Draft.
“It’s pretty crazy and funny that every team I’ve played for pretty much has been in pinstripes, so that’s pretty cool that I get to wear the pinstripes again,” he said. “But just being a part of the Yankees, anybody will say just, ‘Wow.’ It’s unbelievable. … I couldn’t do anything without God putting this in front of me. And the Yankees, it’s just crazy prestigious.”
Contreras was in the MLB draft for the second time. He was eligible after a freshman season at MJC but had no idea where he would go. In 2024, he watched the first day just for fun, he said. “You‘re watching it as an outsider.”
He ended up going undrafted.
This time, he was prepared. His agent, Grant Alvarez of Paragon Sports International, had a good idea of his draft range — between the fourth and sixth rounds — so Contreras knew what to look for. He passed the time by playing MLB The Show’s Diamond Dynasty Weekend Classic and writing down the slot money for different picks of the rounds on the first day.
After he saw the Yankees picked, that’s when he decided to eat. Before he could figure the slot money for each of the picks in the fifth round, he went to the microwave.
That’s when he got the call from Alvarez.
“As soon as I put food in the microwave, Grant calls me, and he’s like, ‘Hey, the Yankees want you, are you ready for this? I think this is a great opportunity,’” Contreras said. “Then me and my family went over it and were like, ‘Yeah, OK, this is real.’”
Drafted after a standout junior season
Contreras was drafted after a standout junior season with Cal State Fullerton.
After earning All-District basketball and baseball honors during his senior year with the Jaguars, he spent a season at MJC before playing two years on scholarship in Southern California.
In his final season as a Titan, he was named the 2026 Big West co-Field Player of the Year, the first Fullerton player to earn the honor since 2016. He was also named a Big West First-Team member and was selected to the ABCA/Rawlings West All-Region Second Team.
Contreras finished first on the team and third in the Big West in overall batting average (.346) and added team highs in runs (40) and RBI (45). He also hit 14 home runs, the most by a Titan since 2010. According to the Cal State Fullerton athletics website, Contreras is the highest-drafted player from the school since Colton Eastman in the 2018 MLB Draft (107th overall).
It was a career year that started last summer.
Contreras played summer ball in Duluth, Minn., and went into the offseason known for his power but looking to improve his strikeout rate and work on hitting the ball for contact.
Fall games and scrimmages followed, and he worked on the same thing, seeing continuous improvement.
“Everything was clicking,” Contreras said. “I was doing everything I was working on. It felt good, it felt like it was second nature to me.”
By the spring of his junior season, the areas he once had to focus on were second nature.
He was also working with mental health coaches. They helped him develop a routine and improve his mental process.
“It’s a kids game, just treat it like that. As we kept going, I was just thinking about that,” he said. “It wasn’t really about the results, it was about the relationships I was creating … how to be a better man. I was able to play more freely this year and I was just having fun.”
At the beginning of what became one of the best individual seasons in the Big West, Contreras made another important switch: no batting gloves.
He went back and forth between wearing them and hitting without them in high school and at MJC. He said he started his junior season wearing them but quickly abandoned them after a slow start.
“I started the season kind of slow and I had batting gloves on and I was talking to my dad and I was like, ‘I always talk about this being a kids game, why don’t I just go back to doing what I used to do when I was 8. Let me just take these batting gloves off and see what happens,’” Contreras said.
He took the gloves off and his offense found new life. He went 1-for-3 with a walk in his first game without them against Xavier. In the next game against Xavier, he hit a home run and walked twice.
“I was like, ‘All right, these are never going back on again,’” he said.
In his next 12 outings, he had nine multi-hit games, 23 total hits and had a streak of at least two hits in four straight games.
It became his “thing” during the season, but will it continue in the pros?
“It’s humid out there, so I don’t know,” Contreras said. “I think I might do a little mix. I don’t think I’m ever going to go back to two. But I might do one on my bottom hand and none on my top. It’s either gonna be one on or none on.”
“You can still make it”
Contreras told The Bee ahead of the 2024 draft that he almost quit, but his mom convinced him to keep playing.
After hitting over .500 at Gregori, he went to MJC, where he was named to the All-Big 8 First Team and was a Gold Glove winner.
He wasn’t selected then, but two years and a number of additional accolades later, Contreras is a pro.
He wants his story to be a lesson to baseball players in the area. He grew up playing in the Salida Little League and stayed local for high school and his first year of college.
“My only goal was to have kids from Salida understand you can still make it no matter what,” he said. “You can put your name out there if you work hard enough.
“Keep going, keep going. It’s not going to be easy, though. But keep going.”
But Contreras doesn’t want to be an example from afar. He has goals to invest in local baseball.
“I used to always tell my parents if I ever make enough money to help make Salida an absolute gold zone for freaking baseball players, I’m gonna do it,” he said.
Contreras begins his journey with a plane ride out of California on Tuesday. He will spend nearly all of the next few months in Tampa, Fla., where the Yankees’ complex and Single-A team are located. It will be his first time out of California for longer than a couple of months.
But on Saturday while riding the high of realizing he’ll live out his childhood dream, he went back to the microwave. He hadn’t had a chance to eat those enchiladas and had to reheat them.
They were chicken with green sauce.
This story was originally published July 13, 2026 at 3:47 PM with the headline "‘Pinstripes again’: Modesto-area baseball star happy to be Yankees’ fourth-round pick."
