The first round of the 2024 MLB Draft could be dominated by college players like never before, with potentially two-thirds of the first 30 picks used on college picks.
Some of these soon-to-be draft picks were former top high school players who were expected to be in this position. Many others were under-the-radar prospects who didn’t have many options coming out of the prep ranks.
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But they all have a unique origin story.
Here is a look at the recruitment of nine top prospects in the upcoming draft.
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JJ Wetherholt, INF, West Virginia
Perfect Game rank: unranked overall, No. 225 2B in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 3 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Mars, Pa.
Wetherholt is on the shortlist of best hitters in college baseball over the past three seasons. As a sophomore in 2023, he led the nation with a .449 average and ranked eighth in OPS at 1.304 while playing second base. His numbers dipped as a junior — due in part to a hamstring injury that cost him six weeks — but he still hit .331 with a 1.061 OPS after transitioning to shortstop.
His only scholarship offer — at any level — came from West Virginia.
West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins (formerly the Mountaineers assistant coach): I first saw JJ when he was playing in a tournament at Alderson Broaddus University, which no longer exists. He would have been going into his junior year. I remember thinking, “I’ve got to go watch this guy because I’d heard the name,” and at West Virginia, if you look at our roster, there’s probably usually only three or four kids from the state that are on our roster. Just a very small state, a rural state. But he was playing 30 minutes from campus and we don’t get that. Like if I want to go see guys, we’re talking, drive to Pittsburgh, fly out to tournaments. Very rarely do we get a drive anywhere to see prospects.
The coach was under no illusion that he was about to discover a future All-American.
Sabins: He’s playing second base for the Beaver Valley Red. Rarely do the big boys recruit second basemen just because everybody’s a shortstop. Everybody’s big, strong. They’re on the national team playing shortstop. And so this was probably a 5-foot-7, 160-pound second baseman that was not sexy. I mean, the opposite of sexy.
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And so he was left-handed and he could really drive the ball the other direction, which is rare. Just young guys that can control the middle of the field doesn’t happen much, especially guys that are from Mars, Penn., that play for Beaver Valley Red and they live 50 minutes from campus. So I kind of just kept watching.
One play convinced Sabins that Wetherholt could play big-time college baseball.
Sabins: And the big turning point for me was in that game, he’s playing second base and there was a fisted ball from a right-handed hitter that went over the first baseman’s head, a Texas Leaguer. And he got an unbelievable jump off the bat and he ends up laying out fully stretched out head first. So he stretches out, lays out, catches the ball and slides in the foul territory. And it’s a s—hole field with rocks and bad grass.
And so I was like, “Holy s—, man, the instincts on that kid.” Those are the instincts of a guy that’s playing a College World Series. But we’re out here probably like on a Tuesday in the summer at Alderson Broadus with Beaver Valley Red. And it was one of those defensive plays where it kind of fired you up. And I’m thinking, “Am I recruiting a 5-7 second baseman?”
About two weeks later, Sabins became the first — and only coach — to extend a scholarship offer. Wetherholt committed shortly thereafter.
Sabins: I think there have been some schools that spoke to him, but we’re the only offer. He didn’t have junior college. He didn’t have D2. He didn’t have anything. He just had one offer to West Virginia. I think his choices were easy, but he’s all West Virginia.
I would joke with him saying he didn’t have much of a choice because I don’t think there was a ton of people beating down his door at that time.
Hagen Smith, LHP, Arkansas
Perfect Game rank: No. 71 overall, No. 12 LHP in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 6 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Bullard, Texas
Smith made the jump from great to elite in his final season at Arkansas. The left-hander from East Texas went 9-2 with a 2.04 ERA and 0.983 WHIP and held opposing batters to a .144 average (lowest in the nation). And he was at his best against the best; he allowed two earned runs or fewer in nine of 10 SEC regular-season starts — and just three in the other start.
Arkansas pitching coach Matt Hobbs was enamored with Smith when he first saw him in the summer after his sophomore season at a tournament in Georgia. There was one problem: Smith was committed to Oklahoma State.
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Hobbs: We were there, myself and coach (Nate) Thompson, our recruiting coordinator, we were watching Building Champions play the Texas Sun Devils. I think that’s who Hagen played for, and we were watching the shortstop for Building Champions, because he was committed to us. And there’s Hagen on the mound, and he’s committed to Oklahoma State, and you’re watching him, and you’re thinking, like, “God, I wish I had that guy.” That was the first day I ever saw Hagen.
Unlike college basketball and college football, baseball coaches rarely try to flip a committed prospect. They typically wait for the player to de-commit before actively recruiting him.
Hobbs: I was at the Area Code Games (in Long Beach, Calif.), and he was still committed to Oklahoma State, but we were kind of hearing that (he might de-commit). (Oklahoma State) had had a staff change, the assistant coach had left who had recruited Hagen, and so you’re starting to think, like, “OK, things are starting to line up here.” And so I’m watching him pitch, and he’s throwing for the Texas Rangers scout team at the Underclass Area Code Games, which is a high-level tournament at the end of the summer. And he’s about to take the mound, and when I had seen him earlier in the summer, it was up to 91 with a really good slider or curveball or whatever he was calling at the time. It was big-time stuff for a kid that age. And he comes out throwing like, 82 miles per hour, and I was like, “Wow, he’s either, really tired or something’s up.” And come to find out, he had hurt his UCL in his elbow warming up to go out for that outing. Like, he hurt himself, so he’s got to have … so he gets hurt.
Smith de-committed from Oklahoma State shortly after the injury and was back on the open market.
Hobbs: I don’t know exactly if (the injury) scared people off or not, but it was just, for me, I was like, “We are definitely recruiting this kid, with or without Tommy John. We are going to be all over this. We are going to be all in on this kid.” And then, we talk to him, and it’s just like, “Wow, this kid’s different.” He’s the salt of the earth. And that’s all you keep hearing about him. It’s just like he’s a wonderful competitor, but he’s like this great kid. And it couldn’t have been more true.
Arkansas got Smith on campus for an official visit a few months later. Hobbs, however, was convinced things were not going well.
Hobbs: So there he is, like, a couple weeks out of surgery, or maybe a week out of surgery, walking around in a sling on our campus. Our football team wasn’t very good, so he had to go to a bad football game, and it was hot, and he had his sling on. And the whole time I’m like, “God, this is not going well.” He’s having to walk up and down stairs, and he’s in pain still. I think, I wish this was different. I wish it was going better. I’m thinking he’s having a bad trip. It’s hard … all kids are hard to read, and I just met the kid.
Smith went on several other trips that fall, most notably to Florida, before making his decision.
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Hobbs: I still remember, I was outside on my deck, and (Arkansas) coach (Dave) Van Horn called me. He’s like, ”Hey, Hagen’s about to call you.” And I was just like, “Oh no, he’s going somewhere else.”
And then he gets on the phone, and he says, “Yeah, I’m ready to be a Razorback” and I about fell down. I was so happy.
Nick Kurtz, 1B, Wake Forest
Perfect Game rank: No. 403 overall, No. 13 1B in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 7 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Lancaster, Pa.
Kurtz did nothing but hit in his three seasons on campus. He ended his career at Wake Forest with a .336 average, 61 home runs and 180 RBIs. He had more walks than strikeouts in all three seasons — rare for a power hitter — and was also one of the top defensive first basemen in the nation.
Not bad for a guy who was recruited to be a left-handed pitcher.
Wake Forest assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Bill Cilento: We committed him early on. We committed him initially as a two-way guy but as a primary pitcher. … He played for Team USA when he was 12, same team with (Wake Forest teammate) Josh Hartle, and we had just committed Josh Hartle. And there’s a guy that I know really, really well, Todd Fine, he coached for USA Baseball. And I said, “Todd, tell me about who would I should (look at),” and he said, “Hey, if I could get one guy, I’d get this guy.”
And he told me a story that they were in Seoul, South Korea, or wherever it was, and (Kurtz) pitched the championship game. And literally, all his teammates are there celebrating, and he’s on his way to the hospital because he just got dehydrated. So that resonated with me and it resonated with our pitching coach at the time, Matt Hobbs, and we went all in at that point.
For us, it’s always — there’s skills, there’s necessary skills, but the makeup’s what separates people, and that story for me was, push my chips in.
Kurtz’s hitting dramatically improved as he progressed through his high school career, to the point where his dad reached out to the coaching staff to be sure his son would have the opportunity to play in the field at Wake Forest.
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Cilento: I’d been on the summer recruiting circuit for a while, and I had finally just gone and met my wife and kids at the beach, actually. And I’ll never forget, his dad called and was like, “Hey, I think he’s kind of becoming more of a hitter, if you guys don’t want that?”
And I was like, “Nah.” I had had a chance to see him a bunch that summer, and offensively he’d taken off, so it was pretty apparent then. The only thing that was different was, we thought he would be a hitter that would pitch every now and again, but at that point we kind of knew that he’s probably just gonna hit only.
Ryan Waldschmidt, OF, Kentucky/Charleston Southern
Perfect Game rank: No. 443 overall, No. 84 SS in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 11 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Bradenton, Fla.
Waldschmidt made the leap from a solid SEC player as a sophomore to a legitimate first-round pick after slashing .357/.485/.654 as a junior on a Kentucky team that won a share of the SEC championship and advanced to the College World Series for the first time in program history.
He began his career in the Big South at Charleston Southern, where he was the headliner of the Buccaneers’ 2021 recruiting class.
Former Charleston Southern head coach Marc MacMillan: I thought we had identified a really good player. There was a mentality there with him. There was a toughness with him. I think there was a little bit of maybe a chip on his shoulder that, “Hey, maybe some people, you know, aren’t paying attention to me.”
When I recruited him, his hair was dyed blonde at the time, probably, a high school summer thing. And then when he got here, he’s got dark hair and all of a sudden he’s put on, you know, 15, 20 pounds. And I was like, I almost didn’t recognize you, man.
Tulane assistant coach Anthony Izzio (formerly the recruiting coordinator at Charleston Southern): First saw him in Fort Myers, playing in a tournament. You could really tell that there were a lot of tools in there, just more than anything, just really needed an opportunity. And so I got on the phone with Waldy and his folks and really built a really good relationship with him and them. And then we ended up getting them to come up to Charleston.
Waldschmidt was recruited as a shortstop but was moved to center field midway through his freshman season. He hit .310 with nine home runs and 43 RBIs in 2021 for the Buccaneers and then entered the transfer portal.
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MacMillan: After his freshman year, I remember having discussions with my staff and we all felt as he was moving through it, we’re like, “Man, we got a young man here that probably has an opportunity to have success at the next, if you want to call it level, the Power 5. My ultimate feeling was that he would come back (as a sophomore) and he would play one more year here. And then at that point, if he repeated it, which I knew he would, I was going to tell him, “You need to go, you need to go explore that other opportunity because, you know, that’s the challenge. That’s the competition that you need to go out and seek.”
It hurt at the time. I wasn’t happy, but in the end, you just want them to be able to look back and say, “Hey, I got the experience I was looking for and hoping for,” and all I can hope is that he looks back at this and says, “That was a value, and there are things there that I learned that was able to take and move on and have success.”
Trey Yesavage, RHP, East Carolina
Perfect Game rank: No. 382 overall, No. 133 RHP in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 13 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Boyertown, Pa.
By any measure, Yesavage was one of the best pitchers in college baseball in 2024. He went 11-1 with a 2.02 ERA (best in the nation among starting pitchers) and a 0.868 WHIP (second in the country).
The Pennsylvania native was originally committed to Pittsburgh but backed off that pledge after a change on the Panthers’ coaching staff.
ECU associate head coach Jeff Palumbo credits a quality video feed at the LakePointe Sports complex in Georgia for allowing the Pirates staff to get a good look at Yesavage during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Palumbo: It was a unique time because it was also during COVID and so we’re not able to get back out on the road to actually see Trey in person. The only way to kind of get to know him a little bit was through the phone calls and trusting the coaches that were with him every day, with his travel program, and speaking to his high school coach.
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Then we did get an opportunity, Trey was pitching — I believe it was at LakePoint — and that was right at that time with guys who you were recruiting you were just kind of hoping and wishing for them to be pitching at a location where they had a live stream rolling and you were able to get a pretty good look at it. Trey was pitching, and I got a chance to watch him on video and it was a pretty good pretty good camera. … He did some really good things that day on the mound that we liked and that’s when we decided to move forward with it.
We got on the phone with him and talking a bunch (to him and) talking to his parents and getting to know more about him, it just led to us eventually feeling like, “Hey, we’re as comfortable as we can be in our recruiting process and realizing the quality people that they are, that we decided to offer him a scholarship.”
It didn’t take long for Yesavage, who had recently completed his junior year at Boyertown High School — about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia — to accept East Carolina’s offer and become yet another recruiting win for the Pirates in the state of Pennsylvania.
Palumbo: Pennsylvania as a whole has been good to us. Western PA has been good to us, especially now some of the kids we have coming in that we’re excited about for the future. We kind of moved out to Western PA, but Eastern PA, that area, we’ve had a number of guys that have had a lot of success and we’ve just really enjoyed — the types of people, the right work ethic, the kind of mentality and the toughness that those guys have brought to the table, and guys like Trey help with that.
Walker Janek, C, Sam Houston
Perfect Game rank: unranked overall, No. 211 C in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 23 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Portland, Texas
Janek was ranked as the No. 211 catcher in the Class of 2021 by Perfect Game. Three years later, he is at the top of the draft class at the position after a banner junior season that featured career highs in batting average (.364), home runs (17), slugging (.709) and OPS (1.185).
Turns out it was a pretty good evaluation for a coaching staff that wasn’t able to scout him in person.
Sam Houston coach Jay Sirianni: It was during COVID when nobody could go out on the road. So really, more or less, we saw a lot from video, and then the people that he was playing for, we’ve had a good relationship with those guys. We trust them and it just kind of built that way because none of us could go on the road to recruit. So a lot of junior college coaches could go out at that point. Guys that we trusted and knew laid eyes on him quite a bit and, you know, obviously his summer coaches and video.
Sirianni said there wasn’t much competition for Janek — “not a lot of people knew about him” — but he admits Sam Houston did have a secret weapon in this recruitment.
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Sirianni: His girlfriend was already coming to school here. She was a little bit older than him. And so there was kind of a familiarity with us, or with our campus, and those kinds of things.
Getting Janek to campus wasn’t much of an issue, as Sirianni notes. Keeping him from entering the transfer portal was the biggest victory for the Bearkats.
Sirianni: Once he got here, he just dove all the way in and loved it. So at the end of the day, I think the biggest part of the recruitment was keeping him, in the world that we’re in now. Somehow we were able to keep him for three years.
Malcolm Moore, C, Stanford
Perfect Game rank: No. 27 overall, No. 1 C in the Class of 2022
Keith Law rank: No. 25 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Sacramento, Calif.
Moore arrived at Stanford as the No. 1 catching prospect in the Class of 2022, and the Sacramento native has lived up to the hype. As a freshman, Moore hit .311 with 15 home runs and 63 RBIs to help the Cardinal advance to the College World Series for the third straight season. His numbers dipped a bit in 2024 — he hit. 255 with 16 home runs and 36 RBIs — but the left-handed hitting Moore is still highly regarded by MLB teams as a draft-eligible sophomore.
He’s come a long way since Stanford assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Thomas Eager first spotted him six years ago on the fields at Twin Creeks Sports Complex in Northern California.
Eager: I’ll never forget it. It was mostly younger baseball teams that were there, like 13-, 14-, 15-year-olds, in the Sunnyvale area. And I was there watching three other players on this one team and then watching actually a current player, (Stanford pitcher) Ty Uber on a different team. And then a buddy of mine, who’s a scout for the Blue Jays, came up to me and goes, “You gotta come see this kid play.”
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I walked over and there’s a scrawny little guy catching. Right when I walk over there, he throws, he gets the ball to throw somebody out and it was manic as all hell. And he was skinny and he tried to throw that ball so dang hard and he tried to throw (the runner) out. I was like, “Man, he went after it.” Like you don’t usually see kids being that aggressive. They usually try to be all formed up and technical. And he was just like, kind of like a throwback. And when he was talking the whole game and he got to hit and hit a couple of balls hard.
“I’m like, who is this kid?” And it was Malcolm Moore.
Moore might have made a strong first impression, but it took several years for the recruiting process to really get going.
Eager: I kind of saw him and I didn’t really know what to do with him, right? Because he was a freshman and at the time it was like, “Whatever.” So he came to camp, but we didn’t really know, and I was like, “I have time. I have time.”
And then he started kind of becoming more of a popular name. And so then I went and saw him play again and I finally got an offer out to him and it ended up working out and he committed. But there was a little gap in there. He always reminds me. He goes, “Remember when you didn’t talk to me for like three or four months?” I’m like, “Yeah, I didn’t know what to do with you. You were a freshman. I didn’t even know what was going on.”
I’m glad he ended up here.
Griff O’Ferrall, SS, Virginia
Perfect Game rank: unranked overall, No. 275 SS in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 32 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Richmond, Va.
Virginia coach Brian O’Connor filled out a lineup card 186 times over the past three seasons. And 185 times it featured O’Ferrall leading off and playing shortstop (he batted second in the nightcap of a doubleheader at Notre Dame in 2023). He hit .345 over three seasons — including .396 as a sophomore in 2022 — scored 196 runs and stole 50 bases while playing on two teams that reached the College World Series.
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It’s quite the career for a player who appeared headed to the mid-major ranks before Virginia got involved in the summer before his junior year of high school.
Virginia associate head coach Kevin McMullan: I first saw Griff late July, early August at an event in Atlanta. And I find out who he plays travel ball for, and I text (Donnie Phillips), I said, “Hey man, how come you didn’t tell me about this kid?” He said, “Well, I didn’t know if he hit home runs or if his arm was good enough.” And I said, “Well, I can make those judgments. I just have one question for you, does he swing and miss?” And he says, “Never.” I said, “I’m in.”
I wound up communicating with Griff at the end of the event, got him and his dad up here on a visit. In about 48 hours, it was done.
McMullan didn’t know at the time, but O’Ferrall was a lifelong Virginia fan.
McMullan: I find this out after the fact that he wanted to go to Virginia his whole life, so it was a little bit simpler than it could have been if there were a handful of (schools) in there. But he’s always wanted to come to Virginia, and sometimes, you know, I always say this: I married my wife, it was the perfect time, it was the perfect fit, where if I would have married my college girlfriend, it probably wouldn’t have worked out. So the timing was perfect, and he was a great player for us, great teammate, all the little things he did, he’s a game changer, because of who he is and how he goes about it, and sometimes in this business you get lucky if you keep working.
Vance Honeycutt, OF, North Carolina
Perfect Game rank: unranked overall, No. 110 SS in the Class of 2021
Keith Law rank: No. 41 prospect in the 2024 MLB Draft
Hometown: Salisbury, N.C.
Honeycutt burst onto the college baseball scene as a freshman in 2022, hitting .296 with 25 home runs and 57 RBIs — and doing so while playing elite defense in center field. After a bit of a dip as a sophomore (.257 with only 12 home runs), Honeycutt re-emerged as one of the top overall players in the nation as a junior, hitting .318 with 28 home runs and 70 RBIs to lead the Tar Heels to their first ACC regular-season championship since 2013.
The North Carolina staff was aware of Honeycutt — he played for the South Charlotte Panthers, a high-profile travel team — but didn’t know too much about him until he attended a prospect camp in Chapel Hill as a rising 10th grader in 2018.
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North Carolina head coach Scott Forbes (an assistant during Honeycutt’s recruitment): I was not at the camp. I was on the road at the time in Atlanta. (Assistant) coach (Jesse) Wierzbicki called me and said, “This kid, I really like his athleticism. He’s small — at the time, he was really skinny — he’s ultra-athletic, fast-twitch, can really run.” So that kind of started it. Coach Wierzbicki and coach (Mike) Fox (UNC’s head coach at the time) identified that at our camp. And then Vance joined his (travel) team after the camp, and I got to see him play in Atlanta.
At the time, Honeycutt wasn’t getting much attention from power conference schools.
Forbes: I think we were the only Power 5 to offer him. You know, I think (other schools) were talking to him, but we offered him, and you know, we just thought that his athleticism — and we knew the character of the family, phenomenal parents. High school quarterback, (but we weren’t) sure where he was going to play. At the time he had been more of like a shortstop, but he played left field some for the South Charlotte Panthers. He hit lower in the order, but he really ran, he was really competitive, and he’s one of those kids that you just had to see that part at the time. He had a ton of upside.
No recruitment is easy, but the North Carolina staff didn’t exactly have to put on the full-court press to get Honeycutt to commit. His dad, Bob, played baseball at UNC in the late 1980s, and his mom, Leah Ann, was a member of the Tar Heels track and field team.
Forbes: I think this was his dream, but he still stepped back and maybe took, I would say, a couple days (to commit after the offer). It was less than a week, I believe.
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(Top photo of Wetherholt: Ben Ludeman / Texas Rangers / Getty Images)
