The Athletic has live coverage of the first round of the 2024 MLB Draft.
Nothing has happened in the last seven weeks to change my mind — this is a bad MLB draft class, in many different ways, but however you shake it, it’s thinner up top and through the next few rounds than a typical draft class, let alone the outstanding group we had in 2023.
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This is my last major update to the Big Board, although I may make minor changes if I hear anything significant between now and the draft. By the middle of the second round, which is around pick 55, the class has thinned out substantially, notably on the college side where the safety of the back-end starter or the quality utility infielder is largely absent.
I also think this is a poor year to try to shave a few million with your first pick to go well over slot with several later selections, a strategy Philadelphia tried in 2016 without success (Mickey Moniak, Kevin Gowdy, Cole Stobbe) while Atlanta fared somewhat better (Ian Anderson, Joey Wentz, Kyle Muller). There are some interesting high school arms, but I suspect a few will sneak into the back of the first round and most will be gone before the second round, for reasons which I hope will be apparent as you peruse this list. It’s lacking in high school position players with promising hit tools, and the college pitching class drops off after the top two guys. It’s just one of those years.
This is my ranking of the prospects, not a prediction in any way of where they will be drafted (that will come later this week). I don’t consider signability on this list — it is just about how good they are as prospects, including their present tools and skills and the projection going forward on their abilities and their physical gifts as well. I don’t have access to all of the information teams have, including medical information, much of which won’t become public until after the draft.
(Note: Scouting grades are on a 20-80 scale.)
Charlie Condon
Condon is easily the top prospect in this year’s draft class, and would be challenging for the top spot in many years — perhaps not 2023, but I wouldn’t rule it out, given the unbelievable year he’s had and the growth potential he may still have ahead of him. If you know Condon’s name, it may be because he set the modern record for homers in a single season, with the most home runs of any player since the NCAA switched to BBCOR bats in 2012, reducing exit velocities for safety and, I think, to make the college game look a little more like real baseball.
Condon does have power, but he’s a more complete player than that one stat alone implies. He changed his hand position after the summer of 2023, starting them a little higher, and that small adjustment completely loosened him up at the plate. He has explosive bat speed and now gets the bat to the zone with more force behind it because he’s so direct to the ball once he loads his hands. It’s hard to imagine more power coming, but Condon’s a lean, wiry 6-foot-6 and could get quite a bit stronger in pro ball. He also doesn’t swing and miss often or chase excessively. Even the slider down and away, a weakness for most hitters when it’s against a same-side pitcher, isn’t a huge vulnerability.
He’s a 55 runner now and capable of handling centerfield for the moment, while he’s also impressed scouts with his work at third base this spring despite a lack of any experience at the hot corner. He’ll probably start out as a third baseman and then move to the outfield if that doesn’t work out, with above-average defense in right field probably the worst-case scenario. His foundation of bat speed, plate discipline, hard contact, and athleticism point to a frequent All-Star ceiling, and they’re more than enough to make him the No. 1 prospect in this year’s class.
Travis Bazzana
Bazzana made his professional debut, of sorts, as a 15-year-old in the Australian Baseball League, the same circuit where many minor leaguers go in the winter to gain some extra at-bats or innings, and then played as an 18-year-old in the wood-bat West Coast League against college players, hitting .429/.471/.593. The Australian has starred for Oregon State for the last three years, setting the career hits record for the Beavers before his junior season wrapped up, while also destroying the school’s single-season home run record, which was 21 homers before Bazzana crossed the Pacific to take the crown.
He starts with an exaggerated setup where he’s holding the bat behind his rear shoulder, pointing down, similar to Kevin Parada’s weird setup at Georgia Tech, but by the time Bazzana starts bringing his front leg down his hands are already in position, and he’s pretty short to the ball despite the odd start. His plate discipline might be the best in the class, as he rarely chases anything outside the zone and doesn’t whiff much in or out of the zone or on any single pitch type. He’s listed at 6-feet, 199, but is probably a bit shorter than that, and what you see is likely what you get — there’s no projection here, so you have to believe his present hit and power tools are good enough.
It’s second base only, which isn’t a favored demographic in the draft, although I would say in Bazzana’s case that’s really nitpicking because his bat is more than enough to give him All-Star upside if he’s just an average defender at the keystone. He’s a great story and a tremendous worker who seems both likely to and capable of making adjustments when he needs to do so, and may have the highest floor of the college bats in the class.
JJ Wetherholt
Wetherholt came into the year on the short list of 1-1 candidates, but hurt his hamstring in Week 1 and missed enough time that he’s probably fallen out of that mix and could find himself in the back of the top 10. He can really, really hit though; it might be the best swing for contact in the class, and even when he was all but hitting on one leg he still got the bat to the ball consistently for line-drive contact. He’s very short and direct to the ball, and he doesn’t miss strikes — over the last two seasons, his whiff rate on pitches in the zone is around 6 percent, which looks like a typo. It’s just a simple, efficient swing, with one move back to load and then a rapid uncoiling at the ball that gets maximum impact from his upper and lower body.
What no one can tell you is whether he can stay healthy; this year’s hamstring injury was the second major one he’s suffered inside of 12 months, and it kept him off the field entirely for six weeks. Even in his return, we haven’t seen him run or field the way he could if he weren’t protecting the leg. He’s mostly played third and second for West Virginia but has only played shortstop this year when he’s played the field at all; I don’t know anyone who expects him to stay there in pro ball, but in all fairness to Wetherholt, no one has seen him play shortstop when healthy except for the very first weekend of the 2024 season. He’s also the smallest of the top college bats in the class, listed at 5-10 and perhaps, well, don’t we all exaggerate a little bit, who am I to judge?
You’re buying the hit tool here, and the hope that a full offseason of rest can get him out playing second base every day in 2025, with the upside of a 60 or better hit tool that makes him a very long time regular who makes a handful of All-Star teams.
Braden Montgomery
Montgomery made the somewhat surprising decision this offseason to transfer from Stanford to Texas A&M, but it has largely paid off as he improved his performance while facing better competition in the SEC. He was a first-round talent out of high school (No. 17 on my Big Board that year), but was strongly committed to college and also had to face the poor track record of high school position players from Mississippi.
Montgomery is a true switch-hitter, with better results hitting from the left side but plenty of bat speed from the right side as well. He uses the whole field better batting left-handed and his plate discipline is substantially better from that side. He’s got a cannon of an arm, and is technically a two-way player with two innings pitched this year, projecting as a solid-average defender in right. There’s some risk with the hit tool here, as his offspeed recognition isn’t great and he will expand the zone when behind in the count, but he has 30-homer upside as a switch-hitting right fielder if he makes enough contact for an average hit tool.
Chase Burns
Burns was 37th on my Big Board for the 2021 Draft, but ended up asking for more money than teams were willing to pay him, so he headed to Knoxville, where he starred his freshman year but was kicked out of the rotation his sophomore year. When the Vols wouldn’t guarantee him a starting spot for his junior year, he transferred to Wake Forest, where he’s been the best starting pitcher in Division 1, striking out over 40 percent of batters he’s faced with a devastating one-two punch of a fastball up to 100 and a grade-70 slider that hitters miss nearly 2/3 of the time they try to hit it. The slider has a late, tight break in both planes, making it effective against hitters on both sides of the plate, while he gets big induced vertical break on the four-seamer, which is how he has success throwing those two pitches about 80 percent of the time. He can spin an above-average curveball for a different look and has a straight changeup with some modest tumble, clearly his worst pitch of the four.
There’s effort in the delivery, with some head-snap and recoil at release, and the high three-quarters slot is deceptive but not ideal for long-term durability. The mechanical questions haven’t hurt his command or control, as he’s walked just 8 percent of batters (through May 13) and has shown he can pitch to the edges of the strike zone. I don’t think he’s far from being able to help a major-league club, especially after a dominant performance in one of the top two conferences in college baseball, with a No. 2 starter ceiling.
Hagen Smith
Smith has improved every year at Arkansas, coming out very hot to start this year with a 17-strikeout performance against Oregon State in Week 2, after which he probably could have just taken the rest of the spring off and still gone in the top-10 picks. He’s 92-97 mph with a plus slider that he uses to left- and right-handed batters alike, with a changeup exclusively for right-handed batters. Because he starts on the extreme first-base side of the rubber, he doesn’t locate the fastball to his glove side and has to go to the slider to throw anything inside to righties, often trying to get a chase on a slider aimed at the hitter’s back foot, with the fastball and the changeup both going to the outer third of the zone.
It’s a funky delivery that he doesn’t hold together deep into his starts, and teams will be scrutinizing his mechanics even more closely because he’s already had one Tommy John surgery, back in high school. He takes a huge stride towards the plate to generate all that power, starting his arm late and then accelerating it very quickly, with a low three-quarters slot and arm path that have earned him some comparisons to Chris Sale. That’s a dream scenario, of course, as Sale improved the moment he got into the White Sox’s system and then threw about 1,000 innings before arm trouble began to hold him back. Smith has No. 2 starter upside if he can hold his stuff deeper into outings, and perhaps if he moves towards the middle of the rubber so he can work to both sides of the plate.
Nick Kurtz
Kurtz overcame a slow start to his junior year to set a career high in walks and approach his career high in homers (as of May 16), hitting more in line with his .353/.527/.784 sophomore year for the Deacons. Kurtz has an exceptional eye at the plate, with an overall chase rate around 16 percent and, more impressively, chase rates on breaking stuff at just 12 percent — that is, pitchers can’t just throw sliders or curveballs down and away when they’re ahead in the count and get him to expand the zone. He doesn’t swing much, but when he does, he shows excellent bat speed, and he hits the ball in the air the vast majority of the time, with several balls hit at 110 mph or harder this season.
The swing is a little Kyle Schwarber-ish, as he lets the ball travel a little and then unloads with that elite bat speed, looking for anything he can pull … and like Schwarber, he doesn’t offer much defensive value, as he’s first base-only and will at least need some work to get to average there. You’re buying a bat, and perhaps the best overall bat package of hit-patience-power in this draft. This profile is a tough one, though; Andrew Vaughn had a similar track record and skill set, even doing it in a less friendly home park at Cal, and he’s never come close to fulfilling his potential with the White Sox. Kurtz at least has better bat speed, with a similar foundation of patience and a touch more power, giving the hope that he can be the anchor bat Vaughn was supposed to become.
Jac Caglianone
Caglianone has 80 power and has been up to 99 mph off the mound, so he might be the best-known player in this year’s draft class, but his pro prospects are a little different than the hype might indicate, as his future is in the batter’s box. As a hitter, it’s close to a dead-pull approach, more power than hit, and while the strikeout rate is way down from last year, he doesn’t have very good command of the strike zone, swinging nearly 40 percent of the time pitchers go outside of the zone, often chasing pitches way out of the zone, and he doesn’t cut it down with two strikes.
On the mound, he has arm strength, sitting mostly 93-97, and a decent changeup, but it’s a violent delivery where he comes way back across his body, a problem both for long-term arm health and for a pitcher’s ability to locate anything to his glove side. He’s already had one Tommy John surgery back in high school and had some kind of hiccup in the preseason this year before returning to the mound in Week 2. I think Caglianone is just a hitter and would be surprised if anyone tried to keep him a two-way guy, especially because he needs work on his approach and as a pitcher he’s a reliever at best. You’re betting on 40-homer upside here, and he has hit over 60 homers in his last two years for Florida, facing the best competition in the country.
Bryce Rainer
Rainer put on a show at the National High School Invitational this year, buoyed by the absence of any other first-round prospects at the event, and in the process probably locked himself into a top-10 pick. He’s by far the best high school infielder in the class, a plus defender at short with a 70 arm who is 93-94 off the mound as well (but, I’m told, doesn’t want to be a two-way guy, to which I say hallelujah). He also shows incredible instincts and leadership on the field.
Rainer’s got power, with good loft in his swing to drive the ball to all fields, but it’s not great bat speed and he’s struggled when facing above-average velocity. Everybody throws hard these days, so he’s going to have to find a way to catch up to it as he enters pro ball. The plus defense/20-homer potential is enough to get someone to roll the dice on his bat in the top third of the first round.
Konnor Griffin
Griffin reclassified from the 2025 class to this one, a prescient decision given how weak this year’s high school crop has turned out to be, with Griffin likely to be the first or second prep position player selected. He’s a toolshed, with four 60s or better on the scouting report — it’s easy plus power, plus speed, a 70 arm (he also pitches), and plus defense in center, with the potential for plus defense at short, although that would require more work than just sending him out as a center fielder.
The question is how much he can hit; he did clean up his swing from the summer of 2023 to this spring and looked good in the first half of the year, but as the season went on he reverted to some old habits and his contact quality dipped. He has quick hands but his swing naturally gets long from his deep hand load, after which he generates power from his excellent hip rotation and strong balance through contact. He also hasn’t shown great command of the strike zone to date, and may need more time in the low minors to develop that aspect of his game, especially given where he’s from. The history of high school hitters signed out of Mississippi is very poor; Austin Riley is now the all-time WAR leader in that category at 19.0 WAR (as of mid-May), with a very high failure rate because the quality of competition in the state is so bad.
Griffin does have superstar upside — it’s 30/30 potential with plus defense somewhere up the middle — for a club that can develop his bat and has the patience to let him move at his own pace.
Ryan Waldschmidt
Waldschmidt has emerged as one of the better pure hitters in the college class this year, his second at Kentucky after transferring from Charleston Southern. This year, he hit .370/.500/.653 before going 0 for 15 in the Super Regionals and College World Series. I think there’s even more power to unlock here. He starts with a very wide base and no stride, limiting how much he can transfer his weight, yet he still rotates his hips well enough to drive the ball now with composite bats. He rarely misses fastballs (13 percent whiff rate during the regular season) and doesn’t chase much regardless of pitch type. He’s a solid athlete who should be an above-average defender in a corner, playing left for Kentucky this year. Even as-is he’s a first-rounder because of the feel to hit, with that opportunity for more power if he loosens up his stance and uses his lower half more.
Slade Caldwell
Caldwell won’t go this high in the draft because he’s 5-foot-5 1/2; if he were 6-1, he’d be a top-15 pick for sure, with three tools that are or project to plus. He’s got a short swing (ha ha) and makes a ton of contact, with fringy power, and he’s a plus runner who covers enough ground in center to project to stay there, even with a 45 arm. The impact with the bat is the question — if you think he’ll hit the ball hard enough to keep his batting average up, he projects as a strong regular. If you don’t think he will, you’ll probably just run, run away.
Trey Yesavage
Yesavage has a super-short arm action but makes it work, throwing a ton of strikes with his four-seamer and a nasty splitter that has both the typical heavy bottom of that pitch and some run that can make it look like a downward-breaking slider. Whatever you call it, it’s a wipeout pitch for him. He does throw an actual breaking ball but it’s a clear third pitch, with the splitter his go-to weapon for hitters on both sides of the plate.
If you don’t mind or care about the short arm action, the question is whether he can be a successful major-league starter as a fastball/splitter guy. I think he can as long as he holds up. He did miss a couple of starts in late May with a collapsed lung but returned to make one start in the Regional.
James Tibbs III
Tibbs was undrafted out of high school and I think largely ignored until this year, when he had more homers than strikeouts in the regular season and still finished with 28 homers and 37 punchouts along with 58 walks. He makes great swing decisions and his contact quality is strong, getting up over 110 mph for his maximum EV this spring after topping out at 105 last summer with wood.
He sets up with a wide base but still takes a small step forward to get his lower half involved, at least until he gets to two strikes, when he shortens up and omits the stride to trade power for contact. He has excellent bat speed and hasn’t had trouble with velocity. Tibbs is limited to an outfield corner, though, so he has to rake, but so far he’s done so at FSU and on the Cape.
Jurrangelo Cijntje
We’ve had switch-pitchers before, but Cijntje is probably the best one to come along because he has good enough stuff throwing with either arm to at least create the potential for him to reach the majors as a true switch-pitch guy. He is a better pitcher right-handed, and chooses to throw with that arm over 80 percent of the time, even if he doesn’t have the platoon advantage; the delivery is smoother and way more online to the plate, while he throws a bit harder right-handed and he has a more complete arsenal. Left-handed, which is his natural side, he comes across his body, loses about 2 mph off the fastball, and doesn’t show a changeup or curve, just going fastball-slider-cutter.
The Dutch native is extremely athletic and throws plenty of strikes with both arms. There’s an unusual added risk here, as that’s two UCLs to break, two labrums to tear, and so on, so regardless of his ultimate role he’ll likely develop primarily as a right-handed starter. He has No. 2 starter upside with a little longer to go than the typical college pitcher, as he’s been trying to develop as a switch-pitcher, while he’s just a sophomore who didn’t pitch that much last year.
Brody Brecht
Brecht is a project as a pitcher with the upside to justify taking him in the first round despite his current flaws. He can hit 100 regularly as a starter and shows a plus slider that he throws more than the heater because he can land it more consistently and gets a ton of whiffs on it — 56 percent this spring, per data from Synergy Sports. He has a changeup that he doesn’t use very often, and it’s both too straight and too firm right now, although college hitters geared up for the fastball did whiff on it nearly half the time they swung.
A former wide receiver at Iowa, Brecht is extremely athletic and should be able to make some big adjustments, which he’ll need to do, starting with his loose but long arm action to get him a delivery he can repeat.
Seaver King
King transferred from Division II Wingate University to Wake Forest this spring after an impressive summer for Team USA and on the Cape, hitting .424/.479/.542 in 71 plate appearances at the latter stop. He’s a very aggressive hitter who doesn’t take a lot of pitches and doesn’t whiff very often, showing plus bat speed, surprising power, and above-average speed on the bases.
King’s played four positions for the Deacs, with third base his most frequently played spot. He’s more than capable in center and I think you could send him out as a shortstop. He does tend to expand the zone too often, as he’s a good enough bad-ball hitter to get away with it now.
Carson Benge
Benge is a tremendous athlete who also pitched in relief for the Cowboys, with his pro future in the batter’s box because he has great bat speed, makes excellent swing decisions, and produces hard contact. His swing is slappy, though, and he meets the ball out front too often, with relatively low launch angles as a result, making him a great target for a team that has had success helping guys who can really hit turn that into more line-drive contact. He did hit 18 homers this spring, but, well, so did half the players in Division I.
He’s a strong defender in right with a plus arm who was 93-95 out of the bullpen with a plus curveball, so there’s always the fallback option of putting him on the mound if his bat doesn’t develop as hoped.
Cam Smith
Smith reworked his swing and his body last offseason, bouncing back from a .258/.326/.517 line as a 20-year-old freshman at FSU to a .387/.488/.654 line as a draft-eligible sophomore, improving in every possible way as a hitter. He’s looser and more free at the plate, and at least subjectively it looks like his bat speed has increased. He’s always had a short path to the ball, so now he’s getting the bat to the zone sooner and with more force.
Smith did hit extremely well on the Cape last summer, with a .347/.407/.575 line that put him fourth in slugging percentage among hitters with at least 100 PA there. He’s played third base in Tallahassee but scouts think he ends up at first or perhaps in an outfield corner, where he still profiles as an above-average regular thanks to his combination of power and patience.
Tommy White
Tommy Tanks had his worst year at the plate this spring, hitting for less power and average in a year when power numbers especially are up across Division I, in large part because pitchers have learned he’ll expand the zone and pitched to him accordingly. He limped to the finish line, with only two extra-base hits between the SEC tournament and the Regional, as he saw better stuff and continued to chase too many pitches, even fastballs.
He’s improved enough at third base that some scouts give him a chance to stay there, whereas last spring he seemed a near lock to end up at first. It’s hard contact and 70 power, with real 30-homer upside if you think you can improve his ball/strike recognition so he’s not swinging at so many pitches out of the zone. There are enough positives in the batted-ball data, from his consistently high contact quality to his tendency to put the ball in the air, to outweigh the negatives and get him into the first round.
Theo Gillen
Gillen is a 70 runner with a great, direct left-handed swing that’s perfect for an all-fields, high-contact approach like he showed last summer and fall. He can show above-average raw power in BP, but in games he’s a hitter for contact and average, which could be an area for development as he learns when to try to drive the ball and when to shorten up and put it in play. He’s played mostly shortstop but had labrum surgery as a sophomore and could barely throw this spring, so he could end up in centerfield, where his speed could make him a plus defender, or second base — or, worst case scenario, in left. He’s one of the best high school bats in this generally thin class, and if a team thinks he can handle centerfield even with a 40 arm, he’s a top 20 pick.
Kellon Lindsey
Nobody wants to miss on the next Trea Turner, and Lindsey looks the part — it’s a similar build, 80 speed, good hands, a good right-handed swing, etc. Turner had three years of success in the ACC, however, while Lindsey has faced some weak competition in central Florida and has had issues with breaking stuff. Lindsey has quick hands at the plate and gets the bat to the ball on time, with a good swing path to drive the ball to the gaps. His pitch recognition definitely lags behind the rest of his game at the plate, however, as he has far less experience facing good pitching than just about all of his peers in this draft after he missed the showcase circuit last summer due to injury.
He’s an outstanding athlete who was a quarterback and defensive back before he gave it up to focus just on baseball, and recorded the best running times at the MLB combine in June. I saw strong defense at shortstop, and he probably starts out there in pro ball, with the obvious potential to move to center at some point given his speed. He’s a huge upside play with a ton of downside risk in the bat.
Walker Janek
Janek has emerged as the top catcher in the class, which may be damning with faint praise but also reflects the fact that he’s mashed and has shown he can stick behind the plate. He jumped to a .364/.476/.709 line this year for the Bearkats, finishing just a thousandth of a point off the Conference USA lead in slugging behind a senior who played for New Mexico State (altitude 3900 feet).
It’s a simple gap-to-gap approach with pull power and some ability to go the other way for contact, along with a two-strike approach that sees him focus on putting the ball in play. He has the hands and the arm strength to catch, close to average right now with the chance to be a 55 defender all around with some coaching help, offering the upside of a 20-homer bat at a position where offense is scarce.
Ben Hess
Hess might be a starter at the next level, with the delivery and arsenal to do so, if he can hold his stuff deeper into games. The Tide only had him get more than 16 outs three times during the regular season, in his last three starts, when he did actually hold his velocity extremely well, still hitting 94-95 later in the outings. He’s mostly fastball-slider-curve, with an occasional changeup to lefties, and he’s added a two-seamer to the mix after going heavy with the four-seam earlier in the season. He takes a huge stride towards the plate and finishes way out over his front side for maximum extension from his strong 6-5 frame. You can easily dream on him as a mid-rotation, workhorse starter, if you can get past the limited track record.
Malcolm Moore
Moore, a draft-eligible sophomore, is going to end up with a team that values batted-ball data over performance — he had terrible luck at the plate this spring but he was not punching out and his contact quality points to a higher average than he had on balls in play. Moore hit .255/.414/.553 for the Cardinal with just a .229 BABIP, a full hundred points down from his BABIP as a freshman, even though he makes plenty of hard contact.
There was a little more than bad luck at work here, to be fair; he put a lot of non-strikes in play and had worse results on those pitches than he did on pitches in the zone, so there’s a pitch selection aspect to his performance as well. He has great bat speed and had no trouble with elite velocity the few times he saw this spring. Moore is a below-average defender right now and scouts are mixed on whether he can stay at catcher; the arm is the worst tool here and his other deficiencies could improve with different coaching. He’s going to be a bat-first catcher if he stays there.
Carter Johnson
Johnson has emerged as this year’s Colt Emerson, a high school infielder whose hit tool is his strongest attribute — and with Emerson’s tremendous start in pro ball, everyone’s looking for this year’s version. Johnson hit very well against better competition in the summer and fall but wasn’t quite as good this spring in Alabama until the very end, when he started to drive the ball a little more often for extra bases. He has good bat speed that helps him overcome a slight bat wrap behind his head, with average raw power but a tendency to catch the ball too far in front that limits his in-game power to a 45. He’s a shortstop now but more likely to end up at second or third. He offers a higher floor than most high school bats in the class because of the wide confidence that he’s going to hit for average and contact.
Cam Caminiti
The cousin of the late Padres star Ken Caminiti, Cam is the top high school pitcher on the board, having reclassified from 2025 into this year’s weaker overall class. He’s up to 97 with a curveball that’s gone from a 35 early in the spring to a 50 or 55 now along with an easy plus changeup that has been a 70 in some outings. He’s a two-way player who is extremely athletic, working a solid delivery that’s become much more online to the plate than it was last summer and fall. As high school pitchers go, he’s got the best combination of present ability and future projection, with the typical risks of 18-year-olds and pitchers in general.
William Schmidt
Schmidt is committed to the local university, I forget the name of it, and I doubt it’ll be easy to pry him away, but he’s the top prep right-hander in the class and should get first-round money as a result. He’s got a 70 curveball and 60 changeup, with a fastball that’s hard but straight, offering projection and an athletic delivery that should indicate room for him to make some adjustments. He comes from a high three-quarters arm slot that does present some effort and give him a head-snap at release. If you think you can fix the fastball, he might end up with three grade-70 offerings, and there aren’t many of those players in any draft.
Ryan Sloan
Sloan has hit 100 mph this spring with a plus slider and he has an athletic and strong 6-4 frame that should allow him to maintain plus velocity deep into games. It’s a powerful delivery where he’s on time and online to the plate, pitching better to his arm side than his glove side, with good extension out front. He doesn’t use his mid-80s changeup much, but it has a little arm-side fade to it and his arm speed looks good enough to project it as an above-average pitch once he starts to use it more. He has No. 2 starter upside if he stays healthy. He’s committed to Wake Forest.
Kaelen Culpepper
Culpepper has one of the best swings in the class, and if he can just deploy it a little less often, he’s going to be a strong regular. When he’s swinging at strikes, he’s very quick and direct to the ball and gets good loft in his finish for at least extra-base power, hitting hard line drives to all fields and even flashing a little power the other way. He’s shown he can stay at shortstop, and can cut down on his swing enough with two strikes to keep his strikeout rate low even with too much chasing out of the zone earlier in the count. It’s the chase that’s killing him with some model-heavy teams; he swung at 31 percent of pitches outside of the strike zone, per data from Synergy Sports, a little more so on offspeed stuff.
He did finish very strongly, with excellent performances and batted-ball characteristics in the Regional and Super Regional against good competition. He projects to average power and is an average runner, with good range at short and enough arm to stay there. I think his flaws are the kind that the right player development group can address, with strengths that make him a first-round talent, but some teams will just be out on him entirely because of his approach.
Kash Mayfield
Mayfield is 93-98 with an above-average slider and good feel for a changeup, with surprisingly low effort for that kind of arm strength. He also gets solid ride on the four-seamer and repeats his delivery well enough to project future above-average command, although he can cut himself off slightly in his landing, starting all the way on the third base side of the rubber and then planting his front foot on the first-base half of the mount. If he were a college pitcher, he’d be a top-10 pick in this class; he’s already 19 and will be sophomore-eligible if he ends up at Oklahoma State, so he has plenty of leverage to demand a first-round bonus.
Griff O'Ferrall
O’Ferrall might have ended up in the first round if he’d stuck with his swing and approach from 2023, when he hit .396/.453/.495 for the Hoos while playing strong defense at short. Instead, he tried to get all launch angle-happy and pull the ball for more power, instead of using the whole field, losing 86 points off his OBP for the sake of four extra home runs (in a year when homers are up all over the place). The swing is very forced, like he’s trying to catch the ball and lift it out to his pull side, when he’s already shown strong contact skills and has enough strength to hit for average in pro ball with plenty of doubles. He can still play above-average defense and at least continued to make contact at a high rate, striking out just 7.4 percent of the time this spring, so there’s at least some floor here for a team that takes him and tries to restore his old swing.
Tyson Lewis
Lewis has raced up boards this spring as one of the few true shortstops in the class, offering plus bat speed and a ton of athleticism, with tools over skills right now. He can show big power at times and is a plus runner, while his swing can get grooved and there’s some concern about his pitch recognition. He does stay balanced through the zone but his front side goes a little soft and his weight is completely off his back leg by that point, which can inhibit contact and, for a left-handed hitter, can leave them more vulnerable to lefties. (Corey Seager would do this in A-ball, but, like Peasant No. 3, he got better.) Lewis has the range and arm to stay at shortstop, offering power/speed upside that’s hard to find at the position. He's committed to Arkansas.
Peyton Stovall
Stovall finally got healthy a few weeks into this spring and had his best year at the plate since getting to Fayetteville, showing a solid approach at the plate with an outstanding swing and excellent pitch recognition. He could stand to walk more, with an 8.6 percent overall walk rate on the season, but doesn’t chase excessively and rarely whiffs on pitches in the zone — 14 percent of the time, according to data from Synergy Sports.
Stovall has excellent hand acceleration and a short path to the ball, with enough loft in his finish to put the ball in the air. He stays back through contact and doesn’t transfer his weight much to his front side for big power, which could be an area for player development to work on, as he has plenty of strength on his 5-11 frame. He’s a 45 defender at second, so this is a bet on the swing and hit tool, and the potential for a little more power down the road.
Kevin Bazzell
Bazzell is one of the best contact hitters in the draft, with just a 10 percent strikeout rate and 11 percent whiff rate going into the conference tournament. He doesn’t walk and he has 45 power, so it’s sort of an empty batting average and he’s seen that dip a little this year to .312 (from .353 the last two years), although he had mono earlier in the spring and that could easily have impacted his performance. He’s played mostly catcher this year and is a work in progress, maybe a 45 defender now or a strong 40 but offering enough present skill that you can envision him getting to average. The bat plays a lot better back there than at third, of course.
Wyatt Sanford
Sanford seems like a real sleeper in this class, in part because his season ended early when his high school missed the playoffs. He’s a plus defender at short with plus speed, while at the plate he rarely misses fastballs and shows good strike zone awareness. He has plenty of bat speed and gets the bat to the zone on time, with a modest hand load back and slightly up so that he can lift the ball a little in his finish. He needs to add a lot of strength and appears to have room for it on his 6-1 frame. There are so few shortstops in this class that he seems like someone who could even sneak into the first round.
Christian Moore
Moore led a loaded Tennessee squad that won the College World Series and could see four to six players drafted on Day 1, with five hitters clubbing 16 or more homers by the end of the regular season. He went on a huge tear to finish the regular season, with six homers in his last seven games, showing power against pretty much all pitch types. He started posting exit velocities of 115+ in Omaha with whatever juiced ball they were using up there, which is going to run him way up the boards for teams that rely heavily on batted-ball data in their draft models.
It’s not a pretty swing, however, with a super-wide setup and no stride, which makes me question whether the power will hold up with a wood bat, and in my in-person looks he struggled to pick up offspeed stuff. He’s a below-average defender at second and is most likely to end up in left field. The performance is going to push him into the first round, but the swing and the defense are real concerns.
Blake Burke
Burke’s got great feel for the barrel with power to all fields, a pretty and direct swing that produces hard contact, and a really good plan at the plate. He does go after a lot of pitches just off the zone, but not pitches well out of the zone, so his overall chase rate — which treats those two things as equal — is misleading. He doesn’t have big-fly power but hits a ton of line drives, reminding me a little of Michael Busch as a college hitter, albeit without Busch’s athletic ability. Of greater concern is that Burke is probably a DH, or at least someone who will need a lot of attention from coaches to improve his defense at first, as he struggled with routine plays when I saw him. The bat will profile at either spot but he’ll have a harder time being more than a regular if he’s DHing.
Owen Hall
Hall has a great delivery and projectable body, sitting 90-94 now and touching 97 with a plus slider. He’s young for the class, turning 18 in November, with a lot of room to fill out his 6-3 frame, and already has good feel to spin two breaking balls, with the slider sharper and likely to end up close to 90 mph when he’s at his peak. He comes from a three-quarters slot and is mostly online to the plate with an occasional habit of landing early to cut himself off, albeit not on every pitch. He’s very much the classic high school projection arm, the sort of teenaged pitcher teams used to take regularly and develop over 4-5 years before everybody threw 98.
Dasan Hill
Hill is a 6-5, projectable lefty who shows average velocity now but should easily get to the mid-90s in time, with feel to spin two different breaking balls, excellent tumble to his changeup, and a delivery he should repeat enough for strikes. He can cut himself off and come across his body too much, which he shouldn’t need to do since his slider looks like it’ll be plus and that alone will make him tough on left-handed batters. This is the classic high school projection archetype — good frame, solid offspeed pitches for his age, a delivery that mostly works, needing strength and the added velocity that comes with it. He’s committed to Dallas Baptist but should be one of the first high school lefties off the board.
Vance Honeycutt
Honeycutt is a 70 defender with 70 power, but even with a midseason swing change to raise his hands, he still struck out too often — even whiffing in-zone — to be a first-rounder for me. He takes a solid stride but doesn’t plant that front leg strongly until well after he’s gotten his hands started, so he ends up with a pretty severe uppercut on far too many of his swings. When he does get the front leg down in time and stays more upright through contact, though, it’s easy power even to dead center.
His bigger issue is pitch and ball/strike recognition, as he swung and missed on nearly a third of the pitches he saw, including a 21 percent whiff rate on pitches in the zone. It’s 30-homer potential in a potentially elite defender in center — I’ve had scouts say he’s at least as good as 2023 first-rounder Enrique Bradfield Jr., on defense — so there’s clear appeal for a team looking for high upside. He’s a project for the right player development department.
Jacob Cozart
Cozart is a power-hitting catcher with enough swing-and-miss against offspeed stuff to project as a low-OBP, 20-homer type who could still end up a regular behind the plate. He had a real breakout season for the (there’s too many in the) Wolfpack, hitting .305/.437/.601 with more walks than strikeouts, saving his best for last — he hit .393/.528/.714 in the NCAA tournament, with eight walks and three strikeouts in 36 PA. Despite the results, he’s primarily a fastball hitter who has a lot of trouble with secondary stuff, especially out of the zone. If ever a player needed to learn to “swing at strikes,” it’s this guy. He does have power the other way, but tries to pull the ball and his swing gets long as a result. He’s a solid defender behind the plate, very likely to stay there long-term.
David Shields
Shields is another reclassifier from 2025 — I guess agents saw the ’24 class was weak and encouraged their older high school clients to jump forward a year — and may benefit from the industry panic over UCL tears because he’s got a very easy delivery and is more of a command/projection guy than a now-stuff guy. (That’s not to say the panic over UCL tears is wrong; more like, what took you so long?) He’s a former quarterback and a Miami commit who has a very easy arm action, working low-90s with projection left and feel to spin a curveball already. He cuts himself off when he lands and doesn’t get the extension he should from his 6-2 frame, something I would expect a pro team to try to address, and that would help his stuff play up. He missed some time earlier this spring due to mono but bounced back quickly when he returned to the mound.
PJ Morlando
Morlando has raw power, but hits with the widest stance at the plate that you have ever seen, with no stride or toe-tap or anything to get his lower half moving, so he isn’t showing the same power in games and it’s hard to see him profiling in left field, where he’s limited by a 40 arm. He hit extremely well last summer at showcases, barely ever missing anything in the zone, with strong hand-eye, allowing the plus power to show up in games, so prior to the season teams drafting in the top-10 assumed he’d be in their decision set — or already gone. Morlando is the most obvious swing-change candidate in the draft; if someone signs him away from his commitment to South Carolina, the first thing they’ll do is unglue his feet from where they are in the batter’s box. If he goes to Columbia, he'll be draft-eligible in 2026 as he’s already 19.
Ethan Anderson
Anderson caught in just eight games over his first two seasons in Charlottesville, all of those in 2022, and started this year as UVA’s regular catcher but lost the job part way through the season to fifth-year transfer Jacob Ference, who started every UVA tournament game behind the plate. Anderson has shown above-average power in the past, but this year made a lot of weaker contact and put the ball on the ground more often. He does show plus bat speed and has good-not-great plate discipline, needing a better two-strike approach. He’s a 40 defender behind the plate now who probably should just move to first base and focus on getting to more in-game power and cutting down on his tendency to chase with two strikes, but some team might try to work with him as a catcher even with his size and lack of agility.
Caleb Lomavita
Lomavita can catch and throw well enough that he’s going to remain behind the plate, with solid contact skills despite an unusual approach. I think he has the lowest walk rate of anyone on this ranking, however, at 4.7 percent, and while we aren’t selling jeans here, that’s an alarming figure that lines up with his chase rate of 37 percent. He hits with no stride at all, starting from a wide base and staying there, with a short swing that cuts off most of the power he could get from his lower half. He’s a solid receiver who will almost certainly remain a catcher for the long term, so he doesn’t have to hit a ton to profile as a soft regular, but if you can’t tell a ball from a strike, we have some problems.
Kyle DeBarge
DeBarge has exploded at the plate this year, hitting 20 homers for the Cajuns after hitting 10 total in his first two years there, although with the wood bat he’s likely to be more of a hitter for a high average with a lot of doubles. He stays so tall through contact that he doesn’t rotate his hips much or get any loft in his finish, which is how he ended up with no homers and just three doubles in 25 games on Cape Cod last year. DeBarge rarely misses fastball strikes, and hasn’t had any trouble when he’s faced good velocity with wood or composite bats. He’s a 55 runner who hasn’t been proficient at base-stealing, with just a 69 percent success rate for the Cajuns over three years. He’s got the hands for shortstop but his arm is a little short for the left side of the infield and he probably profiles best at second base. The potential is here for a 60 hit tool, and he’s an obvious target for some swing tweaks. I like it.
Payton Tolle
Tolle transferred to TCU from Wichita State this year and finished 11th in Division I in strikeouts, working with an above-average fastball that can touch 96 and that plays up due to the huge extension in his delivery. He’s 6-7 and finishes way out over his front side, so left-handers must think the ball is coming from behind their right ears. The delivery is a little cross-body, and he doesn’t have a plus pitch, throwing the fastball three-fourths of the time and letting the deception do its thing. You can send him out as a starter but he has to develop a viable second pitch to stay there.
Dakota Jordan
For pure tools, Jordan rivals anyone in the class, high school or college. He’s a 70 runner with 80 raw power, 80 bat speed, and a 60 arm at worst. You’ll notice I didn’t mention the hit tool, though, which is his main deficiency on the field. His swing can get very handsy, so he doesn’t get the benefit of his lower half and almost throws the bat handle at the ball. He misses in zone too often and will expand to chase breaking stuff down and away, while his speed and athleticism haven’t translated into even 55 outfield defense.
He finished the spring with a 29 percent strikeout rate and 84 strikeouts, which I believe would be the highest ever for a first-round pick if he’s selected there. He’s a big upside play for an organization that thinks they can work to improve both his swing and his pitch recognition … but that’s a lot to ask.
Jonathan Santucci
Santucci has first-round stuff, but he missed the last half of the 2023 spring with a fractured elbow and has had control issues throughout his time at Duke, including a 14 percent walk rate this spring. He’s 92-95 and typically shows a plus slider and above-average changeup, although he barely uses the latter pitch, and when I caught him against Wake Forest in March he didn’t have any feel for the slider. His draft status is probably more a function of what teams see in his medical reports than what the scouts and analysts say. He missed several starts in May with a rib injury, returning for a two-inning, 37-pitch start in the Regionals, where he sat 95-96.
Boston Bateman
An LSU commit, Bateman can hold 93-95 deep into starts and flashes a 60 slider with hard, sharp tilt to the pitch. He’s a big kid, listed at 6-8, 240, with a strong frame that should see him end up at 260+. He finishes enough over his front side to get some advantage from his height. He comes from a high three-quarters slot, making for an uncomfortable at-bat for hitters, but his lower half isn’t always synced up with his upper half, so he’s inconsistent with his fastball command and can end up pitching more east-west than someone with that delivery should. He has starter ingredients if he improves the command and develops his changeup.
D'Marion Terrell
Terrell did very little last summer as his family was moving, so he was a pop-up guy this spring as his plus-plus power had scouts racing into Alabama to see him. He has excellent bat speed and loose hands, with some ability to adjust to changing speeds, although he’s definitely hunting for fastballs to demolish. He has no stride at all with a faint toe-tap his only movement, and giving him any kind of step or stride should help him adjust to changing speeds and perhaps get more of that huge raw power into games as the competition improves. He’s a fringy runner with an average arm who probably ends up in left field.
Dylan Dreiling
Dreiling makes excellent swing decisions and hits the ball hard enough for 55 power and what should be strong averages on contact, making up for his lack of speed or bigger power. He’s got a big stride to get more power from his lower half, so there could be an adjustment coming, as he’ll show power to almost all fields, but his hands can lag a little so his swing may not be as efficient as it could be. He’s a disciplined hitter who led the national champion Vols in walks and only trailed Christian Moore in homers. He’s a corner outfielder, probably staying in right, so there’s a higher bar for his bat to clear. His main deficiency at the plate is the lack of a two-strike approach, as he doesn’t whiff or chase much at all until he gets to two strikes, when he expands the zone too much and loses the contact skill he shows earlier in counts. I think he’s a strong regular with the potential to be more in an organization that can help him stay disciplined in those pitchers’ counts.
Gage Miller
Teams that rely on analytical models will probably love Miller, as the JUCO transfer doesn’t strike out and has shown he can lift and drive the ball even without elite exit velocities, hitting 18 homers this year through the regular season with just 23 strikeouts and a whiff rate of 18 percent. He has good bat speed and didn’t have trouble with 95+ this year, while he also showed above-average recognition of breaking stuff. He’s a below-average defender at third and may have to move to second or left field, so there’s more pressure on the bat, but it’s a solid swing with results to match, and he did it in the SEC, where he hit .336/.432/.612 with more walks (15) than strikeouts (nine) in 116 PA.
Carson Wiggins
Wiggins is the younger brother of Cubs prospect and 2023 second-round pick Jax Wiggins, who showed electric stuff for two years at Arkansas before blowing out his elbow. Carson is also committed to the Razorbacks, and pumps mid-90s heat without much visible effort, bumping 97-98 and sitting 94-96, along with an above-average slider and better command and control than his brother had even as a college sophomore. He turned 19 in June, so he’d be sophomore-eligible in 2026 if he ends up in Fayetteville.
Caleb Bonemer
Bonemer has probably hit, or not hit, his way out of the first round, with a rough showing in a spring break trip to Florida and enough questions about his ever-changing swing that he could even end up at UVA. He does have plus power when he gets to it and is an above-average runner who definitely stays on the dirt, more likely at third or second than at shortstop. He has tried a no-stride, no-tap approach, and he’s tried a longer lift-and-pull approach that gets to the power but at the cost of greater swing length and less contact. With everything he’s tried, though, he’s remained a dead-pull hitter who doesn’t try to go the other way in any situation.
He has a lot of potential with the bat if someone gets him to a single, consistent approach and plan at the plate, one that uses his lower half and also has him go to the opposite field when appropriate, but that’s no small task and he could be better off at Virginia, where they’ve typically taught hitters to work towards more all-fields contact even at the cost of power.
Jared Jones
Jones has enormous raw power, perhaps the best in the college group after Caglianone, so he could still end up going in the top 60-70 picks even as a straight first baseman whose strikeout rate is up at 25.7 percent. His swing is fine, even short for a 6-5, 250-pound hitter, but he transfers his weight too early and is over his front side too soon, depriving him of some power with the wood bat (he struggled on the Cape last summer) and hurting his ability to pick up pitch types. He whiffed way too often this year on offspeed pitches in the zone, over 50 percent of the time he swung at curveballs and changeups in the zone according to data from Synergy. He’s just barely draft-eligible by age, as he turns 21 on Aug. 1.
Billy Amick
Amick has had a huge year for Tennessee but he’s more power than hit, with poor offspeed recognition and a huge tendency to chase stuff out of the zone, especially with two strikes. His swing is good, with a strong front side and excellent rotation to really drive the ball in the air. He’s pretty pull-oriented, and you can throw him sliders with impunity, so there are multiple things he’d need to work on. Amick transferred to Knoxville from Clemson and the Vols have had him playing third base, where he’s a fringy defender. I think he’s a great second-round pick, because he has first-round upside with the bat but several areas for development once he’s in pro ball.
Luke Dickerson
Dickerson came on later this spring in a draft that is still very light on high school hitters up the middle, showing a strong right-handed swing with nascent power and a chance to stay somewhere up the middle, more likely at second than in center. He doesn’t have more than average bat speed, but so far he’s made up for it with the strength to create good contact, and the ball does come off his bat pretty well. The Virginia commit can show plus speed but doesn’t always get there out of the box, with enough speed to try centerfield but perhaps not the first-step quickness you want at that position.
Braylon Doughty
Doughty is a 6-foot right-hander with a solid delivery and an above-average curveball with high spin that could end up a real out-pitch for him. The Oklahoma State commit has no windup, taking a long stride towards the plate that has him finishing well out in front. He has a compact but not overly short arm swing, getting good two-seam tail on his low to mid-90s fastball, and the breaking ball can be a real hammer, mostly 12/6 but sometimes showing a little more horizontal break, too. He’ll throw a slider that I think is supposed to be a sweeper — he spins the ball so well that I’d like to see him use a more traditional slider to give him a pitch with more horizontal movement so everything isn’t so north-south. If he were 6-4 and had more of a changeup for a fourth pitch, he’d get more consideration in the back of the first round — and he could still end up there.
Connor Gatwood
Gatwood has been up to 98 in the last year, with the jump in velocity showing up last August at East Coast Pro, but he missed much of this spring with a lat strain and a broken hand. His breaking ball and changeup are both works in progress, so his value is in his size, arm strength, and loose delivery. He could be a long-term project, as he hasn’t been throwing this hard for very long and lacks experience with the newfound arm strength, struggling to get a consistent arm stroke down for even average control. He’s committed to Auburn.
Bryce Cunningham
Vanderbilt seems to find a guy like this in their own bullpen every year, converting a reliever back to the rotation and ending up with a top draft prospect. This year it’s Cunningham, a tall right-hander who made four starts and 14 relief appearances in 2023 and emerged as the Commodores’ best starter this season. He’s 94-97 on a four-seamer with a plus changeup that has excellent fading life when he gets on top of it, along with a fringy slider in the mid-80s that doesn’t have a ton of break or sharpness. He has a starter’s look and delivery but may need to try a two-seamer, as his four-seamer has led to too much hard contact (including nine of the 14 homers he allowed this season), and could use a better breaking ball.
Dax Whitney
Whitney is indeed from Idaho, a state that has produced only three major leaguers who were drafted out of its high schools (Josh Phelps, Matt Brown, and Mike Garman) and that has no Division I baseball programs. Whitney, an Oregon State commit, is an extremely projectable 6-5 right-hander who works in the low 90s, coming from a high slot, with a 12/6 curveball and a straight changeup. Scouts have noted his advanced control for his age, although the arm slot will make it hard for him to work east-west. It’s projection, feel, and strikes, with a good enough mix to start.
Luke Holman
Holman struck out a third of the batters he faced this year despite less than overpowering stuff. He’s 91-94 with a 55 slider and 55ish curveball, seeing his stuff play up because he has a deceptive delivery with an extremely short arm action. He showed a small platoon split this year, primarily in OBP, walking 12.5 percent of lefties he faced and striking out “only” 29 percent, which bears watching because he barely used his changeup this year and it doesn’t appear to be very deceptive out of the hand.
He had a longer arm stroke last spring at Alabama, and threw nearly 2 mph harder, so there’s some thought that whoever takes him could try to restore the old delivery and get a free velocity bump without any loss of any other stuff. He finishes abruptly and isn’t facing the plate at his finish, even though he’s online, so getting his old delivery back may also probably help him throw more strikes and stay healthy, too.
Mike Sirota
Sirota’s spring was a disaster, as he didn’t hit at all in the first half of the season and has looked like a completely different player than the dynamic hitter and center fielder scouts saw in the summer and fall. He did finish the regular season very strongly, hitting .355/.542/.711 over the season’s final five weeks (21 games), which is an arbitrary endpoint other than it’s after I saw him play absolutely terribly at Towson. Maybe he was dealing with a minor injury or some other obstacle, as before he’d shown excellent bat speed, good feel for the strike zone, plus run, and the ability to play center, enough to predict him going in the top half of the first round before the year began. I imagine the strong finish will get him into the second round as someone hopes they’re actually drafting the 2023 version.
Duncan Marsten
Marsten is a sinker/slider pitcher who missed the 2021 and 2022 seasons while recovering from Tommy John surgery. He’s now 19 so he’d be draft-eligible in 2026 if he goes to Wake Forest. He’s 91-94 with good sink and an above-average slider, projecting more as a groundball pitcher with control than a power pitcher who’ll miss a ton of bats. His delivery is solid but could use some fine-tuning to get his timing more consistent down the hill and make sure he’s maximizing the use of his legs, and he’ll need to develop a third pitch for lefties as sinker/slider guys often run into platoon-split issues. He’s similar to Jake Woodford out of high school, but Woodford’s projection never came to fruition and he became a replacement-level starter in the majors. If Marsten finds that third pitch, that would be his floor.
Dante Nori
Nori will turn 20 in October, so he’s very old for a high school prospect and would be draft-eligible again in 2026 if he ends up at Mississippi State. He’s an 80 runner with some feel to hit and plus defense already in center, maybe trending towards a 70 grade. He has bat speed and the strength to get to average power, although models are going to downgrade his production because of his age and the weak competition he’s facing in Michigan.
I don’t love the Jeff Bagwell stance he uses, which seems to be the trend this year — whoever started that, knock it off, Bagwell’s a Hall of Famer and most guys can’t hit like he did starting out with their legs wide enough to drive a semi through. I could be underselling Nori’s future power as a result, as he’s a great athlete and might find more juice if he could use his hips and legs more.
Gage Jump
Jump’s stats and pitch data make him look like a first-rounder, but the delivery is really rough and the odds of him sticking as a starter are low. He’s a 6-foot-nothin’ lefty with a very, very short arm action and abrupt movements within the delivery that make it hard for him to repeat it and look like they put more stress on his arm. His fastball sits 92-95 with good ride, and he’s got two breaking balls, with the low-80s slurve ahead of the upper-70s two-plane curveball, rarely using his straight changeup. He already had Tommy John surgery after his freshman year at UCLA, transferring to LSU in the interim, where he had an excellent 2024 season in the Tigers’ rotation, including just 22 walks in 83 innings (6.5 percent). There are teams willing to ignore delivery questions to take a guy with strong pitch characteristics in the first round or close to it. I think those questions are enough to make Jump a second-rounder at best.
Jalin Flores
Flores is a draft-eligible sophomore who turns 21 in late July and who exploded for 18 homers this spring for the Longhorns after hitting just four in about half a season of playing time last year. He’s a true shortstop who should stay there and be at least an average defender, so he doesn’t have to hit a ton to be a regular. He chases way too often, leading to a low walk rate and a strikeout rate that’s three times higher, so he projects as a sub-.300 OBP guy unless he starts to lay off pitches, especially breaking stuff, out of the zone. He’s got a great frame and build and looks like he could add some power in the next few years. He hasn’t played in any wood-bat leagues since high school, however, which increases the uncertainty around his hit tool and to some extent his power as well.
JD Dix
Dix had surgery on the labrum in his throwing shoulder in the fall, so he started this spring out as a DH and hasn’t regained all of his arm strength, but that might spell an opportunity for a team to nab a polished switch-hitting shortstop prospect at a lower spot than expected. Dix has a balanced swing with good bat speed, more fluid from the left side, and projects to average power. As long as his arm bounces back enough, he’ll stick at shortstop and should be at least an above-average defender there. Had he been healthy all spring, the narrative around him might have been a lot different and he could have been in the Tyson Lewis/Wyatt Sanford group as high school shortstops with some upside with the bat.
Griffin Burkholder
Burkholder has a great rotational swing that should generate plus power when he finally fills out, although he hasn’t shown much of it yet and had some trouble with non-fastballs at showcases last summer. He’s a 70 runner who can definitely stay in center, so even just boosting his contact rate will give him significant value. He hurt a calf muscle late in his spring and missed several games just as the weather was (sort of) turning nice, however, so it’s possible some teams didn’t get him cross-checked or otherwise seen enough to take him where the West Virginia commit would need to go.
Kavares Tears
That Volunteers lineup was just loaded this season, with Tears one of five Vols bats likely to be drafted in the top-three rounds. He might be the least disciplined hitter of the bunch, which could easily be a function of his inexperience (he had just 66 PA last year), but he makes up for it with plus raw power when he gets the ball in the air. He’ll turn 22 in August, so his lack of plate discipline, which extends to pitch types and ball/strike recognition, is a concern and makes him a crude hitter for his age. He also had no success against good velocity this year, with no hits on anything 95 or harder. He’s mostly played right field for Tennessee and is an average to tick-above runner who should at least get a shot in center, with right field the more likely long-term spot.
Drew Rerick
This year could see players drafted from high schools in North Dakota, Idaho, and even Alaska (Coen Niclai, a catcher committed to a JUCO), which I think indicates both that there is talent everywhere and that this year we’re looking under a lot more rocks than usual to find it. Rerick’s father was a 1998 22nd-round pick out of North Dakota State by the Cardinals, but didn’t play. Drew is committed to Texas A&M but could get interest in the second or third rounds. He’s been up to 99 and consistently is 93-95 with power to his slider and depth on the curveball. He’s really well-built to start at 6-5, 240, and has shown solid-average control in the past, but this year someone had him speed up his delivery and he’s been wilder than before. The fastball gets in on hitters quickly and he has the size and potential out pitch to go out right now in pro ball, with mid-rotation upside.
Carter Holton
Holton missed plenty of bats in 2024, posting the best strikeout rate of his career (32 percent), but everything else trended south this year, as he gave up more hard contact and saw his ERA soar over 5, a jump of two runs from his freshman performance for the Commodores. His changeup is his best pitch and led him to a significant reverse platoon split this year, although he has two breaking balls and misses plenty of left-handers’ bats with them. His final regular-season outing lasted just 1/3 of an inning and he struggled to get over 90 mph after he’d been 92-94 for the rest of the season, even the week prior. After two weeks of rest, he pitched just once more, in relief, sitting 93-95 but only throwing half of his pitches for strikes. Assuming there’s nothing serious here, he’s a potential back-end starter with his pitch mix and prior history of success, although the end of the season has to have hurt his stock.
Bryce Meccage
Meccage is 92-97 with a high-effort delivery and can really spin two breaking balls, overpowering New Jersey prep hitters with his stuff. In the outing I saw, he went four innings and didn’t allow a ball in play. It’s 40 command right now because he’s amping up to throw as hard as he can, hiding his athleticism and the potential that he could be more of a pitcher than a thrower if he works more at 92-94 and uses the breaking stuff more. Scouts who’ve seen him prior to this spring think that pitcher is in there, a guy with average or better command who can still miss bats at the lower velocity because the fastball has good ride. He’s committed to Virginia but should never set foot on campus except as a tourist.
Drew Beam
Beam is a four-pitch command right-hander with nothing plus but who throws a ton of strikes and can be effective as long as he has all of his pitches — I saw him struggle against Georgia because his changeup was much too firm that night. He’s 92-95 with his four-seamer and pounds the zone with it, and because it rides up it plays off the changeup and vice versa. He’s got an average curveball and a 55 cutter that may end up his best pitch in the long run, although in the postseason he largely ditched it and went heavy on the fastball/curve. He’s also got a little more room to fill out and could find another gear of velocity on the four-seamer and the cutter. Because he’s not very physical right now, I was concerned about him wearing down, but Tennessee used him much more carefully in Omaha, taking him out twice when he was pitching well and had thrown just 70-80 pitches. He’s a back-end starter type with a modest chance for something more.
Carson DeMartini
DeMartini has power and can stay somewhere on the dirt, although his arm hasn’t come all the way back from an offseason shoulder injury. He’s power-over-hit, with too much swing-and-miss in the zone to project to an average hit tool, although he does have better ball-strike recognition than pitch recognition. He rotates his hips well to get power from his lower half, but his hands get locked into a single swing path, making it hard for him to adjust to changing speeds or locations. DeMartini played third base for the Hokies this year and last but might end up at second base if his arm strength doesn’t improve.
Braylon Payne
Payne doesn’t turn 18 until mid-August, so he’ll be a darling of analytical models — if you wanted to take a random stab at a player Cleveland could target for an over-slot deal with their second or third pick, he’d be a good guess — and does offer plus-plus speed. He’s underdeveloped physically and his swing is weak and slappy, putting the ball on the ground most of the time with no real ability to drive the ball because he hasn’t filled out enough yet. The contact game can work with his elite speed, but he has to show he’s strong enough to turn on good velocity and to drive the ball to the gaps. He’s committed to Houston and could end up a first-rounder if he goes there and packs some strength on his 6-2 frame.
Chase Mobley
Mobley was up to 99 early in the spring and can flash that velocity but not hold it, with plenty of projection left to foresee him working consistently in the mid- to upper 90s when he’s older and more filled out. He’s 6-6 but has a low three-quarters slot, kind of Eury Perez-ish, so he pitches very east-west with his fastball and struggles to command his curveball, since that’s a slider slot. The lower slot does put some serious two-seam life on the fastball, tailing hard down and in to right-handers. He has a changeup with some tumble but barely uses it. He’s a project with real arm strength and a great body for a starter, and is committed to Florida State.
Jared Thomas
Thomas is draft-eligible as a sophomore, as he’ll turn 21 two weeks before the draft, and he took a big step forward this year by starting his hands a little lower so he’s able to square the ball up way more consistently. He went from a 48 percent groundball rate as a freshman to a 36 percent groundball rate this spring, but the tradeoff is that he’s swinging and missing more in and out of the zone. The net is positive, as he went from four homers as a freshman to 16 this year, and without that power surge I don’t think he sniffs the top three rounds. You can even hope for 20/20 upside, since he’s a 55 runner who stole 18 bags without getting caught. He’s played center, left, and first base for the Horns, probably starting out up the middle.
Blake Larson
Larson is a very projectable lefty who transferred to IMG this year from a high school in Iowa, working 92-94 with a very sharp slider that plays up from his low three-quarters slot. He’s online to the plate but his front foot lands askew and he can spin off that front heel, inhibiting his command, especially to his glove side. His arm is a bit late relative to his front leg and then accelerates quickly at the end of his delivery, which looks like it’s going to put more pressure on his shoulder. He looks like another pitcher in the Cooper Hjerpe mold, another low-slot lefty with a rough delivery but whose slot gave unusual life and shape to his pitches. Larson is committed to TCU.
Harrison Didawick
Didawick led the Cavaliers with 23 homers and was third among Virginia regulars in slugging at .679 (behind sophomore Henry Godbout and fifth-year player Jacob Ference), unsurprising as he’s one of the top exit-velocity guys in Division I, regularly topping 105 mph. It’s all-fields power and he is willing to go the other way, but he’s vulnerable to offspeed stuff, especially changeups down and/or away, leading to a 27 percent strikeout rate in conference play. He’s primarily played left for the Hoos, so he has to hit and hit for power. He’ll be a nice third-round pick for a team that considers batted-ball data very heavily in its model and is willing to take a chance on developing his pitch recognition.
Nick McLain
The younger brother of Reds infielder Matt McLain, Nick wasn’t anywhere near the same kind of prospect coming out of high school (when Matt was a first-rounder), but he’s exploded this year to hit .342/.457/.663 with more walks than strikeouts as the Sun Devils’ primary right fielder. He redshirted his freshman year and missed the first half of his sophomore year with a hand injury, so this is the first time we’ve seen him fully healthy since at least high school. He hasn’t seen much high-end velocity and he does expand a little to chase breaking stuff, performing against what he saw in the Pac-12. He’s probably an extra outfielder but plays very hard and with a ton of confidence, so he’ll likely get the most out of his tools.
Grant Shepardson
Shepardson is one of two Colorado high school pitchers we could see drafted in the first three-to-five rounds, working 92-95 with a 55 slider in the low 80s, throwing both pitches for strikes. He’s 6-1 and only slightly projectable, but he repeats his delivery very well, with a fast arm and good stride that puts him online to the plate, so he should be able to start even if what you see in his velocity is what you get. Like most high schoolers, he’ll need to develop his changeup in pro ball or even in college if he goes that route. He’s committed to the University of San Francisco, where his brother Blake is a junior reliever who throws 95-100.
Josh Hartle
Hartle came into the spring as a near-certain first-rounder, but he stumbled to a 5.79 ERA this spring, allowing 13 homers and 91 hits in 74 2/3 innings. He’s a finesse lefty who works with five pitches, with his changeup his best offering and his cutter suddenly his most-used one. The cutter has become less effective the more he’s used it, unfortunately, and while his slider and curveball can both miss bats, neither is that effective in the zone, often catching too much of the heart of the zone. He’s a buy-low candidate after he struck out a third of the batters he faced as a sophomore with a lower walk rate than he had this year. It may be a matter of adjusting his pitch mix rather than anything major, or even of the ridiculous offense in Division I this year, rather than anything seriously wrong with him, although this profile does have a lot of downside risk as well.
Tegan Kuhns
Kuhns came into the year in the top group of high school arms in the class, but his stuff tapered off late in the spring and he is probably out of consideration that high in the draft. He’s a four-pitch guy who has been up to 95-96, with plenty of projection in the body, while he was more 90-92 at the end of the season. His split-change has big fading action to it and he gets some sharp two-plane break on the curveball. There’s effort to the delivery, including a head-whack at release. He’s committed to Tennessee and if he ends up there he’ll be a strong bet to see the first round in 2027 if he stays healthy.
Anthony Silva
Silva had some first-round buzz coming into the spring, but he hit just .268/.369/.384 this season, and saw his strikeout rate jump because he took far more called strikes this year than in 2023. He’s a true shortstop who was more of a 55 defender last spring and closer to average this year, although there’s no physical reason why he can’t be an above-average defender again. There is some good news buried in here — he didn’t chase or whiff excessively, and his contact quality is still enough to see him hitting for average with doubles power. As of July 6, he’s struggling even more on the Cape, striking out over 30 percent of the time and hitting .103/.229/.154, so he may be better served playing another year at TCU. He’s sophomore-eligible and offers a utility infielder floor if he’s willing to sign.
Sam Stuhr
The University of Portland could see two pitchers drafted in the top-10 rounds between Stuhr and redshirt junior Nick Brink, who finished the regular season with the seventh-most strikeouts in Division I. Stuhr is the better pro prospect, as he’s a year younger and has better stuff, working 94-96 with a short but effective slider in the upper 80s with more horizontal break. He has four pitches but barely uses his changeup, and it showed in his platoon split, as he allowed a .431 OBP to lefties this year. It’s a circle-change that he throws with conviction but doesn’t land it enough for strikes or throw it enough to get hitters to lay off the fastball. He’s a strong, 6-1 kid who could be a fourth starter if he develops that last pitch.
Trey Gregory-Alford
Gregory-Alford is a Virginia commit who pitches his home games at 6,000 feet above sea level, which I have always thought said something about a young pitcher — if you can pitch in that kind of forbidding environment, where no pitches break or move as much as they would anywhere else and every pop-up is a potential homer, you probably have something worth capturing, whether you call it toughness, confidence, feel, whatever. He’s been up to 97 and does have a pretty sharp 12/6 curveball, with good extension out front to help all his stuff play up, although his pitching arm can lag behind his plant foot. He's already 6-5, 235, so the Virginia commit doesn’t have a ton of projection ahead of him, instead needing to work on command and developing a changeup or splitter.
Dylan Volantis
Volantis got much stronger this offseason and has gained 2-3 mph on his fastball, now working 90-92 with good command and a big-breaking 12/6 curveball. He comes from a very high slot, so he’s very north-south with everything, including a splitter he almost never used in high school. He’s got a long stride to the plate and is both on time and online, finishing well over his front side to take more advantage of his height. He reminds me of Tyler Skaggs at that same age, similarly projectable, with Volantis two inches taller than the late Skaggs was at the time of the draft. He’s committed to Southern California.
Henry Brummel
Brummel’s a projection guy at 6-4 who’s 90-94 right now with room to grow, with a big-breaking curveball with tight spin and enough of a changeup to project him as a starter. He’s got a high arm slot that gives depth to the curve and has him really driving the fastball down when he finishes out front — which he doesn’t always do — with good arm speed on the changeup already. There is some effort and recoil at the end of the delivery, which definitely isn’t going to help with command. He’s committed to Indiana.
Levi Sterling
Sterling’s stuff backed up a little this spring, as he’s been sitting 89-90 and touching 92 when he was touching 94 and averaging closer to 92 before. His changeup is a plus pitch, but his breaking balls are nothing special and he’ll need to develop one or the other — or even switch to a different shape. His lower half needs to get a lot stronger and he has to use it more to generate some power to all of his pitches, which might be easier once he’s no longer playing shortstop regularly as well. He’s committed to Texas and could blossom there by focusing just on pitching and building some muscle, offering some more projection than his peers because he won’t turn 18 until September.
Garrett Shull
Shull is a switch-hitting corner outfielder and Oklahoma State commit who has excellent bat speed batting left-handed, projecting to hit for average and power, with a slower and slightly more mechanical-looking swing right-handed. He’s an average runner and probably just goes right to a corner outfield spot in pro ball. He’ll also turn 19 the day of the draft, which will hurt him with teams that weigh age heavily in their draft models. He makes pretty hard contact, though, which could make him an over-slot target even though he’s going to end up in left or right field.
Ryan Johnson
Johnson is a huge strike-thrower, literally, as he’s 6-6 and has walked just 14 batters this year (3.3 percent), even improving on his above-average walk rate from last year of 6 percent, while finishing the regular season ranking third in Division I in strikeouts behind only Chase Burns and Hagen Smith. He does it with breaking stuff, throwing his slider nearly half of the time and his 92-95 mph fastball for only 30 percent of his pitches, with the slider and cutter missing a ton of bats. The delivery is insane, though, as he doesn’t even pause after bringing his glove over his head and just flings the ball at the plate — it’s so hard to reconcile what you see from watching him pitch with what you see on the stat sheet. It’s a low three-quarters slot and almost everything he throws breaks to his glove side, so left-handed hitters do give him some trouble and he only seems to pitch east-west. The results might get him into Day 1, even with the clear reliever risk from his delivery.
Chris Levonas
Levonas has been up to 97 this spring, sitting more 92-95 in starts, with good feel for an upper-80s changeup that has some late tumble and two breaking balls that blend together but both have tight rotation and sharp break. He has a big, exaggerated leg kick, and comes from a three-quarters slot but has to lean way over to get up to it, which makes it look like a lower three-quarters slot might be more natural for him. He does take about as big a stride towards the plate as you could find, and while I tend to favor pitchers with longer strides, I’m really not sure how much is too much. He’s committed to Wake Forest and I’d be very optimistic about them helping tidy up his delivery and figure out his breaking ball.
Matt Ager
Ager had an oblique strain in the fall and didn’t seem to be 100 percent this spring, losing his rotation job in mid-April when his ERA got up near 6, but was more effective in the bullpen, where he allowed just two runs in 21 innings. (Then his genius coach had him start a game in the Regional the day after a relief appearance, which didn’t go well for anyone except their opponents.) He’s been up to 95 this spring but pitches more 90-92 with a short mid-80s slider that’s more vertical than horizontal, showing an occasional curveball that’s almost 12/6. It’s a good delivery and he throws strikes, which makes him seem like a good buy-low candidate for someone to take and return to the rotation.
Joey Oakie
Oakie started out his season, which began at the end of May, extremely well, coming out 93-97 mph with a plus slider and racking up strikeouts, but he was worked very hard — throwing 109 pitches on short rest, then 107 pitches a week later — and his velocity dropped down to more 91-92 with diminished control. The Iowa commit comes from a low three-quarters slot that puts some sink on the fastball and more horizontal movement to the breaker, scoring very well with teams that are heavy on pitch metrics last summer and fall. He raised his slot a little this spring, making for a cleaner delivery but losing some of the vertical approach angle that made him interesting. He also hasn’t shown he can turn over a changeup or other pitch for lefties, which is harder from the lower slot. The high workload and reduced stuff are more of a concern, as he was a potential comp pick coming into the year given the pitch metrics and two plus pitches.
Michael Massey
Massey missed about four weeks due to a bulging disc in his back, returning to make a couple of relief appearances at the end of the season. Prior to the injury, he’d made 10 starts for the Demon Deacons but averaged just over three innings per outing and never threw more than 78 pitches in a game. He’s got an extremely short arm action and works up to 95 with a hard, downward-breaking slider, with a changeup he barely uses and some of the expected platoon split. He was pitching fairly well until mid-April, with three starts where he was ineffective — eight innings total, 10 walks, nine Ks, 10 runs allowed — before he hit the injured list. Someone will try to start him but this looks relieverish to me.
Payton Green
Green transferred to the Ramblin’ Wreck from NC State and started out very strongly in non-conference games, slumped midyear when ACC play began, but rallied to finish with a respectable .317/.390/.548 line within the conference, with average defense at shortstop. It’s just adequate bat speed and he didn’t see much velocity this spring, even in conference, with maybe 55 power and enough strength to perform against guys with average velocity or below. He’s not a great runner, so if he doesn’t stick at shortstop, as seems a little more likely than not, he has to move to second because otherwise it’s left field. He’s probably a utility infielder in the end but if a move back to second base (where he played about 40 percent of the time in 2023) sees his defensive value jump he could end up a soft regular.
Cade Arrambide
Arrambide is very strong and offers future plus power that would make him a regular if he stays behind the plate. He’s got a very wide stance with no stride or even a toe-tap, so his timing isn’t great and he swings and misses way more often than he should, while behind the plate he’s got a cannon but gets mixed reviews on his receiving. He’s committed to LSU and as the spring progressed some scouts got the sense he’d prefer college to pro ball right now.
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(Photo illustration by Sean O’Reilly / The Athletic: From left to right — Chase Burns, Charlie Condon, Ryan Waldschmidt / Michael Wade, Icon Sportswire, Isaiah Vazquez,
Jeff Moreland, Icon Sportswire / Getty Images)
