The MLB draft is minutes away from kicking off as I begin this weekend’s bug, and I find myself pondering the unknown magic of the thing itself. No other sport can boast the breadth and depth of this draft, as it was whittled down to 20 rounds. Other years have lost impact players to the big leagues, leaving few righty answers in the first round. The early gains in the class of 2025 look less than encouraging, for example. Washington’s perfect choice SS Eli Willits looks good, too RHP Seth Hernandez for Pirates looks like a potential star, but it’s hard to imagine anyone Mariners LHP Kade Anderson making next year’s midsummer classic. And that’s fine. It’s completely normal.
We only need to trace back one year to see the impact of a draft that is one or two standard deviations above normal. In 2024, the first round was full of correct answers: Travis Bazzana (1), Chase Burns (2), Nick Kurtz (4), Jac Caglianone (6), JJ Wetherholt (7), Connor Griffin (9), Braden Montgomery (12), Carson Benge (19), again Trey Yesavage (20) and other great prospects we haven’t seen make the majors interesting Theo Gillen again Kaelen Culpepper. You didn’t need a beginner to make money with you. White Sox 3B Caleb Bonemer 43rd overall and starting second baseman Sam Antonacci for 140. Cincinnati sat down Mike Sirota at 87. Toronto writ 3B Sean Keys of 125.
I will emphasize again that this phase was unusual, but it can serve as a symbol of our game changer. The players drafted this weekend will be starting in our exciting teams sooner than before. The royals have just been chosen OF Zion Rose out of Louisville in sixth place after the Pirates took on LSU Derek Curiel’s at 5. Both teams graduated from high school Jacob Lombard. After Curiel’s selection, the analyst team discussed the draft of need, something you almost never hear during the MLB draft unless it’s being touted as the wrong way to do things. I don’t really think of it as writing a need so much as reporting college baseball results and information beyond what teams usually do. The talent gap between high school and professional baseball is huge. Playing college ball for several seasons gives guys a chance to fail and adapt and learn and gives MLB organizations plenty of evidence when making these multi-million dollar decisions.
After the high school turn is the Orioles for Eric Booth Jr. at 7th overall, we’re back to college big hitters with Georgia Tech By Drew Burress heading to Athletics at 8th and Virginia BY AJ Gracia I’m headed to Atlanta at 9. Five outfielders out of nine picks is odd, but that’s possible when more college bats are running in the minors. Oh and here comes another big college bat with the switch-hitting Tennessee shortstop Tyler Bell headed to Colorado with the 10th pick. In case you can’t tell, I love these college hitters. If you ran that 2024 class again, where would Carson Benge go? It feels like that happened today. Eight of the top 10 college hitters. One college pitcher. One high school bat selected by a team that struggled to move up in the draft.
Washington is next, and I think they will stop the slide of high school shortstop Jacob Lombard. If not, we may be living a new reality.
They took a college second baseman instead: Chris Hacopian from Texas A&M. The friend does not look like a lowly person. His position is striking. The panel hinges on this discussion about college as the standard for professional development now. Who knows if we’ll ever see another high school student chosen. You’re kidding, of course, but you can’t compare high school data to college data, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Hi, here’s another high school student in another group who struggles with writing well: Jared Grindlinger to Los Angeles from Anaheim. He’s been heralded as an outfielder, but the thinking here is that he could be developed as a two-way player or moved to the mound if the power doesn’t improve.
Two other high school students went as follows: Trevor Condon again Jacob Lombardand we return to the normal age distribution. Both kids feel like great gems born from this college-oriented approach to team building. The Marlins front office looked determined to draft a big-blooded home kid. Maybe he didn’t expect to be on board with them.
Arizona drafted Arkansas Catcher Ryder Helfrick The next one. His last name sounds like someone’s grandmother swearing for the first time this month. A great defender. The Rangers then acquired another high school prospect LHP Gio Rojas. A good place to get off him.
The next big moment happened at pick 20, when the Red Sox selected the North Carolina shortstop Jake SchaffnerWHO MLB.com ranked 75th and Baseball American ranked even lower. The Red Sox draft room looks weird to me, by the way. Most of these groups have a conference room vibe arranged around a rectangle of tables in the middle so people can see each other and maybe even talk. Not Boston, who has their room set up as a computer programming classroom. Everyone is facing forward, sitting on their laptops. This is almost exactly the same as when they “reached out” to Nick Yorke in 2020. Yorke was a high school sophomore with no clear future on defense. Schaffner is a defensive shortstop from a major college program. This pick has good bones, that’s what I’m saying. I think maybe he should have been ranked a little higher by the public facing companies instead of Boston’s reach, at least given the way the league is trending today. High school students generally “dropped” on the first day, suggesting that groups approach risk aversion to that demographic in ways reminiscent of how we play the game of thrones. There are only so many things that can go wrong between high school and the majors, and we can do other things with those roster spots that help us pay for more guaranteed pitching as needed.
Thanks for reading!
