At the end of next week, we will be unveiling our brand new Draft Top 150 Prospects list as the amateur season is in full swing and it’s even getting warmer in the cold-weather states. Scouts are zigzagging across the country to figure out who should go where, now less than three months before the July Draft in Philadelphia.
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At the same time, the Minor League season is almost a month in, so there’s plenty to talk about pro prospects (when isn’t there?). Given that my brain is now living in that dichotomy, I decided to split this week’s MLB Pipeline Inbox in half, with two Minor League prospect questions and a pair about the Draft. And in both cases, I found question couples with shared themes.
The first two questions this week are about what the top of our Top 100 will look like in the near future, given the amount of graduations we’re going to have. As of right now, Kevin McGonigle is set to graduate on May 10; Konnor Griffin just a little over a week after that. With them off the board, it’s almost certain that most of the attention, were we to survey executives, would go to the next two guys on the list: Jesús Made of the Brewers and the A’s Leo De Vries.
Both are teenagers playing in Double-A, with Made joining De Vries at age 19 when his birthday comes in early May. Both are performing well despite being more than five years younger than the average position player at their level. Made gets a slight edge based on his production in the early going (.338/.449/.554 with 9 XBH, 15/12 BB/K, 11 steals and 160 wRC+), but De Vries isn’t far behind (.333/.427/.464, 5 XBH, 10/20 BB/K, 6 SB and 140 wRC+). I’d be willing to bet we would have a fairly split camp and I’m looking forward to our own spirited internal debate when we do our first “market corrections” later in May.
The only other player I think might garner some votes at this point is Pirates right-hander Seth Hernandez, though I don’t suspect a ton of people would pick him because, in our experience in putting together these lists, it’s less common for a pitcher to get support to be No. 1. We’ve only had four pitchers since we started doing prospect rankings back in 2004 land in the top spot, and one of them was Shohei Ohtani. Hernandez is also a high school draftee who is just getting started, with a grand total of 12 innings under his belt. But he’s been so dominant (3 hits, 3 walks, 23 K’s, .077 BAA, 0.75 ERA) that he’s bound to make a large leap up from his current spot at No. 24 on the list (More on this in the next question).
One last name to put in the “keep an eye on” category: Franklin Arias. No. 26 on the list, the Red Sox shortstop is off to a sweltering start in Double-A at age 20 (.444/.519/.933 with six homers in 13 games). No one expects him to keep that level of production up, but if the power gains are real, he’ll work his way into the discussion.
As mentioned above, we will have our first market corrections shortly after all of these graduations. In addition to McGonigle and then Griffin, JJ Wetherholt will leave the current top 10, and we’ve already graduated Nolan McLean,Samuel Basallo and Bubba Chandler from the top of the list. Potential replacements like Carson Benge and Andrew Painter are set to graduate as well.
We will work together – Jim Callis, Sam Dykstra and myself – to construct what that new top 10 will look like, so what I’m listing here is my own personal list as of this moment and may not reflect where we eventually land next month:
1. Jesús Made, SS, Brewers
2. Leo De Vries, SS, A’s
3. Max Clark, OF, Tigers
4. Colt Emerson, SS, Mariners
5. Seth Hernandez, RHP, Pirates
6. Trey Yesavage, RHP, Blue Jays (keeping him since I don’t think he’ll graduate before we update)
7. Eli Willits, SS, Nationals
8. Travis Bazzana, 2B, Guardians
9. Sebastian Walcott, SS, Rangers
10. Josue De Paula, OF, Dodgers
OK, let’s move on to the Draft, shall we? We answered this one on this week’s Pipeline Podcast, so be sure to check that out (and we had Travis Bazzana on as a guest!). Both are extremely talented and will go early enough in the Draft. We’re still finalizing the order of our Top 150 as I write this, getting feedback from scouts across all organizations. But I feel comfortable telling you that Rojas will be listed higher on that final ranking, even if the distance between the two left-handers is yet to be determined.
We had stacked the two of them on our Top 100 back in December, with Bolemon at seven and Rojas at eight, and there really wasn’t much separating them at all. But Rojas has been a bit more dominant and impressed more evaluators this spring than Bolemon, so there will be some separation. Right now, I could see Rojas going perhaps as high as No. 6, and maybe firmly in that 10-15 range, while Bolemon now feels more like a late-first round, or perhaps even a comp round, kind of selection.
Everyone can have an opinion, so I would never call anyone crazy for having one, especially with something as volatile as the Draft. But I do think at this point, your claim is off-base. At this point, there is no question that Jackson Flora is the clear top arm in this class. The Santa Barbara ace has posted every week, almost always in dominating fashion. Sure, the Big West isn’t the SEC, but keep in mind that scouting departments evaluate the pitcher, his stuff, his delivery, etc. – who he is facing and how he produces comes into play, but it’s not necessarily top of the list. It’s how we get players taken high from areas with ho-hum high school talent, for instance.
Cameron Flukey returns this weekend and there’s enough time for the Coastal Carolina product to show he belongs in early first round conversations, but he won’t surpass Flora for the top arm label. I could see him going top 10-15, though. The aforementioned Rojas isn’t far off, and we might look back and realize that he is the best pitcher in this class in a Seth Hernandez kind of way, but the industry will favor the college arm over the high school one, even a left-handed one, more often than not. As explained above, Carson Bolemon is a bit behind Rojas, as is the third lefty you allude to, Logan Schmidt in California.