Inbox: What boosted Kade Anderson up Draft rankings?

This week has been a big one in terms of 2025 Draft coverage. We launched our new Top 200 list, Jim Callis put out a new mock of the first round, and college regional play kicks off. If you didn’t have Draft fever before, you should now.

I know I do, which is why three of the four questions this week are Draft related, though I did throw in one about a non-Top 30 Minor Leaguer for good measure.

Kade Anderson has indeed vaulted up to No. 3 overall and is now listed as the top college pitcher in the class, ahead of Jamie Arnold at No. 4. As part of the Top 200 coverage, we did a survey of high-level evaluators and, given that there’s a strong cluster of college arms near the top (Jim had Anderson, Arnold, Liam Doyle and Kyson Witherspoon all going in the top 10 in his mock), we asked who they thought was the top college arm in the class. Anderson got twice as many as the next guy, Arnold, but all four of those hurlers got at least one vote.

As for the Anderson vs. Arnold question ... Arnold has been the top college arm since back in December, and again when we re-ranked and expanded from 100 to 150 in April. Each time he was at No. 3 on the list. And he has track record with two years of overall success as Florida State’s ace. But Anderson has been surging up boards this year -- he was No. 44 on our Top 100 in December -- and even right around when our Top 150 came out and we had him up at No. 9, we were hearing his name as a strong possibility near the very top of the first round.

Some of the why is how both have been pitching as this spring has gone on. While Arnold certainly has had some impressive starts, since March 21 (when he gave up six earned runs over four innings), he has a 3.93 ERA and a 1.69 WHIP. That includes giving up nine earned over 10 innings in his last two starts. Anderson, meanwhile, is in the same area ERA-wise (3.98) but has a 1.15 WHIP and 14.3 K/9 (vs. Arnold’s still impressive 11.6). More recently, he’s gone deeper and pitched better than Arnold, and sometimes most recent impressions last.

Beyond the numbers, which aren’t that far apart (and, to be fair, they are 3 and 4), there are things scouts point to that give Anderson a bit of an edge. Two scouting directors I talked to pointed to a deeper/more diverse arsenal. Anderson has a legitimate four-pitch mix, with two distinct breaking balls to go along with a plus fastball and changeup. Arnold’s stuff is fine, but it’s fastball-slider-changeup. Anderson’s stuff has also been bigger down the stretch compared to Arnold’s, according to evaluators, and according to Synergy, he has had the higher miss rate (and Arnold has actually thrown more sliders than fastballs over his last several starts). The combination of those two things, along with evaluators believing he has a better delivery and the fact that Arnold might be fading a bit down the stretch for the second straight year, give some a feeling that Anderson has better long-term starter projection, giving him the slightest edge.

Honestly, there aren’t that many high school arms who we can feel really confident about going in the first round. After Seth Hernandez, No. 2 on our Top 200, the only other prep hurler we’ve put in mocks so far is big lefty Kruz Schoolcraft, who is No. 16 on the rankings. We don’t have another high school arm until No. 37, so we can start there in answering this question. That’s lefty Jack Bauer, who has created buzz with a velocity spike that has led to triple-digit fastballs. Though that kind of velo jump always makes scouts pause, he’ll still get plenty of early attention.

After that, there are a number of high schoolers we have ranked in the 40s who could be in conversations early. Look at teams with multiple picks who could have the ability to go over slot to lure some of the high-end pitchers away from college commitments. Aaron Watson in Florida, Matthew Fisher in Indiana, Landon Harmon in Mississippi and Angel Cervates in California could all go on Day 1. If you want to go a little deeper, keep an eye on Zach Strickland, also from California, who is No. 70 on our list, and maybe even River Hamilton from Oregon, who is at No. 97 (but don’t be surprised if he moves up when we re-rank and expand to 250).

We answered this one on this week’s MLB Pipeline Podcast (There’s also a great conversation with the Mets’ Jonah Tong). Jim went with the Holliday and the Rockies route. With Matt’s history with the Rockies (first five years in the bigs, three All-Star nods, etc). And we’re pretty confident that if Ethan Holliday doesn’t go No. 1 to the Nationals, his floor is No. 4 to the Rockies. I decided to go the body-type connection.

Over the course of the spring, any time I talked to a scout about high school outfielder Slater de Brun, invariably they’d say “Just give him to the D-backs.” He’s under six-feet tall and a left-handed hitter. He’s also from the Pacific Northwest, so the Corbin Carroll comps are unavoidable. Add in that the D-backs took Slade Caldwell, all 5-foot-9 of him (also a left-handed hitter), last year in the Draft. de Brun, in case you were wondering, is 5-foot-10, and yes, he hits left-handed.

It’s a fair question. Bragg was the Orioles’ eighth-round pick in 2023 out of Dallas Baptist, a senior who signed for an under-slot $100,000. So he entered pro ball without much pedigree or fanfare. Then he spent all of 2024 with Single-A Delmarva and was a touch old, at age 23, for the level. And before that red-hot August you mentioned, he had a 4.45 ERA, so he wasn’t on the radar. One month in Single-A wasn’t going to be enough to put him on the Top 30 radar before this season began. All of that said, he’s on our radar now.

He’s pitched his way from High-A to Double-A this year and has a combined 1.01 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 12.0 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 rates. And the move to Double-A hasn’t slowed him down. He’s doing it with four pitches -- fastball, slider, changeup and cutter -- with a heater that’s averaging 94-95 mph. We only add players to a Top 30 if someone graduates during the season, and then we do a full re-rank post Draft. There isn’t anyone in the big leagues now close to coming off, but look for Bragg to get added if someone like Coby Mayo comes back up and sticks and then graduates, or in July.