Here are 6 Draft storylines to follow this weekend

The 2026 MLB Draft is officially just days away and you won't want to miss a second of the action.

The weekend's festivities are set to kick off tomorrow with the High School Home Run Derby at 2 p.m. ET. MLB Pipeline's own Jonathan Mayo will be on the call for the event. On Saturday, Day 1 of the Draft begins at the Pennsylvania Convention Center at 1:30 p.m. ET and will cover the first four rounds.

Day 2 of the Draft will commence on Sunday at 11:30 a.m. ET with rounds 5-20. Mayo, along with Jim Callis, will be on hand providing analysis during rounds 5-10. The All-Star Futures Game presented by Nike will be happening simultaneously with a noon ET start time at Citizens Bank Park.

On the latest MLB Pipeline Podcast, Callis and Mayo, along with host Jason Ratliff, broke down six key storylines to keep a close eye on while following all of the Draft proceedings this weekend.

1. Who goes 1-1 to White Sox?

Mayo: In my mock last week, I did say Roch Cholowsky 50% and Grady Emerson 45% to go No. 1 overall. I would amend that to say it’s an even split (50/50) right now. Nothing to the field. And I would say the added layer this year is that they (Emerson and Cholowsky) play the same position. So you can make more of a direct comparison and what we’re hearing is that Emerson is better than Cholowsky was when he was in high school. And most people believe that Emerson in three years time, should he end up on campus, would be a better prospect than Cholowsky is now. And that’s why I think we’re seeing the tightening of this race. There’s not that much differentiating the two of them.

Callis: I am going 51% for Grady Emerson right now and Roch Cholowsky 47%. And this is more a case of Emerson overtaking Cholowsky, nipping him at the wire. Not, Roch didn’t really have a good year and we’re off him. It’s not that at all … and I’m giving Vahn Lackey 2%. I think there’s a very slight chance where Roch is like, I’m just not going to accept a number, and let’s say the White Sox still prefer a college guy over a high school guy, we’ve heard that. So, if Roch won’t give them a number and they decide they don’t want a high school guy, then I’ll give Vahn Lackey a 2% chance. But I would be very surprised if that happens.

2. What happens after the top 7 go off the board?

Callis: You have Emerson and Cholowsky that are on a tier by themselves, then I think Lackey is half a tier behind them. Then you’ve got another tier of UCSB right-hander Jackson Flora, who is the best pitcher in the Draft, and a couple of high school hitters in Jacob Lombard and Eric Booth Jr., and then once you get past them I think the consensus next best guy would be Drew Burress. But, after that it’s wide open.

Mayo: Especially in terms of if you’re talking who is going to go next. We have Gio Rojas ranked eighth, and I still think that’s right. He’s the best prep pitcher in the class. But he’s not going to go eighth and he might not go ninth. Where it starts, I mean, maybe the Royals are interested in him at No. 6? I think that is where the first chance where things could diverge from chalk in terms of the first six or seven guys going in the top six or seven picks and then after that there are a lot more question marks.

3. Jared Grindlinger (No. 16) is a legit two-way player -- does he get taken as a hitter, a pitcher or remain two-way?

Callis: So much with him is about projection. You’re not paying him for his present tools, but he's probably going to go in the top 20 picks. And then you have the whole question: Is he better as a pitcher or an outfielder? And 95% of the people I talk to say he’s better as a hitter. But it feels like 95% of the people Jonathan talks to say he’s better as a pitcher. And I do think that whoever drafts him probably drafts him as a hitter. And not that they don’t like him as a pitcher, but you aren’t going to pay a high school pitcher who is almost all projection first-round money. And it’s also easier to start a guy as a hitter and switch him to pitching if that doesn’t work out. A lot of the two-way guys would rather play every day.

Mayo: He is fascinating. I think people always liked the player’s story and there was a definite split camp about where to play him based on the teams that are actually interested in him. I know of at least one team that is picking in the middle of the first round that would send him out doing both but likes him better on the mound. But what does the kid want to do? Does he want to try to do both? Will he be more amenable to signing with a team that will let him try to do both? Or is he OK with, we just want you to hit or we just want you to pitch? It’ll be interesting to see.

4. Biggest wild cards

Brody Bumila, LHP, Bishop Feehan (MA) (No. 23)
Mayo: One of the better high school arms in the class. Big 6-foot-9 left-hander from Massachusetts. He’s athletic, basketball player, throws 100 mph. I think there’s always some question marks about high school pitchers, but he had internal brace surgery in May 2025, and then came back and was throwing really well. But he didn’t throw well down the stretch and it was assumed that he was just gassed from basketball season and then making it through baseball, but it was revealed on Monday that he has a UCL injury in his left elbow. And they are telling all 30 teams that there is an issue there. And that the next course of action will be determined after the Draft, so that whoever decides to draft him will have a say in the next steps. So I think that now this throws him even more up in the air because it’s going to have to be a team that’s willing to sign him and rehab him. And there are teams that aren’t afraid to do that, but placing him now becomes that much more difficult.

Logan Reddemann, RHP, UCLA (No. 31)
Callis: Here’s a guy who, when he was pitching well for UCLA this year, was perhaps putting himself in a position to be the second college pitcher taken after Jackson Flora. And then shortly after striking out 18 against Rutgers, his season came to a close. He didn’t make his last six starts of the year. Nobody really knew what was going on. It was described as arm fatigue. Now we know it was a flexor strain. But he threw a live bullpen at UCLA. He threw at the Combine. It looked good. He executed his pitches. Obviously teams are looking at medicals to see exactly what they’re dealing with, but if you think he’s healthy, how much do you ding him for the way the season ended and having the flexor strain, or if you thought he was the second-best college pitcher before that, do you still think he’s the second-best college pitcher? If you told me he cut a deal in the Top 10, I would say OK, and if you told me he went in the 30s as somebody’s second pick, I’d believe that too.

Justin Lebron, SS, Alabama (No. 9)
Mayo: The tools are crazy good. As good of a set of tools as anybody in the class, but he didn’t perform. He hit .229 in SEC play and hit .270 for the year. And I can't remember there being a college player to go in the top half of the first round with those kinds of numbers. And so he’s probably going to go somewhere in the middle of the first round, I think. But could he go as high as in the Top 10, yes. Could he drop down into the 20s, absolutely. But because of the lack of performance it makes it difficult to predict where he actually lands.

Tyler Spangler, SS, De La Salle (CA) (No. 53)
Mayo: A high school shortstop from Northern California. A left-handed hitter. That checks off a lot of boxes for a number of teams picking in the back half of the first round. But he didn’t play his senior year at all. He was a guy who could have been a Top 10 pick if he had gone out and performed. The biggest question with him is his health. There was a back injury in play, and I think that always makes teams nervous. The medicals might be in question. He did go to the Combine and took batting practice and took infield and he looked fine in those settings, but there’s going to have to be some certainty there if you’re going to try to sign him away from his commitment to Stanford.

Carson Wiggins, RHP, Arkansas (No. 88)
Callis: Here is a college player who missed the entire season. A right-hander from Arkansas, much like his brother, Jaxon, who missed the entire 2023 season following Tommy John surgery. Jaxon went in the supplemental second-round to the Cubs and has become a Top 100 Prospect and the best pitching prospect in Chicago’s system, Carson is more advanced at the same stage. But he had internal brace surgery last spring, missed this whole year, but he did pitch at the Combine. He wasn’t throwing max intent, but it looked good. And when we last saw him pitching in game action the stuff was ridiculous. He averaged last year as a freshman, pitching in relief mind you, 99 mph with his fastball and touched 102. When we did the best tools list for this year’s Draft, I asked people if it would be crazy to give Carson Wiggins the best fastball tool even though he didn’t pitch all year and they all said absolutely not crazy, that fastball is ridiculous. And he’s got an upper-80s slider that is unhittable. So, it’s two wipeout pitches, he’s athletic, he’s healthy again, he’s good to go. I would guess he’ll go in the second round, but if you told me somebody popped him in the sandwich round, I could see that.

5. Teams to watch

Pittsburgh Pirates: 4 of top 51 picks, near-record $19.1 million pool
Mayo: I am curious to see what they do and how they use their pool because I don’t think they’re going to do anything super cute at the top to save money, because they don’t need to do that. As they’ve shown the last couple of years, they take the best player and then they can still be aggressive later on. So I’m curious to see what they do with those other picks on Day 1. That large bonus pool really gives them the ability to get as creative as they want to be in going after talent.

Colorado Rockies
Callis: This is a team that lost 119 games last year. The way the lottery rules work they can’t pick higher than 10th this year, so they have the 10th pick instead of being in the mix to perhaps pick No. 1. But they also have the 37th pick and the first pick of the second round which is 38. So even though they got pushed down from No. 1 to 10, which is a $5 million deficit in terms of bonus pool money, they still have almost a $16 million pool, they have three of the first 28 picks, they have new management and they obviously need some help in the Major and Minor League levels, so I think this is a big Draft for the Rockies and I’m curious to see what they do with their ammunition.

St. Louis Cardinals
The Cardinals have the most picks on Day 1 of the Draft with seven. Only the Astros and Pirates have six. There are 15 other teams that pick five times on Day 1. However, St. Louis does not possess a top 10 pick as its first pick is at No. 13.

6. Which prospect could be a surprise Top 10 pick?

The final storyline comes from Mathew Johnson on X. Every year since 2021, at least one player has gone inside the top 11 that was ranked 15 spots or lower in MLB Pipeline's Draft prospect rankings than where they were picked. Those players were:

2025: Tyler Bremner, selected No. 2 by the Angels (ranked No. 18)
2024: Christian Moore, selected No. 8 by the Angels (ranked No. 25)
2023: Nolan Schanuel, selected No. 11 by the Angels (ranked No. 26)
2022: Kumar Rocker, selected No. 3 by the Rangers (ranked No. 38); Cade Horton, selected No. 7 by the Cubs (ranked No. 24); Gabriel Hughes, selected No. 10 by the Rockies (ranked No. 26)
2021: Frank Mozzicato, selected No. 7 by the Royals (ranked No. 39)

Who could this year’s player be and which team could it be?

Mayo: The first place where I can see this happening is at No. 6 with the Royals and the other place I was thinking was at No. 9 to the Braves. I’m going to say there are two college lefties that I think could end up going somewhere inside the Top 10 and the more likely one is Mason Edwards from USC (ranked No. 36) and the other is Cole Carlon from Arizona State (ranked No. 26).

Callis: My team was the Braves also at No. 9 because I think there’s a very good chance the Braves might have seven or eight players they really want and they look up at nine and they’re all gone and they’ve always taken discounts anyway, a lot of times in the first round, and at that point they say, we don’t love any of the guys who fit here so we’re going to do a deeper discount and they’ve taken high school pitchers high before and you know I love me some Carson Bolemon (No. 24) and maybe you get him at a discount at No. 9. Maybe you feel like you might not get him at your second pick. Or maybe you take a Logan Reddemann (No. 31) if you think he’s healthy and you cut a deal with him.