The 2024 MLB Draft has concluded, and it’s time to make definitive judgments about which teams did the best and worst before many of the players have even signed their deals. Just kidding — while I do have a few team-specific thoughts below, this piece is more about what unfolded across the draft as a whole. I texted folks in the industry (scouts, executives, and agents) to see what they thought of the overall results, and if they noticed a continuation of broad industry trends or observed behavior specific to this year’s proceedings. I’ve incorporated some of their thoughts below. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cleveland Guardians made history at the Fort Worth Stockyards on Sunday night, drafting Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana first overall. I planted my flag on Bazzana Island back in February, and noted that he could become the first Australian player drafted no. 1 overall, as well as the first player born and raised anywhere other than the U.S. or its dependencies. Keith Law pointed out that because no. 2 overall pick Chase Burns was born in Italy (though raised in Tennessee), 2024 marked the first time that both of the top two picks were born outside the U.S.
Had the Guardians chosen University of Georgia third baseman Charlie Condon, a different kind of history could’ve been made. Condon would’ve been the third no. 1 overall pick from Marietta, Georgia, after Dansby Swanson and Kris Benson, which would’ve given that city of some 60,000 people the distinction of being the only municipality in America to produce three no. 1 overall picks. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is a team-by-team analysis of last night’s draft activity. Remember that you can find more detailed scouting reports and tool grades for the players drafted yesterday over on The Board. The positions below are what the player was announced as, not necessarily what I have them projected as on The Board. For pitchers, I have a role designated below: starter (SP), or single-inning or multi-inning reliever (SIRP and MIRP). Read the rest of this entry »
Eric A Longenhagen: Good evening and hello from the Stockyards and the 2024 MLB Draft. It’s full in here and they’ve leaned into the Texas of it all in a way that I am enjoying.
6:50
Carlos Danger: Can’t wait for the day after mock
6:51
Eric A Longenhagen: the ole’ Jason Parks move.
6:51
Guest: Latest update for top 10 surprise?
6:51
Eric A Longenhagen: It’s live now. Not a lot of dope that I trust flowing today but what I got is in there.
6:51
Eric A Longenhagen: I’ll be Woj’ing picks tonight so feel free to use that intel to make a ton of money on draft props.
1. Cleveland Guardians Pick: Travis Bazzana, 2B, Oregon State
There has been a lot of buzz today about Wetherholt going here and, as I wrote in my first mock, he is the guy to cut an under-slot deal with if you’re going to do it with anyone because his other homes are later than the other candidates. I also have Wetherholt first on my board and would be fine just taking him here on talent. The rumors smell almost too strong today, as if they’re a last ditch effort to drive Bazzana’s price down before taking him. I’m staying disciplined and leaving Bazzana here, but it’s purely on intuition. Read the rest of this entry »
Konnor Griffin is the middle child of a Division III college softball coach. His parents’ names both start with K, as do both of his brothers’.
“If my mom’s trying to get a hold of me, she’ll probably say my other two brothers’ names first and then get to mine,” he said. “It’s kind of confusing, but everybody in my family has K as a first initial. It’s different, but it makes us unique.”
Griffin has a broad smile and an equally broad Mississippi accent, and from the neck down he’s pure muscle. He’s just preposterously big: 6-foot-4, 205 pounds, though he’d have no trouble convincing me he was being cheated another inch and 20 or 30 pounds. At his size, there’s the potential for plus-plus power. He can also run — he stole more than 80 bases in his final high school season — and hit the mid-90s throwing off a mound.
He’s 18 years old and just graduated high school. He says he can play shortstop at the next level, but can he cook and do laundry? Read the rest of this entry »
Clubs have begun their pre-draft meetings, with some teams already about a week into theirs, while the last team to start them (Milwaukee, as far as I know) begins today. The number of people in draft meetings varies significantly from team to team. Some have more than 20 people in the room, others five or so. When any one person in the draft room learns something new, whether it’s from a scout buddy with another team or during a conversation with an agent or media person, the other folks in the room tend to also learn that thing. It is during this window that the dope starts to flow in a way that makes a more specific, full-round mock draft more feasible.
Below are notes I’ve compiled across the last couple of days from conversations with scouts, front office people, and agents. There isn’t intel on every single team or first round player out there in the ether right now. In spots where I’m making an educated guess based on a player’s fit with past team or decision-maker behavior, I try to make it obvious that’s what I’m doing. I let you know when rumors are coming from industry sources, while being vague enough to not burn a source. I also have some thoughts peppered in that aren’t specific to teams’ picks, but instead what the arc of the first round of this draft might look like based on the nature of this year’s class. For more info on the players below, head over to The Board for scouting reports, tool grades, and rankings. Read the rest of this entry »
Last season, the college baseball game of the year was the national semifinal matchup between LSU and Wake Forest. It pitted the first two pitchers chosen in that year’s draft — Paul Skenes and Rhett Lowder — against one another, with a berth in the College World Series final on the line. The two star right-handers obliged, combining to strike out 15 while allowing just eight baserunners over 15 scoreless innings. The game remained tied, 0-0, until the very final at-bat, when Tommy White hit a two-run walk-off home run to win it for LSU.
The closest thing we had to that kind of pitching matchup in 2024 came in the losers’ bracket of the Greenville Regional. The top four college starters in this year’s draft — Wake Forest’s Chase Burns, Arkansas’ Hagen Smith, East Carolina’s Trey Yesavage, and Iowa’s Brody Brecht — all played in different conferences. The only time any of those four faced each other was in a win-or-go-home matchup between ECU and Wake on the second day of the NCAA Tournament, and the contours of this game were somewhat different as well. Read the rest of this entry »
The amateur draft is this weekend and I’ve done a top-to-bottom refresh and expansion of my draft prospect rankings, which you can see on The Board. Please go read those blurbs and explore the tool grade section of The Board to get a better idea of my thoughts on the players. The goal of the draft rankings is to evaluate and rank as many of the players who are talented enough to hop onto the main section of the pro prospect lists as possible, so they can be ported over to the pro side of The Board as soon as they’re drafted. Players for whom that is true tend to start to peter out in rounds four and five of the draft as bonus slot amounts dip below $500,000. Over-slot guys are obvious exceptions. By the seventh round, we’re mostly talking about org guys who are drafted to make a team’s bonus pool puzzle fit together, or players who need significant development to truly be considered prospects. That usually means ranking about 125 players, but this year’s class is a little bit down and right now I have 100 guys on there.
Scouts and executives tend to think this is a weaker draft class. The high school hitters in this year’s crop are especially thin, while the depth in the class is in high school pitching, usually a demographic teams don’t love drafting with high picks and bonuses. There are still going to be plenty of good players in this draft, but it’s not the best year to be either a team picking at the very top (because there isn’t a generational talent or two) or a team with a lot of picks (there are fewer exciting places to put all that extra bonus money).
For example, last year’s deeper draft class had just over 60 players who I had as 40 FV or better prospects. This year, that number is just over 40. That’s almost a whole round’s worth of impact players present in one draft but not the other. Read the rest of this entry »
When I was in Phoenix for the Draft Combine, I kept running into Seaver King’s friends.
“That’s my homie,” said JJ Wetherholt, the West Virginia infielder and presumptive top-five pick. He and King played together on Team USA last summer, and Wetherholt said King was the person he’d been looking forward to seeing most at the Combine. “He’s a great kid. He’ll be funny. Good dude.”
