MLB Draft Rankings: 2018, 2019, and 2020

To answer your first question: no, there isn’t a slam-dunk, generational talent among the prospects ranked below. We’ll have to wait a little longer, it seems, for the next Bryce Harper to emerge. Nevertheless, the 2018 draft class is generally seen as deep and strong, particularly in prep pitching. There isn’t a player yet on whom we’d currently put a 55 FV (that is, the lowest grade received by the first 42 prospects on the recently published top-100 list), but almost every draft class ends up with a couple of those, and obviously these names will shift around during the season.

For reference, last year’s draft ended up with one low 60 FV and five players with 55 FV grades by the time the offseason arrived. So expecting three to five of the following prospects to emerge in the top 50 of next year’s Top 100 seems reasonable. As you might guess, the top 10-15 prospects are pretty tightly packed. With most of the early-season action occurring in Arizona, Florida, and SoCal, we’ll both be out to get lots of early looks this spring to quickly start sorting more out.

It’s too early to do a mock draft that would amount to anything much greater than a collection of guesses (here’s the draft order, for reference), but something to monitor is the presence of those clubs that lean risk-averse/analytic/etc. in the top half of the first round. In light of certain trends within the game — and, in particular, what appears to be a greater interest in near-ready, low-end-regular types — this could push college players (and, specifically, college bats) up into the high first round. Both Oregon State and Missouri State have TrackMan units at their home parks, so clubs will have multiple years of data on Madrigal and Eierman to aid their evaluations. Hitters from Virginia have benefited in much the same way from strong, large-sample TrackMan data in recent drafts.

Just as the recent minor-league top-100 list prominently featured the sons of Dante Bichette, Vladimir Guerrero, and Fernando Tatis, the lists that follow also feature quite a bit in the way of bloodlines. We have the sons of Jeff Conine, Troy Percival, David Weathers, and Bobby Witt, along with the younger brothers of Pirates Triple-A RHP Nick Kingham, Rays Double-A 1B/LF Joe McCarthy, Padres Double-A 1B Josh Naylor, and Blue Jays Triple-A CF Dalton Pompey. Kumar Rocker’s father, meanwhile, is Tracy Rocker, a former NFL defensive tackle and current defensive line coach for Tennessee.

We could have ranked more players or included more names for each list (especially projectable high-school arms), but we chose to limit ourselves in this preseason installment. Things will obviously expand as we get more information. We’ll have a slightly different presentation of the list than in years past, to more closely resemble the sort of information at what clubs are looking in draft rooms. We’ll both be at games starting this week and will keep you guys updates with tweets and InstaGraphs posts (along with longer posts when warranted) and updated rankings a couple more times leading up to the draft.

The underclass tables are sortable. The unranked players are grouped by high school/college and pitchers/hitters, roughly in order of preference within those four groups.

The underclass lists are tricky to research, as most scouts have seen the top players from their area but haven’t played close attention to them yet or seen enough of the whole class to compare players. College recruiters, travel coaches, and agents (ahem, advisors) almost always know more about this group. In light of the uncertainty at this time, we’ll rank fewer of them here. Suffice to say, however, that multiple players in the ranked portions of both lists are the subject of intense battles between the top agencies in baseball right now — and even with at least one high-school player for the 2020 draft.

Note, please, that ranks here don’t correspond to projected draft pick. Someone appearing 10th overall here won’t necessarily go 10th in 2019 or 2020. Scouts haven’t borne down on most of these players, nor have the players themselves typically faced elite summer competition yet. So there’s a lot of evaluation to be done. Also, high schoolers are obviously less mature at this point than the 2018 prep prospects, and the college players remain somewhat similar in terms of talent to who they were as high-school seniors, when the industry let them go to college.

We also have very little performance data to help separate the players, but by this time next year it will be much easier for elite prospects to stand out. If every domestic amateur player were eligible right now, the top four to 10 in the 2019 list would make the 2018 Top 30 and maybe just one player from the 2020 list would make it. So use these more as guides for the top players in a general order rather than a mock draft per se.

It’s also worth noting that the further into the future we’re projecting, the more the lists weigh tools over production. There simply isn’t meaningful performance data for 2020 draft prospects and only limited data on most members of the 2019 class. There are also a number of older college freshmen who are eligible for the 2019 draft but who also haven’t yet played for their university teams. Kyle Hurt, Greg Jones, and Brady McConnell all fit this criteria, as do a number of prospects not listed here, such Philip Clarke, Pat DeMarco, and Kyle Jacobsen.

Prep RF Austin Hendrick of the 2020 class is known for having recorded triple-digit exit velos at a very young age, and obviously some of the incoming college freshman here attended multiple big high-school showcases just 18 months ago. Such players, though, either had sufficient flaws or such big bonus demands that they weren’t scouted as much in the spring. This lack of information will be evident when someone who’s likely on our long list (but not listed below) jumps to a prominent spot on the list after a huge freshman season and/or a greater development of his tools. Trea Turner is a great example of this.