Updating the 2023 Draft Prospect Rankings
As the 2023 NCAA baseball season gets underway, so too does this year’s Prospect Week, which begins with a fresh coat of paint on my 2023 draft prospect rankings. I asked around the industry for thoughts about how many prospects it makes sense to ordinally rank at this time of year, and scouts’ and executives’ answers ranged from as low as 30 to as many as 75, with most answers falling close to 50. Typically, there are enough 40+ FV or better prospects by draft day to fill the first two rounds of the draft. For this update, I worked back through the players who already populated the 2023 rankings on The Board to revise their grades and reports, revisited my 2022 summer and fall in-person scouting notes, and integrated data from last season to identify and then help evaluate college prospects who weren’t already on there. I did that until I stopped finding players who comfortably hovered around the 40+ FV line or above.
Ideally, my draft list will eventually include all of the eligible players who are talented enough to make a pro team’s prospect list. Usually about 150 players end up migrating to the pro side of The Board right after the draft, a good many of whom haven’t even popped up yet. For a handful of them, the draft itself is my means of identification, with post hoc analysis generating their grade and ranking. Players who I already have notes and opinions about but who exist beneath the 40+ FV scope that I have hard ranked right now still make sense to have on The Board, just not yet with an ordinal ranking. The number of players in the 40 FV tier (future fifth starters and middle relievers, low-ceiling bench hitters, and volatile high school pitchers) and below is so substantial that it’s almost impossible to maintain a precise ranking into the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds of the draft (we’re talking about 200 rapidly changing youngsters at that point) since chunks of that would be rendered obsolete as early as this weekend. I have a few of these kinds of players bucketed by demographic below the ordinally ranked guys, as I have on past draft lists. Players will be added to those buckets, and the depth of the ordinal rankings will increase as the spring marches along and these players can be assessed with greater precision.
I’m pretty excited about this draft class, particularly the high school hitters, a group I think runs deep enough that there will still be interesting players left well into the third round once we reach draft day, though a good many of them might be tough to sign there. If that’s true, then the top of the 2026 class might be unusually deep since more talented high schoolers than usual will stand to buoy their stock by going to school and performing, though that’s obviously a long way off. After last year’s class was extremely light on college pitching, this year’s group is closer to normal, and there are about a half dozen guys who look like first round talents entering the season. Injuries almost always create attrition with at least a portion of this group, which we can only hope will be counterbalanced by the emergence of other pitchers.
The new, looser transfer portal rules and incentives created by NIL opportunities have caused a seismic shift in the way talent flows to and throughout collegiate athletics, and baseball is no exception. Five of my top 25 prospects here have passed through the portal. Even if it isn’t consumed with the same fervor as football or basketball are in our culture, college baseball players have newfound earning potential and agency. It’s hard to predict the long-term effects of these changes on scouting, but it’s safe to say there will be some. For now, the biggest impact is that LSU has built a super team of sorts, and are now in their second year of coaxing early-round prospects to Baton Rouge for their amateur swan song.
When data and technology began to creep into college baseball as avenues of talent assessment and player development, some blue blood programs ignored these tools and fell behind, an issue that’s rampant throughout programs out west like Arizona State and Fullerton. It’s plausible that changes to the rules around transferring and amateur compensation will have a similar impact, creating opportunities for the programs that quickly learn how best to navigate these new processes to make a push for Omaha more consistently, while some traditional powers take a step back.
Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
It’s Christmas, in February
First updated evaluation where Dollander isn’t consensus 1-2.. interchangeable with Crews. Interesting..
Dollander pitches tonight as college baseball kicks off.
I am very, very surprised by this. Pretty much everyone I’ve heard from on Dollander says something like that he’s the best pitching prospect to come out of the draft since Gerrit Cole. This is more like “best pitcher to come out of the draft since Kyle Wright and Hunter Greene”.
But man, I tell you, a guy who sits 94-97 and who strikes out 12 per nine innings and only walks one and a half for an SEC team and has multiple possible breaking balls…that sounds like a 55 or 60 to me.
I suspect it’s a mix of A) Eric joining the growing crowd that is categorically lowering pitchers on draft boards; and B) he still has a whole season to go. It’s hard for me to say he’s in the Cole tier when part of what put Cole in that tier was his junior year.
That sort of makes sense. To me, he’s clearly at Leiter level right now, and he was a 55. The grades for the pitches are roughly the same as Leiter and they have comparable levels of experience. But if Dollander does this again, I think he pulls very much ahead of Leiter. (And Mize)
I believe Cherrington will not take a pitcher in the first round. Dollander will fall to #2. Cherrington has had three drafts and took position players in the first round each year. At one time, the Pirates were supposed to have a dream rotation composed of Cole, Taillon, Glasnow, Morton and Liriano. That never happened. Fate means some pitchers suffer injuries. I’d be shocked if the Pirates take anyone but Crews. It might mean that Crews demanded an over-slot signing bonus or suffered an injury.
I would strongly suspect that if Crews and Dollander and whoever else is close they will see who takes the least money. But a lot of the people they would consider would have strong chances of getting picked at 2 or 3 so I don’t think we are looking at too big of a haircut.
Where things get iffy is if they start taking guys a half grade down from the top tier. So if Dollander and Crews represented the top tier and they took Gonzalez to save money and spread the bonuses around that would probably be a bad idea. But then again, that’s what I thought the Orioles did with Holliday over Jones and now I think maybe Holliday was the #1 guy after all.
How much do you think teams talk themselves into two guys being close enough talent wise so they draft the cheaper one when they’re really not that close? What’s the difference in price where you decide to take a lesser player?
The Pirates took Davis, Solometo, Lonnie White and Bubba Chandler with their first four picks in 2021. Davis was well under slot, the other three over slot, Bubba much more so. The total slots for those first four picks were $12.3407M, and the Bucs spent $13.8M. While Davis is a good prospect, he’s certainly got more questions than answers right now and other prospects (Mayer and Lawlar) look better. For similar money, they could have taken Mayer, an underslot guy or two, then Bubba. That combo looks better than what they have right now.
What I’m getting at is, I get the idea of getting overslot guys in rounds 1A and onward. I’m not sure I’d make sacrifices with a one overall to make that happen.
I bet that does happen, and I strongly suspect that is what happened with the Orioles and Kjerstad. But I’m not sure it happened with the Pirates. Henry Davis destroyed college baseball and there was a pretty good chance he could catch. Things obviously look worse now that he’s nicked up and it’s not clear he can catch after all. But the book isn’t written on him yet, and Mayer and Lawlar have some holes in their game that could very well get exposed.
For what it’s worth, if a redraft happened today I’m pretty sure that Painter and Wood would go 1-2. Mayer and Lawlar would probably come next, and then Gavin Williams, Colson Montgomery, Manzardo, and Jackson Merrill. Davis would probably after that group, but ahead of Frelick, Cowser, Harry Ford, and Bryce Miller. I’m not buying that Leiter or Jobe would be first round picks at all.
I bet it would happen again, I’m just questioning the strategy. How much evidence do we have that the underslot first guy worked out well so they could spread it around? We’re 11 years into this format, it would be an interesting exercise to see what teams employed it and how successful it was. MLB draft tracker only has bonuses going back to 2017. Obviously the Correa and Houston example sticks out as a win.
That’s the optimistic view on Hank’s defense. Attitudes on his defense were fairly split at the time; these concerns didn’t just appear when he turned pro. The rosy side looks at the rifle arm and thought the rest would eventually come along. But where does he go if the defense is bad? He’s athletic for a catcher, but that’s not the same as being athletic to be moved off it. If you’re drafting a C 1-1, even at a discount, you better be damn sure about his defense.
As for redrafts, I think taking a view like you did is a bit too wide. I’d prefer to look at the other candidates at the time to go 1-1, which is basically Leiter (nope), or the prep SS, either of which look better.
Nice to have some company!*
I would even go as far as saying gimme Thomas White (HS LHP) over any other pitcher in this draft*
*Tbf to Dollander, I’m not deep diving on a player with basically no shot at reaching 13
This is the highest I’ve seen anyone on Braden Taylor. By a lot. Also pretty high on Nimmala but I’ve seen a surprising number of people put him as a #10ish pick now so it’s not crazy.
The MLB guys are high on him to saying he’s crazy safe
Yeah that’s what they said about JJ Bleday too. If you’re not a shortstop or center fielder and you don’t have a carrying tool…IDK.
Of course the default is that pretty much all these guys bust, but guys without plus tools don’t seem “safe” to me.
I don’t think there is any such thing as “safe” with these guys. If we get right down to it.
9. Brayden Taylor, 3B, Texas Christian
Draft Class: 2023
What He Did: .583/.706/.917 (7-for-12), 1 HR, 1 2B, 3 R, 4 RBI, 5 BB, 3 K
Taylor entered the season regarded as one of the best pure hitters in the country and certainly backed up that reputation in Arlington during the College Baseball Showdown. Taylor routinely looked in complete control of his at-bats, hit the ball hard, got ahead in counts, walked more than he struck out and notched his first homer of the season. He’s the focal point of what appears to be a dynamite TCU offense. -CC
Another year, another son of a big leaguer to make me feel old
Oh please please please get Enrique Bradfield into Cubs territory (pick 13). I get power is necessary to be seen as a consensus elite, but also he’s the most dynamic leadoff prospect to enter the draft since Trea Turner. Similar to Kumar Rocker in that this guy has obviously elite tools going back to HS, keeps proving it on a big stage, but has to do a little extra. Personally don’t get what Max Clark does better, youth and a more prototypical look for the sport maybe? He’s closer to the best player in this draft than the 15th
Also think Jacob Wilson’s closer to 1 than 1 than 6
Lub Kyle Teel and Caden Grice as a couple more NCAA position players with stuff that stands out. I’m hoping Grice can round out his game as a position player, he has real potential on the mound too
Bradfield’s plate approach reminds me an awful lot of Tony Kemp from the 2011-2013 VU teams. Dude hardly ever swings at a bad pitch and if there is a pitch in the zone he is going to make contact with it. His defense, his instincts on the bases, his speed, the increase in power he showed last year, the plate approach and pitch recognition…. Gosh I love him. And he seems like an outstanding young man who plays with a ton of passion. <3 <3 <3 <3
A guy with Tony Kemp’s hit tool, 80 grade speed, and a 60 defender in CF is a probably a 3.5 win player most of the time. Maybe more. That would be a very good outcome for anyone.
I mean, 46/46 on steal attempts in 2022??? LMAO
One issue I read with Bradfield was a very low barrel rate (like 3%). Greg Zumach of NSBound mentioned it ( Taylor’s EVs too)…That probably covers his ranking tbh, not really any stars pulling that off (Turner and Cronenworth have put up ~3 WAR seasons at ~5-6% so he needs big gains)
I read Braden Taylor only averaged an 87 MPH EV last year…rough from a guy who may be a 3B prospect without standout defense?
I have heard something similar. And that is the one guy I think is just too high. I don’t understand it. He doesn’t have a single plus tool by Eric’s grades, and a guy who is limited to 3B with a 45 arm is kind of iffy. This gives me major JJ Bleday vibes but without Bleday’s ridiculous performance.
Does aluminum affect EV? If so, that’s a massive red flag
Skenes shoved in his debut using basically his fastball.. and was hitting 98-99 mph near 100 pitches..
Really intrigued by Nolan Stevens, though age relative to competition seems like a pretty serious concern as a 123.5 year old high schooler.
This is why I subscribe. <3
The whole ethnic/heritage pride thing usually makes me a bit uncomfortable, but as a baseball-loving kid with a Telugu name and immigrant parents, I have to admit that I’m rooting hard for Arjun Nimmala, and I’m stoked to see his stock rising. It’s surreal—and pretty freaking cool—to see a name like mine on a list like this, rather than on a list of Scripps Spelling Bee™️ finalists or IT department employees or whatever. (Side note: his last name is pronounced ‘NIM-mah-lah, not Ni-‘MAH-lah; i.e. accent/stress on the first syllable, note the doubled “m.” Like most American desi kids, he probably says it wrong himself; I mispronounced my own name until I was, like, 25.) Even in India, my people are stereotypically thought of as uber-nerds, and don’t exactly have a reputation for athletic prowess; I can think of one cricketer, Ravi Sharma—and, uh, that’s about it. There’s never been an MLB player of Indian descent in general, only a few in the minor leagues, and AFAIK, none from my ancestral neck of the (sandal)woods in any of the major North American sports leagues—not unless you include their analytics departments, anyway 😆.
This is a side note that has very little to do with your story, but I looked up Telugu and it is the 4th most widely spoken language in India. To give you an idea of how enormous India is, the fourth most widely spoken in India is good for the 15th most widely spoken language IN THE WORLD. It has the same number of speakers, roughly, as Korean and Turkish. It outpaces Italian and Swahili by a decent amount. India is such a large proportion of the world’s population that the fourth most spoken language there—and almost nowhere else—is still a medium-sized world linguistic community.
When you put it this way, you start to wonder why there aren’t more Indian baseball players. But cricket is a thing and migration to the US has been very limited given the enormous population of India.
Yeah, I feel like even a lot of Indian people are surprised that there are so many Telugu speakers. Its cultural footprint is small relative to its actual demographic footprint, for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s rather geographically concentrated, and that interactions with speakers of other Indian languages are usually in English. The South Asian diaspora in North America has historically been dominated by speakers of languages like Hindi/Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, and Gujurati, but that’s been changing quickly over the past couple of decades thanks to, well, the IT sector. As for the lack of baseball players of Indian descent, I think it’s partly a numbers thing, partly a function of baseball’s dwindling popularity among American kids generally, and maybe also a bit of an immigrant culture thing. It’s a stereotype, but many Indian immigrant parents really are very security-minded, and want their kids to study hard so they can go to good colleges and get good jobs, not spend all their time playing sports or whatever. Last year, the Giants drafted Yale LHP Rohan Handa in the 5th round, but he’s a “good Indian boy”: he went to an Ivy League school, majored in the sciences, plays the viola, etc. (Case in point: when I told my folks about Nimmala, a Florida high schooler, my mom was like, “I doubt his parents will let him skip college.” 🤦🏽♂️ I joked that if that actually happened, I’D fly down to Florida to remind his folks of a little thing called “first-round money,” and all the things you can do with it 😆.) The Indian-American diaspora now represents close to 1.5% of the U.S. population (~4.5 million), with large, affluent (hear that, baseball?), rapidly-growing contingents in California, Texas, Florida, and Georgia, with the broader South Asian American diaspora comprising just under 2% of the population. As the second and even third generation grow up, and guys like Nimmala and Kumar Rocker (half-Indian) make names for themselves as potential impact players, I imagine we’ll see plenty more South Asian American players over the next several years, some of whom might be good enough to get to The Show one day. (Might take a bit before we see another Telugu kid, though. Maybe if he promises to go to med school after baseball.)
This is another example of why Fangraphs readers are the best.
The Pirates had two Indian baseball players. I saw one pitch in AA. They got close. This young man would seem to have much more potential.
Yeah, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, who won a reality show competition called “Million Dollar Arm” (hence the name of the movie, which I’ve never seen). As I recall, they were javelin throwers from a couple of small villages who didn’t even really know what baseball was, and became, to date, the only two “Indian-Indian” players ever to be signed by an MLB team. (Everyone else has been Indian-American or Indo-Canadian, to my knowledge. Patel (a RHP) didn’t last very long and he returned to India, but Singh (a left-handed reliever) really fell in love with the game, saying he felt he was born to play baseball. I found a local (American) news interview with him on YouTube, and I wouldn’t say that he learned English so much as he learned American, complete with an almost Mid-Atlantic/Southern drawl. He also played in the Australian Baseball League for a bit, but he struggled with injuries (including a torn UCL—surprise!), and never even got to Double-A despite some early promise and decent numbers. A quick Google search informs me that apparently he’s now a WWE wrestler, which I suppose is a fittingly weird coda to a similarly weird, but charming story.
He’s an older HS hitter, but I like Aidan Miller anyway as a 3B prospect
Thanks for the update!
With the MLB draft beginning July 17, and opening day March 30, I hope you have time to apply your same expert analysis to update your team-by-team prospect rankings before fantasy leagues hold their drafts in March. Love the eight updated team rankings so far and look forward to the remaining 22.