Updating the 2025 Draft Rankings

Today is the first day of the 2025 college baseball season, and to celebrate, we’re cutting the ribbon on our 2025 Draft prospect rankings and scouting reports. They’re now live on The Board, so head over there for all these players’ tool grades and reports. In this piece, I’ll touch on several individual players who I think are among this year’s best and most interesting prospects, and discuss the class as a whole from a talent standpoint, as well as which teams are in position to have a huge draft.

First, some quick housekeeping on the rankings. I’ve got just shy of 100 players on The Board right now. I’ve hard-ranked the players with a 40+ FV and above, while the 40 FV players are clustered by demographic below them. At this stage in the draft process, players are more in “neighborhoods” or clusters. It’s too early to have hundreds of players ordinally ranked, because the deeper you go, the more those rankings will change between now and draft day. On this update, I’ve tried to include players who have the best chance to take a leap during this season and climb The Board. This is definitely a ceiling-heavy list at this stage, in part because so many of the higher-floored players tend to reveal themselves during the college season. New prospect contributor David Gerth, whose debut piece will run later today, helped produce the reports on the players in the Big Ten conference. Obviously, there will be much more to come in the next few months as guys separate themselves from their peers, and new standouts emerge.

I’ve mentioned this a couple of times in chats and on podcasts, but it bears repeating: I think this is a fun, deeper-than-average class, especially on the high school side, and as far as the hitters (both high school and college) are concerned. If there’s a gap in the class right now, it’s the overall quality of the pitching, especially in the mid-first to mid-second round area. The good news is that, especially with modern training and pitch design, pitchers tend to improve pretty quickly at many college programs. If there’s a player demo we can most reasonably hope will improve as a whole this spring, it’s the arms. Hopefully it’s enough to counterbalance injuries to the guys who are already good. The pitcher who I think is in pole position to do this is ASU lefty Ben Jacobs, who carved Team USA during scrimmage activity in the Fall. He was 92-94 with plus carry, and two plus secondary pitches in the video you see here. I have him ranked in the middle of the first round.

There are many huge-framed power hitters in this year’s draft class, fellas with hit tool risk who could force themselves into the first round mix if they can foster confidence in their contact ability this spring. These hitters are ranked from no. 38 on down; peeking at their tool grades will tip off who they are.

This might be a great year for teams to explore spreading their bonus pools out the way the Brewers, Diamondbacks and Braves did last year, and there are enough good high school players to support several teams taking this approach if they want to. Teams whose pick positions in the top 100 (indicated in parentheses) give them a great opportunity to do something like this include:

• Baltimore Orioles (19, 30, 31, 59, 71, 94)
• Milwaukee Brewers (20, 32, 33, 60, 68, 95)
• Kansas City Royals (23, 28, 62, 73, 98)
• Tampa Bay Rays (14, 37, 42, 53, 67, 87)
• Cleveland Guardians (27, 66, 70, 72, 102)

Let’s talk about some individual players. I currently have six players with a grade of 50 FV or better; that’s six guys who’d be on the Top 100 list were they in pro ball. Texas A&M outfielder Jace LaViolette leads the group and is currently in a tier of his own at the top of the list. LaViolette enters his draft spring as a career .297/.433/.683 hitter with 50 homers in two seasons at A&M. He has enormous left-handed power and controls the zone, but he does swing and miss at a pretty good clip (24% strikeout rate in 2024), especially at fastballs up and away from him. LaViolette’s swing and approach are geared for power; he had a 23 degree average launch in 2024. He’s strong enough to leave the yard from pole to pole, but most of his damage is done to the pull side. LaViolette also has a sneaky shot to stay in center field. He has spent time in center and right, and he looks comfortable going back on balls over his head, but his size might be a prohibitive factor as he matures and fills out.

My second-ranked prospect is Arkansas shortstop Wehiwa Aloy, who transferred from Sacramento State to Arkansas after his freshman year with the Hornets. His offensive production took a bit of a hit (he slid from a 1.089 OPS to a .841) as Aloy transitioned from Sac State to Fayetteville, but then he crushed on Cape Cod, where he hit eight homers in 21 games with wood bats. Aside from a somewhat concerning amount of chase at Arkansas (which I’m chalking up to the enormous leap in competition quality), Aloy does everything else well, and he has some of the loudest power of an up-the-middle player in the class. He’s a plus athlete with a plus build and arm, above-average range, and average hands, basically a lock to stay at shortstop. If he can improve his plate discipline, I think he has a sneaky shot to go first overall, as viable shortstops who have this kind of power and also perform in the SEC are rare.

Following Aloy I have the class’ first two pitchers, lefty Jamie Arnold from Florida State and righty Tyler Bremner from UC Santa Barbara. Arnold is a low-slot lefty with an uphill, mid-90s fastball and a huge mid-80s slider, but he doesn’t have a well-developed third pitch right now. Bremner has a three-pitch repertoire, but his mid-90s fastball plays down a tad due to its downhill plane. You could alternate which of these two you prefer, but they’re the two players who I’d count on reaching the bigs the most quickly.

I have Kayson Cunningham, who I think is the best pure hitter in the draft, ranked fifth. Cunningham is a squat-bodied, 5-foot-8 Texas high school infielder who rakes and demonstrates explosive lower-body athleticism during his swing. There’s a chance his physique goes the way of Willie Calhoun (he’s similar to U of A freshman season Willie), but if he can stay quick enough to play second base well, he should have a good everyday hitter’s hit/power combination.

Finally, Corona High School (CA) shortstop Billy Carlson is a great shortstop defender with a plus-plus arm. He performed well from a contact standpoint against his elite peers, and there’s room on his frame for strength and power. A couple of Carlson’s teammates (most significantly right-handed pitcher Seth Hernandez) are also good prospects.

I’m a little apprehensive about, and therefore lower on, Stillwater High School (OK) shortstop Ethan Holliday. To run through some positives, Holliday is incredibly physical and strong, and he’s a big time rotator, absolutely electric for a guy his size; his swing has huge finish in the dirt behind him and natural lift toward the oppo gap. He has plus raw power right now and still has room for strength on his gigantic frame. He’s going to have special power.

But there are some alarming, pause-giving indicators here. Per Synergy, Holliday hit .246/.446/.346 combined in 2023 and 2024 against his most talented peers. I can guess what you’re thinking, and I agree — that’s surprisingly low. Holliday is very often late getting to pitches on the outer third of the zone. His swing is super long and makes it tough for him to pull fastballs at all, which is a red flag at this stage (see: Jones, Druw). The amount of whiffing, combined with the lack of actual in-game power production, means I’m not comfortable windmill slamming Holliday as a top two player in this class.

Because most teams care so much about how hitters perform against the cream-of-the-crop pitchers from their grad class, it’s going to be tough for Holliday to make these concerns go away when he’s facing guys who sit 83-85 mph during spring varsity play. Holliday’s special power and upside justify a high pick, but he isn’t a no-doubt star. The team that drafts him should have some idea of how they might help him be in better position to cover the up-and-away quadrant of the zone and, in general, pull fastballs with power.