Updating the 2026 Draft Rankings

Today is the first day of the 2026 college baseball season, and to celebrate, I’m cutting the ribbon on our 2026 draft rankings and scouting reports. They’re now live on The Board, so head over there for all of these players’ tool grades and blurbs. In this piece, I’ll touch on several individual players who I think are among this year’s best and most interesting prospects for readers to watch and monitor over the next five months as we approach July’s draft in Philadelphia (I can’t wait). I’ll also 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 51 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. Draft-eligible sophomores are denoted with an asterisks. At this stage in the draft process, players are more in neighborhoods or clusters. It’s too early to have many dozens of players ordinally ranked in a way that won’t change drastically between now and draft day, especially once we get beyond the players who fit within the first two rounds. More players will be added to The Board as the spring progresses.

This is also your reminder that we now have college leaderboards on the site, as well as college player pages, all of which I will be wearing out this spring as the class produces another season of data.

Overall Class Quality and Names to Know

This is a good draft class, one that is especially deep with college players. There isn’t a slam-dunk talent who’d go first in basically any draft, no Stephen Strasburg, Gerrit Cole, or Adley Rutschman, but UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky, whose scouting report reads like a bulkier Dansby Swanson’s, wouldn’t be out of place most years, and there is a healthy handful of players who could potentially join him in the 55-FV stratosphere between now and selection day.

This class is meaty with college players whose grades would ordinarily put them in the middle of the first round. Players who, on talent, might normally be drafted in the pick 10-15 range, give or take, will still be around at pick 25. The 2023 high school class was quite good, and now several of the unsigned players from that class make up this year’s first and second round group. Thanks to their embrace of modern training and pitch design, there are a number of college programs that have a track record of helping their arms improve pretty quickly. 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 the injuries that some of the players who we already know are good will inevitably suffer.

For what seems like the fourth year in a row, there is a lot of good high school pitching in this class. A good year tends to have eight to 10 high school pitchers who I would feel comfortable giving at least $1.5 to $2 million to in the draft; this year’s class might have as many as 12 or 15 of those guys. And these aren’t maxed-out, high-effort prepsters who just throw hard; these are enormous prospects whose listed heights range from 6-foot-4 to 6-foot-7 (again, there are a dozen of just this type of guy in this year’s class, not all of whom are yet on The Board) and sure look like they could work 160-plus innings in their physical prime. There is only so much bonus money to go around, however, and even in a normal year, there are good pitchers who don’t sign and end up going to school. Liam Peterson (who has top 10 stuff but a scary delivery — more on the Florida Gator below) and Joey Volchko (who transferred from Stanford to Georgia for this year) both fit that bill back when they were 2023 high schoolers, and the depth in this year’s high school group means that the 2029 college class is likely to have a few more top shelf pitchers than normal.

The high school hitting crop isn’t as star-studded, and there are very few of them who are poised to go in the early or middle part of the first round. Texas high schooler shortstop Grady Emerson (a good defender and contact hitter with modest physical projection) is a good bet to go inside the top five, and NorCal shortstop Tyler Spangler is talented enough to go high, though perhaps not high enough for him to sign. Sweet-swinging switch-hitting shortstop Rocco Maniscalco, who re-classified from the 2027 class, will only be 17.2 on draft day and has the look of a potential breakout guy who could join Emerson. Maniscalco’s showcase performance across the last two summers is only fair (72% contact rate and an OPS just shy of .700, per Synergy Sports), but his frame, lefty swing, and defensive actions are all very exciting scouting components.

Who Could Have A Huge Draft?

These teams have an abnormally high number of picks early in the draft. Trades have netted the Cardinals six (!) of the first 86 picks, and the Pirates (in part because of an unsigned pick from last year) have five of the first 80 picks and six of the first 108. Here are the clubs with lots of early picks, with that last Rockies pick representing the first pick in the fifth round:

• Atlanta Braves (9, 26, 48, 84, 112)
• Houston Astros (17, 28, 57, 93, 121, 134)
• St. Louis Cardinals (13, 32, 50, 68, 72, 86, 114)
• Tampa Bay Rays (2, 33, 49, 85, 113)
• Pittsburgh Pirates (5, 34, 44, 51, 80, 108)
• Colorado Rockies (10, 37, 38, 76, 104, 138)

The Pirates and Rays are primed to both add players who are Top 100 prospects from the jump and have a deep class. The Cardinals already has one of the deeper systems in baseball and might have 70 rankable players by the end of the year if they continue to shed big leaguers throughout the season.

Let’s Talk About A Few More Individuals Players

I’m going to be lower than the consensus on Gulliver Prep shortstop Jacob Lombard, the brother of Yankees prospect George Lombard Jr. Jacob is a physical, power-hitting infielder who puts on quite a show during BP, but he has struggled to hit in games. His contact rate, per Synergy Sports, has been 61% during tracked showcase events the last two years, which is not only below the big league average but is down in Gabriel Arias territory, at the very bottom of the big league scale. Player contact rates tend to either remain the same (the good outcome) or dip (the sometimes scary one) as hitters climb the minor league ladder. I left my first Jacob Lombard BP and infield experience thinking he was obviously one of the toolsier players in this class, but a sub-70% contact rate is an alarming starting point.

The aforementioned Peterson, who I had a $3 million grade on when he was in high school, has been sitting in the 94-98 mph range during tune-up outings the last couple of weeks. He might have the best fastball/breaking ball combo in the draft, but his delivery is violent.

One player scouts are excited to see this spring (and many already have) is Georgia high school righty Joseph Contreras, the son of former big leaguer Jose Contreras, whose velocity has been growing for the last couple of years. He was parked in the 94-97 mph range earlier this week and has his father’s forkball, which has devastating sink. Teams are focused on deciphering whether or not they think Contreras’ delivery is sustainable for a starter, and if not, how they might augment it.

And finally, a name to stash away that you’re unlikely to hear much during the next couple of months is Carson Wiggins, an Arkansas righty and the brother of Cubs prospect Jaxon Wiggins. Carson touched 102 last year, but then blew out and had elbow surgery in May. A typical return timeline puts him in play for pre-draft bullpens and hopefully an air-it-out session at the Draft Combine.