With competition level rising, MLB Draft League gives talent added exposure

GRANVILLE, W.Va. -- One is a college weekend starter back for a second straight year. A second is a hard-throwing college pitcher, playing at what’s been his home field for the past three years. The third is a high school outfielder who traveled thousands of miles to be a part of the action.

All three are part of an influx of talent for the third season of Major League Baseball’s Draft League that has noticeably increased its level of competition.

The college starter is lefty Zach Thornton, who will start for the West Virginia Black Bears on Friday against the Trenton Thunder, a game that can be watched for free on MLB.com at 7 p.m. ET. He’s currently the highest-ranked prospect in the league, coming in at No. 163 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 200 Draft Prospects list. He’s no stranger to pitching on Fridays, having spent much of the season doing so for Grand Canyon University this year (including Saturday stints as well).

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Thornton is also accustomed to pitching in the Draft League. Last year, he pitched for Mahoning Valley, work that helped him make the transition from Barton Community College in Kansas to Division I GCU. He’s made one start so far and will look to use Friday’s outing as a springboard to the MLB Draft Combine in Phoenix.

“Last year, I was at the junior college level the season previously, and it was to go face the Division I hitters, and I would say I got to face those Division I hitters,” Thornton said at Monongalia County Ballpark, home of the Black Bears, about his decision to come to the Draft League in 2022. “This year, the level of competition increased. And I would say [I came] to face Minor League-level hitters now. That’s kind of the reason why I came to the Draft League two years in a row -- the level of competition has increased in a year.”

The team he’ll be facing Friday, Trenton, is proof of that. Isaiah Drake, a Georgia high school outfielder, and Delaware State infielder Trey Paige, are also Combine-bound and the Thunder’s slated starter opposite Thornton, Ryan Birchard, is a Niagara Junior College product who has already created some buzz with his velocity and spin rates.

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Thornton is not the only ranked prospect on the Black Bears roster. Carlson Reed (No. 196) is the hard-throwing college arm mentioned above who spent the previous three seasons playing near Granville as part of West Virginia University’s staff. He’s coming off a solid year of relief for the Mountaineers, where he struck out 14.2 per nine, picked up seven saves and finished with a 2.61 ERA. The right-hander joined the Draft League to give scouts a look at what he could do as a starting pitcher, something he only got to do 11 times in 58 career games at WVU, none of which came in 2023.

“I know the Draft League has a lot of players that are very competitive,” said Reed, who made one appearance for Trenton before coming back “home” to join the Black Bears before he, too, heads to the Combine. “I wanted to work on starting and I also wanted to learn how to start calling my own game.

“I want to show [scouts] that I do have the capability of starting and facing hitters multiple times in the same day. Coming in the back end of the bullpen, chances are, I only get to see people once, kind of throw everything I’ve got and they’ll never see me again.”

Scouts in the area obviously know about Reed’s ability to light up a radar gun and miss bats. But he knows that this is a chance to showcase his ability to stretch out, use his entire repertoire and be a more consistent strike-thrower.

“I have to do a better job of mixing all three because a lot of times, I get heavy on the fastball-slider and forget to show the changeup even though I like that pitch the best," Reed said. "Being able to find all three pitches for strikes is obviously really important. But being able to throw all pitches in each count, that’s probably what I’m doing the most work in.”

While this is a homecoming for Reed, few have come further than Devin Saltiban. He’s the aforementioned high school outfielder, from Hilo High School in Hawaii, who is one of the few prepsters in the league testing his mettle against a higher level of competition -- though the distance did make him pause for a moment.

“It was a very concerning thing,” said Saltiban, another Combine participant who likely will join MLB Pipeline’s rankings when it expands to 250 at the end of June. “This is super far away, but I was excited to be in a new environment and to see how I stacked up against this competition. And I love it.”

Anyone who is in the Draft League now, of course, is hoping to use the opportunity to get seen a bit more before July’s Draft comes along.

“My goal is to experience better competition and hope that I can sign and be with an organization,” said Saltiban, who will head to the University of Hawaii if the Draft doesn’t work out. “I also pick their minds how college was. I learn from them. I’m having fun and I’m learning a lot.”

Thornton has previously received more exposure than probably anyone in the Draft League, not only pitching on weekends for a well-regarded program like Grand Canyon and finishing with a nifty 5.06 K/BB ratio and 3.87 ERA, but also reaping the benefits of being teammates with potential Top 10 pick Jacob Wilson and early-round hopeful Homer Bush Jr. But he still felt he had some things to show to scouts while upping his innings total and keeping his arm fresh.

“The coaches out here, it’s next level. The changeup was the pitch for me I wanted to excel at out here and [manager] David Carpenter’s done exactly that for me,” Thornton said. “It was getting a feel for that changeup in the last two games I had this season. I really just wanted to work on the changeup. I had a good feel for it and that was part of the decision when I came out here to kind of flash that in front of the scouts. And I love competing and pitching. So it gave me an opportunity to do that.

“We all have the same goal, and that’s to hear our names selected in this upcoming Draft.”