Inbox: Bazzana, Caglianone or Kurtz -- Who's No. 1 in 2024 Draft?
With the rest of the Minor Leagues getting underway on Friday and the amateur season in full swing (not to mention our work on a new Draft Top 150), I’ll admit that my focus is a little divided. So I tried to give both sides of my baseball brain some attention, starting with a 2024 Draft question, then moving on to three questions that ended up involving last year’s Draft class, i.e. players set to begin their first full seasons of pro ball.
With how Jac Caglianone is playing, do you believe he could be the first pick in this year's Draft, or is Travis Bazzana or Nick Kurtz still the consensus first pick? -- @StevieDAles97
We answered this question on this week’s MLB Pipeline Podcast, so give it a listen, but I wanted to give frequent contributor Stevie D. some love in writing. As of now, I don’t think Kurtz (MLB Pipeline's No. 2 Draft prospect) is in the top of the Draft talk, though he is heating up a bit and his OPS is now over 1.000 (.247/.467/.534). There’s plenty of season left and I have a feeling his numbers will be close to where we expected them by the time we’re done with the college season. But too many other college hitters have performed better.
As of now, I’d say the leading guys for No. 1 pick are Travis Bazzana (No. 3) from Oregon State or Georgia outfielder Charlie Condon (No. 4). Caglianone (No. 5), the best two-way guy in the country, has taken a step forward both at the plate and on the mound to the point where a team could entertain letting him try to do both at the next level. I do think that teams are much more likely to want him to be a full-time hitter, as he’s answered a lot of questions about his hit tool this year, allowing him to get to his power without the chase or swing-and-miss.
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Which 2023 Draft prospect could move up the Top 100 list quick? -- @Blahbla92342524
Blah-bla is giving Stevie D. a run for his money in terms of question-sending prolific-ness. I’m going to go with a guy who is already on the Top 100, currently at No. 83 overall: Colt Emerson.
The Mariners took Emerson No. 22 overall in last year’s Draft and the Ohio prepster went out and hit .374/.496/.549 in 24 games during his pro debut, 16 of which came with full-season Modesto. He was a prospect I circled as being under-ranked almost immediately after our Top 100 came out and I recently predicted he was going to win the Minor League batting title. I think he really rakes across two levels of A ball and by the end of this season he’ll be considered one of the better hitting prospects in all of baseball.
The Mariners do have a nice track record of high school draftees coming out strong right out of the gate. Harry Ford, their first-rounder in 2021, was at No. 93 at the start of the 2022 season. He then posted an .874 OPS, while catching that season, and was No. 49 on the 2023 preseason list (He’s now at No. 37). They took Cole Young in 2022 and he wasn’t on the Top 100 to start the 2023 season, but he’s shot up to No. 36 this year. So Emerson has a path he can clearly follow.
So far, it seems that the Tigers are going to regret passing on Wyatt Langford. What is Max Clark's ceiling/floor and do you agree with me in that the Tigers should have gone with Langford over Clark? -- @bxbaseball2
The thing with the Draft is that you can’t draw conclusions this quickly. Put aside that Langford is in the big leagues already for just a second. Immediately after the Draft was over, I would have told you, without question, that he would reach the big leagues well ahead of Clark, a high school outfielder. The fact that Langford has done it so quickly is impressive, but that doesn’t change the equation in terms of having to wait to see how both look in, say, 10 years.
Last year’s Draft class had five players who could have gone No. 1 overall in just about any other year. Yes, Langford has the chance to be a very special and it wouldn’t shock me if he ends up being the best player in the class. Just like it won’t surprise me if Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews (hey, the Pirates and Nationals also didn’t take Langford), Walker Jenkins or Clark end up being the “best.”
Langford would have helped the Tigers sooner, but Clark has a very, very high ceiling and you could argue that as good as the other players are, he might have the highest ceiling of this group, perhaps with not as high a floor (and this isn’t even getting into the savings to sign Clark helping to also sign Kevin McGonigle). His tools are very loud, he works extremely hard and he wants to be the best. His ceiling is as an All-Star five-tool center fielder. The only thing that might be remotely in question compared to the other hitters here is his power potential, but word is that’s already starting to come. So sit back, enjoy watching him develop and let's revisit this in 2034.
Which Pirates hitting prospect (outside of Termarr Johnson) are you most confident can perform as a productive big league regular? -- @2000sSports
The Pirates have what I believe to be the best assortment of pitching prospects in baseball, with four Top 100 arms headlined, of course, by Paul Skenes. But beyond Johnson, their first-round pick from 2022 who is their No. 2 prospect, it’s a little tougher to project who has the best chance to be an everyday Major League player.
I hate to play it safe, but I do believe that Mitch Jebb is the mostly likely one to fit that description. Safe because he’s the next highest-ranked hitter on the Pirates’ Top 30, at No. 8. He was the club’s second-round pick last year and he had a solid pro debut last summer with Single-A Bradenton. I think he has the chance to play somewhere up the middle -- the Pirates plan to play him on both sides of second base and introduce center field this year -- and I think he might be best suited for second base. More importantly is I think he can really hit, with a wrist issue hampering him for much of his junior year at Michigan State, and he has the tool that can't be taught: speed.