July is MLB Pipeline's busiest month of the year. The Draft, the Futures Game and the Trade Deadline are coming, the Major and Minor league seasons are in full swing and we start working on overhauling the Top 100 Prospects list and all of the organization Top 30s.

Coming up on this Trade Deadline, it seems like the Orioles are at a crossroads. If you were running the team, would you view the trio of Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo and Coby Mayo as untouchable? I guess I'm asking, should the Orioles say, "Our top three are untouchable, but Heston Kjerstad and below, take your pick"?

-- Will M., Richmond, Va.

All three of those guys rank in the top 15 of our gently updated Top 100: Holliday at No. 1, Basallo at No. 12 and Mayo at No. 15. My general philosophy is that no player ever should be untouchable because there's always a return that will be enticing. I wouldn't want to deal Holliday, but if the Pirates offered Paul Skenes ...

Garrett Crochet, who's leading the Majors in strikeouts for a dreadful White Sox club and comes with two additional years of team control, looks like the biggest prize of this Trade Deadline. If I were in charge of the Orioles and had to have Crochet, Holliday would be the only player I'd refuse to part with.

Baltimore already has more quality young position players than it has spots in its lineup. There's a chance that Basallo and Mayo both are best suited for first base, so I'd be willing to surrender one in a Crochet deal. The Orioles also have an abundance of outfielders, so I could include either Colton Cowser or Kjerstad.

Basallo/Mayo and Cowser/Kjerstad would be a strong foundation for a Crochet trade that other clubs would have difficulty beating. And Crochet would enhance Baltimore's already formidable chances of winning the World Series.

As I laid out in my last first-round projection about a week ago, I don't believe the Guardians' primary goal with the No. 1 overall pick is to stockpile bonus-pool money. I think they want to figure out the price tags on the top candidates (Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana, Georgia outfielder/third baseman Charlie Condon, Florida first baseman/left-hander Jac Caglianone, West Virginia middle infielder JJ Wetherholt) and determine who presents the best value on the basis of talent and cost.

For the sake of this question, let's assume the Guardians go with the least expensive option and sign Wetherholt in the neighborhood of $7.5 million. That would save about $3 million compared to the assigned pick value and leave Cleveland with $10.8 million in its bonus pool, plus roughly another $900,000 if it spends to the maximum 5 percent overage (the most it could without losing a future first-round choice).

While the Guardians would be in an enviable financial position, pushing players to their subsequent picks at Nos. 36, 48, 84 and so on is easier said than done. Just because they would be willing to pay someone more than other teams would doesn't mean that those clubs will just get out of their way. Cleveland could promise, say, Tennessee second baseman Christian Moore $6 million if he falls to No. 36, but he still wouldn't last past the mid-teens.

The best prospect with perhaps a realistic chance of getting to the Guardians' subsequent selections is Louisiana prep right-hander William Schmidt. He has the best curveball in the Draft, a fastball that reaches 99 mph and good feel for pitching. But the industry is skittish of high school righties, and they rarely go as high as they're ranked (in Schmidt's case, No. 16 on MLB Pipeline's Draft Top 250).

There's a second tier of high school shortstops drawing late-first-round interest (Theo Gillen, Kellon Lindsey, Wyatt Sanford, Tyson Lewis, Carter Johnson, Luke Dickerson) to whom the Guardians could give a nudge. They could try the same with more prep arms such as Kash Mayfield, Braylon Doughty and David Shields. Perhaps they're high on South Carolina high school outfielder P.J. Morlando, whose stock has slipped a bit after he projected as a mid-first-rounder entering 2024.

It's harder to float college players down the Draft because juniors don't have much leverage to resist a team that wants to pop them. But sophomore-eligibles such as Stanford catcher Malcolm Moore and Mississippi State outfielder Dakota Jordan could be possibilities.

Merrill is making a run at the National League Rookie of the Year Award, though I suspect Skenes will win it it the end. At age 21, Merrill is batting .289/.322/.452 with 12 homers and 10 steals in 87 games while transitioning from shortstop to center field in the big leagues and making it look easy.

Merrill ranked No. 12 on our preseason Top 100. If he hadn't graduated off the list in mid-May, I'd put him at No. 4, behind Holliday, Nationals outfielder James Wood and Rays third baseman Junior Caminero. If you wanted to go all-in on ceiling, he might slot at No. 7 behind another Nationals outfielder, Dylan Crews, Twins outfielder Walker Jenkins and Padres catcher Ethan Salas.

Pratt was one of my favorite non-first-rounders in the 2024 Draft and an absolute steal for the Brewers after he slid to the sixth round amid signability concerns. He's batting .306/.405/.397 with 19 steals in 61 games in Single-A and just joined our Top 100 list at No. 95.

As a 6-foot-4 high school shortstop with all-around tools from the Deep South, Pratt drew comparisons as an amateur to Gunnar Henderson. Given that Henderson is in the midst of one of the best seasons ever by a shortstop, that's probably a bit rich.

Pratt could be a plus hitter with arm strength to match, at least a solid defender at shortstop and have at least average power and speed. That gives him All-Star ceiling and sounds like the good version of Bo Bichette.