Baseball America posted their first mock draft since the college baseball season started. Their last mock draft was posted shortly after the Pittsburgh Pirates won the first overall pick in the new draft lottery system. They are going with the same top pick as before, but the top of the draft class has some changes. Here’s our draft preview article in case you missed it.
This mock draft was done by Carlos Collazo from Baseball America, who was making the odd numbered picks, followed by a scout making the even numbered picks. I’m not going to give away too much here because it’s a subscription article, but I will say that the scout adds his thoughts about all of the picks, so there’s a lot to take in here.
Collazo took LSU outfielder Dylan Crews for the Pirates. He has been going to the Pirates in all of the early mock drafts, even before the season started. If you’ve followed our draft coverage, you know that he’s doing as well as you could hope through the first few weeks of the season. You want a first overall pick to show you why he’s considered the first overall pick all season. That has happened here.
Both Collazo and the scout say that Florida outfielder Wyatt Langford has a legit shot at the top spot and that’s something that will be decided later in the year. Crews isn’t running away from the pack, he’s just continuing to lead. Tennessee right-handed pitcher Chase Dollander was our last draft profile. He went fourth in this mock. We will have a new profile here on Saturday.
Six of the first eight picks in this mock draft are the six players we have covered in our weekly recap. A seventh is Walker Jenkins, a high school outfielder, who just started playing games this week, so he will be added to the coverage. The eighth is Max Clark, a high school outfielder from Indiana, who still has two weeks before his season starts. Once he starts playing, we will add him to the players we cover weekly.
For now, those eight players will make up our draft coverage. Right now we are really talking about four guys with a shot at first overall, then four names that need a lot to go right to get there. If you’ve followed the draft over the years, you know a lot can happen between now and the draft, which is nearly four full months away still.
