Our weekly spotlight of 2023 draft prospects began with a closer look at LSU outfielder Dylan Crews, who many people have as the top prospect in this draft class. We then moved on to Chase Dollander, a right-handed pitcher from the University of Tennessee.
Our third profile article looked at high school outfielder Walker Jenkins. That was followed by LSU pitcher Paul Skenes. Our fifth profile was high school outfielder Max Clark, whose season opened that same day as the article was posted. The last profile was Wyatt Langford, the power-hitting Florida outfielder. Here’s our draft preview article in case you missed it.
I had an original group of eight players to cover here, which you have seen in our Monday weekend recap articles. A hand injury to Jacob Wilson, along with a slow start from Jacob Gonzalez, has led to me skipping those two for profile articles (for now). I’ll still keep them in our weekly article though, but it feels like any chances they had of going #1 this year has slipped away.
I got that list of eight players from averaging out the early draft rankings. I obviously had the last word on who would be on the list, but I wanted to cover everyone who could possibly going #1, even if it meant they had to make a big move, while seeing people ahead of them fail to impress more than normal.
I originally thought about including TCU third baseman Brayden Taylor because Fangraphs ranked him #2 to start the season. However, he was down at #9 for BA and #11 for MLB Pipeline. So he has been one of those guys I check on occasionally.
Taylor is hitting .280/.416/.576 this year, with seven doubles and ten homers in 32 games (going into last night’s action). He hit better during his freshman and sophomore years, putting up nearly identical slugging numbers all three years, though he did a better job getting on base during those first two seasons. Those are nice average/OBP numbers this year, but you expect more from a top college hitter.
Hurston Waldrep, a right-handed pitcher from Florida, rated well for all three sources, ranking tenth for Pipeline and BA, and 11th for Fangraphs. If I decided to cover ten players instead of eight for the weekly Monday article, he would have been the tenth spot behind Taylor.
Waldrep has 75 strikeouts this year in 45 innings, along with a .225 BAA, so you would think that I’d have added him to the group by now. Unfortunately for him, he has a 4.60 ERA and a 1.38 WHIP, thanks in part to a high walk rate. His best start this year out of eight games saw him allow two runs in six innings.
D1Baseball does a terrific job of covering the college side of the draft. They just updated their top 150 college draft prospects list on Thursday, but the top of that list didn’t add a potential name for us. Their top five has five of the guys mentioned above.
Prep Baseball Report just did a mock draft, and the top six spots went to guys in our top eight spots.
The #7 spot on that list is prep pitcher Noble Meyer, a right-handed pitcher out of Oregon. He ranks 12th for BA, 19th for Fangraphs and 16th for Pipeline.
I’ll watch for any movement with him from other sources, but we are starting to get a little late in the game to make those type of moves to the top.
So in summary, my scheduled mid-season reevaluation says that there aren’t any outsiders making a run at the top spot. I might not be looking at the top eight players each Monday, but there’s a tremendous chance the #1 pick comes from that group.
