With just under two months until the 2023 draft class, there is still time for changes to be made at the top, but things have remained rather consistent throughout this whole process.
Recent mock drafts and prospect rankings have shown that there is a clear top five in this draft class. Depending on who you ask, there are either 1-2 tiers of players among those top five, and even the cutoff for that split isn’t agreed upon.
As a group, that top five is well ahead of the pack, so the Pittsburgh Pirates are likely making their section among LSU outfielder Dylan Crews, LSU right-handed pitcher Paul Skenes, prep outfielders Walker Jenkins and Max Clark, and Florida outfielder Wyatt Langford.
I’ve read multiple people saying that any of those five are talented enough to go first overall in most years. If the Pirates stay in that group, they will be getting an immediately top prospect, regardless of who they settle on.
The only reason they would think about going outside that group is to maximize their draft bonus pool, which is the highest in baseball for this draft. Due to the split in talent after this group, I don’t think that route is a legit option. They could be looking for the best deal among these players, which would allow them to go over-slot elsewhere.
My personal feelings when I hear something like those reports is that you have to eliminate some of the risk. If the overall upsides are all similar, then why not go for the players closer to those upsides? There’s a definite risk in going for high school players over major college players. There’s also a risk in going for pitchers over position players.
If I’m buying in to the similar upside for the group, as well as factoring in the risk, then it seems like we should be down to Crews vs Langford. We have seen from Crews recently that he is human, while Langford has turned into early season Crews, making him the OPS leader among the two going into the weekend. That just proves that things can still change, especially in the next few weeks.
We are currently in the final weekend of the regular season for LSU and Florida. We will have full results from the weekend on Monday morning. While these games have importance for the three college draft picks, there are much bigger games coming up.
This upcoming Tuesday marks the first of six days in the SEC tournament. Both teams are SEC teams, so scouts are going to be all over those games, especially once Skenes takes the mound. We don’t have the schedule yet for those games, but I’ll likely share it here once I see it.
Regardless of what happens in the tournament coming up, both LSU and Florida are locks for the NCAA tournament. How far their teams go could help their draft cases. It could also hurt their draft cases if they don’t show up well on the big stage.
Between June 2nd and June 26th, the NCAA tournament will start and then end with a College World Series champ. The first week (June 2-5) is the Regionals, followed by the Super Regionals (June 9-12), finishing with the College World Series (June 16-26) in Omaha.
That is the potential for a lot more games from these players, even though their regular seasons end today. Stay tuned.
