We're just days away from the start of the 2021 MLB draft (first-round coverage starts Sunday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN) and there are still many unknowns starting with who the Pittsburgh Pirates will take with the No. 1 overall pick.
With so much uncertainty in this year's draft, we asked readers to send along what they want to know via Twitter and answered some of our favorites below. Because the questions are so specific, many of the answers are the type of things I normally only talk to scouts and agents about going into the draft.
Check out our draft guide for all 30 teams, latest mock draft and top 150 prospects before the draft unfolds in Denver. (Questions have been edited for clarity.)
Does Gunnar Hoglund fall to the Yanks at 20? (via @OpTic_Jxmpxr)
One juncture of the draft that's tough to line up is the group of college arms outside of the top two (Vanderbilt's Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker). You have Will Bednar (Mississippi State), Gunnar Hoglund (Ole Miss), Ty Madden (Texas), Jordan Wicks (Kansas State), Michael McGreevy (UC Santa Barbara), Ryan Cusick (Wake Forest), Sam Bachman (Miami Ohio), and Gavin Williams (East Carolina) in that next tier with a strong chance to go in the first 36 picks, with a couple of more including Spencer Schwellenbach (Nebraska) and Jaden Hill (LSU) lurking just behind them with a shot to sneak in.
I point this out to say that three players from this group will likely go in the 10-20 area of the draft, and I think it'll be Bednar, Hoglund and Wicks, but it really could be any of them. I'll call it a one-third chance that Hoglund gets to the Yankees pick (he's in play at almost all of the half-dozen picks ahead of them) but very slightly less than that to become their pick, since there's also some chance he has a deal waiting for him later in the draft.
Who is the best high school prospect you could see ending up on a college campus? (via @SECbaseball)
This is always a fun one, since I have to balance my evaluation with what a number of clubs think along with what I think the player's asking price will be, and a couple of smaller factors as well, including the wild card of a bad medical that no one is aware of right now.
North Carolina LHP Josh Hartle (Wake Forest) is the best prospect that I think has a real shot to go to school, but I'd guess he's still slightly over a 50% chance to turn pro. South Carolina prep CF Will Taylor has long been rumored to be considering going to Clemson to be a center fielder, quarterback and slot receiver, but I think he ultimately opts to turn pro for a big number.
Florida OF James Wood may have lost enough momentum that he would go mid-second round on talent now vs. mid-first round at the beginning of the year, so I could see him heading to Mississippi State to make that money back. The money usually just runs out for a couple of prep pitchers, and because Jackson Baumeister (Florida State) would be sophomore eligible in two seasons, I could see him leaning that way if he's still on the board after two rounds. Texas prep 3B Izaac Pacheco (Texas A&M), Mississippi prep OF/RHP Braden Montgomery (Stanford), Maryland prep RHP Peter Heubeck (Wake Forest), Alabama prep LHP Maddux Bruns (Mississippi State), and Florida prep LHP Drew Gray (Arkansas) are other top candidates for various reasons.
Florida prep LHP Jac Caglianone (Florida) and Washington prep RHP Max Debiec (Washington) both just had Tommy John surgery, would redshirt for their freshman years, and are even more likely than anyone previously named to get to campus, but pro teams have drafted and signed players in those situations in the past.
Delaware prep CF Lorenzo Carrier somewhat surprisingly announced this week on his Instagram that he's pulling his name out of the draft and is headed to Miami. He's immediately the top (and only) official member of the 2024 college class, but is a second-round talent and will be one of the top five incoming freshman at the end of this process as well.
If the Tigers go under slot at No. 3 with Jackson Jobe, what would the extra money go toward? Would the Tigers go big later in the draft? (via @Joe13231556)
There's nothing a fan base loves more in the draft than overslot bonuses. This is the Lake Wobegon of the draft: The ideal draft is one in which every bonus is somehow well overslot and every player is a great value pick who tumbled due to bonus demands.
At various times during their tenure of picking up high, the Tigers have been rumored to be entertaining the idea of spreading their money around, and every time they opt not to do it. Until they do it once, I'll expect them to play things straight and pay close to slot with their top 10 overall picks.
But if they do take Jobe and let's say trim seven figures off their slot amount, who could they target with a later pick? The aforementioned Taylor and Florida prep RHP Andrew Painter are the most common names mentioned as players teams may try to float to their second pick. Both are consensus players with summer track record, so it wouldn't be as easy as some in previous years were, but prep pitchers are by far the easiest demographic to float down the board.
There are some players with a good bit of action in the 15-25 area where the comp round or top of the second could offer more money and it may only entail getting a couple interested teams to blink, thus making them more realistic options. That group includes RHP Gunnar Hoglund (Ole Miss), OF Jud Fabian (Florida), LHP Frank Mozzicato (Connecticut prep), SS Max Muncy (SoCal prep), LHP Josh Hartle (North Carolina prep), and OF Lonnie White Jr. (Pennsylvania prep). Other players in that range of my rankings would either be hard to float via bonus demands (Hoglund would still be pretty tricky) or may get to the comp round naturally.
How much of the 2021 eligible class is playing on the Cape now, and do you think teams are moving guys up and down their boards still based on early play there? (via @FTLO_Baseball)
A handful of second- and third-round types like Kentucky OF John Rhodes and Georgia RHP Jonathan Cannon are playing in the Cape Cod League and some mid-round types including Cincinnati LHP Evan Shawver have made good impressions to help raise their stock.
This is one of a few ways the draft being moved back almost a month gives teams enough time to adjust their boards and probably make different decisions -- but better decisions. I don't blame the players or agents because they're both doing the right thing, but Rhodes and Cannon played a full SEC season; what are you going to see in a few weeks on the Cape to change where you'd draft them? There will surely be at least one prep player (I'd guess a few) who had a great MLB draft combine workout and will go from a $300,000 bonus-level prospect that goes to school to getting $750,000 or more (and turning pro) on the strength of a physical tool (exit velo, spin rate, etc.) more than a long track record of games.
There will be more private workouts, which also boost up a certain kind of player typically at the expense of the opposite sort of player. The Draft League has been useful for teams to get longer, more competitive looks on smaller college types, but I could also see some data-friendly types getting overdrafted. Teams have a lot of data on a small part of their season and some teams overvalue having knowns via data versus unknowns from primarily eyeball evaluations. I would guess there will be a few mini-trends like this popping up a couple of rounds into the draft as teams tend to copy each other's successful tendencies, and they're all getting data in the last month that's more similar than any other time of the spring.
What are your thoughts on ECU's Gavin Williams? He seems to have the most fluid prospect rankings from site to site. (via Twitter DM from Mike Anderson)
Williams has a lot of late helium. Some scouts told me they had him ranked ahead of Kumar Rocker on their personal lists even before their Super Regional matchup, and now I've heard a couple of teams (picking outside the top 10) have Williams over Rocker on their official boards. That's not super surprising because teams' draft boards are more varied than the average fan thinks, but there are two more variables to consider.
Since he was draft eligible last year, he's 22 years old, and at the head of a group of a number of top-two-rounds college arms with Virginia's Andrew Abbott, Dallas Baptist's Dominic Hamel, Florida's Tommy Mace, Houston's Robert Gasser, North Carolina's Austin Love and Oregon State's Kevin Abel. In the top 50 picks, most or all of those players will come at a discount due to their age/ability, but could be picked there if teams are looking to get a solid talent at a cut rate to set up an overslot bonus elsewhere.
In some cases, they were passed over last year for more than just a gap between ability and asking price. Williams is healthy (and has been healthy all spring), but teams have indicated some level of trepidation in projecting his health going forward given past injuries, relative to other pitchers who are also healthy. This varies team to team due to the team doctor and the team's specific stance on pitcher health risks.
This sort of thing is the source of most post-draft verbal deals that break down during the pre-signing physical, with a condition of some sort that gives elevated risk of future injury, but not an actual current injury. Often when a player unexpectedly slides relative to public rankings, then signs for slot (so he didn't slide due to bonus demands), it's due to a medical issue that wasn't well known to the media ahead of time, but becomes widely known after the draft. Walker Buehler's Tommy John surgery is one of these situations.
There are players every year who go right where projected, sign for slot, and almost every team clears their medical, then a team tells me after the draft that he was off their board. Sometimes these can be wildly incorrect in retrospect, particularly when only one or two teams have real concerns.
So you can see why some post-draft medical revelations end in a standoff between the player and team (ultimately ending in the player not signing), because there aren't 29 other teams with the same medical info for the agent to gauge how serious the condition is from teams not involved in the negotiation. It's an undesirable part of the draft process that MLB wanted to eliminate with a medical portion of the draft combine that started this year, but there still aren't enough incentives for it to make sense for most elite pitching prospects.
Williams is especially tricky because every day he's healthy makes him less of a risk. His injuries were a forearm strain and arm soreness his first two years in Greenville, while pitching mostly out of the bullpen, before transitioning to the rotation this spring. His velocity spiked from the low-90s as a high school senior to hitting 100 mph as a freshman at ECU in 2018.
Talent can often trump all in sports, but medical projections are often not that flexible since many ownership groups see them as important risk management for everything from amateur signings to MLB free-agent deals.
For Williams, I think it is more likely some teams will shade him as a relief risk rather than double-digit teams just taking him off their boards. There's a rightful stigma around projected relievers and there's a glut of college pitchers in the late-first-to-second-round range, to name two more complicating factors.
Adding all of this up, it wouldn't shock me if Williams went comfortably in the 20s (probably for a bit under slot due to his age/lack of negotiating leverage/only 17 starts in college), or if he went more middle of the second round, behind one of those other 22-year-old pitchers.
How do 2B Connor Norby (ECU), 2B Tyler Black (Wright State), and SS Trey Sweeney (Eastern Illinois) compare to Will Wilson? (via Twitter Spaces)
This gets at one of the bigger evaluation trends in this year's draft that I think will look silly in retrospect. In recent years, we've seen mid-major college position players go in the top half of the first round when they have a strong summer on the Cape or with Team USA. That kind of performance can put a smaller-school prospect on the same level as a player from a big conference with a longer track record. We had Nick Gonzales from New Mexico State last year, Bryson Stott of UNLV in 2019, Alec Bohm of Wichita State and Travis Swaggerty from South Alabama in 2018, and Keston Hiura of UC Irvine and Jake Burger of Missouri State in 2017.
With essentially no college summer leagues last year, this opportunity was missed, and it's reasonable to assume at least one player would've broken through and started this spring in the top half of the first round, since no mid-major position player was in that group in February. Colton Cowser has moved into that range throughout the spring and actually was a standout hitter two summers ago for Team USA as one of the handful of underclassmen on the squad, which helped give scouts more confidence than judging him only on this spring for Sam Houston State. Is it reasonable to think Cowser would be the only and best position player who would've emerged with a normal summer?
I say no and have mentioned for at least a month that Norby, Black and Sweeney are the three leading candidates, which I'm guessing is why this question has grouped those three hitters together. You could also toss South Alabama's Ethan Wilson in this group as well as hitters projected to go 25th to 50th overall who with a full summer may have started the spring 15th overall and had a solid spring settle them in the top half of the first round.
I think Black is the best of this group, and this brings us back to Will Wilson, who was at a major program (NC State) and also was on Team USA the summer before his draft year, eventually going 15th overall in 2019. Wilson was a perfect example to me of a player with five average tools (you could toss a 55 on the bat if you loved him) that played up in draft position since he could play any position on the field, was lauded for good makeup, and had history with national scouts going back to high school, three years in the ACC and with Team USA in the summer. I think Black is a better hitter (55, maybe 60 if you factor in his approach). He's left-handed, has a little more offensive upside and about the same defensive upside, but less versatility.
I have Black ranked in the middle of the first round, but I don't think he's really in play until the 20s or maybe even the 30s; I'm totally fine with being the high guy on him. I think there's a subtle swing change that should unlock more in-game power, I love his consistent performance for Wright State and his late-blooming characteristics as a young-for-the-class Canadian who has played some hockey.
Norby is also a 55-grade bat like Black and has roughly average raw power, with a little less overall impact, but faced stronger competition and is also young for the class. He should also go in the 20s or 30s. Sweeney is a 6-foot-4, left-handed-hitting shortstop with a shot to stick at the position in pro ball, but has the shortest track record and lowest level of competition; he also likely goes in the 20s or 30s.
Wilson is a dozen or so picks behind the other three since he's limited defensively to left field and draws a wide range of reviews on his offense, but has performed his whole college career, and has a solid approach and plus power from the left side. I am very confident at least one of these players will look like a huge bargain in a couple of years, due to this hopefully once-in-a-lifetime lack of summer for college hitters.