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          MLB draft 2025: Scouting Ethan Holliday, Seth Hernandez, more

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          Which MLB prospects are on the rise ahead of the draft? (1:14)

          Kiley McDaniel lists some MLB prospects who are on the rise ahead of the draft, including Tennessee's Liam Doyle. (1:14)

          • Kiley McDanielApr 24, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
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            • ESPN MLB Insider
            • Kiley McDaniel covers MLB prospects, the MLB Draft and more, including trades and free agency.
            • Has worked for three MLB teams.
              • Co-author of Author of 'Future Value'
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          There is no surefire first-overall-pick type to headline this year's MLB draft class (as covered in my rankings update), but that doesn't mean there won't be future superstars coming off the board this July -- it just shifts the focus to trying to find standouts in riskier player demographics.

          If the college ranks aren't handing teams a Paul Skenes or Wyatt Langford like in 2023, the natural pivot is to find the highest upside prep talents who could become that kind of player as they develop.

          All of the scouts I've been speaking with this spring are focused on the top of the high school class, specifically trying to pick out which of the clear top four prep prospects will be the defining star of this draft.

          That group includes three shortstops and one right-handed pitcher who all seem like locks for the top 10 picks, and I scouted all four of them in person in the past few weeks. Oklahoma high school infielders Ethan Holliday and Eli Willits faced each other in a three-game round-robin event last week while California high school teammates Seth Hernandez and Billy Carlson played in a four-day event featuring some of the nation's top talent in North Carolina earlier this month.

          Here's what stood out most about the potential superstars of tomorrow from my scouting opportunities.

          Ethan Holliday, SS, Stillwater (Oklahoma) HS

          I'll start with the most famous name in the group. Holliday is the son of former major leaguer Matt and little brother of current Baltimore Orioles infielder Jackson. (I first scouted Ethan as a freshman when he batted behind Jackson in his draft year of 2022.)

          There was ongoing conversation among scouts that Ethan Holliday hadn't performed that well in terms of surface statistics and in-zone miss rate over the summer, when facing the best prep pitching in the country. I noticed a swing issue (as did a number of teams) in the way he loaded his hands that held him back from pulling a fastball. In fact, in the 80 plate appearances I have data for from last summer, he didn't pull one fastball.

          This spring the buzz was that he has made mechanical adjustments -- now settling on a toe tap and tweak to his load -- that were what he needed to unlock his potential, but he hasn't faced enough velocity during the Oklahoma high school season to confirm that it will hold up against pro pitching. In two games I attended last week, he had two walks, two strikeouts, a hit by pitch, a single and an infield single, so it wasn't exactly what scouts wanted to see, but that's the gamble inherent in scouting a high school game.

          Given his swing plane and power-over-contact approach, I think Holliday will run slightly worse than average contact rates (call it a 45-grade bat, give or take) but strong walk rates and above-average to plus power. (Scouts generally put a 65 grade on his raw power projection.)

          He's not a great runner, as you can see in the video, but speed was never going to be a big part of his game. With his improved defensive skills -- I think he's an above-average defensive third baseman long-term, with a plus arm -- he's still a clear top-10 pick in this class, but there's plenty of room for discussion about where to slot him exactly.

          Eli Willits, SS, Fort Cobb Broxton (Oklahoma) HS

          Willits has some similarities with Holliday: His father, Reggie, also played in the big leagues and now coaches at Oklahoma while his brother, Jaxon, is a 2026 MLB draft prospect for the Sooners. But on the field, he does it quite differently than Holliday as a hit-over-power type with plus speed and a definite long-term fit at shortstop. Eli often works out with the Sooners and has been hitting well against some top-level amateur pitching there, something almost no other prep prospect has the opportunity to do.

          Willits is a switch-hitter who is much better left-handed, but his right-handed swing is good enough to continue with for now. His frame and swing remind me of Jackson Merrill a bit, though Willits is 6-foot or 6-foot-1 and Merrill is 6-foot-3, so his power potential isn't at the same level. Willits' approach is focused on hitting liners and fly balls to the middle of the field, but he shows enough aptitude at pulling/lifting the ball to tap into his fringe-to-average raw power in games. There is a world where he grows into 20-homer power, but I'd expect more like 15 with lots of doubles and triples.

          Willits doesn't always show off his arm, but there is plus arm strength in there, and he's sure-handed with solid range at shortstop to where he may end up being above average defensively.

          Basically, Willits is above average at almost everything, with power potential maybe a notch below that. The other thing to consider is that Willits reclassified from the 2026 class, so he doesn't turn 18 until December.

          That may not sound like that big of a deal, but it is actually the most statistically significant indicator for teams based on the history of young-for-the-class (i.e., younger than 18 years old and a few months on draft day) prep position players outperforming their draft position. This sort of player -- not that big, no plus-plus tools -- has always been a bit underrated by the industry so Willits' age helps teams have an empirical reason to round up on what they're seeing. Combine that with his performance in summer events, well-rounded skill set and access to top-end college competition, and it's easy to imagine a lot of rosy outcomes for Willits that you may not immediately envision when he walks off the bus as a high school player.

          Billy Carlson, SS, Corona (California) HS

          While we're talking about age on draft day, the biggest knock on Carlson is that he'll turn 19 years old a few weeks after the draft, making him almost a year-and-a-half older than Willits. That said, the reason Carlson is being considered in this tier is because he's offering a well-rounded, athletic tool set that reminds me of a slightly scaled down version of Bobby Witt Jr.

          Carlson is an above-average to plus runner who projects as a plus defender at shortstop and has a true 80-grade arm. (He also sits in the mid-90s on the mound.) He has above-average to plus power potential along with bat speed and bouncy, loose actions in all phases of the game that look like those of a future standout big leaguer. He also performed well over the summer -- easily clearing the bar of posting stats to match the tools, even when adjusted down a bit to account for his age.

          In addition to his age, the other concern scouts have with Carlson is that his swing is, in simple terms, too big. He looks like he's going for a personal exit velo record on most swings and while he can afford to do that now given the competition he is facing, he will need to tone it down a bit in pro ball. This seems eminently fixable and in short, this is what potential All-Stars tend to look like at this stage.

          Seth Hernandez, RHP, Corona (California) HS

          There's one pitcher in this group of high-upside prep prospects and, given the well-founded bias against prep right-handers at the top of the draft, Hernandez needs to be truly special, even in a lesser draft, to even be considered here. Good news: He is.

          Hernandez posts triple digits pretty often but mostly sits in the mid-to-upper-90s, hitting 99 mph in the seventh inning of his start in North Carolina. His changeup is a plus-plus, devastating pitch with screwball action.

          Last summer, his slider and curveball were both below-average pitches, but both breaking balls have shown better this spring. His curveball in particular has taken a big step forward. It is now an above-average pitch when executed but he isn't locating it in the zone that often, so some progress is still needed. His slider is a fourth pitch that's maybe still one notch below average.

          Considering everything Hernandez has going for him, you may be wondering why he doesn't just go to the top of this list -- and it's mostly just about how the industry views his type of prospect. Prep righties are the running backs of the baseball draft. There are some Saquon Barkleys who make you want to take the best one at the top of the draft -- Zack Wheeler, Madison Bumgarner, Max Fried, Clayton Kershaw and Hunter Greene all have turned out pretty good, but those are also basically all of the successes in the last 20ish years. Meanwhile, there are still lots of good high school pitchers available later in the draft while college pitchers and position players also have a much higher hit rate early on, so some teams just avoid this demographic up top entirely.

          On top of that more general concern, Hernandez has very average fastball shape -- meaning if his velocity slips a bit, which happens slowly to almost every pitcher starting around their mid-20s, his fastball will play a notch or even two below his velocity. That would mean a 93-96 mph heater would become a below-average big league pitch as he's currently throwing it. There is still room for adjustments along with his already-present command and strong offspeed pitches to make up for it, but you can now see why a team could opt for just taking the position player or college player at the top of the draft if it's a close decision.

          Hernandez does have a variable working in his favor that could serve as the separator that allows a pitcher to dance between the aforementioned raindrops. He is also a second-round prospect for many teams as a third baseman (he almost certainly will not swing a bat in pro ball) who is obviously athletic and accomplished on the mound. There are a lot of standout big league starters who were top-five-rounds prospects as position players or hit a lot in college (Paul Skenes, Max Fried, Shohei Ohtani, Jacob deGrom, Hunter Greene, Zack Greinke, MacKenzie Gore, Jack Flaherty and Jackson Jobe come to mind) and some scouts think Hernandez has enough intangibles on his side to project him to continue to improve and become the next in the line of highly drafted prep righties who have become big league aces.

          So, there's all the relevant information you need to make your decision. Who is the top high school player on your board? Just don't mess it up and set your rebuild back years by missing the chance to land a perennial All-Star. It could be the last first-round pick you get to make.