With the MLB Draft officially over, there is no better time to look at some of the winners and losers of this past weekend. Whether it is a changing tide on evaluating a premium position or the dying prep demographic, there are always winners and losers from every draft.
MLB Draft Winners & Losers
College Catchers Going #1 Overall: Loser
How can you evaluate the difference between a college catcher’s workload and a professional catcher’s? This draft might have answered a question that has plagued the draft in recent years.
Dating back to 2014, 11 college catchers have been drafted in the top 15, including Vahn Lackey and Ryder Helfrick this year. Out of those 11, only Adley Rutschmann finds himself in the top 10 of career WAR at the position with 17.1, Patrick Bailey is behind him at 19 with 10.2 WAR, and Shea Langeliers is at 24th with 8.8 WAR. When filtering for only offensive value, only Rutchsmann and Langeliers appear with positive WAR in their career. Every one of those players drafted in the top 15 showed some form of hit tool at a premium position to be worth a top 15 selection, but the outcomes are less than 10% for players being selected at the top of the draft. Even with a small sample size, those outcomes feel off.
The cause? Catcher workload. When looking at offensive output for catchers in college baseball, the position is on a historic run. Lackey had an argument to be the best hitter in the draft, while cross-state rival Daniel Jackson of Georgia won the Golden Spikes Award as the best player in the country. Dating back to 2014, it has become normal to see catchers put up monster numbers in college. But even for the number 1 overall pick Rutschmann, who felt like a “safe” hitting prospect, it feels like something changes once they reach professional baseball. Something even more impactful than competition is increasing because it doesn’t seem to impact other position player groups as greatly. The only difference between college and pro is defensive workload and wear and tear on the body, and this draft told us that the MLB orgs might be recognizing that.
Whether you are a dynasty owner or just a draft fanatic, it is time to start fading college catchers. The data told me Lackey was the best position player prospect in the draft, but as draft day got closer, he wasn’t even being mentioned for 1/1. I believe that is because there needs to be a catcher regression built into the modeling that I completely missed. Evaluators have to be able to say Lackey might be a better hitter than Cholowsky right now, but when we look at historical outcomes, a SS prospect is a much better bet in professional baseball than a catcher. And when investing $10 million into that player, you need to be 100% confident in your evaluation. While Lackey only fell to 3, I think it is a lesson on understanding how to best evaluate players, and understanding how the workload of a catcher can MASSIVELY impact their offensive output when going from 4 games a week to 6, and years of wear and tear on the body.
Athletics: Winners
The A’s are heading in the right direction, and we might look back at the 2026 draft and see a core that helps them transition to Vegas smoothly. As a data darling myself, I am a sucker for an org taking 19 college players. While they may lack the ceiling of an 18-year-old, there is nothing more reliable than data against high-level competition, which you can only get in college baseball.
When looking at each player the A’s took, they each do something elite. While I am not the biggest Drew Burress fan, he had arguably the best raw power in the class, and combined that with above-average contact and chase rates. Mason Edwards won’t wow you with velocity at just 91.8 mph average FB velo, but he featured 3 offspeed pitches that generated above a 58% whiff rate, and combined to have a 42.1% whiff on the season. The walks are slightly concerning, but the swing and miss stuff is real. In the same vein, Gabe Gaeckle had a 109.6 stuff+ on the season behind a power fastball that has a 113.3 stuff+, but struggled with command at times. Had it not been for injuries, Jacob Dudan and his 109.2 stuff+ wouldn’t have been available at 83rd overall.
On the offensive side, Roman Martin grades out as above average in every data point, including most importantly a 78.2% contact rate, 16.6% chase rate, and a 91.7 mph average exit velocity. His inferred bat speed is a little low at 68.7 mph, but he shows a knack for pulling the ball in the air at 20.7%. Those skills combine to create an intriguing offensive prospect, with or without bat speed. Alex Hernandez and Alex Sosa both possess elite raw skillsets. Hernandez has some swing and miss concerns at 73.4% contact rate, but makes up for it with a 17.7% chase rate and 94 mph average exit velocity. There are players selected in the 1st round who have similar data skillsets. Sosa has an impressive feel for power with a 28.5% pull air rate, combined with a 78.5% contact rate and a 19.3% chase rate, but lacks the raw power with a 67 mph inferred bat speed. If either Hernandez makes more contact or Sosa adds more bat speed, either could be a mainstay in a big league lineup.
The biggest value in this whole group is RHP David Rossow from Campbell. Rossow was a major riser as a Senior this year, due in large part to an elite combination of whiff and strike throwing ability. He finished the season with 32.4% whiff rate and a 6.5% walk rate. He will need to improve his offspeed pitches, but the fastball averaged 94 with a 106.3 stuff+, and his Change-up generated an insane 53.5% whiff rate with a 109.2 stuff+. Pitchers who throw strikes with good swing and miss stuff will always be valuable, and getting one this good at 201 could end up being insane value.
Baltimore Orioles: Loser
This one is hard for me. I have based so much of my hitter evaluations on what I believed to be the Orioles process, but in recent years, that has seemingly shifted. For the first 5 years of Mike Elias’ tenure, they were the best offensive identifiers and developers of talent. Every year, they had a new prospect skyrocketing up prospect lists, and it seemed like they were running circles around the competition. The last few drafts have shifted that narrative, and they seem to be losing their identity on offense.
While I am frustrated over their offensive development, that alone isn’t worth making them losers. I have long defended their refusal to use high draft selections on pitchers because pitching development can just be finding “outlier pitches” later in the draft and maximizing that player’s skillset. Hitters are more reliable datasets early, then you reach for the moon later in the draft, and truly maximize draft value. After years of defending them, I am truly questioning what their plan is.
With a window closing fast, they decided to take another athletic premium prospect who needs some swing development in Eric Booth Jr. Three years ago, that marriage alone would have fired me up, but right now, I am not as confident. The rest of the draft is where it becomes a true head scratcher. Ty Head is a college prospect who averaged 86.4 mph exit velocity with a metal bat. Even with bat speed improvement, it is hard to see average power for him. Then they took 205 overall ranked Dominic Voegele at 82nd overall, who has an impressive combination of swing and miss stuff and strike-throwing ability, but felt like a reach that early.
Then the kicker of it all, not that draft rankings are everything, but out of their 20 selections, only 5 show up ranked on MLB.com’s last rankings list. I understand slot manipulation, but looking at their draft order side by side with rankings feels like they were playing a different sport than the rest of the league. At this point, it just feels like a refusal to change anything in their process. With a struggling MLB core, it feels destined to end poorly.
Data Driven Decision Making: Winners
Against all the wishes throughout the old school baseball community, analytics runs this sport. As the draft went, every player who was selected “early” based on their draft rankings did something elite. Whether it was the Braves taking Carter Beck, who combined a 92.8 mph exit velocity with an 85.6% contact rate, or the DBacks selecting Carson Kerce, who was the draft’s leader in Squared-up%, and combined a 94.1 mph avg exit velocity with an 82.3% contact rate and a 19.7% chase rate, every single player who went early checked boxes every model would flag as key performance indicators.
Now more than ever, “evaluating with your eyes” is more of a recipe for failure. College baseball data is as comprehensive as it has ever been, and it has been accessible for long enough to know exactly what skillsets translate to wood and better pitching and which ones do not. We are probably at the point now where organizations have the ability to look at Kerce’s 82.3% contact rate, and based on historical data project what that contact rate would equal at the major league level. Data-driven decision-making is the only way to properly identify talent in the MLB draft. Gone are the days of pounding the pavement to go find diamonds in the rough. Those diamonds appear in your computer, and that is why high school prospects in the draft might be dying.
This year, 80% of the selections were college prospects. With the public outcry over the MLB’s proposal to eliminate high schoolers from the draft, the majority of the public is missing the main thing MLB orgs have been telling us gradually for years: high school players in the draft are on life support.
Every 18-year-old taken is a massive risk. They haven’t even proven that they can feed themselves on a daily basis, but MLB orgs are supposed to invest millions into them? On top of the lack of maturity of most 18-year-olds, there is also no way to quantify performance against Mississippi 3A High School baseball. When a player gets 250 at-bats in a college season, MLB orgs can quantify how good the competition was for every single at-bat, and use that data to better inform their decision-making. Seeing a high school prospect, who is 1000x more athletically gifted than the rest of their competition, go 4 for 4 with 2 home runs and 6 stolen bases does nothing to predict the future success of that player.
Drafting is all a guess. But data-driven decision-making takes a randomized outcome to an educated guess. 80% of the draft process has shifted to the college game, and that number will only continue to go up. While people will continue to debate right and wrong with the future CBA negotiations, the results of the draft continue to tell the story we are missing: the prep prospect demographic is on its deathbed.
