It’s Nic Gardiner’s turn to detail his round-by-round thoughts as we continue our coverage of the Pitcher List 2018 Mock Draft. He is our Prospect Writer and you can find his writing here. Let’s get to it.
To read the analysis of other teams in the draft, head to our Mock Draft hub page here.
Round 1: Clayton Kershaw, SP, Los Angeles Dodgers
This is a bit of a no-brainer for me. I debated Mookie Betts here briefly, but I am a sucker for Z-scores and Clayton Kershaw is so much better than the average pitcher that the value at 12 is too much to pass on. Many experts on pitcherlist.com wait on pitching because they believe they will find the value later, but I am the opposite. Give me top tier pitching and I will find the bats. If you look at the youth surge in MLB it's almost entirely of hitters. With a number of juicy hitting prospects coming up in 2018, I will take my pitching and find my bats later.
