MLB Draft 2025: Kade Anderson and Ethan Holliday are the prime candidates for the top pick

Despite the massive change in the Washington Nationals organization, the same two players remain favorites to go first overall

There has been a lot of change in the Washington Nationals organization over the last few days. The ever present Mike Rizzo is out as GM and Davey Martinez is no longer the club’s manager. Mike DeBartolo and Miguel Cairo have taken their places. For DeBartolo, he will have to make a massive decision this weekend, with the Nationals picking first in the draft on Sunday.

We have been doing a lot of draft coverage on this page and will do so in the coming days. The changes this weekend have thrown a major curveball into the draft process. While scouting director Danny Haas oversees the draft room, at the end of the day, the GM is the one making the pick, especially when it is the first pick in the draft. Mike Rizzo came from a scouting background, so he surely would have had a big say in this decision.

However, Rizzo is now gone and that could have a major impact on the draft. While DeBartolo will have the final say, it would be fair to assume that he will not be as big a part of the process as Rizzo was. It is unclear how much DeBartolo was even focusing on the draft in his previous role.

In the days since Rizzo’s firing, there have been some mock drafts and predictions about what will happen with the number one pick. The same names keep coming up at the top of the draft, which is not that surprising. The scouting directors are still there and you can only alter your board so much in a week. However, Rizzo’s firing might impact which one of those top names they take. We wrote a bit about that a couple days ago.

Baseball America put out a mock draft today that had Ethan Holliday as their number 1 pick. Interestingly, in their last mock they had Kade Anderson at one. In the write up, they mention that Holliday was probably their one regardless of the Rizzo news and that the Nats have not yet decided on who the pick will be.

This is interesting because there has been a lot of Anderson buzz in recent weeks following his performance for LSU at the College World Series. Honestly, this is the first time I have seen Holliday at the top in a little while.

However, MLB Pipeline has Anderson as a slight favorite. Both Jim Callis and Jonathan Mayo have Anderson’s odds to go 1 at 50% and Holliday’s at 40%. The other 10% is allocated to names like Seth Hernandez, Aiva Arquette and Eli Willits.

All of this is to say that this is still an open race and might have become even more open now that Mike Rizzo is gone. This draft is not like the last two drafts where the Nats had the number one pick. In those drafts, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper were seen as generational talents and obvious picks. That kind of profile does not exist in this draft.

Personally, I thought that Rizzo leaving would make it more likely the Nats take a position player like Holliday or even an Eli Willits. However, there is still a lot of buzz around Kade Anderson.

Sunday will be a wild night with a lot of uncertainty. The Washington Nationals are in a weird spot with an interim GM coming in right before the draft. It is also a weird draft that is not seen as having as much slam dunk high end guys.

Buckle up because the next month is going to be a wild ride. Get ready for the first draft and trade deadline of the Mike DeBartolo era. Will it be Holliday or will it be Anderson, I can’t wait to find out.