The big news of today is the MLB Pipeline crew updating its Draft Ranks for the 2025 draft for the first time in months, with significant movement both within the top 10 and throughout.
The updated board is here. You can see some of the movement, but notably:
- Ethan Holliday remains #1.
- Arnold remains #3
- Seth Hernandez up to #2 from #5
- LaViolette dropped from 2 to 7, Bremner dropped all the way to 17
- Willits up significantly.
- Both Anderson and Doyle now in the top 10.
However, what I want to talk about was some of the interesting draft nuggets and other information points that the team talked about in the accompanying podcast that dropped last night. It’s a good listen if you’re hyper-into this stuff like I am this year.
I listened to it so you don’t have to, but here’s some of the interesting stuff I heard.
- The analysts consensus is that the 1-1 pick is now coming down to one of just three players: Holliday, Arnold, and Hernandez.
- The group generally thinks at this point the odds for 1st overall are Holliday 50-60%, Hernandez 20%, Arnold 10%, Arquette 3-5%, and the Field 3-5%.
- By new draft guidelines, If a player attends the pre-draft scouting combine and takes a medical physical, teams cannot offer that player more than a 25% cut on the slot value. So 1-1 is worth $11.1M dollars; 75% of that figure is $8.3M. I was not aware of this rule. And, it really limits how much of a deal you can cut at 1-1. If everyone takes the physical, nobody’s taking a $7M bonus deal at 1-1 to give the Nats millions of dollars to spend later on.
- The group suspects that, since the industry knows this is a weaker draft at the top that most of the top players will take physicals to force teams’ hands and force them to guarantee at least 75% of that value.
- Burns and Condon both got $9.25M bonuses last year; Skenes and Crews got $9.2 and $9M in 2023. It seems unlikely that the Nats will have to go much higher (if at all higher) than this threshold for one of these top guys this year.
- The group believes that the Nats, and Mike Rizzo in particular, are just the right combination of risk acceptance profile to roll the dice on being the first team to ever take a prep RHP 1-1.
- Direct quote, “The Nationals are a ceiling organization, not a floor organization.”
- They talked about how Rizzo is a scouting-first guy (not analytics-first, which point to younger players and safer college picks). If Rizzo thinks Hernandez is the best player, Rizzo is going to take him. Hernandez, by far, has the highest ceiling of any player in this draft; Holliday is more about the track record, and Arnold is more about floor.
- This seems to me to be a distinct break in the Rizzo regime’s approach. If you look at the nature of our drafts for the first decade of Rizzo’s tenure, it was very college-heavy, barely ever taking a prep kid … except at the top or with major overslot deals.
- There have been teams/times where a prep RHP came really close to going 1-1. Hunter Greene was in serious consideration for 1-1 in 2017 before Minnesota took Royce Lewis. They told a story about Rizzo at Arizona taking Max Scherzer in 2006 as a prep RHP: they drafted 11th but Rizzo had Scherzer #1 on his board.
- (speaking of the 2006 draft: Longoria, Kershaw, and Scherzer all picked in the top 11).
- Hernandez is not just a RHP: he’s also a significant hitting prospect. He’s a major power hitter who bats ahead of fellow 1st round pick Carlson in his high school lineup. So, there’s always some fallback options there and/or some two-way options (can’t see the Nats doing that honestly).
- The Nats decision makers were in Oregon State to watch Arquette last weekend. We know they went to Florida State a few weeks back and saw Arnold get shelled. The entire industry was at the NHSI game where Hernandez shined, and the entire industry was at the big Oklahoma 3-team showdown where Holliday’s team played. So they’re covering their bases.
- Both Arquette and Holliday … are represented by Scott Boras. And the Nats take a lot of Boras clients.
Anyway, I came away from this podcast with the distinct idea that the Nats are going with either Holliday or Hernandez as of this juncture. Lets hope we get some more information on both players before the draft.