Everybody thinks the Orioles like LaViolette, though some publications see them taking high school players instead.
The 2025 edition of the MLB Draft is now just a few more days away. The Washington Nationals, who won the lottery for the #1 pick, will be officially on the clock in the evening on July 13, with the other teams following in order afterwards.
After making the postseason last year and getting eliminated in the wild card round, the Orioles are set to make the 19th pick in the 2025 Draft. The Orioles also have bonus compensation picks set for 30th and 31st overall, which they received due to losing Corbin Burnes and Anthony Santander in free agency after those players declined a qualifying offer from the O’s and signed big contracts elsewhere.
Who might the Orioles pick at that spot? We are several years removed now from the Orioles choosing in the top 5 of the draft. It was hard enough to predict what the O’s would do when you could reasonably guess what pool of players would be available to choose from. Only the 2019 pick of Adley Rutschman, the consensus #1 prospect, at #1 overall, was a total chalk pick. With the O’s choosing at #19 this year, it’s even harder to know who will be left on the board following 18 other picks being made.
In Mike Elias’s tenure as general manager, the Orioles have never taken a pure right-handed hitter with their first pick in a given draft. They’ve also never taken a pitcher with either of their top two picks. Earlier waves of mock draft picks thought the O’s might take a lefty-batting college outfielder for the third time in as many years. That remains in play as an option, though at this point, other publications are branching out in what they think the Orioles will do. Except for take a pitcher first. Nobody thinks the O’s will do that.
Here are some of the players to keep in mind when day 1 arrives at the end of this coming weekend:
Gavin Fien – SS/3B – Great Oak (CA) HS
Fien is the pick mocked to the Orioles by The Athletic’s Keith Law in his most recently-updated mock draft from this morning. This would mark a departure from the Elias pattern because Fien is a righty batter. On his intelligence linking Fien to the Orioles, Law writes:
The Orioles are one of the teams that rely the most on their draft model, sot he industry assumes they’re on guys with very strong data like Fiend (one of the best overall hitters at showcases in 2024).
Other players Law suggests have strong data are Texas A&M outfielder Jace LaViolette, Washington high school infielder Xavier Neyens, and Tennessee infielder Gavin Kilen. In Law’s mock, Kilen is already gone at #15.
Fien rates as the #12 player in the draft class according to Law, solid value for picking at #19. There is, however, some risk:
Fien is one of the bigger enigmas in the draft class, as he was clearly the best hitter on the showcase circuit last year, making a ton of hard contact against all manner of pitching, but didn’t have the same success this spring against lesser competition while playing for his regular high school team … There’s some risk here given the performance this spring, but that looks like a buy-low opportunity for some team that probably thought in January it would have no shot to draft a player of his talent
Elias does like a buy-low opportunity. He could potentially buy really low on Fien, as the MLB Pipeline mock draft has Fien lasting until #33. The Orioles, remember, will be choosing again with the 30th and 31st picks. I don’t want any enigmas! I want guys who we can be sure will be good. But you don’t get those guys at #19, so maybe an enigma with upside is the best way to play it.
Xavier Neyens – 3B – Mount Vernon (WA) HS
Neyens is listed as the Orioles pick by MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis from a July 4 mock draft. Callis writes that “the two names that come up most often with the Orioles are two of the best power hitters in the Draft, Neyens and LaViolette.”
Pipeline’s scouting capsule on Neyens, where he ranks as their 25th player in the draft class, highlights the potential upside as well as the potential risk. There is risk with any draft pick and that only increases the farther down the draft board you go. The Orioles showed a year ago that they’d take a risky player with upside in Vance Honeycutt. That risk hasn’t paid off yet, but that probably won’t dampen their willingness to roll the dice on an amateur who they think has real potential. On Neyens:
Neyens has long been seen by area scouts as a potentially elite hitter from the left side of the plate with an outstanding approach. He made some adjustments to his setup and swing, adding leverage and starting to show off at least plus raw power and the ability to not only get to it, but to do so to all fields. … There was some concern about the increase in his swing-and-miss rate as the summer (of 2024) progressed … Those concerns resurfaced with some lackluster showings at the plate this spring at times.
Big high school third baseman with power potential but swing-and-miss concerns sets up Neyens with a sorta-similar profile to current Oriole Coby Mayo, except batting from the left side. How you feel about adding a lefty Mayo into the farm system and potential roster picture in like 2029 probably depends on how you feel about Mayo right now.
In the other mock drafts I’m looking at today, Neyens lasts until either the Astros at 21 or the Padres at 25. Some team is likely to grab him in the back third of the first round if the Orioles do not choose to pick him themselves.
Jace LaViolette – OF – Texas A&M
Baseball America has been holding on to LaViolette as its mock pick to the Orioles through two iterations of mock drafts. Its latest mock from June 30 continues that connection, with BA’s Carlos Collazo writing that he “could see the Orioles going with other big power, big OBP hitters, including Luke Stevenson or Xavier Neyens.” (An updated BA mock on July 9 still connects the Orioles to LaViolette.)
There are some players in a given draft class who get referred to as “helium guys”, so dubbed because their performance leading up to the draft leads to them floating higher up the board than they would have before. A helium guy in this draft class is Arkansas pitcher Gage Wood, who struck out 19 batters while throwing a no-hitter in the College World Series.
LaViolette is sort of whatever the opposite of a helium guy is. Maybe a stone guy, as in he’s sunk like a stone. He entered this spring as a potential candidate for #1 overall and was holding in the top 10 range through April, but he’s dropped because he just didn’t hit that much in his junior year. BA, which ranks him as the 17th prospect in the class, writes:
His 2025 season was a struggle. He hit just .258/.427/.576 with 18 home runs and a 25.2% strikeout rate … LaViolette is tremendously physical with a 6-foot-6, 230-pound frame and tons of strength. He has a stiff—almost robotic—operation in the box that features little to no movement in his setup and load phase, but he generates thunderous raw power … He has double-plus raw power that plays to all fields. LaViolette’s biggest question is how much he’ll hit. He has advanced swing decisions … but his contact ability is below-average—especially for a potential first-round college bat.
With last year’s first round pick Honeycutt rocking a 40.3% strikeout rate and .579 OPS for High-A Aberdeen, the idea of taking another chance on a player with the power profile but massive hit questions has no appeal to me. The Orioles, on the other hand, might feel that a second bite at the apple is still worth it, because Honeycutt’s failure should not impact their outlook for an entirely different player.
In the other mocks, MLB Pipeline sends LaViolette to the Brewers, one pick after the Orioles, while Law sees him going to the Astros at 21.
Picks 30 and 31
The Pipeline and Baseball America mocks go through the 43rd pick, which is the end of competitive balance round A. Here are the names mocked to the O’s with those additional picks:
- Ethan Conrad – OF – Wake Forest
- Josh Hammond – SS/RHP, Wesleyan Christian Academy (NC)
- Luke Stevenson – C – North Carolina
- Devin Taylor – OF – Indiana
Camden Chat’s John Beers highlighted Taylor as a possible quick-to-the-majors player the Orioles should consider targeting with one of their high draft picks.
The first two Elias drafts with the Orioles saw them use their second picks on Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Westburg. I think these successes made some fans feel like Elias would just be able to automatically do this kind of thing every year. Subsequent drafts have not supported this theory, although 2022’s #33 overall Dylan Beavers is doing very interesting things for Triple-A Norfolk this season.
The Orioles need to get back to hitting on the late first/early second-type picks, especially now that their first rounders are later in the round and not as likely to be sure things. The four players named above are all roughly seen as being in that range of talent.
If the Orioles go high school with the first pick, I think 30 and 31 will be college players. They might both be college players even if the Orioles take LaViolette or some other college junior at #19. I like what I’ve read about Stevenson and Hammond. The next time that Elias takes a player whose pre-draft scouting reports I liked will be the first time.