Major League Baseball's 2023 amateur draft got underway on Sunday night. The Pittsburgh Pirates chose LSU right-hander Paul Skenes with the sixth No. 1 pick in franchise history. The Washington Nationals then selected LSU outfielder Dylan Crews at No. 2, making this the first time in the history of the MLB draft that teammates have gone first and second overall.
The draft resumed with the third round on Monday afternoon, and will sprint to completion on Tuesday with rounds 11-20.
A worthwhile piece of advice (that we are about to violate) is never judge a class too harshly during the draft. Talk to any scout or scouting director worth their salt, and they'll confess that even the professionals miss often. Such is the nature of baseball, and such is the nature of drafts. Even with that in mind, you have to understand that the content gods demand sustenance. Below, you'll find our perceived winners and losers so far from the draft.
For the sake of touching on new material, we've opted against including any of the teams who made selections in the top five. If you're picking that high in this draft, you better walk away a winner. Now, with that fine print out of the way, let's get to it.
Winners
1. San Francisco Giants
The Giants made three day one selections: Nos. 16, 52, and 69. You could argue that having three bites at the apple early on makes it too easy for a team to walk away with a class that looks good in comparison to everyone else. That's a fair point in a vacuum, but even with additional picks in tow, it's tougher to land three quality prospects when your first pick is at No. 16 -- and not just because all the premium talent is likely to be gone. There's also the matter of signing bonuses. The Giants, for instance, ranked 17th in total bonus pool.
That didn't stop scouting director Michael Holmes from landing two-way high school player Bryce Eldridge, high school shortstop Walker Martin, and lefty Kent State pitcher Joe Whitman on the first night. Eldridge and Martin both ranked in our pre-draft top 30. Whitman, meanwhile, was a late riser as one of the top collegiate southpaws in a class that didn't feature many of them. (More on that later.) There's a case to be made, then, that the Giants landed three first-round talents.
You can read more about Eldridge and Martin by clicking here. The short version is that Eldridge is listed at 6-foot-7 and has both a power arm (as a righty thrower) and a power bat (as a lefty hitter). Martin has loud tools, though he drew criticism because of his age (he turned 19 months ago, making him old for a prepster) and his lack of quality competition in Colorado. Whitman, for his part, projects to have three average or better pitches.
Eldridge is particularly interesting since this is the second consecutive draft the Giants have used their first pick on a two-way player with the intent to let them do both as a professional. Last summer, they chose injured UConn two-way player Reggie Crawford at No. 30. He's since made his return to the field, hitting for an .840 OPS (in 18 plate appearances) and pitching to a 4.09 ERA (in 11 innings) as part of San Francisco's A-ball affiliate in San Jose.
There's certainly risk with each profile -- Lord knows there's a reason why other teams haven't rushed to embrace the two-way player in the wake of Shohei Ohtani's brilliance -- but, so far as this analysis is concerned, we dig what the Giants did on day one.
2. Tampa Bay Rays
The Rays were similar to the Giants in a few respects. They too had three picks, albeit none in the top half of the first round, and they too landed three players worthy of first-round consideration: TCU infielder Brayden Taylor (No. 19), Florida prep shortstop Adrian Santana (No. 31), and Mississippi State outfielder Colton Ledbetter (No. 55).
Taylor and Ledbetter both made our pre-draft top 30. Taylor had an uneven season that saw him trade his line-drive-hitting ways for more slugging. He launched a career-high number of home runs, but he also struck out at a greater rate. We'll see which version the Rays encourage Taylor to embrace heading forward. Ledbetter transferred into the SEC ahead of last season and performed well overall, though his numbers in conference play were just OK. He has a good feel for the barrel and the strike zone alike, and he boasts sneaky athleticism.
As for Santana, we identified him as a potential riser based on a few reasons. For starters, he's a switch-hitter with good speed and a high-grade defensive projection at shortstop. He's also extremely young, as he won't celebrate his 18th birthday for another week. We reference the idea of "model-based" teams and the traits they like all the time. The Rays are one of those clubs, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise that Santana ended up high on their board.
3. Prep shortstops
Generally speaking, the shortstop is the best player on most high school teams. At minimum, they tend to be the best athletes, making it easier to transition them to other positions as they develop physically. Scouting departments clearly agree with that rule of thumb, as they combined to select 11 prep shortstops within the first 52 picks, albeit only five of the top 30.
The funny thing is it took some time before the first high school shortstop came off the board. Arjun Nimmala, who had top-10 buzz throughout the spring on account of his youth and loud tools, lasted until pick No. 20. From there, his peers were chosen in a fast and furious manner. Teams went on to draft 10 more prep shortstops within a 32-pick range:
Granted, not all of those players are likely to remain at shortstop for long, let alone until they reach the majors. (Miller, to name one, has long been identified as a future third baseman.) But the larger gist -- teams prefer up-the-middle prepsters -- remains true all the same.
4. The draft lottery
This was the first draft in league history that had the top six picks dictated by a lottery, and boy did it make a difference. The Pirates ended up with the No. 1 pick despite having the third-worst record in the majors; the Athletics picked sixth despite having the second-worst record; and the Rangers and Twins jumped into the top five, elbowing the Reds and Royals aside. Your perspective on the lottery undoubtedly hinges on whether or not your team benefitted, but from our vantage point, it was probably a good set of outcomes for the league.
MLB has tried in recent years to make the draft into An Event, the way the NFL and NBA have succeeded. That's entailed moving the draft to the All-Star break, and even running it unopposed by games. Has that been a successful venture? Who knows. What's evident is that Sunday gave the league a tangible way to hype up the lottery. It's no longer a matter of theory that the lottery could change the shape of a franchise's fortune; now it's simply reality.
5. LSU baseball
We suspect that head coach Jay Johnson's recruiting pitches are going to be easier to formulate after the past month. Not only did the Tigers win their first National Championship since 2009, but they also produced the top two picks in the draft, in Skenes and Crews, as well as three other top-100 selections: right-hander Ty Floyd (No. 38, Reds); right-hander Grant Taylor (No. 51, White Sox); and first baseman Tre' Morgan (No. 88, Rays). How's that for a summer?
Losers
1. Chase Dollander
Dollander, you may recall, came into the spring regarded as the top pitching prospect in the class. He suffered through an uneven season that saw him battle his fastball command and tinker with a new slider with half as much sweep. He did finish the year strong for Tennessee, creating late buzz around the industry that he would still find himself taken within the top 10. Sure enough, the Colorado Rockies selected Dollander with the ninth overall pick.
The scouts and analysts who spoke to CBS Sports ahead of the draft harped on how important it was that Dollander landed in the right situation, and with a team that could optimize his considerable arm talent. Only time will tell for sure, but you can forgive us if we're skeptical about the Rockies presenting Dollander with what he needs to become a topline starter. And we're not just typing that because of the difficulties that come with pitching at Coors Field.
Fairly or not, the Rockies are viewed around the league as an antiquated organization -- one that operates within its own bubble. Whatever they have brewing in that bubble has not helped them convert draft picks into big-league pitchers. They've chosen 26 pitchers in the top three rounds over the last 10 drafts: 16 have yet to (or won't) pitch in the majors, and the others have combined for 29.2 Wins Above Replacement. (And nearly all of those wins are courtesy of two pitchers in particular, in Kyle Freeland and Jon Gray.)
Maybe Dollander finds a way to beat the odds, but we fear that we're going to end up wondering what could've been if he had landed with a more modern franchise.
2. Collegiate southpaws
One of the longstanding tropes of the draft is that there's always a college lefty taken in the first round. The dollar could plummet in value, gravity could relent, the moon could collide with the sun, and a polished collegiate southpaw would still go in the top 30 picks. Or, at least, that's how we perceived reality until this summer, and specifically, until Sunday night.
Indeed, this draft marked the first time since 1978 that the first round passed without someone selecting a collegiate lefty. The shutout endured all the way until pick No. 46, when the Colorado Rockies took Sean Sullivan from Wake Forest. Kent State's Joe Whitman, who seemed to have late helium, lasted all the way until the San Francisco Giants nabbed him at no. 69.
Don't count on this being the start of a new 45-year run, by the way. It's too early to know for sure how next year's draft will play out, but there are a handful of lefty pitchers who should be first-round candidates, including Florida two-way player Jac Caglianone and funky Arkansas lefty Hagen Smith. You can read more about those two individuals by clicking here.
3. Oakland Athletics
It wasn't a surprise that the Athletics took Grand Canyon shortstop Jacob Wilson at No. 6. They had been tied to him for more than a month, as CBS Sports reported in our June draft rankings. Alas, the absence of tension did not mean the A's pick was met with praise from rival clubs.
The book on Wilson, whose father Jack played in the majors for more than a decade, is straightforward. He was the toughest player to strike out in college baseball this season, punching out in just 2.4% of his plate appearances. Other front offices were lower on him than the A's because of his inability to impact the ball. Exit velocity isn't the end-all, be-all, but like pitch velocity, there is a baseline level you'd like to see top-10 picks achieve on a consistent basis. Wilson, unfortunately, doesn't even come close to that threshold: his 84 mph average this season would rank second-to-last in the majors among qualified batters. The one player he would be ahead of? Athletics center fielder Esteury Ruiz. Go figure.
If you're an optimist, you might point to Wilson's unsynced swing (he loads his hands before he strides) as an area that the A's could coach him up on. Perhaps a tweak in that department would help unlock more authoritative contact. Or, more topically, you might say, hey, Luis Arraez is doing OK for himself despite having meager exit-velocity readings. Of course, tweaking Wilson's swing too much might rob him of his bat-to-ball skills, and there's a big difference between an 88 mph average in the majors versus an 84 mph average in the WAC.
You always want to allow for the possibility of the player getting better, or the team knowing something that you don't. Perhaps the A's will be vindicated in that respect. From where we're sitting, it just feels like they could've gotten a surer thing at No. 6.
4. Kansas City Royals
One way to view the draft is through a probabilistic analysis lens. You may not know what any specific player's future holds, but you can make educated guesses based on how their profile has fared historically. We recently laid out the case against taking high-school catchers and high-school right-handers early in the draft. So, naturally, we have to include the Royals here, who used their two top-50 picks on -- what else? -- those exact profiles.
We want to be clear: we have nothing against Texas catcher Blake Mitchell (No. 8 overall) or Illinois right-hander Blake Wolters (No. 44). Both are talented young players who deserve to feel good about their selections and who ought to be optimistic about their futures. Our contention here is solely from an organizational perspective.
If you're the Royals, you likely believe that Mitchell and Wolters will be an exception to the rule for various reasons. The problem is that's what every team thinks when they go this route. They buy into the idea that their player will buck the trend because of x, y, and perhaps z. And then what happens? Usually, time reveals that those players were unable to do just that.
Who knows. Maybe Mitchell and Wolters will serve as the outliers. We just wouldn't want to bet on it -- not when the Royals had any number of other good options available to them who seemed like safer bets from an empirical perspective.
