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Twelve Week Check-in with 1-1 Candidates for 2025 Draft

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Could Eli Willits really go top? Photo via USA Baseball

Here’s our sixth check-in on the 1-1 candidates.

Important Draft related news and notes that have published since our last posting (Note: since i’m doing these every 2-week posts and linking to mocks as they happen, i’m going to abandon my typical annual “Mock draft collection” post. Or maybe i’ll throw it up right before the draft).

  • ProspectsLive posted its updated 250 Draft Prospects on 4/21/25. Top 5 go Arnold, Hernandez, Carlson, Holliday, LaViolette. All the rest of the top 10 are in our link block, so no surprises. I think they have Carlson too high, but can’t quibble otherwise. Detailed scouting reports on each player are here as well, and i’ve updated the link blocks below with direct links and updated ranks.
  • Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo wrote an interesting piece titled the “8 MLB Draft prospects who could go 1-1,” illustrating just how wide open this is, which of course supports why we’re keeping tabs on so many players. His analysis mirrors the list of players i’m tracking, and anyone not in his top 8 I’m dropping off the check in list.
  • Baseball America did a podcast on 4/25/25 ahead of the release of its second staff mock draft. Last time their staff member chose Hernandez 1-1; this time a BA writer took Willits, saying it came down to Willits or Arquette for him.
  • Two of the guys we’re covering here (Doyle and Anderson) faced off as Tennessee visited LSU on 4/25/25 in a battle of top 10 teams (LSU is ranked #6, Tennessee #7 by d1baseball as of gametime). I’ll discuss more about their outings below. However the game itself was pretty amazing: LSU went into the bottom of the ninth down 3-0 and scored 6 runs to win it, including a 450+ dead-center 3-run walk off homer from their best hitter Jared Jones.
  • MLPPipeline finally released an updated to its top 150 Draft board; it was pretty dated with ranks that were done in December, and we saw some significant movement. I have updated the below ranks for the updated data and wrote separately about the update and the accompanying podcast, which had several very interesting nuggets of info. I’m also going to seriously cull the below list of actively tracked players because of it.
  • ProspectsLive released its Mock Draft v2.0 on 4/30/25. They went Holliday, Arnold, Hernandez, Arquette, Willits. I can’t argue with this from a draft ranks order, but the match with the teams to their proclivities in the draft doesn’t add up; more on that at the bottom.
  • BA posted their updated top 400 on 4/30/25. There’s a slight bit of movement in the top 10 but they still have top 3 as Arnold, Holliday, and Hernandez. I’ve updated the ranks in the player snippets below but eliminated the link since its all in one place now.
  • BleacherReport’s Joel Reuter’s 4/25/25 Mock draft has the Nats going conservative. top 5 in the mock: Arnold, Arquette, Hernandez, Holliday, Houston.
  • Kiley McDaniel posted his scouting reports on the top draft candidates all in one place on 4/24/25. He also posted video snippets of the top players on his twitter feed. I’ll add his commentary to the prep players below.
  • Just as i published this on 5/5/25, MLBPipeline guys published an “Odds to go 1-1” post. Holliday, Hernandez, and Arnold. It’s basically a transcript of their podcast last week that I quoted elsewhere.

Aggregation Stats for College Baseball for Reference:

Link Block for the top guys under 1-1 consideration

Prep Players who are in the running for 1-1:

Prospects guys we’re removing from 1-1 discussion for now and why. We’ve removed a ton of names that have been in discussion this spring.

  • Cam Canarella, CF, Clemson. Clemson stats & box scores, MLBPipeline rpt (#38), BA (#25) His star has dropped since mid 2024, now projecting as a mid-1st rounder.
  • Gavin Kilen, 2B, Tennessee. Tennessee stats & box scores, MLBPipeline rpt (#16), BA (#18)He started very hot for Tennessee but is an end-of-the-1st rounder, 5’11” 2B guy. He also pulled a hamstring and hasn’t played for weeks, torpedoing his 1-1 chances.
  • Devin Taylor, OF, Indiana. Indiana stats & box scores, MLBPipeline rpt (#23), BA (#38). solid offensively but fringy defensively, so moving him down. #6 on ProspectsLive, so still some hope there.
  • Brendan Summerhill, OF, Arizona. UofA stats and box scores, MLBPipeline rpt (#22), BA (#24); he was top 10 fringe and started hot, but broke his hand in mid March and will miss a chunk of the season, crushing his chances of going higher. Was top 10, now in the 20s.
  • Tyler Bremner, RHP, UC Santa Barbara. UCSB stats & boxes, MLBPipeline rpt (#17), BA (#13). He just has not impressed against sub-standard competition like he should have, and is no longer on anyone’s radar for the top of the draft. #8 on Prospectslive. Dropped all the way to #17 by MLB; was in their top 5 to start season.
  • Kayson Cunningham, SS, Johnson HS (TX). MLB (#6), BA (#9), ProspectsLive (#10). He’s a seriously good prospect of course, but there’s 3 prep guys clearly ahead of him, so dropping him out of analysis.
  • Liam Doyle, LHP, Tennessee. Tenn stats & box scores, MLB (#10), BA (#11), PL (#10+). Despite a massive jump on MLB’s list (from #75 to #10), I don’t see him as a realistic candidate for 1-1 anymore. If the team wants a college LHP starter … they’re taking Arnold.
  • Kade Anderson, LHP, LSU. LSU Stats & box scores, MLB (#9), BA (#12), PL (#10+). Jumped from #44 to #9 on MLB’s latest draft, but despite excellent showing in 2025 he’s #3 out of #3 college LHP starters, and the Nats aren’t going to pass on Arnold or Doyle for him, so i’m going to stop hyper-tracking.
  • Marek Houston, SS, Wake Forest. WFU Stats & box scores, MLB (#12), BA (#7), PL (#10+). Jumped up a bit in the latest MLB ranks, but if the Nats are going to take a college SS … they’re taking Arquette at this point.
  • Billy Carlson, SS/RHP Corona HS (CA). MLB (#6), BA (#8), PL (#3). Despite increasing his profile all year (in part due to the fact that he plays on the same HS team as Hernandez), Carlson is like the 3rd best prep SS out of three, and for similar logic to Doyle/Anderson … if the Nats want a prep SS with a slick glove, they’ll be picking Willits.

Here’s some updated commentary.

  • LaViolette‘s TAMU team had two tough series, at #1 Texas and hosting #2 LSU. He got just one hit in each weekend series. His slash line took a dive as a result and has gone down to .276/.437/.593 (two weeks ago it was .307/.468/.693). He’s running out of time to impress the decision makers, and more and more is looking like a down-ballot draftee.
  • Arnold had two great starts over the past two weeks against top competition. He went into #17 Louisville and went 7 2/3 11/1 K/BB, gave up 2 runs. Then with FSU hosting Clemson last weekend in a battle of top 5 teams, he limited Clemson to 1 run in 6 ip despite being rather wild on the night (3 walks and 3 HBP). No word on whether Nats brass was at this start, but it would have made sense to get another look against decent competition. He continues to keep himself in the 1-1 discussion.
  • Arquette got “the visit” from Nats brass for their 11th weekend visit. Here’s the problem with Arquette succinctly stated: if you want a big power hitting SS who won’t stay on the position and has to move to 3B, then Holliday is a younger, better, more upside version. So, to me that always means Arquette is going to be “behind” Holliday if this is the stature of player the Nats are looking at. In the meantime, his slash line has cooled a bit in the last two weeks, down to .351/.472/.701 from .383/.497/.780 as OSU visited Oregon two weekends ago in a battle of two top 10 teams.
  • Doyle was absolutely amazing in a high-profile showdown at LSU on 4/25/25, going 6 2/3rds and giving up just one hit to #6 LSU in their bandbox of a stadium. 6/3 K/BB so not nearly as many Ks as normal, but he made himself some money today. Is there a world where Doyle is picked above Arnold? Maybe, but it is fading fast. Last weekend weather issues caused him to pitch twice in two innings against Arnold, something scouts and MLB execs probably cringed at.
  • Anderson looked nearly as good as his counterpart Doyle on 4/25/25: 7ip, 2runs, 11Ks. Both guys took no decisions. But, as per above, neither Doyle and Anderson are getting picked over Arnold at this point, so we’ll focus on the top guys from here on out.

Prep kids: I’ll paraphrase McDaniel’s scouting report for the prep kids, in lieu of any actual news.

  • Holliday: Word on the street is that Holliday had a hitch in his swing last year that he’s fixed, but that he’ll project as a strikeout happy, 65-grade power hitter as a pro. He’s described as an above average defender with a plus arm, and should be a top-level 3B prospect. McDaniel isn’t sold on him as 1-1.
  • Hernandez; sits mid-upper 90s, hits 100+. Plus-Plus changeup. has worked on his curve and its now above average; slider is his 4th pitch and needs work. The knock on him is that his FB is straight and will become more hittable if he loses velocity. 2nd-round talent as a 3B hitter too.
  • Carlson: turns 19 a few weeks after draft, a negative for many teams. 80-grade arm at short. has a huge swing right now, will need some fixing as a pro, but here you’re drafting for the floor of a solid pro SS with all the defensive tools.
  • Willits: hit over power, plus speed, plus defender, true SS. Solid contact, switch hitter who’s better from the left hand side. All plus tools. Super young, reclassified from 2026 class. Again mentions that many teams really over-value the age at draft.

The Race for 1-1 status: More and more I’m thinking the college arms are not in contention, while we’re seeing fast risers from the prep ranks. I now think the Nats are seriously looking at Willits for 1-1. However, they also can dream on Holliday and Hernandez. In a draft where the college guys aren’t blowing your socks off, you roll the dice on upside.

The next four teams picking are the Angels, Seattle, Colorado, and St Louis. Just off the top of my head, i these teams seem to have a drafting history like this:

  • Angels: want quick to the majors college guys; they hyper promote and have had a draftee be first to debut for each draft class for 3 years running. Their last six 1st rounders have all been college players. This screams polished college arm; aka Jamie Arnold.
  • Seattle loves prep kids at the top; 5 of last 6 picks have been HSers, all bats no prep arms. I’ll bet they take either Willits or Holliday if they’re there, but may not be able to pass on Hernandez.
  • Colorado can’t get FA pitchers to come to Denver, so they have to grow them. Their last 6 1st rounders have all been college, and 3 of the last 4 are arms. I think they pick Arnold or Doyle, whoever’s there.
  • St. Louis has 4 straight college guys in 1st; i’ll bet they are dreaming on LaViolette.

So my current top 5: Holliday, Arnold, Hernandez, Doyle, LaViolette.

Written by Todd Boss

May 5th, 2025 at 9:16 am

Posted in Draft,Prospects

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10 Responses to 'Twelve Week Check-in with 1-1 Candidates for 2025 Draft'

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  1. It’s funny, there’s almost less clarity on the 1-1 pick today than even a few weeks ago. We’ve got 16 names that are/were under consideration for 1-1!! Has there ever been a draft with so little high end talent?

    I’m really not convinced Hernandez is meaningfully better than Arnold or Doyle, except that he’s young so prospect watchers dream about upside that, on closer inspection, doesn’t really exist. Arnold and Doyle also have 3 plus pitches and hit upper 90s like Hernandez. The key difference is that both Arnold and Doyle have shown these pitches play against advanced hitters, and have shown capable of handling adversity and improving their game.

    There’s a reason a prep arm has never gone 1-1. Hernandez isn’t a generational talent, so I don’t understand why he’d be the guy to break the mold. You assume significantly more risk without much, if any, additional upside than one of the college arms.

    Then add to that the fact that there’s next to no room for negotiating down the signing bonus, meaning any of the guys listed above will command a signing bonus of $8.5-9m, this draft suddenly became considerably less interesting to me. My idea about taking a surprise 1-1 to rack up significant slot savings is not possible, and nor will the later rounds even be particularly interesting from a Nats perspective, because the other teams drafting are also going to rack up big savings on their 1-2, 1-3, etc. picks that the Nats won’t have any real comparative advantage. The 2nd round will likely end up being the most expensive 2nd round ever, but if everyone else has money to spare, that won’t lead to that Nats vacuuming up the best non-drafted prep prospects in rounds 2-5.

    This would’ve been a dream year to go 1-10, as there’s certain to be several high quality picks still on the board at that point, and saved that 1-1 pick for any other year. What a bummer.

    Will

    5 May 25 at 10:19 am

  2. @Will: “Hernandez isn’t a generational talent?” That’s not the vibe i’m getting off of some talent evaluators, who definitely think he is. BA staff seems to be in this camp heavily. They did a podcast last week where they talked several times about HS right handers who alllmost went 1-1 and how thats fared. Right now MLBpipeline gives Hernandez these grades: Fastball: 65 | Curveball: 60 | Slider: 50 | Changeup: 60 | Control: 55 | Overall: 60. I mean, that’s a lot of 60s for a prep kid.

    If Arnold (or doyle, or anderson) actually had good looking mechanics and didn’t look like a gunslinging sidearmer, they’d be no brainers. But they have funky mechanics. Yes they’re showing they play against ACC/SEC … is that enough?

    Todd Boss

    5 May 25 at 11:49 am

  3. I’ll give it to you that there’s fewer 60 rated prep arms than I thought (though MLB had Jackson Jobe as a 60 out of HS a few years ago), then there’s a whole host of 55 HS arms in the past several years. But I’d call a “generational” talent someone in the 65/70 range, i.e. someone who only comes around once in a generation, like Skenes/Crews/Rutschman types. Hernandez just feels more special because there’s comparatively so little high end talent in this draft, but there’s usually 5-10 60s in any draft year (last year there were 3 65s and 7 60s, in 2023 there were 2 65s and 3 60s, in 2022 there was one 65 and 8 60s), but in any other year Hernandez is falling somewhere between 5th and 10th. But if you’re Rizzo, you better be very sure that Hernandez is THE guy, because if you look at the top prep arms (55/60s) between 2018-2022, it’s nightmare fuel.

    2018: Matthew Liberatore, Cole Winn
    2019: Matt Allan
    2020: Mick Abel, Jared Kelley
    2021: Jackson Jobe
    2022: Brock Porter, Brandon Barriera

    Like most prep arms, it’s a pretty terrifying list, as a few of them (Allan, Barriera) blew out their arms, others (Winn, Kelley, Porter) just weren’t good and regularly posted 6+ ERAs. Liberatore turned into a serviceable 5th starter, and Jobe and Abel (though he’s now fallen off all top 100 lists) still might turn into something worthy of an early 1st round pick, and these are the guys in the same range as Hernandez…

    Maybe he’s Travis Sykora 2.0, but I wouldn’t bet $9m and a 1-1 on it. (Also Sykora needs to put up another good season, before we really get carried away with his hype).

    On the SEC/ACC, I’ve seen the competition there compared to A+ ball, so it’s something. HS ball is like DSL-level quality, even top circuit teams like IMG Academy are worse than FCL teams.

    Will

    5 May 25 at 3:10 pm

  4. At least Will’s been consistent;he has argued against taking a HS player at every turn.

    In the five drafts identified above, there have been players drafted in the top 10 make an MLB all-star game:

    Alex Bohm (college)
    Adley Rutschman (college)
    Bobby Witt (HS)
    Riley Green (HS)
    CJ Abrams (HS)
    Josh Jung (college)
    Skenes (college)

    Note: no HS or college pitcher drafted among the first 10 picks of MLB drafts from 2018 through 2022 have made the ASG to date (2023 MLB overall #1 did).

    The bottom line is that there are great players and bustable players in every draft. Limiting your selection to just college players is a losing draft strategy, especially with the #1 overall pick. Hope the Nats draft the player with the highest ceiling rather than a “safe” college player with limited upside.

    Pilchard

    5 May 25 at 5:06 pm

  5. That’s precisely my point: if Hernandez or Holliday or Willits had significantly higher upside than the college players, then I’d be fine with taking them. But they don’t. MLB.com is the only of the 5 or 6 prospect lists Todd has been tracking that says Hernandez is even slightly better than Arnold (or a number of other players). I have nothing against drafting HSers, and fully expect us to sink considerable slot savings into them in rounds 2-5. I take issue with taking HSers, who are inherently far riskier picks, when their scouting profile projects to be no better than their college peers.

    Hernandez like Arnold is a 60 prospect (just using MLB’s assessments here for simplicity). These ratings do not assess present day skills, but future projectability. As I said above, Hernandez and Arnold have very similar projection profiles (high 90s velo, 3+ plus pitches). The difference is that Arnold is 3 years ahead of Hernandez developmentally, which is a long time for something to go wrong with a pitching prospect, and is THE reason why a prep arm has never gone 1-1. Not because there’s never been good prep arms, but that the risk is significantly higher than any other profile (and college arms are already risky enough).

    Of course, if the offer is a 1 in 4 chance of a MVP (65/70 kind of prospect) vs a 1 in 3 of an All Star (A 55/60 prospect), then it makes sense to assume more risk for higher upside, but again, no prospect list is making that claim. They’re all 60 or 55 rated prospects like the college players (or 50/45+ if you go by ESPN). So the equation is rather a 1 in 4 chance of an All Star vs a 1 in 3 chance of an All Star. Of course you go with the better odds, and college arms have better odds of succeeding than prep arms.

    Until more prospect watchers consistently start saying Hernandez or Holliday/Willits is obviously better than Arnold/Doyle or Arquette/LaViolette, then I’ll happily come around to drafting one of them. But until then, it makes most sense to me to take a college player.

    Will

    6 May 25 at 5:21 am

  6. So first off let me say this: I absolutely do not want Hernandez at 1-1. I’m just relaying information; both MLB and BA types honestly believe Hernandez has the best chance for a prep RHP to go 1-1 they’ve seen in the last decade.

    https://www.baseball-reference.com/draft/index.fcgi?overall_pick=2&draft_type=junreg&query_type=overall_pick&from_type_jc=0&from_type_hs=0&from_type_unk=0&from_type_4y=0

    That’s a direct link to the #2 overall picks each year: Prep RHP in this camp include Hunter Greene in 2017 (who took forever to flourish but seems solid now), Tyler Kolek (2014: never made majors), Jamison Taillon in 2010 (decent career, still playing), Josh Beckett in 1999 (solid 35 bWAR career). It doesn’t really make sense to go back before then since the 90s were such a different time in the draft. But that’s just 4 prep RHP starters taken at #2 in the last 25 years. That’s crazy too.

    More and more i’m thinking they take Holliday. Holliday is a younger, higher upside version of Arquette. Willits is a slap hitter/plus defender; that doesn’t project to generational talent. Arnold is a better version of either Doyle or Anderson, and is the “safe pick.” Maybe they offer Arnold 75% of the slot and see if he bites and go from there. But then what the heck are they gonna do with all that extra cash? The only way it makes sense to use is to overpay a bunch of prep kids in 2nd and 3rd rounds … which is going to be even MORE risk than taking a prep kid 1-1.

    Todd Boss

    6 May 25 at 9:40 am

  7. I don’t have anything to add on the specific merits for Hernandez or any of the others, but those grades are risk-adjusted. If ESPN has FV50s on both Hernandez and Arnold, they’re actually saying that Hernandez has the higher upside because it’s self evident that he has higher risk.

    Obviously, we can disagree with how those adjustments are made or how large they are, but it’s a mistake to just zero out their differences because the evaluators pinned the same grades on them.

    SMS

    6 May 25 at 10:22 am

  8. SMS, I understand ESPN and FanGraphs bake in risk into their FV (and sometimes PV) grades (it’s why Holliday and Hernandez rank a grade lower than Arnold, for example). But this is different to MLB Pipeline’s straight grades, which is essentially just future value/ceiling, hence why players are ranked according to their grade and 3 of their top 4 are HSers. But please correct me if I’m misunderstanding their methodology.

    Will

    6 May 25 at 2:55 pm

  9. Todd, I agree. Holliday would be my bet on who the Nats pick. His scouting report reads very similarly to Brady House’s, with the added bonus of being from a “baseball family” and from Oklahoma, two other favorite traits of Rizzo.

    Still, it’s fun to discuss, and there’ll no doubt be a number of more twists until July 13.

    Will

    6 May 25 at 2:59 pm

  10. @Will – I certainly don’t want to give the impression that my certainty level is 100%, but my understanding is that all the evaluators are incorporating risk into their assessment. And that the only reason that Kiley and Eric are more explicit and open about it is that they’re more explicit and open about all of their methods.

    I’m happy to be corrected re Pipeline or the others. But I’m not exactly sure how to even understand things like MLB moving House back and forth between FV50 and FV55 if it’s related to his projected ceiling and not his projected risk of failing to achieve that ceiling.

    Or are you specifically referring to their draft coverage vs prospect scouting more generally?

    SMS

    6 May 25 at 3:41 pm

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