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.
Man, that rule on bonuses is brutal. That completely handcuffs the Nats’ negotiating abilities, and means the starting point of negotiation will be $8.3m, meaning the final amount will likely be well above that. That sucks.
BA also published a new mock the other day, but I don’t have a subscription. Curious if they had any big changes to their top 5 or so.
I’m also not sure that it’s fair to characterize Rizzo’s set up as a “ceiling organization, not a floor organization.” This is, after all, an org that drafted very few HSers with their top picks for a decade from 2010-2020. There was a weird blip where we seemingly leaned all into ceiling players in 2021-2022, drafting toolsy projects like House, Green, Cox, White in the top 10. But in the last two drafts, we’ve drafted exactly two HSers in the top 10: Sykora and Dickerson. The rest have all been relatively developed college guys. If anything, I’d characterize Rizzo’s approach as “bucking conventional wisdom” (whether that be injuries [Giolito, Rendon, Denaburg], attitude issues [Romero], or physical make up/repeatability issues [Rutledge] that caused guys to fall or the team to reach). Case in point, we passed up the consensus top 10 HS pick (high ceiling) in Bryce Rainer for college bat, Seaver King.
Off topic, but since you brought up Scherzer, he did a really interesting interview with FanGraphs recently commenting on his 2008 scouting report (https://blogs.fangraphs.com/max-scherzer-addresses-his-2008-baseball-america-scouting-report/), but actually giving some super interesting insight into his contentious time in the Diamondbacks org, and how he refused to sign a contract with Arizona for almost a whole season, and went and played Indy Ball! I never knew that. But what struck me is how negatively he spoke about the DBacks at the time. They were insisting on converting him to relief, which would’ve been one of the biggest player development tragedies of all time. Glad he was able to get a trade to the Tigers, and then fall into our laps. I think this time doesn’t overlap with Rizzo’s time there, fortunately.
Will
30 Apr 25 at 10:43 am
I’m not sure the bonus amount will be much higher than that $8.3M. Given the contours of this draft, the negotiation may look more like “which of you guys is willing to take XYZ?”, and not “we want you and will you sign for XYZ?”. You could even imagine the team saying, “we’ll take you 1st and give you $7.5M, but obviously if you attend the combine, we can’t, so we’ll take someone else. Your call.”
Also, by pipeline, last year the combine included 171 of the top 200 draft prospects, but only 13 of the top 20 and 4 of the top 10. And, unless I’m using this page (https://www.mlb.com/prospect-development-pipeline/events/mlb-draft-combine/participants) incorrectly, it looks like a lot of folks picked in the top 10 skipped it. I’m only seeing Wetherholt and King among the eventual top 10 picks. (Rainer, Montgomery, and Tibbs are all listed though.)
And, interestingly, King, Loma, Dickerson, Bazzell and Kent were all there. And in 2023, Crews skipped it, but every other day 1 or 2 guy who got more than $20k attended. I wonder if that makes the Nats an outlier at all.
SMS
30 Apr 25 at 1:54 pm
@Will: on MLB’s characterization of Rizzo … i agree; its a weird take. I’ve thought Rizzo to be very conservative generally. I dunno why they think he’s the kind of guy to go super duper risky.
@SMS: I heard someone say this about the Nats’ negotiating for this draft: call the top 3 guys and go “will you sign for $9M?” If they say yes, boom draft them.
As for attendance at Combine … last year some skipped knowing they were sure fire locks. Theyre saying this year b/c the draft doesn’t have conssensus top X picks … more will show up to guarantee their bonus slots.
Todd Boss
30 Apr 25 at 2:07 pm
Great analysis and catch on the 25% cut rule. Can see the Nats taking Hernandez. Watched his video from the MLB Pipeline site. Man, it looks like max effort to me, and the accompanying inevitable long-term elbow issues.
Guess the good news is that if whomever the Nats take signs at $8.3 or close to it, that signing would still be $2.7 million under-slot which still could result in a lot of flexibility with picks in the following rounds.
Put another way, even without a clear 1-1, the Nats will have the tools to harvest talent in this draft.
Pilchard
30 Apr 25 at 2:08 pm
BA’s new/updated top 400: https://www.baseballamerica.com/rankings/2025-top-mlb-draft-prospects
Some slight movement in the top 5: Arnold, Holliday, Hernandez, Arquette, Laviolette.
Todd Boss
30 Apr 25 at 2:20 pm
To me:
– Arnold = limited upside, “best of a good but not great” class of college starters.
– Holliday = great peidgree, may be getting prospect fatigue and unfairly dinged, still may be the best upside of the draft
– Hernandez = great arm, huge risk as with all prep pitchers.
Todd Boss
30 Apr 25 at 2:22 pm