Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen several prospects for this year’s MLB Draft, some of whom have gone from likely top-10 picks to perhaps falling out of the first round, while others have improved their stock considerably. Below are scouting reports on those players, starting with a riser: Florida prep shortstop Kellon Lindsey.
(Note: Reminder that the 20-80 scouting scale is used to measure tools. Click here for all of our 2024 MLB Draft content.)
Lindsey is the biggest pop-up name this spring — a guy who wasn’t on anyone’s radar as a Day 1 pick coming into the year, as he hadn’t done much over the summer or fall, but who’s had national guys flying in to see him and will probably go off the board before the 40th pick. I trekked to Wauchula, Fla., the cucumber capital of the world, to see Lindsey play last Monday, and got three swings in three at-bats — but I saw the elite speed that may push him into the end of the first round.
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The Hardee Senior High School product is an 80 runner, and if we’re making fine distinctions, he’s at the top end even within 80 runners. In his first two at-bats, he hit two groundballs and ran 3.96 and 4.00 to first base from the right side, which are indeed grade-80 times. In his third at-bat, he lined a ball to the right-center field gap, hesitated while approaching second because he was about to catch the runner ahead of him, then turned the jets back on and ended up with an inside-the-park homer. It is truly bonkers speed, and he’s got the kind of lithe, twitchy body you’d expect from someone whose foot speed is measured in fractions of c.
He saw all of four pitches that night, swinging at three of them, before his team pulled him as they were about to run-rule their opponent. The first two swings were nothing to write home about, but on that inside-the-parker, he stayed back well and really got his hips involved to drive the ball the other way. It’s less a question of “Can he do it?” than “Can he do it consistently?” as he’s got some juice, at least enough to be a gap-to-gap guy who’s very dangerous with that foot speed … and so many people, myself included, thought that Trea Turner would never get to much power, so you know that’s going to be in the back of everyone’s minds when they see Lindsey.
That said, I’ve heard from other scouts that Lindsey’s offspeed recognition is very poor, especially on breaking stuff, and the competition that Hardee HS plays is clearly not great. Scouts didn’t get the looks at him over the summer and fall when he might have faced some better pitching and answered the question about his pitch recognition more definitively, but if he’s having issues with the breaking stuff he sees now, playing low-caliber competition in central Florida, it’s not going to get easier in pro ball. I think he gets into the first round, because the draft is weak and he may be the fastest guy in the class, but there will be teams that value him more as a second pick because there’s real risk in the hit tool.
ECU’s Yesavage moving up the pitching rankings, Jenkins-Cowart could be a top-five round pick
East Carolina right-hander Trey Yesavage has a chance to be the third college pitcher taken in this year’s draft, after the two slam-dunk top-10 guys, Chase Burns of Wake Forest and Hagen Smith of Arkansas. Yesavage isn’t at their level, but does have a real out pitch in his splitter and throws a ton of strikes with all of his pitches. It’s a tough delivery with a super-short arm action and he doesn’t pitch that well east-west, which limits his ceiling somewhat and probably pushes him down into the 11-20 range rather than into the top 10.
ALL DAY TREY @treyyesavage
12 K's after 6.0 IP pic.twitter.com/VYiXssJsGE
— ECU Baseball (@ECUBaseball) April 12, 2024
Yesavage couldn’t have been any better on Friday night, throwing six no-hit innings against UNC-Charlotte in a game ECU won via run-rule in seven. He was 91-96 mph, working north-south well with the fastball, and threw quite a few splitters with good arm speed and a ton of movement, both vertical and even some horizontal, to the point that they looked from the side like another breaking ball. He also threw a slider with some tilt at 83-86 mph that was very effective against right-handed batters, whereas he used the splitter against both sides.
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The mechanics here are different, to say the least. He’s very quick off the rubber and his arm action is about as short as I’ve seen on anyone who wasn’t working in a bullpen. He is consistently on time, though, and he’s got no worse than average control; he’s not as reliant on getting hitters to chase the splitter as Hurston Waldrep, now with Atlanta, was last spring in his draft year. There’s risk here with the delivery — as in, I think there’s added risk beyond “he’s a pitcher” — but as I line up the board he’s in a very small group of college starters beyond the top two.
East Carolina outfielder Jacob Jenkins-Cowart went 0-for-3 with a walk in the 11-0 rout, grounding into a double play and striking out, with two whiffs on offspeed stuff. It wasn’t an ideal look, although he’s having a good enough season to go in the top five rounds, with solid contact rates but no power and no speed to play anywhere but a corner.
UNC’s Honeycutt continues to slide despite elite tools
UNC centerfielder Vance Honeycutt is one of a whole group of players with lead weights around their waists this spring, as he came into the year with top-10 buzz — perhaps unwarranted, given his propensity to strike out last year — and has only hurt his stock with a mediocre showing to date. On Saturday, he went 1-for-5 against Notre Dame with a long homer but two ugly strikeouts. There’s just way too much in-zone miss here — before Saturday’s game he had whiffed on 25 percent of pitches within the strike zone, and his strikeout rate for the year is just under 30 percent. The homer was impressive, with an exit velocity over 109 mph and really good hip rotation to generate the power, coming off 93 mph from a Notre Dame reliever.
Career dinger No. 48 for No. 7 pic.twitter.com/VeAUXPSKWE
— Carolina Baseball (@DiamondHeels) April 13, 2024
He’s got power, and he can really play defense — it’s a 70 glove and at least a 60 arm — a combination we’ve seen before, actually. Jud Fabian was a second-round pick twice out of Florida, and while he’s struggled in Double A for Baltimore it’s at least a template teams can use to figure out where Honeycutt fits. Christian Franklin was also this sort of player and went in the fourth round, while he’s had a bit more success in pro ball so far. In a weak draft, Honeycutt could still end up in the back of the first round if a team wants to bet on improving the approach — a lot — while banking on three other plus tools, although I think he fits better in the pick 31-50 range.
Northeastern’s Sirota also slipping
Northeastern outfielder Mike Sirota came into the year as a likely top-10 pick in pretty much everyone’s eyes, as he’d looked great over the summer and in the fall, showing feel to hit, some twitch, potential centerfield defense … and he’s been atrocious this spring, to the point that I’m not sure he’s even a second-rounder.
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Northeastern came down to Towson last weekend and hung a 10-spot on their hosts — Northeastern can really play defense, by the way — but Sirota was a cipher. He didn’t run well or play strong defense. He was behind average fastballs and didn’t pick up spin at all. He did draw three walks, but then got a terrible jump when trying to steal second and was out on a bad throw that was wide of the bag and took 2.16 seconds to get to the fielder. Sirota is hitting .267/.407/.408 as I write this, playing in the Colonial Athletic Association; he’s fourth on his team in OBP and eighth in slugging. Unless he’s hiding an injury, he’s got a bigger weight around him than Honeycutt did, and I wonder if he’ll even go on Day 1.
Notes from the National High School Invitational
The annual National High School Invitational tournament took place this week at the USA Baseball Complex in Cary, NC, but the draft talent there was very light, with Harvard-Westlake shortstop Bryce Rainer the only projected first-round pick on any of the 16 teams. Rainer helped his cause with a strong week, and he is likely to be one of the first two high school hitters selected this year, along with Mississippi outfielder Konnor Griffin. Griffin is the toolshed, while Rainer is the more polished player and plays the more valuable position. His hit tool is still the biggest variable, but he did show he could hit decent stuff in Cary while continuing to play superb defense.
Rainer’s not just a plus defender at short with a 70 arm — he hit 95 mph in a relief appearance as well, but please miss me with any two-way talk — he’s a leader in the field, involved in every play, directing teammates, serving as the sort of on-field captain you hope your shortstop or your catcher can be. He has a sound swing with some loft to drive the ball, showing he had extra-base power the other way, but it’s not great bat speed and that has borne out over the past 12 months in the small sample of pitches he’s seen with above-average velocity. He does so many other things well that I think he’s worthy of a top-10 pick, even with concerns about how well he’ll catch up to big-league fastballs.
Rainer’s teammate, right-hander Duncan Marsten, threw well in his outing, working 91-94 mph without much effort and showing a short, tight slider at 80-83 mph. The slider is a 55, while the fastball helped him keep the ball on the ground, without missing many bats. Marsten has already undergone Tommy John surgery, however, missing the 2021 and 2022 seasons while recovering from the procedure, and I think teams are going to look at many of those players differently this year after Spencer Strider suffered a partial tear to a UCL that was still under warranty. Marsten is committed to the pitching factory at Wake Forest, where he’d be eligible for the draft again as a sophomore.
Orange Lutheran (Orange, Calif.) High School was the runner-up in the tournament to Corona (Calif.) High School, with Orange Luthern led by outfielder Derek Curiel. The LSU commit first caught scouts’ and coaches’ eyes as a high school sophomore, but he hasn’t developed physically since then, so while he has a good swing and feel for contact, there’s no power there at all and I think he’s better suited to going to college. If he heads to Baton Rouge and puts on some strength there while playing for one of the best programs in Division 1, he’ll be a serious draft prospect in 2027.
There were two underclass right-handers of note at NHSI this week, Mason Pike of Puyallup, Wash., and Seth Hernandez, also of Corona. Pike is committed to Oregon State and was 91-94 mph with a slurvy slider and potentially average changeup, although Corona knocked him around in his one outing. Hernandez, a Vanderbilt commit, was 92-95 mph with good spin and tilt on a slider that projects to plus, showing four pitches including a changeup that flashed above average but wasn’t that consistent. He’s a little uncoordinated right now but has a tall, wiry 6-foot-4 frame that you can envision filling out to 220-225 pounds. My skepticism on high school pitchers aside, Hernandez has the ingredients you’d want if you were trying to concoct a prospect of that class.
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(Photo of Trey Yesavage: Ben McKeown / Associated Press)
