A 2025 MLB Draft Primer
One of the IBWAA co-directors looks at the upcoming 2025 MLB Draft
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . The big news over the weekend was the trade of Rafael Devers from the Boston Red Sox to the San Francisco Giants. The ins and outs of Devers’ 2025 season in Beantown are an article all its own, but his impact on the organization is not debatable. He leaves the Red Sox in the top ten all-time in the storied organization in home runs, slugging percentage, and intentional walks. He is also top-20 in franchise history in offensive bWAR, OPS, runs scored, total bases, doubles, RBI, and adjusted batting runs.
. . . Bringing in Devers should help the Giants at two positions. Devers is an improvement over Wilmer Flores, who has been the primary DH this season, even though Flores is having a very solid season. Devers moving to DH would allow Flores to play mostly full-time at first base, where he’s an above-average defender and can add value with his glove and bat. To this point of the season, the Giants’ first baseman have had the fifth-worst OPS in baseball, while Flores and other Giants’ designated hitters have sported the seventh-worst OPS in the game.
Leading Off
A 2025 MLB Draft Primer
By Benjamin Chase
With the College World Series playing its first weekend of action in Omaha, Neb., draft season is officially upon us. For many years, the draft was held in June and coincided with the first weekend of play at Omaha, so you often would have players finding out mid-game that they were now a member of the New York Yankees while they’re busy trying to help Oklahoma State win a baseball game.
It was an inefficient system, and that’s a big reason why MLB used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to do something they’d wanted to do for some time, coordinate the draft with All-Star weekend. For what it’s worth, it definitely has led to more eyes on the draft, though some of those eyes are obviously not exactly well-educated, expecting the MLB draft to bring instant impact to the big league club.
This year’s draft has widely been considered one of the worst for overall talent in decades, which certainly doesn’t inspire a lot of extra viewership on Sunday night during All-Star week, but it is what it is!
This will not be a mock draft or an in-depth look at prospects for the upcoming draft. There simply isn’t the space here to dedicate to that. Instead, you’ll get a strong overview of what to expect in this year’s MLB draft. Let’s dig in!
Who/What/Where/When
First off, the basics of the 2025 MLB Draft. The draft will take place on July 13 and 14 in Atlanta as part of All-Star week festivities in Atlanta. The first three rounds and compensatory picks, amounting to 105 selections, will happen on Sunday evening beginning at 6 p.m. ET. The fourth through twentieth rounds of the draft will take place Monday.
The Washington Nationals have the first overall selection, followed by the Los Angeles Angels, Seattle Mariners, Colorado Rockies, and the St. Louis Cardinals in the top five.
With the third selection in the draft and a competitive balance round A pick after the first round, the Mariners have the largest draft pool, at $17,074,400. This year’s draft is one of the most “even” in pool dispersion, with seven organizations tabbed with $15 million or more. The New York Yankees have the smallest pool at $5,383,600.
The draft features players from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Players from other countries are subject to international signing rules and regulations.
Strengths/Weaknesses of the 2025 MLB Draft
The 2025 MLB Draft has received a fairly negative reputation for its depth of talent, but there are still some strong areas in the draft.
This year’s college pitching crop is both deep and talented, with the possibility of as many as eight college pitchers who could make sense in the top ten of the draft. With the depth of the draft, don’t be surprised in five years if we’re all talking about the top young pitcher in the game coming from the fifth round of this year’s draft.
High school shortstops are often a good gauge of the depth of a prep hitting class, though it’s a bit of a mixed bag this year. The shortstop class is excellent, but it does hide a lack of depth in the outfield and corner infield in the high school class, though obviously, many of the players drafted as a high school shortstop won’t reach the majors playing short.
Those are the two biggest strengths in this year’s class. The biggest weakness in this draft is the lack of floor in the college position player group. There are a few interesting prospects among collegiate position talent, but many of them still have some significant development to do in a professional development system and/or have simply not had consistent performance on the field. College hitting is frequently a fall-back position for teams who are not convinced to take an arm or a prep bat, but that could be thrown out the window a bit this year.
Why Is Talent Down?
I could editorialize a host of things about hitting and pitching organizations that provide off-season training for youth before they’re even in high school altering the baseball intelligence and instincts of players when they come to the draft, but that’s a personal feeling and I simply haven’t dug into the numbers enough to know if I’m just an old man yelling at the clouds with that opinion.
What is unmistakable is the impact that changes in college sports have had on the draft. The institution of the transfer portal to allow players no time off punishment for transferring from one school to another each year of their college career has certainly meant that many more players are now entering the draft process with three or four different training ideas in their minds, so you’re not exactly sure what sort of background a player retained in his collegiate journey.
Name, image, and likeness (NIL) money has also significantly changed the game. A player committed to a power conference school that fell into the 12th round was previously considered a tough guy to sign, but it was worth the effort to give it a shot because a $300,000 bonus could change his mind. Now, you see a lot of high school guys who are picked after the tenth round of the draft committed to mid-major colleges that don’t have the same funds behind their program. Colleges are willing to pay notably more, and in many cases, they’re moving players around on first-rate accommodations on the road while minor league teams often have horror stories about a 40-year-old bus breaking down halfway to the destination or five guys sharing a one-bedroom apartment. Those conditions have improved notably in the past five years, but they’re still present in some organizations, especially at the lower levels, so young players could be convinced fairly easily to forego the pros and get paid better in college.
Finally, those high school players who did attend college often were guys who were old enough to qualify as a “sophomore-eligible” player in the draft in college. Those players are now highly sought-after by schools in the transfer portal, so convincing them to head off to the majors is also a challenge.
All of that has diluted the overall draft talent pool this year. Whether it will tick back up in future years remains to be seen.
Benjamin Chase is one of the team of co-directors for IBWAA and edits the Monday newsletter. He is the managing editor for one of the remaining local daily newspapers in the country in his day job. In his “free” time, he writes for his Medium site, Chasing Baseball Greatness, and is also part of the Pallazzo Podcast team, focusing on prospects. You can find him on most social media sites under the handle biggentleben.
Extra Innings
There are no MLB Hall of Fame players born on June 16, but the two best players born on the day are both well-known for their early success. Kerry Wood has been covered plenty, but Wally Joyner is often forgotten about and is the top player in career bWAR born on this day.
Joyner was drafted out of BYU in 1983, and he was among a very talented group of rookies to arrive in MLB in 1986, but his season was heads and shoulders above the rest, making the All-Star game, finishing runner-up in the Rookie of the Year voting, and finishing in the top-ten of MVP voting. He was widely considered to have a very bright future as a slugging first baseman, especially after he was even better in his second season.
Joyner was never able to duplicate the offensive production of the 1987 season, but he did have a 16-year career, accumulating 35.8 bWAR, a strong number from a first baseman.
He finished his rookie season in 1986 with the Angels in the ALCS, falling just short of the World Series, but it was no fault of Joyner’s effort as he hit for a 1.448 OPS over the series and would likely have been ALCS MVP had the Angels won.