Post Draft - BA Top 30

[caulfield12]

White lol and a number of teams probably much better off with random number generated drafts lol

 

Guess this is closer in subject matter to draft thread or milb catch all but it's also germane to Top 30 list...especially drafted Sox prospects 

 

Jim Callis @ mlb.com   free article

"As one of my favorite scouts likes to say, the Draft is hard. To remind myself of that, every year since 2003 I've conducted my own 10-round Drafts to see how I would fare.

I use a random-number generator to pick a team to shadow, holding myself to the same budget restrictions it faces. I've never selected higher than No. 8 overall, yet my first 22 Drafts have generated 71 big leaguers, highlighted by Jason Heyward, Bryan Reynolds, Kyle Freeland, Kyle Gibson and Chris Archer. My best current Major Leaguers are Andrew Abbott, Hunter Brown, Brady Singer and Xavier Edwards.

My 2024 Draft could be one of my best ever, as I grabbed three Top 100 Prospects (Konnor Griffin, Ryan Sloan, Mike Sirota) and a pitcher who already has reached the Majors (Ryan Johnson). I've also spent past first-rounders on Jon Zeringue, Ty Hensley, Eric Jagielo and Jeren Kendall. Yeah, the Draft is hard.

This year, I drew the Tigers' picks, which gave me a supplemental first-rounder and a $10,990,800 bonus pool that I can stretch to $11,540,340 without forfeiting a future first-round choice. I landed five players ranked 91st or higher on MLB Pipeline's Draft Top 250, though figuring out the middle rounds felt more difficult than ever in a down year for talent."

 

My picks:

Round: Player, Pos, School (Actual pick)

1st (No. 24): Kruz Schoolcraft, LHP, HS/Oregon (Padres, 1st round)

Huge frame (6-foot-8, 229 pounds), even huger ceiling, love the combination of stuff and polish.

Supplemental 1st: Brendan Summerhill, OF, Arizona (Rays, supplemental 1st) One of the best all-around college talents, possible 20-20 center fielder.

2nd: Max Belyeu, OF, Texas (Rockies, supplemental 2nd)

Potential to hit for power and average, has the arm strength for right field.

Edited July 23 by caulfield12

[PolishPrince34]

 

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6502957/2025/07/24/mlb-top-prospects-2025-kevin-mcgonigle/?source=user_shared_article
 

updated Law Rankings

Montgomery #21

Montgomery broke his ankle in the super regionals in June 2024, slid to the No. 13 pick in the draft, signed with Boston but didn’t play a game before they shipped him to the White Sox in the Garrett Crochet deal, and finally made his pro debut this spring in Low A. He’s spent most of the year in High A, hitting .256/.342/.444 there while playing right and center, hitting for more average and on-base percentage left-handed with more power right-handed, in line with what I saw from him in college. He’s whiffing on pitches in the zone, including fastballs, much more than I anticipated, though, and that’s mildly concerning for an SEC product in High A, even giving him some grace for the injury and lost time. It hasn’t been improving with time, either, and that’s the main thing I need to see from him in the second half to hold my evaluation of him as a future 55 (above-average regular) in right field.

schultz #58-Starting to get a little worried. 
 

I admit I’m a little concerned here. Schultz started out in Double A and was just OK, posting a 3.34 ERA but with mediocre peripherals – he walked 14.4 percent of batters he faced, struck out 23.2 percent, and posted a good but not elite groundball rate of 49 percent. His slider looks like it should be plus, but it doesn’t miss nearly enough bats, and in the end his arsenal is more a basket of 50s and 55s, without a real out pitch right now. He is 6-9 or 6-10, just 21, and has only 183 pro innings under his belt, so you can expect some development given more time and reps. I wouldn’t have promoted him to Triple A, however, where he’s now given up 15 runs in 11 innings and is on the IL with knee discomfort. He’s one step from the majors, but I think he needs a lot more time than that implies, whether it’s a full year at the current level or a slow ramp in the majors like they did with Chris Sale over a decade ago.

[Chicago White Sox]

I thought Schultz’s slider was considered one of the best in minor league baseball last year?  Both BA and Fangraphs had a 70 grade on the pitch coming into the season, so something just doesn’t jive.  Did he suddenly lose the ability to spin it?  Is it a command issue?  Is the pitch less effective due to broader arsenal issues?

I maintain optimism on Schultz because he was incredible coming into this year and the control issues seem to be outlier-ish to me.  Feels like maybe the change in schedule and some underlying health issues (hopefully just the knee) are the culprits?  But admittedly, I don’t know what other changes Bannister has made and if those mechanical adjustments have lead to a degradation in stuff.  And if so, I have to ask why change something that was working?

[PolishPrince34]

If you watch video on Schultz the slider doesn’t look the same compared to last year. It looks like he’s throwing with less velocity and not getting as much horizontal movement/late bite on the pitch. Also, he’s been going deeper into the games and velocity has gone down. 
 

 

Edited July 24 by PolishPrince34

[fathom]

His slider was atrocious in the Futures Game

[southsider2k5]

3 hours ago, Chicago White Sox said:

I thought Schultz’s slider was considered one of the best in minor league baseball last year?  Both BA and Fangraphs had a 70 grade on the pitch coming into the season, so something just doesn’t jive.  Did he suddenly lose the ability to spin it?  Is it a command issue?  Is the pitch less effective due to broader arsenal issues?

I maintain optimism on Schultz because he was incredible coming into this year and the control issues seem to be outlier-ish to me.  Feels like maybe the change in schedule and some underlying health issues (hopefully just the knee) are the culprits?  But admittedly, I don’t know what other changes Bannister has made and if those mechanical adjustments have lead to a degradation in stuff.  And if so, I have to ask why change something that was working?

I also wonder how much workload is taking away from his stuff.  Honestly it was why I was stunned when the rushed him to Charlotte when he wasn't exactly killing in a hugely pitchers park in Birmingham.

[Jake]

A couple things stopping me from pushing the panic button on Schultz just yet:

1. In AAA, his Statcast metrics are vastly superior to his observed outcomes. He's allowed a .490 wOBA but his xwOBA is .311. Allowing a .311 xwOBA in AAA isn't good, but it's league average in AAA. Yes, xwOBA considers walks and such in the calculation. For example, batters are hitting about .400 against him on batted balls hit under 85mph. That won't last, it will go down by about half.

2. Entering the season, the narrative I had on Schultz's risk is that he couldn't miss bats. But he's generating a lot of whiffs in AAA. Only 7 out of 351 AAA starters who have thrown as many pitches as Noah have managed to generate a higher whiff rate (one of them is Spencer Strider). The slider, curveball, and changeup are all running about 50% whiff rates which is fantastic. The sinker is at 27% which is more ho-hum although rather good for a sinker. Four seamer has gotten more whiffs at 36% but he hasn't really thrown enough of those to say much about that pitch. 

Maybe there's something about the way he's throwing that is artificially racking up the whiffs, I don't know. Maybe bad command means they whiff when they swing but they don't swing often enough, something like that. But in general I think between watching a couple starts and looking at the data, it's not all arrows pointing down for him. 

Looking at pitch movement:

This can be tricky because you have very different pitches called the same thing. The most similar sinker in MLB is Garrett Crochet's, about the same velo and about the same movement. The release point would be very different though as well as the way they are used in their respective arsenals. But the movement by the numbers is very good (albeit not quite elite) for Schultz. Chris Sale, for instance, has more sink while maintaining about the same run...and that's not even a featured pitch for him anymore.

In terms of shape, the slider is almost a dead ringer for Justin Steele's. Worth noting that Steele is throwing his slider the same velo as Schultz but Steele's fastball is much slower, so the way the pitches fit into the arsenal is quite different. Still, it should be said: there is no left-handed major leaguer with as much horizontal movement on their slider as Schultz. It is fairly similar to Chris Sale's, but Sale's is a little slower, has a touch more vertical movement, and has almost 5 inches less side to side.

That brings us to what Statcast is calling Schultz's "curveball," a pitch with a very similar shape and velo to the "slider." As Statcast sees it, the "curveball" is very slightly faster, a little less side to side, a little more drop, identical spin rate. They may be the same pitch. Hitters are equally unsuccessful against both. Either way, it's easy to see why the scouting reports rave about the slider because there's none quite like it in MLB. Can't help but wonder whether he has to somehow tone it down to throw it where he wants to. I'll note that he actually throws it in the zone just as much as his fastsballs (about 50% of pitches, equal to league average), although he doesn't get the same incredible whiff rate in the strike zone unsurprisingly. That said, they chase his slider/curve out of the zone at a very high rate, almost always whiff, and have not yet gotten it into play when managing to make contact.

4-seamer seems unexceptional by the shape metrics. Not much rise, although it's a lot different shape than his sinker which is really the role it's currently playing for him. This is likely why it's getting some whiffs and is chased out of the zone a lot. But there aren't many lefties throwing a fastball with a similar shape and velo. But a lot of them have more rise and it's pretty ordinary in terms of run. His arm slot makes comparisons of this kind more difficult of course. Chris Sale's four-seamer, which is thrown much more often, has a lot more run Noah's. In fact, Sale's sinker and four seamer have about equal amounts of run and differ only in the rise. Noah's four seamer only has about half the run that his sinker does, veering almost into cutter territory but not enough to get the benefits of a cutter.

The shape of the changeup seems decent but not standout. I generally feel like changeups are a pitch that is kind of hard to learn about solely from the movement metrics. This is a pitch Noah doesn't use a lot (about 15% of pitches). Hitters whiff a lot of the times they swing at it, but Noah doesn't throw it in the zone very much and hitters aren't as apt to chase it as they are his slider. 

Quality of contact against all of his pitches *when thrown in the strike zone* is actually not very good so far (for the hitters). I find that interesting and speaks to the level of raw stuff.  

When watching Noah, my feeling is that hitters fairly quickly start to approach him like a two-pitch pitcher and he doesn't always have a counter-attack at the ready. When he starts mixing in that four-seamer it sometimes does the job for him of making hitters more uneasy. Trickier is that hitters seem like they acclimate to his slider as the game goes along. I know that Bannister claimed that throwing a cutter was having negative effects on Schultz's mechanics or some such and maybe he's right. But that's really the kind of pitch that would probably help him a lot. Gives him a nice middle velocity between the the 95ish heater and 81ish slider and something that could put a seed of doubt into the batter's mind when he reads "breaking ball." I suspect this would be a better weapon against righties than the slider in some cases. That said, it is true that sidewinders often don't throw cutters effectively so maybe it was never going to work. Chris Sale makes it work with a very slider-heavy approach, almost 50% nowadays. Chris probably has a more deceptive delivery though and his fastball is better, so that may not be an approach that solves all of Noah's issues.

Edited July 24 by Jake

[oldsox]

I am not convinced.

[caulfield12]

B.Montgomery at 11 homers 55 rbi's 811 ops and 11 steals in 300+ at bats overall.

[Sleepy Harold]

Six White Sox on the list, Schultz (22), Teel (37), Braden Montgomery (53), Bonemer (76), Hagen Smith (83), and Billy Carlson (84).

[caulfield12]

7 hours ago, Sleepy Harold said:

Six White Sox on the list, Schultz (22), Teel (37), Braden Montgomery (53), Bonemer (76), Hagen Smith (83), and Billy Carlson (84).

Smith must be the lowest rated of the Top 9 picks from last year…Schultz will start falling back soon.

And Teel off the board entirely.

Edited July 28 by caulfield12