2025 MLB Draft: Turk’s Boards

As regular college season games have completed, and we focus in on regional tournaments, the field of 64, and the eventual College World Series, I thought it might be interesting to a handful of Angels’ diehards to start assembling some names of potential draftees who intrigue me, and who might be available to the team at various stages of the 20 round draft. The draft is held July 13-14 this year – it’s been shortened to two days instead of three – so we’re less than two months from the annual action.

Those who know me from CtPG and the ‘old site’ (Halos Heaven) know that I do something like this roughly annually – offer draft coverage and opinions in advance of the draft and in real time as the selections unfold. I used to do more regular (weekly, monthly) farm reports for the Angels, but my family and work obligations (as well as the punishing state of the Angels farm system) has made that less feasible and rewarding in the past couple years. If it isn’t obvious, I’m neither a pro scout or a former player, just a minor league and college baseball enthusiast (and long-time data analyst) who has followed the small game for 25+ years, who subscribes to a lot of paywalled prospect media, combs through video, and who takes in as many MiLB and NCAA games as I can.

Over the course of the season, I build up lists of amateur players that interest me, sort them into groups by region, position and player demographic, and potential draft selection zones – then try to read and watch as much as I can as I develop this or that crush on tens of players as the draft approaches. In recent years, I’ve taken a ‘fantasy’ approach to building up player target lists (“boards”), where instead of just a stack-rank list of talent, trying to find the elusive BPA (“best player available”), I instead create several theoretical draft scenarios, working through the top ten rounds, imagining ideal draft classes informed by rankings, mock drafts, industry buzz, recent HS and college performance, and yes…Angels organizational needs.

I thought I’d kick off my irregular draft coverage by simply embedding a few of these fantasy tables here, with some short notes, and then drilling down into some of these player profiles in future posts, referencing back to this larger sample.

It’s important to also state that these fantasy draft classes also include potential “CBA trade” selections – imagining that the Angels are shrewd, capable and canny enough to acquire compensation round picks from contending teams who possess them. This is, in a couple words, highly unlikely – but it makes the exercise more fun for me, and allows me to highlight the talent in the first three rounds who might fall between the Angels selections at #2, 47 and 79.

It’s also worth stating that these are not predictions – while I’ve tried to be not-irrational in placing names where I think they might plausibly fall, I don’t have access to proprietary medical reports or industry lore on player X’s makeup, so some players might fall down boards for reasons unknown to me. And the draft is a lot like stock picking – there are going to be low-ranked and fairly unknown players who shoot up boards just because a regional scout has a long-time connection (fixation) to them, or because an underslot deal in, say, round 4, allows a team to spend on preferred goodies elsewhere.

Scenario A

If there’s an underlying theme to this class, it’s local farm-to-table, pulling on half a dozen SoCal and West Coast talents to marry power (Neville, Gurevitch, Voit) with polish on the pitching end (Hernandez, Dzierwa, Obermueller). I’m not sure that Minasian’s team has the jazz or mettle to draft the best prep righthander in half a decade – even if that kid is right in their backyard and it’s a great story ripe for a billboard magnate – but I try to pepper the plate with enough ready-to-play collegiates to mitigate the risk.

(Note that the Day 2 pick here, and in the next tables, is a guess at the sort of player who might slide down boards due to bonus demands, and reflects the Angels’ recent trend of catching one of these fallers on the final draft day with a considerable offer of excess bonus savings.)

Scenario B

It’s odd to think of Kyson Witherspoon, who has recently worked his way up the rankings to land at #7 in the latest Baseball America 500, as a “discount” pick – but given his 7-12 range, it’s not unreasonable to think he could be acquired at a $2-3M savings vs the Angels’ $10M+ slot value. The Halos already have the third largest bonus pool this year, and any additional CBA trades might take them to top dog – that means a fair amount of potential pool savings to spread around to high schoolers with big bonus demands to forego college commitments (and the lure of NIL monies). The general consensus is that prep talent (and prep bats especially) are the strength of this draft, so this class goes heavier on youth, and adds more unranked players and senior signs in rounds 6-10 to further accomplish this.

Scenario C

This draft class goes deep into the southeast, leaning both heavily on the strongest conference (SEC), and other kids from the Carolinas down to phallic end of the peninsula. Do I think that regional non-diversification is smart? No, but just loads of fun, at least for this exercise. I’ve had a good time watching Florida State and Georgia games over the course of the season, and it’s enjoyable to contemplate scenarios where the Lodise cousins might land in the same system, or the Seminoles and Bulldogs retain their prides and broods as a group in pro ball.

Scenario D

In the Minasian era, scouting director Scott McIlvaine has tended to go pretty heavy regionally into two or three geographic wells of talent. Whether that’s due to vestigial ties or a smaller pool of area scouts who are less nationally distributed, it’s hard to discern. But if you look at the past half decade of drafting, you’ll see an oversample from the Appalachian cluster of TN/KY/OH/IN, and another from TX/OK talent.

This scenario draws a lot from those regions, starting at the top with an Oklahoma prep bat that the Angels really have not been connected to in early draft chatter, and digging deep into the American South and rural red country. Fair number of power bats and arms here as well, trying to find the center of the Venn diagram between organizational deficits and some recent drafting tendencies.

Scenario TT: Turk Packs his Trunk and Goes to Heaven

I won’t pretend this scenario is either likely or some platonic ideal, but it samples from the boards above to find the kids that would simply be most fun for me to follow organizationally. Yes, it might speak to the approach I would take were I a voice in the draft room, but some of these dudes are just my type of player, in addition to some cats who have posted plenty in recent months.

I’m taking one of the two top-ten ranked RHPs at #2, and pairing them with a couple competitive NCAA posters with mid-rotation upside in Eyanson and Bodendorf, plus arguably the top JC discovery in the nation in Barr. I’m aiming for as much polished power as I can get in the first CBA round, grabbing whomever falls to the mid-30s. My favorite mid-major centerfield smasher is here, James Quinn-Irons, and my under-the-radar, unranked mighty mouse in Cardell Thibodeaux. I also take a flyer on a Day 2 prepster (one of the national leaders in HRs), imagining slippage due to bonus demands, which might be solvable given the Angels’ sizable draft pool.

Now, I fully realize that to most this is just an illegible accounting mess of names in tables, but I’ll link back to this when I post future profiles of some of the players above. Perhaps it’s a conversation starter, or will lead draft foolhardy fans to do their own research.

The time is nigh – more to come!