State of Play
The time is nigh.
The College World Series is over (congrats to the LSU Tigers on their second championship in three years!).
The MLB Draft Combine has wrapped up.
The 2025 MLB Draft is less than three weeks away, and clubs are assembling their boards.
Mock drafts are coming with more frequency, and prospect rankings are beginning to stabilize.
A few things have been clarified since I wrote my Round One post a few weeks back. Due to LSU’s dominant run through the collegiate finals, a new SP1 (ie, the first pitcher expected to be drafted) has emerged in Kade Anderson. He bested a team that had 26 straight wins in Coastal Carolina, right after dominating the best college offense in Arkansas, which had sent Liam Doyle packing in the fourth inning only a week before. It’s generally thought that the Nats, with the #1 pick this year, are deciding between Kade and the trio of talented top-five prepsters in Ethan Holliday, Eli Willits and Seth Hernandez. Many prognosticators feel it’ll come down to a bake-off between Holliday and Anderson, but that’s no given.
Meanwhile, the rumors on the Angels are roughly split between two camps. Many believe that it’ll come down to a choice between Anderson and Liam Doyle (though Jamie Arnold and Kyson Witherspoon are still in the mix), in hopes of getting one to the MLB club in under a year. Others have heard upwards of eight to ten names tied to the team, including prep shortstops like Willits, Jo Parker and Daniel Pierce, with no predictable pattern. Interestingly, the top prep and college bats of Holliday and Aiva Arquette are less mentioned in these conversations, with more heat and smoke on the four college arms, hit-over-power high schoolers or the C/OF power bat Ike Irish.
While Holliday and Arquette continue to intrigue me, the state of the Angels farm, and their challenges in competing for the top arms in free agency, lead me to believe that taking one of the “safe” college arms in round one is still the best option for the team. Those would be Anderson, Arnold and Witherspoon, in that order. Liam Doyle, the fourth of the group, has been sliding down boards a wee bit due to his rough playoff exit and abiding concerns about relief risk and underused/underdeveloped secondaries. It’s a hard sell to me to have yet another first rounder – the third in six tries – potentially destined for the pen alongside Detmers and Bachman. Some believe if the Angels do not select Doyle at #2, he may slide all the way down to #9 or more, which tells you that my concerns are not unshared. But the fast-moving nature of Doyle’s projection, especially as a bullpen piece, continues to fit Moreno’s win-now MO.
(At this point, I would even view Tyler Bremner as a safer selection vs Doyle, and his industry estimation has been rising of late, as people look past a mediocre first month toward his excellent performance, and underlying metrics, down the stretch.)
Another thing that’s becoming clear is that my sustained fantasy of securing additional draft picks via trades for CBA, already unlikely, is less likely than ever, with the team hovering around at .500, just a couple games out of the WC3 mix. The more promising trade candidates are injured, and guys they really should trade, like Tylers Anderson and Ward, and Jansen, are viewed as key players in this rather unlikely quest for the playoffs, where the Angels look to be buyers at the deadline.
As you’ll see, it makes for some tough choices, as there’s a lot of interesting talent available in the zone roughly delimiting the Angels second and third round picks. And that’s the area I’d like to focus on in this post.
The Great Offensive Blackout
One thing should be abundantly clear in any survey of the Angels four full-season minor league affiliates: there just aren’t any bats there. Really not a single one that projects for regular play, and specifically power, at the MLB level. There’s an interesting glove-and-legs package in Nelson Rada at AA, but no one expects him to hit for impact. Old-schoolers hope for Gary Pettis outcomes from Rada, but a likelier comp in terms of MLB half life might be Reggie Willits. Beyond Rada, it’s senior signs, older free agents and org soldiers at every level, with a couple contact-challenged Latin draftees in Denzer Guzman and Adrian Placencia cranking gears toward low-probability bench roles.
It’s…something. I can’t name another of the 29 teams with a system this devoid of offensive impact. We’re well-removed from the mid-2010s, when toolsy draft selections like Adell, Marsh, Adams, Paris, Jones, Vera dominated the tops of the Angels’ prospect lists.
The reason for this is clear, but it’s worth reviewing. Going back eight drafts, including a couple under Billy Eppler and previous scouting director Matt Swanson, the Angels have skewed toward pitching to a remarkably unprecedented degree, really ramping the strategy up in 2019. After drafting Will Wilson and Kyren Paris (then dumping Wilson for payroll relief in the offseason), the team drafted fourteen straight pitchers, not making a single positional selection until the 17th round. In 2020, the pandemic shortened draft, they used their first round pick on LHP Detmers, and didn’t have a second. Of the three picks that remained, two were on fringey prep lotto tickets (Calabrese, Blakely) who went nowhere, plus a soft tossing lefty they quickly traded. The notorious 2021 draft followed, with leverage reliever Sam Bachman leading 19 straight pitching selections.
If you’re following along, that’s three straight draft cycles without a single college bat selected before round 17 (two months of cut-bait Will Wilson doesn’t count).
In 2022-2024, there was a shift to use first round selections on college offensive performers – each of whom have successfully graduated to date. But beyond those selections, the focus has still been on the arms race.
In 2022, outside $7500 late round senior signs, the only notable bat selected was bad-bodied DH Sonny DiChiara, who looked like a Comic Sans version of Dan Vogelbach and couldn’t hit a lick above A-ball. He was released this spring less than three years after drafting.
In 2024, after the Christian Moore selection, seven straight pitching selections followed. And in 2023, the team actually tried to sprinkle in some bats – they used their 3rd, 4th and 7th round selections on Alberto Rios, Joe Redfield and Cole Fontanelle respectively. Redfield and Fontanelle were off-the-board picks who didn’t even rank in the Top 500 of Baseball America’s draft rankings. Rios had one great year in the Pac-12, but has a catcher’s body, no defensive home, and a dubious power outlook. DiChiara and Rios mark an exaggerated departure from the tendency to draft athletes under previous regimes, and Redfield and Fontanelle highlight Minasian’s tendency to try to skew from the consensus view of BPA. None of the small handful of college bats selected in the last half-dozen drafts have found a role in the MLB beyond the well-known first rounders.
So what to do?
The golden rule is Don’t Draft from Need, but the Angels have been drafting from need for half a dozen years, and they’ve viewed that need as pitching. The proceeds haven’t been great – a couple BP guys currently in Detmers and Bachman among some up-and-down inconsistent relievers and a prep arm in Kochanowicz still figuring it out. The Angels entered the 2025 season with three of their top prospects being potential starting pitchers (Dana, Klassen, Aldegheri), and all three took significant steps back this year, and don’t look playable in the short term.
So, in absence of any serviceable farm program, you basically have to throw sensible precepts out the window. It’s time to draft from need again…to at least begin the begin, and inject some offense into the dimly-lit farm system. The Angels need bats. They need them badly.
Luckily for them, there’s a pile-up of offensive talent in the first 5-6 rounds of this draft, with a particularly dense cluster in the zone of #40-100, where the Angels have selections #47 and #79. Let’s take a look at some candidates, and some personal faves, in that zone.
Rounds #2-3
A reminder: the Angels select at slots #47 and #79.
Let’s start with some assumptions here. Some of the best college performers – Devin Taylor, Alex Lodise, Mason Neville – are expected to be selected in the late first and supplemental round – roughly between slots #25-45. Lodise would be a nice alternative to bats like Aiva Arquette and Wehiwa Aloy, both expected to be gone in the first half of the first round. A guy with some contact questions, but who profiles at 3B and has significant raw power. Taylor, one of the most polished bats in this class though one with defensive questions, is not expected to last past the early 30s. Neville, the NCAA home run leader, has more serious whiff concerns (and some interesting home-road splits) that might have him sliding further, but it’s hard to imagine him making past some of the East Coast teams into the second round.
So with that caveat, let me highlight four players I really like, and then expand to some other candidates that are worth consideration.
Quentin Young
(Draft rankings: BA: 55, MLB: 37, ESPN: 101, JustBaseball: 99)
People who have listened to my draft nattering for the past several months know that I’ve been keen on this kid since the offseason, and he’s arguably my favorite prospect in this draft class. Part of that is that he’s a SoCal kid (Oaks Christian HS in Westlake Village). Part of it is that he has impeccable bloodlines, being the nephew of both Delmon and Dmitri Young, each with solid MLB resumes. But even more, it’s because he can do stuff like this:
It’s over-the-moon power, 70-grade at ceiling. He also has a now-tool 70-grade arm that makes him ideally suited to 3B or RF, two positions that have been perennial underfilled for the Angels going back fifteen years, roughly to the Vlad/Glaus/Figgins era. Young has exceptional bat speed and exit velocities, and was one of the standout performers at the recent Combine.
He’s made progress on his main area of concern from an inconsistent 2024 showcase tour – quality of contact. It’s still a power-over-hit profile, but he’s starting to simplify the swing and chase less. He’s also played a serviceable shortstop throughout much of spring, speaking to his athleticism, but his size makes him a good bet to move to a corner sooner rather than later.
Here’s another look at him at last week’s Combine:
Young has been ranked all over the board, from late first round to early third round, but his explosive showing at the Combine, and the fact that he matches what analytically driven teams like the Dodgers and Red Sox like a lot, makes me think he goes between #30 and #40, and is the least likely of these draft candidates to make it to the Angels in the second round. If that extra CBA selection were there, this is who I’d almost certainly select. He’d be the biggest raw talent the farm has seen since Jo Adell. It’s a high-variance profile with some risk, but also upside to rival potential 1-1 Ethan Holliday.
Gavin Turley
(Draft rankings: BA: 67, MLB: 78, ESPN: UR, JustBaseball: 116)
Turley’s is a classic patience-power profile – he took a 58 game on-base streak into his elimination game, and it’s still unbroken. He’s never put up less than a 16% walk rate in each of his three years with the Beavers, and he hit 53 HRs over three seasons (625 PAs), peaking at 20 HRs this season. Some of those at the MCWS were dramatic and decisive.
There’s still some whiff here – but he made progress each year in taming it, bringing it down to 22% this year. His 155 wRC+ this season beat teammate Aiva Arquette by just a tick. It’s a guy who might put up a lower batting average and higher K%, but will take his walks and produce enough XBHs to compensate.
He’s also a bit of a character:
While he’s played all three outfield positions at various points, it’s largely a LF profile that, in optimal scenarios, would provide a nice replacement for Taylor Ward when/if he clocks out after 2026. In terms of potential availability, Turley is currently ranked as likely second-rounder, but he showed well against higher competition in the playoffs. It’s not impossible he could fall to the Angels in the third round, but usable power in a polished college performer like this doesn’t last long.
James Quinn-Irons
(Draft rankings: MLB:175, BA:89, ESPN:UR, JustBaseball: 94)
Quinn-Irons is probably the most intriguing smaller school performer in this year’s class. I could probably devote an article as long as this one just to JQI – he’s that compelling.
In the early part of the college season, he was tagged as a more conventional mid-majors Day Two pick, probably someone selected in Rounds 6-10. Mid-majors pedigree and inconsistent contact quality will do that. But he posted so loudly and so consistently all year – he ended the year with a ridiculous video game slash of .415/.520/.726 – he’s pushed his way easily into the third round conversation at this point. For model-driven teams who pay attention to batted ball data, he’s a prize across the board. In their profile of hitters with the best balance of batted ball characteristics, Baseball America had Quinn-Irons at the top, with top three max exit velocities (111mph), and above average contact and chase rates.
JQI is a physical specimen – a highly athletic and strong 6’5” lefty who has played all OF positions, but who was surprisingly rangy and nimble in George Mason’s center field this season, with solid DRS scores on defense. In other words, Quinn-Irons is what you can get when you can’t get Jace LaViolette, and there’s an outside chance he outperforms Jace in pro ball.
He led all college outfielders in WAR. He made first-team All American in Baseball America’s end of the season awards: “the best season of any mid-major bat in the country…he posted a gaudy .419/.523/.734 slash line with 42 extra-base hits, 85 RBIs and 36 stolen bases”. And he followed all that up with top five max exit velocities in batting practices at the MLB Draft Combine.
Exceptional mid-major bats, given lesser competition in a program without postseason experience, don’t always pan out at the highest levels. But this one is one to dream on.
Mitch Voit
(Draft rankings: MLB: 63, ESPN: 66, The Athletic: 66, BA: 231, JustBaseball: 102)
I suspect this guy is under-the-radar for many readers here. MLB Pipeline comps him to Jake Cronenworth, and I think that’s fitting. It’s a valuable utility profile with more power than usual. He played 3B, 1B and RF for Michigan before settling in nicely at 2B in his junior season. He’s also pitched as a starter for Michigan, with a FB touching 93, testifying to an arm that can play at about any position on the field.
His batted ball data is excellent. In late May, Baseball America profiled the top ten hitters in D1 Baseball who were above average in contact %, chase % and 90th percentile exit velocity, and Mitch was right in that mix with batters like Ike Irish, Devin Taylor and Andrew Fischer.
He walked more than he struck out in 2025, with a BB% north of 15% and a tiny 13% K rate. He had 35 extra base hits, with 14 HRs and 14 steals, leading to a 157 wRC+ that edged Arquette, Aloy and Turley. He led all D1 second basemen in WAR over the season, and part of that value came on defense, where he delivered 13+ DRS. This is not a bat-only package.
It’s a very well-rounded, high-floor player with 50-60 grade tools across the board, and few obvious deficits. The swiss-army-knife profile might be limiting to 2nd-3rd round consideration, but my guess is that the model-driven teams push him up the boards.
To my mind, this is the superior version of utility darling Kyle Lodise (cousin of Alex), himself a compelling prospect in his own right, though one I suspect with less usable game power, and less of an arm. I also like him better than LSU’s Daniel Dickerson, whose wood bat track record is poor, and whose power and positional flexibility doesn’t reach Voit’s respective ceilings.
2nd-3rd round: Expanding the (Out)Field
| Position/School | Stats | Draft rankings | |
| Max Williams | LH OF, Florida State | .316/.383/.598 113 wRC+, 19HRs | MLB:81, BA:94, ESPN: 90 |
| Korbyn Dickerson | RH CF, Indiana | .314/.381/.632,123 wRC+, 19HRs | MLB:83, BA:118, ESPN: 60 |
| Ryan Wideman | RH CF, Western Kentucky | .398/.466/.652 61 wRC+,10HRs, 46SBs | MLB:146, BA:82, ESPN: UR |
| Jacob Parker | LH OF, prep (Miss.) | .525 avg / 17 HRs 45 BBs vs 13 Ks | MLB:109, BA:115, ESPN: UR |
| William Patrick | RH OF, prep (Louis.) | .421/.553/.719 | MLB:90, BA:97, ESPN: 145 |
These five are highlighted here for their power profiles, though Wideman and Patrick are also emphatically contact and speed guys.
Williams and Dickerson are similar players, power-over-hit, with solid performances in competitive conferences. Each with slightly unorthodox, crouched batting stances. 20-25 HR projection, above-average, though maybe not plus in terms of game power. Strong exit velocities for both. Williams has the edge for me given he’s a lefty and a year younger than Dickerson.
Wideman is a fairly divisive prospect. Big time performer at a smaller school, he was the Conference USA Player of the Year. He has monster 70-grade speed and stole 46 bags, among the leaders in NCAA ball. He also has above average power, with massive exit velocities, and has an insane 6’5” frame with incredible athleticism. The problem is he chases frequently out of the zone, and drives everything into the ground, leading his GB percentage to rank among the worst in D1 baseball. This is a player with a very high ceiling and very low floor, who needs maturation of approach to succeed in pro ball.
Parker and Patrick are high schoolers with big power ceilings, especially Jacob Parker, the identical twin of JoJo Parker, a certain first-rounder. Parker is #2 in the nation in terms of HRs this year. It’s plus all-fields power in an ideal left-handed frame, though a tendency to sell out for power, and exposure to lesser competition makes him a talent more on the fringes of the top 100. Patrick is a tooled-up multisport athlete with 70 grade speed and potential plus defense in centerfield. Fairly simple swing with loft that can project to above-average power and quality contact, but the hit tool is still a projection piece, and it could take some time to come together in pro ball. LSU commit, so he’d have to be a big bonus baby.
Wideman and the prep bats are probably good value should they fall to the fourth round where the Angels have two picks (due to the failure to sign Ryan Prager last year). Parker or Patrick might be someone the Angels could target with pool savings should they manifest a discount at the top.
Others of note
Charles Davalan, Brendan Compton, Nick Dumesnil
Each of these players are likely second rounders, though each have characteristics I think fit the Angels a bit less at the moment, unless they’re seeking CFers
Davalan has many fans in various draft rooms, as his in-zone contact quality verges on the elite, and he can sneak into some line drive power that may project to 15 HRs as an undersized lefty with a clear leadoff profile. Some uncharacteristically poor defense helped eliminate his team in the MCWS, but he was one of Arkansas’s true catalysts in the run to Omaha.
Compton has some of the biggest raw power of the entire draft class – at the Combine he displayed the top exit velocities of any player prep or college. But it’s batting practice power at the moment, as he struggles mightily against velocity, and regressed badly in 2025, hitting .271/.379/.486 with 9 HRs. A club with a strong hitting development culture will probably take him early anyhow, as the power and athleticism is real, even if the in-game swing decisions are currently suspect.
Dumesnil is an interesting player – great athlete with good footspeed, and solid bat speed. Likely sticks in centerfield. His sophomore year showed the stuff of a first rounder – 19 HRs, K rate around 13%, wRC+ outstanding at 168. That made his 2025 season a bit more perplexing – his K rate shot up to almost 20% while his power production declined. He became more of speed/defense guy, with some game changing plays in the field and 27 stolen bags on the basepaths. If a team thinks they can bring those two seasons together, it’s a valuable package that could go early in Round Two.
And….that’s what I have for the moment.
I do have thoughts on available pitching in rounds two and three, but I’ll save those for another post.
My hope is to do three more posts like this pre-draft. One for additional bats in the round 4-6 range (where the Angels have four picks), and one for intriguing late rounders, unranked players and senior signs. Finally, one for some pitching prospects that could be sprinkled into what I hope is, for the first time in almost a decade, a hitter-heavy draft.
