2019 Top 500 MLB Draft Prospects Broken Down By Demographic

Image credit: Bobby Witt Jr. (Photo by Tom DiPace)

Baseball America expanded our BA 500 draft rankings to include all 500 scouting reports Tuesday afternoon, but that simply isn’t enough. 

We also pulled out a few numbers to try and show how the class breaks down from a broad view. Below you can find information on where players come from, their positions, current schools and more. 

To see our full 2019 MLB Draft prospects rankings, click here. 

 

Source

Of the 500 players ranked, 268 of them come from four-year universities, making up 53.6 percent of the pool of players. If you include the 38 junior college prospects in that number to get a purely college number, the class shakes out to 61.2 percent coming from the college ranks, leaving the remaining 38.8 percent being made up of high school players. For those who don’t want to break out the calculator, that’s 194 players from the prep ranks.

States

While it’s again a down year for California at the top of the class, the state never fails to produce a swath of prospects on depth. The state leads the way with 92 players (18.4 percent) in the BA 500. The next-closest state is Texas, which has 53 (10.6 percent), followed by Florida with 47 (9.4 percent), Georgia with 31 (6.2 percent) and North Carolina with 26 (5.2 percent).

With California, 64 of the players come from the southern half of the state, while 28 players come from the northern half.

If you look at just the top 100 prospects, however, a new narrative unfolds. Texas becomes the biggest talent-producer in the top fifth of the class, accounting for 17 of the top 100 prospects, followed by California (12), Florida (11), North Carolina (8) and Louisiana (5). The 2019 Texas class has a chance to be one of the best groups for the state this century, and the top 14 prospects from the Lone State State are ranked within the top 56.

Position

Here’s how the BA 500 breaks down by position (two-way players have been slotted into their primary position or the position in which scouts view their ceiling to be higher, as each case dictates).

RHP — 203 (40.6 percent)
OF — 94 (18.8 percent)
LHP — 60 (12 percent)
SS — 60 (12 percent)
C — 39 (7.8 percent)
3B — 23 (4.6 percent)
1B — 14 (2.8 percent)
2B — 7 (1.4 percent)

Again, once you select for just the top 100 prospects, the narrative shifts and aligns more accurately with the consistent narrative that the 2019 pitching class is among the weakest scouts have seen in years.

RHP — 33
SS — 18
OF — 17
LHP — 13
3B — 11
C —4
1B — 3
2B — 1

Hitters constitute 54 percent of the top 100 players in the class, while pitching comes in at 46 percent.

Schools

Georgia, UCLA and Vanderbilt lead all schools with seven prospects among the BA 500, while Mississippi, North Carolina, San Jacinto (Texas) JC, UC Santa Barbara and IMG Academy High follow with six players apiece. The runner ups on the high school side are both Texas programs, as Colleyville Heritage and Lake Travis (Austin) each have three players ranked.