Bobby Lanigan

Plenty of scouts in the Northeast prefer Lanigan to Scott Barnes, even though Lanigan is a Division II righthander from a wood-bat conference and Barnes is a Big East lefty. That's a testament to Lanigan's prototypical 6-foot-5 pitcher's frame and quality fastball/slider repertoire, which helped him go 4-4, 1.94 with 87 strikeouts and 16 walks in 79 innings this spring. He's not a great athlete, but he's physical and durable with has a loose arm and an easy delivery. At his best, Lanigan holds the low-90s velocity on his solid-average fastball and touches 93, but a dead arm down the stretch caused him to drop into the 87-89 range. During the course of a game, Lanigan will show plenty of above-average sliders in the 82-86 range, but he'll also leave below-average sliders up in the zone; the pitch grades out as average overall but projects as plus. His changeup has good arm speed, but he seldom used it in college. Lanigan should be drafted in the top five rounds and projects as potential back-of-the-rotation starter.