College Baseball’s Winners And Losers From The 2024 MLB Draft
Image credit: LSU's Michael Braswell (Photo by Eddie Kelly/ProLook Photos)
Every year, the draft has significant implications not only for MLB but also for college baseball teams around the country. How programs navigated the draft both in terms of rostered players and incoming recruits will shape the college game for the next few seasons.
Some of the fallout won’t be known until this year’s August 1st signing deadline. But we can make reasonable assumptions about which players are and aren’t likely to sign. The draft rules make it imperative that teams select players in the top 10 rounds they know they can sign because, otherwise, they’ll lose the pick value from their bonus pools. While that isn’t true of rounds 11-20, most of those drafted players typically sign, too. Since the implementation of the 20-round draft in 2021, about 85% of players drafted in rounds 11-20 inked contracts.
Specific to college players, 45 players four-year schools went unsigned over the last three years. Thirty-one of those unsigned collegians went in the final five rounds of the draft. If a college player is going to return to school, he most likely picked heard his name called during rounds 16-20.
Exceptions and surprises are possible, and there probably will be one or two. But we still have a good idea of how things will shake out. With that in mind, here are some of college baseball’s winners and losers from the draft.
Winners
College baseball
The number of prep players drafted in the top 10 rounds continues to be less than 20%, and this year’s draft had the fewest number of prep players drafted in the first 20 rounds ever. All that means MLB is siphoning off fewer elite players before they get to college baseball.
When you combine those numbers with the fact that the first eight picks of the draft were all collegians, things look even better for college baseball. There are a lot of reasons why all of that happened—the strength of this year’s prep class, MLB rule changes and name, image and likeness deals to name a few—but the upshot is that college baseball comes out of the draft in a great place.
The talent pipeline that has raised the level of play in the sport remains strong. The biggest signing bonuses of the year are going to go to college players, which you can be sure will make it into recruiting pitches across the country. The future of college sports and college baseball may be uncertain, but at the highest level of the game, things are looking very rosy.
LSU
The Tigers were winners before the draft began, as local product William Schmidt, the highest-ranked prep righthander, announced Sunday he was removing his name from draft consideration. His decision came after the deadline to formally withdraw, but the result was effectively the same. Schmidt went undrafted and LSU got the highest-ranked pitcher to make it to campus since Jack Leiter in 2019.
The good news didn’t stop there. LSU signed the No. 1 class in November, and it predictably took some hits, as it had four players drafted. But it should still end up with nine players who ranked on the top 500 draft prospects list and slot in at No. 1 or 2 in the recruiting class rankings.
On top of that, shortstop Michael Braswell, first baseman Jared Jones and outfielder Josh Pearson all went undrafted and will return to Baton Rouge. Transfer commits Dalton Beck, Luis Hernandez and Chris Stanfield all made it through the draft, too, with only righthander Luke Hayden getting picked.
Jay Johnson will again have one of the most talented rosters in the country in 2025.
Oregon State
The Beavers had what has become a pretty normal draft for them, which is to say, they crushed it. Second baseman Travis Bazzana went first overall, giving the program two No. 1 picks in the last six years. Oregon State also became just the fourth college to have produced more than one first-overall pick and joined Vanderbilt as the only school with two No. 1 picks in the 21st century. In all, Oregon State produced seven draft picks this season, tied for eighth-most nationally. The player development machine in Corvallis remains strong.
Meanwhile, for the third straight year, Oregon State held on to a top-100 recruit. Righthander Dax Whitney, the Idaho Gatorade Player of the Year, went undrafted after being ranked No. 45 in the class. He will now head to Corvallis, following in the footsteps of Gavin Turley (2022) and Trent Caraway (2023), who were among the highest ranked players in their classes to make it to campus.
That would be reason to celebrate in any draft, but it feels like an even bigger deal this year. With Oregon State left out of this summer’s conference consolidation and preparing to play an independent schedule in the spring, showing that it can both still produce elite talent and haul in new recruits is of even bigger importance. Mission accomplished for Mitch Canham and his staff this week.
The SEC
Is this one cheating a bit? Yes. But while I separated out LSU because it will bring in the highest-ranked player, know that just about everyone else in the conference had a great week, too.
I argued on Sunday that no one had a better day than Tennessee. The Vols kept things rolling over the next two days and look like they’ll bring in two top-100 draft prospects. Texas lost three recruits on Sunday but mostly kept the class together otherwise and gets back All-American shortstop Jalin Flores. Florida is in a similar situation after losing Kellon Lindsey, but the Gators return shortstop Colby Shelton, lefthander Pierce Coppola and catcher Luke Heyman. Auburn didn’t have a recruit picked until the 19th round and should have a top 10 class. Arkansas kept its class together. So did Georgia and Texas A&M and Mississippi and Vanderbilt.
The rich got richer this week.
Losers
There weren’t that many losers this year. Even the programs that had a lot of recruits drafted either offset those losses through volume or by getting important players from their current rosters back for another year. Virginia, for instance, had five recruits drafted in the first 15 rounds, but returns outfielder Harrison Didawick and righthander Jay Woolfolk, both of whom are top 300 players in the draft class from their current roster. The Cavaliers will make that trade.
Even though it was easier than ever for teams to avoid this list, I’m obligated to pick at least couple losers.
Notre Dame
Notre Dame’s top recruit was prep righthander Cameron Sullivan, who ranked No. 106 on our board. Prep righthanders are a tough demographic to read in the draft right now, as some teams prefer to completely steer away from them, while others are still happy to draft them. And that’s what the Guardians did in the seventh round with Sullivan. The Dodgers followed a round later by drafting prep outfielder Brendan Tunink, another of the Irish’s commits.
To see those two players come off the board in back-to-back rounds at a time when few high school players are getting picked—and fewer still with Sullivan’s pedigree—was a tough one from the outside.
In between the Sullivan and Tunink picks, Notre Dame also saw lefthander Jack Findlay selected by the Cardinals. He didn’t pitch this spring, as he was recovering from Tommy John surgery, and so he could have returned with two years of eligibility. Instead, he’ll head to pro ball.
Schools outside the SEC
Each year, I track every prep and junior college player drafted and make note of the school to which each is committed. I do this mostly because it helps me get a head start on the final ranking of recruiting classes, but it’s also instructive to see who had a good and bad draft. After all, having a year when the draft cleans out a recruiting class can truly set a program back.
I know that’s not the most refined way to evaluate this. Colleges have done their own signability checks over the months leading up to the draft and have a pretty good feeling going into the event about who they are at risk to lose. In some cases, they have already accounted for those losses, whether that’s through the portal or through the junior college ranks. Any time a school signs an elite player, it comes with a risk that said player won’t show up. And not all draft picks are created equal, either. A player selected 19th overall is signing. One selected in the 19th round may well not.
Having said all of that, I can’t help but be taken aback by the discrepancy in this year’s results.
Sixteen schools had at least three recruits drafted, seven of which are SEC schools. That’s very much in line with the numbers from the previous three years.
But unlike previous years, SEC schools didn’t dominated the top of the list. Four of the five schools to have had at least five recruits drafted are from other conferences. Most of the players in those classes are likely gone. Florida State, Miami, Oklahoma State and Virginia had a combined 24 recruits drafted. Twenty-one of them went in the top 15 rounds, where signing is the most likely. Meanwhile, the seven SEC schools with at least three recruits drafted combined for 25 picks. Fifteen of them were in the top 15 rounds.
Further, next season there will be nine freshmen in the SEC who this spring ranked among the top-100 draft prospects, barring a deadline surprise. The rest of the country will have six total.
Maybe I’m making too much out of those results. Maybe I need to expand the parameters to incorporate more schools or transfer players. But the way I read that, is the SEC has figured out a way to hold on to its top recruits better than the rest of the country. Whether that’s through NIL money, facilities, the promise of playing on the biggest stage, MLB success or something else, it seems like it’s happening. And considering how much the SEC is already dominating the sport, that kind of recruiting advantage only figures to add to the conference’s powerful position.
