2023’s First Rounder with a Bullet

It’s like second Christmas.

From 2015-22, one player per year has put up first-round value from the 12th round or later (15 teamers):

2015: Keuchel
2016: Villar
2017: Judge
2018: Snell
2019: KMarte
2020: Voit
2021: Mullins
2022: Adolis

History says another does it this year. Who ya got?

— Ryan Bloomfield (@RyanBHQ) March 20, 2023

Ryan Bloomfield of BaseballHQ has conducted this exercise every year for some time now. It’s one of my favorite exercises, if only because it has yet to fail us in at least eight years. (I’m pretty sure there were representatives from 2014 and before, too, and Bloomfield has simply tastefully truncated the list for us.) But, also, it shows the possible potential impact of a late-round draft pick. Obviously, you don’t want to waste any picks. But if you know where to look, it feels less random.

The common thread connecting these players is at least one extreme outlier tool—or five well-above-average tool. Dallas Keuchel was MLB’s reigning ground-ball king. Jonathan Villar had 80-grade speed. Aaron Judge has 80-grade power; Luke Voit, 70-grade with above-average contact skills. Cedric Mullins and Adolis García are five-tool guys. Blake Snell was a burgeoning ace who spiked a lucky ERA and 21 wins but was otherwise deserved of his rank. The only questionable one here is Ketel Marte because of the timing: he hit 32 home runs when the ball was at its liveliest and has yet to replicate that kind of power. But his hit tool is plus-plus, and sometimes all it takes is lucking into a little bit extra in one of the other categories to push you over the top. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is it’s much easier to sike first-round value as a hitter than as a pitcher.

So, who could it be this year? Let’s use the general categories outlined above as the framework for identifying potential first-round silver bullets. Keep in mind this is mostly for fun, but also it is deadly, deadly serious. In order of National Fantasy Baseball Championship (NFBC) average draft position (ADP):

NFBC ADP 185.86: Kodai Senga, NYM SP. An “unknown” player has yet to crack the first round from so far outside it. I think that’s exactly why it helps Senga. He’s not a traditional “crafty” pitcher from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) who keeps walks to a minimum. Senga carries bigger strikeout stuff than Kenta Maeda or Hisashi Iwakuma at their peaks, and both were NPB aces and MLB SP2s in their heydays. Senga is being drafted as the 70th pitcher (including relievers) off NFBC draft boards, implying an SP4 valuation. It’s hard to imagine worse from him given the previous performance and pedigree.

189.77: Joey Meneses, WSH 1B/OF. This has a Voit/García flavor to it: guys who didn’t get their shot until almost too late. The power is real, and the line drive-oriented swing plane suggests he can sustain a high BABIP.

194.65: Grayson Rodriguez, BAL SP. In a league of his own in terms of pitching prospects, he should debut in late April and make an immediate splash. He’ll need some lucky breaks to wring 1st-round value out of five months of play (innings caps be damned), but if anyone could do it, seemingly he could.

197.84: Reid Detmers, LAA SP. In case you missed it, it is officially Reid Detmers SZN. After breaking out in the minors in 2021, things seem to come unraveled a bit last year. Fast-forward to 2023 spring training, and he is throwing a tight, hard gyro slider, and his fastball is up three ticks. If he wasn’t primed to break out two years ago, he sure is now.

202.72: Ryan McMahon, COL 3B. Rumor has it McMahon’s hardest-hit ball of spring is 4 mph harder than any other batted ball in his MLB career. An otherwise average player, if he unlocks premium power and catches the lucky breaks Coors Field has to offer…

209.60: Josh Rojas, ARI 2B/3B. This is not just because I’m a Rojas homer; it’s because it’s hard to know exactly who will benefit most from the new pickoff rules. Rojas ran wild in the minors, and he showcased those tendencies again last year. The rest of the skills are good enough, but the same could be said of Villar at the time; in fact, Villar’s other tools were arguably worse. Villar’s speed was better, yes, but the circumstances have changed. If Rojas finds himself itching on the basepaths, who knows? Maybe we see him running constantly. We can say that about nearly anyone projected for double-digit steals, which makes this kind of a crapshoot, but isn’t that kind of the point anyway?

209.87: Masataka Yoshida, BOS OF. The purest of the pure hitters with more pop than his projections give him credit for, Yoshida could be one of MLB’s best bats and be a robust four-category contributor.

222.81: Ramón Laureano, OAK OF. He’s a dual power-speed threat with a crippled batting average, but with some BABIP luck and a clean bill of health, again, who the heck knows?

223.39: Anthony Rendon, LAA 3B. As a disenchanted Angels fan, this is hard for me to write. But there’s Marte-esque potential here if—one of the biggest ‘ifs’ in all of fantasy baseball—if Rendon stays healthy. Allegedly this spring he hit the hardest ball he has hit since 2018. That’s hope. But hope can ruin a man, or whatever that line from Shawshank Redemption is.

249.09: Jorge Mateo, BAL SS. The prevailing assumption appears to be that Mateo is not long for Baltimore’s shortstop gig. Gunnar Henderson is here to stay, but he’s tabbed to fill the hot corner, leaving the 6-hole all to Mateo. He could go full Villar on us.

257.72: Esteury Ruiz, OAK OF. Speaking of full Villar, Ruiz stole eighty-five!!!!!!!!! bases in 114 minor-league games last year while hitting .332. The bat is nearly thumpless—he definitely won’t hit .300 in the majors—but, uhhhhhhhhhhh, wow.

262.65: Adalberto Mondesi, BOS SS. This is it. In the year everyone finally gives up on him, Mondesi will stay healthy, hit .210 with 20 home runs, and steal, like, 130 bases.

288.19: Jon Berti, MIA 2B/3B. If nothing else, this exercise is opening my eyes to the high volume of speed available late in drafts.

300.03: Spencer Torkelson, 1B DET. Seemingly every year, the best college hitter of the class is the best anyone has seen, ever. It was true of Torkelson, it’s true of Dylan Crews now, and it will be true of whomever comes after Crews. Snark aside, Tork has ~pedigree~.

337.97: Anthony Volpe, NYY SS. Helium. (Last year, Julio Rodríguez began the offseason outside the top-180 of NFBC ADP but was firmly entrenched in it by Opening Day. The same might be said of Volpe; if he returns first-round value, it might come with an asterisk.)

354.17: Luis García, WSH 2B/SS. See my bold predictions. I don’t know if he has all the tools to compile 1st-round value, but I have faith in the breakout, regardless of its eventual magnitude.

364.17: Kyle Bradish, BAL SP. A couple of smart people in the industry like Bradish as a dark-horse candidate to, as they say, “win your league.” I will say this about him: his two breaking pitches comp most closely to Joe Musgrove’s, and Bradish’s sorta-bad fastball was up a couple of ticks this spring. Musgrove’s fastball was not always great, either. It’s overly simplistic to say Bradish’s path to stardom here is a Musgrovian one, but Musgrove, like Snell, is a lesser ace who, at any point, with a couple of luck breaks in win and ERA variance, could elevate himself into Cy Young contention.

413.21: Brayan Bello, BOS SP. As long as he doesn’t miss too much time, Bello could develop into Boston’s next ace. His entire arsenal is nearly a dead ringer for Luis Castillo’s.

* * *

All right, it’s hard to imagine a first-rounder rising from the ashes of a post-400 pick, so I’ll stop there. Who do you think it will be?

P.S. Happy Opening Day, you degenerates!