1st Tier: Kyle Wright, Alex Faedo
2nd Tier: Alex Lange, Tanner Houck, Clarke Schmidt, Wil Crowe, Corbin Martin
3rd Tier: Blaine Knight, Bryce Montes de Oca, Trevor Stephan, Tyler Johnson
Others: Keegan Thompson, Zach Pop
The SEC, or the Southeastern Conference, is baseball's premier college conference, including South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Louisiana State, Texas A&M, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky. More than anything, the SEC is known for producing high quality arms, recently David Price (Vanderbilt), Max Scherzer (Missouri), Dallas Keuchel (Arkansas), Michael Wacha (Texas A&M), and Drew Pomeranz (Ole Miss) among many, many others. Aside from the track record, one reason teams love SEC arms is that the pitchers get tested against the highest levels of collegiate competition, giving teams the best idea of how they'll perform going forward. Since all of these players play in the same conference and are therefore mostly context-neutral, I included their 2017 stats in each tier.
Admittedly, I'm just sort of making excuses to write about and compare different sets of players at this point, and this is of no offense to the ACC, led by powerhouses Louisville, North Carolina, Clemson, Florida State, Miami, and Virginia, among others (somewhere in the distance, my own mediocre baseball school in the ACC, Virginia Tech, screams for a mention).
Tier I (Wright, Faedo)
Kyle Wright (Vanderbilt): 5-6, 3.40 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, 121/31 K/BB
Alex Faedo (Florida): 7-2, 2.70 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 123/34 K/BB
Kyle Wright and Alex Faedo were roughly equal coming into the season, and my slight preference for Wright turned out to be correct (so far) as the Vanderbilt ace has pushed himself to the very top of the draft. In fact, he has an excellent chance of going first overall to the Twins. Wright throws in the low to mid 90's with a devastating curveball/slider combination and a solid changeup. He has arguably the best combination of floor (#4 starter or set-up man/closer) and ceiling (ace) in this draft, though teams would have liked to see the 6'4" righty dominate the SEC just a little bit more, and he got roughed up against #1 ranked Oregon State yesterday. Factoring in Wright's tough final start against Oregon State (his ERA was below 3.00 beforehand), Faedo actually put up better numbers, but he'll almost certainly be the second SEC arm drafted. After knee surgeries in the fall, his stuff took a while to bounce back, but he sits in the low 90's with arguably the best slider in the draft class. The 6'5" righty has a more durable but less projectable build than Wright, and like his Vanderbilt counterpart, the Gator ace has a long track record of success in the SEC. While he won't go first overall, he could hear his name in the top ten and almost certainly in the top 20.
Tier II (Lange, Houck, Schmidt, Crowe, Martin)
Alex Lange (LSU): 9-5, 2.87 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 124/34 K/BB
Tanner Houck (Missouri): 4-7, 3.33 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 95/24 K/BB
Clarke Schmidt (South Carolina): 4-2, 1.30 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 70/18 K/BB
Wil Crowe (South Carolina): 6-5, 3.41 ERA, 1.30 WHIP, 90/31 K/BB
Corbin Martin (Texas A&M): 7-3, 2.99 ERA, 1.38 WHIP, 87/36 K/BB
Alex Lange's draft stock is still riding the momentum of his insane freshman season (12-0, 1.97 ERA, 1.17 WHIP), and he is one of my favorite pitchers in this draft class. While many rankings have dropped him from the top 20 or even the top 30, he remains at #16 for me because I love his combination of SEC performance and solid arsenal. He throws in the low to mid 90's with one of the best curveballs in the class, and his changeup even has plus potential. Control has held him back when he fails to come back on-line with his deceptive but inefficient delivery, an it is what keeps him out of the top half of the first round conversation. Meanwhile, Tanner Houck has experienced falling stock for most of the spring, coming in as a potential top ten pick and likely finishing as a late first rounder. He can pump his plus to plus-plus fastball into the upper 90's, but he's sat more in the low 90's this spring, which is troublesome because he lacks a true put-away offspeed pitch. Combine that with an atypical delivery, and many project him as a future reliever, though he does have surprisingly good command. If you take a look at Clarke Schmidt's stats, you can see that he was positioning himself as a possible top ten pick, but he blew out his elbow and is now rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. That said, the stuff is pretty great, as you'd expect from the numbers. He rolls a sinking low to mid 90's fastball with a solid slider/curveball combination, giving him plenty of weapons against today's Fly Ball Revolution. Teams have shown more and more willingness to draft pitchers after going under the knife, but Schmidt already had durability questions before the injury and this only raises more question marks. His teammate, Wil Crowe, had Tommy John surgery that caused him to miss his junior year, but he's back as a redshirt junior and has pitched well enough to be drafted in the first two rounds. Unlike the 6'1", 200 lb Schmidt, Crowe is a big boy at 6'2", 250 lbs. He should be more durable and is a safer bet to reach the majors, though his upside his much lower. Corbin Martin is a fairly polarizing prospect, as he has great stuff and pitched very well in the Cape Cod League last year, but he never was was able to perform in the SEC until this year. In relief, his fastball sits in the mid to upper 90's, but it is more low to mid 90's as a starter. His curveball is a plus pitch and he has a solid slider too, and with a decent changeup, the only thing missing is command; after walking 5.89 and 7.18 per nine innings in his first two seasons, he dropped that number to 3.98 in 2017, but it is still very high and leads many to believe he'll end up back in the bullpen.
Tier III (Knight, Montes de Oca, Stephan, Johnson)
Blaine Knight (Arkansas): 8-4, 3.28 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 96/20 K/BB
Bryce Montes de Oca (Missouri): 4-5, 4.43 ERA, 1.39 WHIP, 61/42 K/BB
Trevor Stephan (Arkansas): 6-3, 2.87 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, 120/20 K/BB
Tyler Johnson (South Carolina): 1-2, 2.39 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, 40/15 K/BB
Blaine Knight is a draft eligible sophomore at Arkansas, turning 21 later this month. At 6'3" 165 lbs, he has one of the skinniest frames in this class, and could use to add some good weight. Where he's at now is pretty good, too, as he uses his well-located solid fastball/slider combo to get outs in bunches. All he has to do to guarantee starting is to continue developing his changeup and proving his durability, as he has most of the tools needed to be a mid-rotation force. Bryce Montes de Oca has a unique profile: standing at 6'7" and weighing 265 lbs, he's one of the biggest players in this class, and his heavily sinking fastball can hit 100 out of the bullpen. He has massive command problems as well as a medical history, and to top it all off, he has one of the coolest names in the draft. Those are the basics. Montes de Oca has been used as a starter for Missouri this season, though most, including myself, see him as a reliever at the next level, where he can blow hitters away with his velocity and hard curveball. He's among the riskiest picks in the college ranks, though, because he made just eight appearances over his first two seasons due to injuries, and he has walked 42 batters in 61 innings this season, showing almost no feel for locating pitches. Knight's Arkansas teammate, Trevor Stephan, has been an instant hit in Fayetteville, as the numbers show. Like Knight, he throws and locates a low to mid 90's fastball, but his secondary stuff lags behind his teammate's. His hard slider and decent changeup have been enough to get hitters out in the SEC, which is certainly saying something, but they'll both need to improve if he wants to cut it as a reliever at the higher levels. Tyler Johnson, a teammate of Schmidt's and Crowe's at South Carolina, is already a reliever. He runs his upper 90's fastball to both sides of the plate, and his decent slider has helped him dominate as the Gamecocks' closer. He did miss time with a sore arm this season, which caused him to be inconsistent even when he was on the mound and also hurt his command.
Others (stats only)
Keegan Thompson (Auburn): 7-4, 2.41 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, 75/17 K/BB
Zach Pop (Kentucky): 1-1, 3.48 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, 20/13 K/BB
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