Major League Baseball’s amateur draft is just a few weeks away: the Cleveland Guardians, for the first time in franchise history, will make the No. 1 selection come Sunday, July 14. The Guardians have previously chosen No. 2 on five occasions, including most recently in 1992, when they picked Paul Shuey, a right-hander from the University of North Carolina.
As part of the lead-up to the draft, CBS Sports has spent the last few weeks breaking down the draft class from every angle. That’s included ranking the 30 best players in the class, and, more recently, analyzing who has the best chance at going No. 1. Every summer, we make a point of highlighting a few players whose stock appears to be on the rise, albeit not enough to land in the top 30.
Predictably, given the headline above, that’s what you’ll find in this piece: Four players who we’re higher on now than we were entering the season.
With all that fine print out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. (Do note that the players are presented in alphabetical order.)
1. Gage Jump, LHP, LSU
Jump’s name should be familiar to hardcore readers; we’ve covered him since 2021, when he was a promising prepster from California with a commitment to UCLA. Unfortunately, his stock has been hard to place because of how little he’s pitched over the interim years. He made seven appearances in 2022, then underwent Tommy John surgery that wiped out his 2023 campaign. Jump returned to the mound this spring, appearing 17 times (15 starts) and compiling a 3.47 ERA and a 4.59 strikeout-to-walk ratio. He punctuated his season in the SEC tournament, delivering seven one-run innings against Georgia. Jump is on the shorter side (he’s listed at 6-foot even), but he has a quality arsenal and it’s possible that he comes off the board sometime within the first 50 picks.
2. Kash Mayfield, LHP, Elk HS (OK)
Mayfield has a good chance of being selected in the first round. He’s a physical lefty (listed at 6-foot-4) capable of touching into the upper-90s despite a delivery that looks like he’s playing catch. He’s also shown a feel for spin, giving teams plenty of right-tail outcomes to dream upon. It’s the left-tail outcomes — those most commonly associated with hard-throwing prep pitchers — that kept him just outside of the top 30. Nevertheless, we doubt he makes it to Oklahoma State.
3. Wyatt Sanford, SS, Independence HS (TX)
Sanford is a lefty hitter with the glove to stick at shortstop for the long haul. Scouts are split on their evaluations of his bat, and a team on the higher end of the projections could pop him in the first or supplemental round. Sanford’s father, Chance, was a 27th-round pick who appeared in 19 big-league games during the late ’90s. We’ll see if Wyatt can match or exceed that amount of big-league service time, but we feel confident that he’s going much, much higher in the draft.
4. Ryan Sloan, RHP, York HS (IL)
As with Mayfield, it’s easy to envision Sloan going somewhere in the first round. He’s a physical right-hander who already looks the part of a big-league pitcher. He has a promising arsenal, beginning with a stiff fastball, and he’s shown enough promise with his secondary pitches to project him as a potential mid-rotation starter. The usual caveats apply about prep right-handers, but there’s almost no chance that he finds himself on the Wake Forest campus come fall.