I started the 2025 MLB Draft season in what looked like the best spot: the Shriners College Classic at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, an annual six-team event that often has some of the top draft talent in the country. That was certainly true here, with a slew of potential first-rounders across the Clemson, Texas, Arizona, Louisville, Oklahoma State, and Mississippi rosters, and plenty for me to see in the seven-plus games I saw before catching the last flight home on Sunday.
In the interests of not burying the lede here, none of these guys looked like they were top-10 picks in a typical year — which isn’t to say none of them will be, but that they didn’t look it this weekend. The player who probably had the strongest follows from teams coming into the spring had one of the worst weekends, likely because he’s dealing with an injury. There were, however, anywhere from six to 10 likely first-rounders in this event, and I’d guess at least 10 guys here will go on Day 1, so it was a fantastic showcase all in all, which is probably why I saw seven scouting directors there in person.
Clemson centerfielder Cam Cannarella was that guy who came into the spring with the highest “follows,” meaning the best evaluations coming out of the previous summer and fall. You may remember the highlight-reel catch he made in the NCAA Super Regionals last year, and he stood out from some of the other suspects for the top of this year’s draft because he doesn’t strike out very often — his strikeout rate in 2024 was less than half that of Jace LaViolette of Texas A&M, who is in that same tier of follows as Cannarella but for different reasons.
CAM CANNARELLA WITH THE WILLIE MAYS CATCH TO SAVE CLEMSON’S SEASON 😱 pic.twitter.com/HvVBVLZqRl
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) June 9, 2024
Unfortunately, Cannarella wasn’t 100 percent this weekend; he’s got some kind of shoulder issue and barely threw the ball in games, underhanding it in infield/outfield, and hitting the ball with much less authority when he managed to hit it at all.
He pulls his hands way back in his load, nearly barring his lead arm, and his arms are still all the way back there in the hinterlands when his front food is already planted, so his bat has a long way to travel to get to the zone. He does have good bat speed, probably excellent bat speed when he’s at full strength, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him grow into above-average power to the opposite field.
In the two-plus games I saw from him in Arlington, though, he missed a lot of pitches — 96 right down the middle, slider down and away, 94 in the zone, 94 down and in, slider in the zone — that he should have squared up or at least fouled off. I have said before I don’t think exit velocity is everything or close to it, so take this with that context in mind, but the fact that he didn’t hit a ball over 101 mph all weekend seemed like confirmation that something’s amiss with him physically.
He looked great in centerfield, making one really impressive play on a ball hit directly over his head near the wall, but Clemson had to send out a cutoff man to the cutoff man to help him get the ball back to the infield. I respect the kid for wanting to play, and in this case he’s almost certainly helping his team even while he’s hurting or at least not helping himself. If this issue lingers, he’ll be a real challenge for teams to evaluate on draft day since their last complete looks at him came in 2024.
Scouting Oklahoma State’s Nolan Schubart, Gabe Davis and Jayson Jones
Clemson squared off against Oklahoma State in the series’ opening game on Friday morning, so we got two potential first-round bats right out of the schute … er, chute, with the Cowboys’ hulking rightfielder Nolan Schubart. (I was filming his swings and a woman behind me asked if he was my son. Nolan Schubart is 6-foot-5. I just smiled and said “no.”) Schubart is strong, and he takes a pretty big swing, getting very rotational with some big lift in his finish, although he also has a long path to the ball and there’s definitely some swing and miss in there.
He did show that he could adjust to offspeed stuff, even within at-bats — in one, he saw changeups on the first two pitches, then got another on 0-2 and stayed back to slap it the other way for a hit. It’s probably power over hit in the end, but the ability to anticipate and stay on an offspeed pitch is a really good sign that maybe he’ll show more hit tool this year than last.
Oklahoma State started right-hander Gabe Davis, who’s had a number of non-baseball injuries recently, including a knee injury and a broken collarbone just in this past offseason. He was 93-97 with a potential 55 slider (out of the 20-80 scouting scale) and a 45 or so curveball, with the difference between the two exacerbated by his much better feel for the former pitch. He’s got huge legs and a strong pitcher’s build, while the delivery isn’t very smooth and he comes slightly across his body. It looked to me like he threw four- and two-seamers, with some good sink on the latter. I didn’t see another pitch for lefties, but for now I’d say there’s starter upside here and we’ll see where it goes the rest of the spring.
The Cowboys’ Jayson Jones had the hardest-hit ball I saw in the event, a homer at 116.5 mph that sounded every bit of it. That’s his carrying tool, for sure, and if he does that a handful of times this spring someone will draft him in the third round on the power alone.
Scouting Brendan Summerhill and the Arizona Wildcats
Game 2 featured Arizona and Mississippi, with nearly all of the prospects on the Arizona side — which didn’t help them win the game, mind you. Their leadoff hitter, Brendan Summerhill, gets the prize for the best hit tool of the draft-eligible guys there this weekend, and he did it by being quiet: it’s just a simple approach with good plate coverage and better plate discipline than his peers showed. He also didn’t hit anything especially hard, with a homer at 103 mph his best bolt that I saw, although I’d project more power on his body than Cannarella’s. He has 55 or better range in right but showed a 45 arm tops.
Arizona’s shortstop, Mason White, ambushed a 93-mph pitch for a homer that was the Wildcats’ only run in this game; he has outstanding bat speed and he’s not afraid to use it. He swings hard, all the time, and I got the sense he might have the Javy Báez approach where he decides whether he’s swinging before the pitcher has released the ball. He homered twice on the weekend and also struck out on a fastball that might have been up at his neck; he struck out twice looking, twice swinging on sliders, and twice swinging on fastballs that I saw.
He’s got at least a 60 arm at shortstop and his range is at least average, but he plays short a bit like he hits — aggressively, to say the least. He made a nice grab of a line drive in their third game and went to try to double a runner off first, but he dropped his arm and the throw was sloppy, so the ball went into the dugout, one run scored, and the floodgates opened for a big inning. I don’t know if a good throw gets the double play, but the bad throw didn’t have to happen.
Arizona’s third baseman was the most interesting man in the tournament, as Mathis Meurant is French, as in, he’s from France, born and raised. He went to Cochise Junior College in Arizona, where his brother players and a few other players from France have gone, but Meurant is something of a prospect. He absolutely looks the part, has good bat speed, and seems to know the strike zone a little bit. He starts with a very wide setup and his toe-tap gets him even wider, so he’s a little off-balance through contact, and I think he may be sacrificing a little power as a result. He did have a couple of 100 mph+ exit velocities and showed a strong arm and good reactions at third base. He’d be a name to watch even if he were from Paducah, maybe a top-5 rounds guy if he has a solid enough spring with good data to back it up.
Mason Morris the top Mississippi draft prospect
Mississippi has very little for this draft, with a lineup that hits but doesn’t have much projection to it. Their best prospect was a reliever who should have started one of their games, right-hander Mason Morris, who was their first guy out of the ‘pen in Game 1. He was 93-96 with a little ride to it, showing a cutter at 87-91 and a slider at 84-86, both potentially average, with a good delivery that finishes well out front. They don’t have three guys better than him in their rotation.
Scouting Texas and Louisville draft prospects, including potential riser Jared Spencer
The last two teams in the event were the ostensible host club, Texas, which played the night game on all three days, and Louisville.
The Longhorns had one of the bigger surprises of the event in Game 1 starter Jared Spencer, who was eligible but undrafted last year as a junior at Indiana State. The gangly left-hander was 93-97 in his outing with two above-average secondaries in his 86-88 mph slider with sharp horizontal break and a mid-80s changeup. It’s not a great operation, with some extraneous movement in the back of his delivery and what looks like a tendency to get a little under the ball at release, and while with the Sycamores he had walk rates over 10 percent each year. He had no issues with control or command on Friday, though; only 29 percent of his pitches were called balls, and he worked around the zone with his fastball while avoiding the heart of it. He’s a true senior, so he’ll probably end up an under-slot pick for someone, but if he holds this stuff all year he’s going to end up on Day 1 on merit, not dollar value.
Spencer outdueled his more famous opponent, Louisville right-hander Patrick Forbes, who did at least match Spencer in velocity at 93-97. Forbes comes from a low three-quarters slot with some slinging to the arm action, getting some ride to the fastball and living at the top of the zone with it to get whiffs. He showed a slider, a “cutter” that was just a harder slider, and changeup; the last pitch was the worst of the set, with no action at all, and the lower-velocity slider varied pretty widely in shape. That slot is going to lend itself well to anything that sweeps down and across the zone, which was what that cutter did the couple of times he threw it, making it a promising chase pitch for righties.
He only walked one, like Spencer, but his command was noticeably worse and his line reflects his ability to get hitters to chase and whiff more than it does his strike-throwing. He only became a full-time pitcher in 2024; he threw just 9 1/3 innings as a freshman while getting 109 PA off the bench, then threw 29 innings last year around a hand injury. His start on Friday of five innings matched his career high as a Cardinal. I do have questions about whether he can start; this arm slot tends to lead to platoon splits, and while we accept that pitchers get hurt all the time, sometimes that “slinging” arm action puts more stress on the arm than more conventional ones do. If he posts every week and regularly goes 5-6 innings, he’s got a good chance to get into the first round.
Texas outfielder Max Belyeu homered twice on the weekend, including one at 107.7 mph off a hanging slider from a right-hander in their blowout win against Mississippi on Saturday, making for a solid start to the season after he had a disappointing stint in the Cape Cod League last summer. He’s got quick hands and a loose, pretty easy swing with really good bat speed, but his issue has always been that he expands the zone way too easily, and even in a strong weekend (eight hits) that was still evident. He’s a corner outfielder who doesn’t run, projecting to above-average power but probably not plus, so he will have to show he can cut down on that chase rate to get into the first round.
Longhorns shortstop Jalin Flores was draft-eligible last year as a sophomore but went unselected, so he’s back in this year’s pool but will be dinged by some models because he turns 22 in July. He struck out seven times in 14 PA over the weekend, with pitchers putting 93-94 right by him.
A look at future draft prospects in the tournament
There were several underclassmen of note in the event too, and just about all of them played well, which, of course, is how you get one of those good follow grades put on you before your draft year.
Louisville left fielder Zion Rose raked as a freshman last year, hit well on the Cape, and went 6-for-13 in Arlington, squaring up fastballs all weekend. They were all singles and he didn’t have any especially hard-hit balls. He’s a catcher, but Louisville has made him a full-time outfielder, and I’m not really sure why they’d do so given the value he can provide behind the plate.
Texas outfielder Will Gasparino homered the other way in his first at bat of 2025, then homered once more on the weekend just for kicks; he went 5-for-14 and all of his hits went for extra bases. There’s still some length to his swing and some tendency to chase stuff out of the zone, all of which was there last year as well. He’s the son of Dodgers scouting director Billy Gasparino, who was a colleague of mine when we both worked for the Blue Jays in 2004-06.
Clemson right-hander Aidan Knaak was 90-95 with good deception thanks to an ultra-short arm action, flashing a plus curveball and a changeup with good tumble to it. He’s all the way on the first-base side of the rubber, I assume to try to get a little more deception against lefties, but he’s online to the plate and really worked the bottom of the zone in his first three innings before his stuff started to drift up in the fourth.
Oklahoma State shortstop Avery Ortiz’s first homer was a surprise — he was batting ninth, and he’s not that physical — but the second was more like proof that he’s got more juice than you’d expect from the frame. He showed good command of the zone, too, and was solid at shortstop, where he’s moving after playing mostly second base as a freshman.
Clemson’s Collin Priest transferred from Michigan this offseason, DHing in two of the three games, showing both strength (he doubled at 110 mph) and whiff (I had him missing half of the pitches he swung at). He played first base in Ann Arbor, and he’ll need to do that and to boost that contact rate, which was an issue for him last spring too (31 percent whiff rate, per Synergy Sports).
(Top photo of Cannarella: Ken Ruinard / USA Today)
