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Ten Week Check-in with 1-1 Candidates for 2025 Draft

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Here’s our fifth check-in on the 1-1 candidates.

Important Draft related news and notes that have published since our last posting:

  • MLBPipeline staff did a mini “mock draft” on 4/10/25 talking just about top 10 picks, and there’s absolutely a shift in the discussion. Three of the top 5 college candidates we’ve been tracking aren’t even in their top 10 as they have pivoted to prep players. The time tracking the likes of LaViolette and Bremner may be done.
  • The National High School Invitational (NHSI) event happened in this cycle, and included Corona HS with its two upper 1st round prospects. Read below for a deep-dive into Seth Hernandez in particular.
  • D1Baseball reordered their ranks for just college players and now go Arnold, Arquette, Houton, LaViolette, and Kade Anderson, who we’ll start tracking.
  • BA released their Mock Draft v2.0 on 4/14/25. Following along with their scouting report of Hernandez NHSI, they’ve got Hernandez first, saying its looking like the perfect set of circumstances to have a prep RHP go 1-1.
  • The Athletic’s Keith Law released his top 50 Draft prospects on 4/15/25: Holliday, Doyle, Arnold, Arquette, Houston. Hernandez is all the way down at #21, which is way, way out of line with the rest of the industry. But, his ranks also support Doyle’s meteoric rise.
  • Law also wrote a longer form analysis of Arnold, Carlson, and Hernandez in his Draft notes article on 4/15/25. Basically said Arnold won’t get out of the top 3, while he’s not sold on Hernandez (more on that below).
  • Kiley McDaniel published his updated Draft class ranks on 4/15/25. True to form, Kiley has some prep kids way, way up there, though he leads the line with Arnold. Remember; McDaniel’s methodology is all driven around projected Future Value, so he tends to dream on prep kids and their ceiling instead of thinking about risk. He’s got Eli Willits, a prep SS in Oklahoma, #2 on his list, primarily with an age-based analysis (he’s super young), which is crazy. McDaniel does say one interesting thing: Analytics-heavy teams like Willits and Carlson, while old-school scouting/eyeball teams like Holliday. Which do you think the Nats are? More on this later.
  • McDaniel also posted a ranking of the College Aces on 4/18/25 … with rankings that do not align with the draft ranks. McDaniel explains this in the preamble; the ranking (which has Doyle top and Arnold 4th) is who is performing NOW, versus his draft class ranks (where Arnold is top and Doyle is 12th) where he’s projecting “Future Value” of the player in the majors. Confused?
  • Two of the biggest prep prospects (Holliday and Willits) played last weekend: here’s Keith Law’s scouting report. I’ll reference it below for the two players.

Aggregation Stats for College Baseball for Reference:

Link Block for the top guys under 1-1 consideration. I’ve got this whittled down a bit. Note: the MLBPipeline report rank is a bit out of date at this point, being months old. I’m sure they’ll update it soon, and when they do i’ll re-capture the updated ranks. There’s just no way, for example, that LaViolette is still #2 or Doyle is #75 right now. The BA list was updated 3/26/25 and is better.

Prep Players who are in the running for 1-1:

Prospects guys we’re removing from 1-1 discussion for now and why. I’ll be paring the above list soon enough; there’s too many names in the mix to track every couple of weeks.

Here’s some updated commentary.

  • LaViolette: continues to improve his slash line, now hitting .307/.468/.693 (two weeks ago he was at .294/.451/.633). He destroyed Arkansas pitching on the road last weekend, going 5-12 with 4 homers and 3 walks and now has 15 dongs for the year. Is it too little too late for him to go 1-1? I think so; the narrative has already been written for him this year, but man someone’s going to get a huge bat in the first 10 picks or so. Can you imagine this guy in Colorado?
  • Arnold: We got a little bit of context for Arnold’s dip in performance; his missed start was due to a flu or illness, and he was weak for the next couple of weeks, which led to those iffy starts. He bounced back with a solid beatdown of Va Tech on 4/12 (7ip 4hits 1r 9/2 K/BB), and then his start last weekend was cancelled in the wake of the Florida State shootings. Season line: 8 starts, 4-1, 2.40 ERA, 0.97 whip, .177 BAA. 57/15 K/BB in 41 innings. I’d like to see him going deeper in games; he’s averaging just 5IP a start.
  • Bremner: gave up 4 in 6ip to UC Riverside while striking out 10 and throwing 107 pitches, then 3 in 7IP against Cal Poly while striking out 13 … and throwing 119 pitches! 119 pitches. In April. Not good. I just don’t like the hittability of Bremner, and he’s not dominating good but not the SEC teams.
  • Arquette blew up in the last two weeks, raising his slash line from .321/.439/.604 to .383/.497/.780. Unfortunately, he did this on the back of a 3-game sweep of one of the worst teams in D1 Cal State Northridge, against whom he had a 9-13 series with 4 homers and another 4 walks. That’s one way to jack up your seasonal batting average 60 points in three days. To be fair, the weekend before OSU visited Cal State Fullerton and he blasted 2 dongs there as well; he now has 15 for the season. He’s clearly a top 5 pick; but is he 1-1?
  • Doyle continues to pile on stats against top teams. He took the ball against #11 Ole Miss two weeks ago and put up a heck of a line: 8 1/3rd, 3 hits, 2 walks, 14 Ks and got lifted when he walked a guy with a one run lead in the 9th. He was at 111 pitches at that point … and probably saved his arm in the process. A week later against the solid but not top 10 Kentucky he had a more typical ace line: 7ip, 4hits, 2Runs, 9/1 K/BB, pulled at 101 pitches. For the season: 7-1 with 2.48 ERA, 0.83 whip, 104/17 K/BB in 58IP. That’s a 16 K/9 rate for an SEC pitcher.
  • Houston: first time on this list, lets take a look. For the season he’s slashing .335/.449/.589. He’s got more walks than strikeouts, has 10 homers. He has cooled significantly from earlier in the season, when he was maintaining .400 BA well into the college season, and just finished up a series against Boston College where he went just 2-10. Scouts are watching every move now. We’ll see how long Houston stays in the rarified air of possible 1-1.
  • Anderson: first time on this list, so we’ll catch up with his full season. He’s another lefty starter; apparently 2025 is going to include three front-line left handed starters in the top 10-15 picks. Anderson as of this writing has a 3.92 ERA for the year but is getting attention for 91Ks in 57 ip, Doyle-like numbers. He’s LSU’s Friday night starter, so he gets the ball against the toughest opponents. Last two weeks; he gave up 6 runs in 4 2/3rds in a loss at #9 Auburn, then he gave up 5 in 5 2/3rds hosting #10 Alabama in a no-decision. My first time looking at his stuff and while I see lots of whiffs, I also see lots of runs. He may not be long for this analysis.
  • Holliday wasn’t as impressive in his big OK prep school showdown as he may have wanted: Law reports that his BP wasn’t impressive and he waved at a couple of curves in the games that call into question his approach. His defense was improved though and Law threw out a Corey Seager comp, and Law thinks he could go “anywhere from 1st to 6th overall.” My thinking right now is this: If you want a bit of a project who could have a superstar SS/cleanup hitter ceiling, and if you trust your player development camp on the hitting side, you draft Holliday. If you’re the Nats, you let someone else assume that much risk.
  • Hernandez threw a CG in the NHSI quarter finals with this line: 7ip, 3H 1R, 0ER, 11/1 K/BB. Baseball America wrote it up and he sounds amazing: sitting mid 90s, hitting 99 in the 7th inning, showed a 70-grade changeup. There’s a ton of video showing dozens of pitches at the BA link; he has a slow, deliberate motion, hides the ball well, throws 4 pitches, got 10 swing and misses off the change. Could he go 1-1? Law’s analysis was a little less rosy, noting that Hernandez is generating velocity more with his arm than body (a huge red flag for future arm/shoulder injuries)
  • Carlson: in the same NHSI event, he… did not show up at the plate. He played SS and batted 5th behind cleanup-hitter Hernandez and went a combined 2-12 with 2 singles, a walk, and a sac fly. Their team Corona (which headed into the event the #1 ranked team in the country by every major rankings shop MaxPreps, PBR, PG, BA, SI) lost in the semis. Law’s analysis was more focused on defense, where he described Carlson as a “wizard on defense,” which bodes well and continues to support Carlson for at least the 1st round.
  • Cunningham: no news.
  • Willits is super young (he reclassified from 2206 class), which makes him a darling of some scouting projections (you’re drafting a top talent at 17yrs 7months). He’s a 6’1″ baseball rat from a baseball family who switch hits and has a 60 hit tool and 55s across the board otherwise. Law liked him all around, but the lack of power projection will keep him lower than his fellow prep hitters. But, he projects very highly with bat-to-ball skills. I don’t think he’s anywhere in the conversation for 1-1 but he is worth mentioning b/c analytical models like McDaniel’s loves him for his already high floor.

The Race for 1-1 status: I think the Nats have four names in the mix: Arnold, Doyle, Holliday, and Hernandez. If I had to guess today, i’d say they go Doyle.