Baseball America mock draft has Braves picking UGA pitcher Cole Wilcox

While things have been mighty quiet, Baseball America (BA) went ahead and put out their mock draft 3.0. We still don’t know how many rounds the draft will be, but there will be a minimum of five. I know some of us that follow the draft think there will be ten rounds.

At this juncture it’s still way too early to have any player linked to a team. The consensus top pick in the draft is Austin Martin out of Vanderbilt, but BA has him going #2 overall to the Orioles. Spencer Torkelson, the power hitting first baseman was mocked with the first overall pick to the Tigers. Nick Gonzales was hitting everything out of the park, and if he somehow manages to go to the Royals, he could form one amazing up the middle tandem with Bobby Witt Jr.

It looks like Baseball America is predicting early that college players will move up boards while high school players could get pushed down due to lack of scouting. This could be a draft where teams forgo manipulating bonus pools around prospects and just taking the best players available. There’s really just no way to know how this draft will go, which can make it nerve wracking and exciting at the same time.

With the 25th pick, BA has Atlanta taking the 6’5 junior RHP, Cole Wilcox, out of the University of Georgia. This was actually my preseason pick for the Braves. Wilcox was pitching pretty great before everything shut down, and still has a shot breaking into the top 20. Being a big bodied pitcher, Wilcox has the velocity to match where he can touch 100 mph, but sits more in the 93-96 mph range. His slider grades plus, and from what I saw this season, his changeup improved to an average or slightly better pitch.

What can separate good to great pitchers is offering different speeds of pitches. Now his slider and changeup are both in the mid 80’s, which is not ideal. Control has been his Achilles heel, and there simply wasn’t enough time to truly say if he’s improved in this area. Having said that, in a very small sample size, he had only walked two batters in over 20 innings, which was good for a walk per nine rate under 1.

Other notable picks. Pete Crow Armstrong, the toolsy outfielder out of Harvard-Westlake HS went 17th overall. JT Ginn, who likely could have gone top 10 as he has three potential plus pitches (his fastball and slider potentially being double plus), will miss the next ~18 months recovering from Tommy John surgery. Ginn is a Sophomore and could return to school, so a team will still have to take him early. BA mocked him at 22, just three picks before the Bravos.