Checking in on the Guardians’ Options for the Number 1 Pick - 4.0

We are entering the playoff period of evaluation

The college baseball regular season, including conference tournaments, will conclude by the end of May. Big 12 and SEC tournaments start today and PAC-12 Tournmanet start tomorrow. For any teams who qualify, the College World Series will commence on June 14th and end on June 24th. Then, the Guardians will have their choice of any baseball player they want on Sunday, July 14th.

With limited time left to evaluate players, we at Covering the Corner had narrowed down the Guardians’ most likely choices to five options, but we have now added a sixth: Oregon State’s left-handed hitting second-baseman Travis Bazzana, Georgia’s right-handed hitting corner outfielder Charlie Condon, Texas A&M’s switch-hitting outfielder Braden Montgomery, Mississippi prep star right-handed hitting shortstop and pitcher Konnor Griffin, and Jac Caglianone, left-handed hitting first baseman, left-handed pitcher from the University of Florid, and today, we are looking at recent rising prospect, J.J. Wetherholt, left-handed shortstop from West Virginia University.

A reminder regarding Nick Kurtz, power-hitting first baseman for Wake Forest: I don’t believe, giving the available options, that the Guardians will choose a first-base only player with the first pick, so I am not going to include Kurtz in this analysis. I have included Caglianone in the event the Guardians believe he can be both a relief pitcher AND a first baseman. I also don’t believe any of the excellent pitchers - Hagen Smith and Chase Burns chief among the bunch - in this year’s draft have performed at a level where they would compel the Guardians to ignore the injury risks and take them over a hitter.

Let’s check in on some stat lines:

Travis Bazzana, LHH 21 (turns 22 in August) 6 foot, 199 pounds: 53 games, 68/31 BB/K, .429/.587/.963 with 26 home runs, 14 steals and 5 caught stealing. Has only played second base, but is generally thought to be capable of playing left field, and maybe centerfield, if needed.

Bazzana’s MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Charlie Condon RHH 21 years old, 6’6”, 216 pounds: 53 games, 50/39 BB/K, .451/.575/1.063 with 35 home runs, 3 steals and 1 caught stealing. Condon has played games at first base, the vast majority at third base, and in left field, centerfield and right field. He profiles best as a corner outfielder but he has made some great plays at third base this season and might be able to stick there according to some scouts. Condon did just open up postseason play going 0-4 and hitting into a key double-play (one game sample size alert).

Condon’s MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Braden Montgomery Switch-hitter, just turned 21, 6’2”, 195 pounds: 55 games, 52/54 K/BB, .325/.464/.769 with 26 home runs, 5 stolen bases and 2 caught stealing. Montgomery has been used strictly as a right-fielder.

Montgomery’s MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Jac Caglianone, LHH turned 21 years old in February, 6’5” 245 pounds: 54 games, 41/21 BB/K, 29 home runs, 3 stolen bases and no caught stealing, .413/.525/.851. 4.39 ERA, 63/37 K/BB as a pitcher. Caglianone is seen as likely a corner outfielder with an outside chance of being a relief pitcher on the side (he has already had Tommy John surgery). An upper 90’s fastball and exit velocity in the 90th percentile as a hitter makes Caglianone someone that every team picking in the top five needs to consider. Caglianone doesn’t have any Cape Cod hitting record and he struck out quite a bit last year (17/58 BB/K in 2023), so I don’t think he’s quite at the level of a Bazzana, Condon or Montgomery but IF the team believes he could be a reliever 2-3 days a week, that gives you a 27th player on the roster, essentially. So, it’s definitely an option to monitor. If Caglianone can play a corner outfield spot as some scouts have speculated, that would help his case.

Caglianone’s MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

J.J. Wetherholt, SS, LHH turns 22 in September, 5’10”, 190 pounds, 29 games, 132 plate appearances, 28/13 BB/K, .375/.519/1.277 (OPS is 1.442 since returning from injury this month), 8 homers, 5 stolen bases and 0 caught stealing. Wetherholt had a .978 OPS in Cape Cod in eight games last summer. There are questions on whether or not Wetherholt can play shortstop or will need to be moved to second base in the big leagues. As I finish this article, Wetherholt is 0 for 1 with a walk in West Virginia’s SEC playoff opener.

Wetherholt’s MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Konnor Griffin, IF/OF/P, RHH turns 18 in later this month, 6’4”, 210 pounds: 37 games, 149 plate appearances, 45/9 BB/K, .582/.718/1.040, 7 home runs, 78 stolen bases, 91/18 K/BB as a pitcher, 0.64 ERA in the regular season. His OPS has remained in the mid .900 range in the Mississippi playoffs so far. Griffin throws 96-97 mph with his fastball, though he is seen as a hitting prospect. He is mostly thought of as a future shortstop or a future centerfielder, defensively. His regular season has ended and Jackson Prep High School is scheduled to begin a three-game series in the Mississippi playoffs tonight.

MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Let’s take a look under the hood at performance against offspeed pitches (should get an update on these numbers this week):

And against fastballs:

Sower recently provided his draft board, with Bazzana and Montgomery ahead of Condon:

Finally, let’s see a combination of numbers versus level of competition and corresponding output from Matan K @mk237700 on Twitter:

The full leaderboard provided by Matan is linked here.

Don’t forget how these prospects have performed when asked to hit with wooden bats, as that will, obviously, be what they pick up when they reach the majors. Travis Bazzana was MVP of the Cape Cod league last summer with a 1.037 OPS in 158 plate appearances. In only fifty at-bats in Cape Cod, Condon had only a .648 OPS, but in more extensive time in the wooden bat Northwoods league he hit .286 with 18 doubles, seven home runs, and 68 RBIs in 248 at-bats. In 69 plate appearances at Cape Cod last summer, Montgomery had a .900 OPS. Griffin played for the U.S. under-18 team in Taiwan last summer but I can’t seem to find any stats of how that experience went but it’s surely useful info for the Guardians to evaluate. Caglianone has not played anywhere outside of college ball.

Joe Doyle had some useful data for futurestarsseries.com recently comparing key metrics of the top hitters in the upcoming draft and the best hitters in recent MLB drafts. You can see that it’s hard to top Bazzan’s plate discipline skills and hard to top Condon’s exit velocity skills.

Carlos Collazo had a good thread showing hitter ranks in college baseball in key metrics:

JaconE_STL provided metric comparisons of top prospects on Twitter recently:

I had some folks inquire about player splits and Twitter user @ianlasch helped me find fridaystarters.com where splits are available. Condon has a 1.824 OPS vs RHP and a 1.277 OPS vs. LHP. Bazzana has a 1.580 OPS vs. RHP and a 1.512 OPS vs. LHP. Montgomery has a 1.325 OPS vs RHP and a 1.066 OPS vs. LHP. Caglianone has a 1.302 vs. RHP and a 1.523 vs. LHP. Wetherholt has a 1.254 OPS vs. RHP and a 1.091 OPS vs. LHP.

With the information presented above, I firmly believe either Travis Bazzana or Charlie Condon will be donning a Guardians’ hat on July 14th and I find them both a tier above either Caglianone or Montgomery. However, I would not be surprised if Wetherholt turns the Guardians’ heads if they believe he will to be able to play shortstop in MLB, and I am willing to entertain the possibility that the ceiling of Konnor Griffin as a 30/30 centerfielder is the highest in this class (while acknowledging that he needs a lot of work). You risk a lot of draft capital taking a teenager, but certainly Griffin’s performance warrants careful consideration.

We will continue to monitor the performance of these four prospects over the next two months as we prepare for the first number one pick in Cleveland history. Check in on tournament runs for Oregon State, Georgia, Florida, Texas A&M, West Virginia and on Konnor Griffin’s MaxPrep page to keep up to date!