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

We are in the home-stretch

The college baseball season has concluded and 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 have narrowed down the Guardians’ most likely choices to six options: Oregon State’s left-handed hitting second-baseman Travis Bazzana, Georgia’s right-handed hitting corner outfielder Charlie Condon, Mississippi prep star right-handed hitting shortstop and pitcher Konnor Griffin, Florida’s left-handed hitting first baseman/left-handed pitcher Jac Caglianone, West Virginia’s left-handed shortstop JJ Wetherholt, and Wake Forest’s right-handed starting pitcher Chase Burns. With Braden Montgomery suffering a knee-injury in Texas A&M’s playoff run, he has, unfortunately, dropped off the board for number one, here.

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 did not have a great playoff performance with Oregon State, but it’s very small sample size, so hard to know how much to read into it.

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 didn’t dominate in his time in the playoffs, but collected a home run and some extra base hits while getting on-base consistently via intentional and “unintentional” walks.

Condon’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. If Caglianone can play a corner outfield spot as some scouts have speculated, that would help his case. Caglianone hit very well in the playoffs, but his chase rate remains high and I’m surprised he has been consistently connected to the Guardians in rumors for that reason.

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. Wetherholt has been consistently connected to the Guardians in rumors if the team decides to go for as much savings as possible at the number one pick. Wetherholt was an uneven performer in West Virginia’s playoff run, but did have a couple standout games and garnered some praise for his defensive showing at shortstop.

Wetherholt’s MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Konnor Griffin, IF/OF/P, RHH 18 years old, 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. 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. He led his team to a second state championship in Mississippi with an OPS over .900 in the playoffs. Griffin would probably be the most surprising name on this list, but if the Guardians become convinced that he is a future star up the middle, it’s possible they surprise the baseball world with this pick.

MyMLBDraft Collection of Prospect Evaluator Blurbs.

Chase Burns, RHP, 21 years and 5 months old, 6’3” 210 pounds: 16 games, 2.70 ERA, 17.2/2.9 K/BB/9. Burns averages 98 mph on his fastball, has a great slider, and a solid curveball and changeup. If it weren’t for the inherent injury risk of pitchers, I’m pretty confident the Guardians would be taking Chase Burns with the number one pick. As it is, I am still assuming that the risk of taking an arm that could fall apart at any moment will leave the Guardians with a position player. But, Burns would sign underslot and leave the Guardians money to pursue maybe a high school hitter they like at pick 36, so I don’t think we can 100% rule this out. For whatever it’s worth, Burns got hit pretty hard in Wake Forest’s early-round exit in the college baseball playoffs.

My MLBDraft Collection of Prospect Blurbs on Chase Burns.

Let’s take a look under the hood at hitter performance against offspeed pitches:

And against fastballs:

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. Wetherholt had a .978 OPS in the Cape Cod League in 2023 in 32 plate appearances and a 1.178 OPS in the Northwoods League in 2022 in 53 plate appearances. 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.

The recent mock drafts being published all have either Travis Bazzana or JJ Wetherholt being picked by the Guardians, except for Keith Law of the Athletic who has Charlie Condon going to Cleveland at #1. For me, at this point, I will believe it will be Bazzana until I hear a different name come out of Rob Manfred’s mouth. I think the Wetherholt rumors are to apply a slight bit of pressure to Bazzana to take just under $9 million and be the first number one pick from Australia while leaving Cleveland some money to sign an option they like a lot at 36 for overslot. If they draft Wetherholt, I’m going to assume it’s because they believe he can play short and see some Jose Ramirez-type pulled fly ball ability in his compact frame, and to save that slot money, of course.

If it is indeed Bazzana, I’ll be interested to see if the Bazzmanian Devil gets some work as a centerfielder for Cleveland, where he could make an impact as soon as late summer 2025 if he can stick there. If I allow myself to think in a reactionary fashion, I find myself dreaming of what Cleveland could do with Chase Burns and how he could be slotting in right behind Tanner Bibee in the summer starting rotation by mid-summer 2025. But, it’s safer to draft a position player and likely the better long-term play by far.

We will have lots more draft coverage for you in the next two weeks leading up to the day of the draft when our Brian Hemminger will post write-ups for each pick as they happen and threads for discussion. So, stay tuned!