2025 MLB Draft: MLB Pipeline's latest mock makes plenty of surprising

The 2025 MLB Draft is just about two months away, which means we are in the heat of draft season. High School state tournaments are coming to a conclusion, while conference tournaments at the college level will commence shortly.

The highest level of amateur baseball is being played during this time of the year, so draft boards are really starting to take shape as draft prospects get their best looks in front of the game's top competition. We've seen plenty of players rise up draft boards and mock drafts throughout the season, while other high-profile names have slipped, making this one of the more interesting draft classes in recent memory. MLB Pipeline recently released their first edition of their 2025 mock draft, and I'm here to break down a few of their picks that stick out to me.

MLB Pipeline Mock Draft: Three college lefties fall within the top five

College pitchers dominate the top end of this year's class, and MLB's mock draft makes that pretty apparent with three different arms falling within the top five picks.

Jamie Arnold, the 21-year-old junior out of Florida State, has, for the most part, been regarded as the favorite to go first overall. While he has continued to pitch at a high level throughout the season, a few more southpaws have been pretty steady risers and find themselves alongside Arnold within the top five, at least according to MLB Pipeline.

In this particular mock draft, Arnold actually falls to the Cardinals with the fifth overall pick, while Liam Doyle out of the University of Tennessee and Kade Anderson out of LSU move up to second and third overall to the Angels and Mariners, respectively. Doyle has arguably been the most dominant pitcher in college baseball this year, while Anderson has really blossomed into a potential big league level arm despite coming into the season as a fringe first-rounder.

The calling card for Doyle is his elite strikeout ability. He leads all Division-1 pitchers in strikeouts with 127 while sporting a 44.4 strikeout rate. He has an electric fastball with three above-average secondaries to complement it. The knock on his profile is that he does come with some reliever risk, which is why this pick might raise some question marks with Arnold still on the board.

It's a very high effort delivery that isn't very conducive to starting long-term, however, he has displayed above-average command which makes him somewhat of a wild card. The Angels like college athletes they can move through their system fast, and given Doyle's stuff, he could be that guy for them.

Anderson has a bit more of a traditional starter profile and is also a draft-eligible sophomore. He trails right behind Doyle for the D-1 lead in strikeouts with 124 in 76 1/3 innings. It's a mid-90s fastball for Anderson, but he has some physical projection that may lead to more velocity in the future.

He also has three above-average secondaries along with an excellent 6.4% walk rate. There is a lack of track record for Anderson, however. He missed his senior year of high school due to undergoing Tommy John surgery, and worked a lot out of the bullpen last year for LSU. The Mariners are big fans of high-floor pitchers, which is exactly what Anderson projects to be. Although this pick probably comes as a surprise to some fans, it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility.

Perhaps the winner in this string of picks is the Cardinals taking Jamie Arnold fifth overall. I am still of the belief that Arnold is the best pitcher in this class, and I still feel that the odds of him falling out of the top three are pretty slim.

If he does in fact fall to five, the Cardinals would be getting him at nearly three million dollars less than the Nationals would be getting him at with the first overall pick ($11.0M/$8.1M). The next couple of weeks will be very telling for these three southpaws. Florida State, Tennessee, and LSU are all expected to make deep postseason runs this year, so all three arms should be on the mound during the highest level of competition.

The high school shortstops are still causing all kinds of chaos

The college arms own the top end of this year's draft class, but the high school position players, especially the shortstops, will populate a large portion of the rest of the first round. It has been a while since we have seen this strong of a position player prep class and MLB Pipeline agrees. Four different prep shortstops land within the top ten, while four more find themselves selected within the 11th and 20th picks.

Ethan Holliday is the number one overall pick to the Nationals in this mock draft, which does actually come as somewhat of a surprise despite the amount of buzz he's had dating back to last year. There are still some concerns about the hit tool, and he isn't expected to stick at a shortstop while there are a few safer options in the same tier of prep talent.

Eli Willits, my personal top prep position player at the moment, falls to the Marlins with the seventh overall pick, which feels like a good spot for him considering the crop of pitching expected to go before him. With that being said, an updated mock draft from myself would probably have Holliday landing somewhere in the back-half of the top ten.

After Billy Carlson falls to the Blue Jays with the eighth pick and Kayson Cunningham ends up with the White Sox with the tenth pick, it gets really messy. Pipeline has JoJo Parker, Steele Hall, and Daniel Pierce going back-to-back-to-back with the 12th, 13th, and 14th picks to the Rangers, Giants, and Rays, respectively.

These picks certainly stand out considering all three were fringe first rounders at best as recent as a few months ago. As if the prep class wasn't chaotic enough, these three shortstops had to make it messier as some of the biggest risers in the class.

Although they play the same position, these are three distinct profiles from one another which makes the jobs of teams drafting at this point in the first round pretty tough. Parker is the best hitter of the bunch, but is also the one most likely to move over to second or third base at the next level.

Hall possesses the plus-speed-and-defense combo, but has yet to grow into power and has some holes in the hit tool. Pierce might have the highest floor of the three as he has a number of above-average tools, but doesn't have one elite tool, which is something plenty of teams still prioritize at this point in the draft.

With the amount of prep talent along with the growing need for fast moving college players, I would imagine this tier of shortstops actually spreads itself out a bit. However, I still wouldn't be surprised to see any of these names crack the top fifteen. Pierce to the Rays at fourteen is what makes the most sense to me of these three picks. The Rays have always valued high-floor, up-the-middle athletes, and have recently dipped into the prep class to find that.

There's still a lot that can change between now and July 13th, but this mock draft gives us a pretty good feel for how the industry sees the puzzle coming together.

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