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Ethan Holliday (Photo by Eddie Kelly / ProLook Photos)
The 2025 MLB draft—scheduled to begin on Saturday, July 13—is now just 10 days away. Here are 10 things you should know before it gets started.
1. The Nationals Pick First Overall
Let’s start at the top.
The Nationals will pick first overall in the draft for the third time in the history of the franchise after winning the third annual draft lottery.
Washington had a 10.2% chance—the fourth best odds—to win the first-overall pick in this year’s draft lottery. They got luckier than the Rockies (22.45%), Marlins (22.45%) and Angels (17.96%) and will now pick inside the first 10 selections for the fourth consecutive year.
The two previous times the Nationals picked first overall there were no-brainer, generational prospects leading their respective classes. Neither Stephen Strasburg in 2009 or Bryce Harper in 2010 required much debate and were the obvious names long before draft day arrived. Both players also managed to live up to their significant pre-draft hype.
The Nationals don’t have things quite so simple in 2025, with a muddled draft class that features a handful of legitimate 1-1 possibilities in different demographics. That’s led to plenty of questions about draft strategy, draft philosophy and proximity. Should the Nationals take the highest upside they can find picking at the top? Should they instead draft a player who can contribute quicker? And what exactly is Washington’s “type” these days in year two of longtime GM Mike Rizzo’s new-look scouting department led by Danny Haas and Brad Ciolek.
Below are each of the Nationals first picks since Rizzo became the team’s GM in 2009:
- 2009 — Stephen Strasburg, RHP, San Diego State (1st overall)
- 2010 — Bryce Harper, OF, JC of Southern Nevada (1st)
- 2011 — Anthony Rendon, 3B, Rice (6th)
- 2012 — Lucas Giolito, RHP, Harvard-Westlake HS, Studio City, Calif. (16th)
- 2014 — Erick Fedde, RHP, Nevada-Las Vegas (18th)
- 2016 — Carter Kieboom, SS, Walton HS, Marietta, Ga. (28th)
- 2017 — Seth Romero, LHP, Houston (25th)
- 2018 — Mason Denaburg, RHP, Merritt Island (Fla.) HS (27th)
- 2019 — Jackson Rutledge, RHP, San Jacinto (Texas) JC (17th)
- 2020 — Cade Cavalli, RHP, Oklahoma (22nd)
- 2021 — Brady House, SS, Winder-Barrow HS, Winder, Ga. (11th)
- 2022 — Elijah Green, OF, IMG Academy, Bradenton, Fla. (5th)
- 2023 — Dylan Crews, OF, LSU (2nd)
- 2024 — Seaver King, SS, Wake Forest (10th)
2. The Holliday Brothers Could Make Draft History
One of the favorites to become the Nationals choice at first overall is Oklahoma high school shortstop Ethan Holliday—the top-ranked player in the class. If Holliday is the pick, he’ll join his brother Jackson, who the Orioles picked first overall in 2022, as the only sibling duo to both be chosen first overall.
There are a few notable familial ties who have gotten close.
The Rays took BJ Upton as their second-overall pick in the 2002 draft, then three years later the Diamondbacks took Justin Upton with the first-overall pick in the 2005 draft. That’s the highest-achieving brotherly duo at the top of the draft currently.
The Witt family is another that can claim prestigious top-of-the-draft capital. The elder Bobby Witt was drafted third overall by the Rangers in 1985. His son, Bobby Witt Jr., topped him by a single spot when the Royals drafted him with the second-overall pick in 2019.
JD Drew and Stephen Drew are perhaps the most accomplished first-round sibling duo, with a combined 61 bWAR between the two. The Phillies picked JD second overall in 1997, but he didn’t sign and then was picked fifth overall in 1998 by the Cardinals. Stephen Drew was the 15th-overall pick in the 2004 draft and had a solid 12-year career, mostly with the D-backs.
Wherever Ethan goes on draft day, he and his brother are set to become the 14th pair of brothers drafted in the first round. See the best of the bunch here.
3. Elite Lefthanded Pitching Capital
Lefthanded pitching is a rare commodity in general. It’s especially rare at the very top of the draft. This year’s class features not one, not two, but three lefthanded pitchers who should hear their names called extremely early on draft night.
LSU lefthander Kade Anderson is the top-ranked college pitcher in the class and helped push the Tigers to a second college world series championship in the last three years. Florida State lefthander Jamie Arnold entered the season as a 1-1 candidate and brings a unique release point with solid pure stuff and track record. Tennessee lefthander Liam Doyle has one of the best individual pitches in the class with his explosive fastball and was arguably the most dominant arm in the country this season.
All three college lefties rank among the top eight on our draft board. All three are expected to be top 10 picks. And there’s even a chance that the trio could be the first three players picked.
There have only been five drafts where three or more lefthanded pitchers have been selected among the first 10 picks.
The 1976 draft featured five lefties:
- Floyd Bannister, 1st
- Pat Underwood, 2nd
- Bill Bordley, 4th
- Bob Owchinko, 5th
- Steve Trout, 8th
The 2007 draft featured four lefties:
- David Price, 1st
- Daniel Moskos, 4th
- Ross Detwiler, 6th
- Madison Bumgarner, 10th
The 2014, 2000 and 1975 drafts all featured three lefties apiece in the first 10 picks.
When isolating for just college arms, the 2007 draft stands alone as the only draft in history with three college lefthanders taken inside the top 10—for now.
4. Corona High Is Set To Break The All-Time High School Teammate Record
This year’s Corona High team in California is one of the most talented that scouts have ever seen. The program won a Division I CIF Southern Section championship last spring and this year leads all high school teams with four players ranked on the BA 500.
The program has a chance to set multiple records in the draft for teammate draft stock.
Righthander Seth Hernandez and shortstop Billy Carlson are both ranked inside the top 10 on the draft board and both are realistic candidates to be drafted inside the first 10 picks. If that happens, they will become the first-ever high school teammate duo to go inside the first 10 picks of the same draft.
If one of them slips outside of the top 10 picks, they still have a chance to top the 2007 Chatsworth High duo of Mike Moustakas (2nd) and Matt Dominguez (12th).
It’s not just Hernandez and Carlson. The team also boasts shortstop and third baseman Brady Ebel, the No. 42 player in the class, and righthander and outfielder Ethin Bingaman, the No. 166 player in the class. Between the four, Corona has a chance to become the third high school program to see at least three players from the same team drafted in the first 100 picks in the same draft year.
Moses Lake High in Washington had three players in 1999 (BJ Garbe, 5th; Ryan Doumit, 59th; and Jason Cooper, 63rd) and IMG Academy in Florida had three players in 2019 (Brennan Malone, 33rd; Rece Hinds, 49th; Kendall Williams, 52nd).
Corona has solid odds to join or surpass those two teams, and it’s possible they could become the first high school team ever to have four players drafted inside the first 100 picks of the same draft.
5. The Cardinals Pick Fifth Overall, Which Is Unique Because…
This is the first time in the history of the St. Louis franchise that the team has picked in the top 10 in back-to-back drafts.
This could be taken two ways for Cardinals fans. For draftniks, perhaps it’s more fun to dream about the high-end prospects the team could come away with on draft night. For others, it’s just a reminder that the 2023 season was just the team’s second losing season this century and that in 2024 the team finished 10 games out in the division.*
*Editor’s note: We previously incorrectly referenced the Cardinals 2024 season as a losing season. We apologize for the error.
It was a big deal a year ago when the Cardinals picked seventh overall. That was the first time St. Louis picked inside the first 10 picks since 1998 when they took JD Drew fifth overall. Notably, Drew’s 44.9 bWAR is good for second-best of that 1998 first round and behind only CC Sabathia, who amassed 62.3 bWAR as the Indians’ 20th overall pick.
While JJ Wetherholt is still at the start of his career, that pick from a year ago still looks quite good.
The Cardinals fifth-overall pick in the 2025 draft will be just the 12th single-digit draft pick in the history of the club. Florida State lefthander Jamie Arnold and Oklahoma high school shortstop Eli Willits are currently favorites for their pick.
Below you can see every single-digit pick in the history of the franchise:
- 2024 — JJ Wetherholt, SS, West Virginia (7th)
- 1998 — J.D. Drew, OF, St. Paul Saints (5th)
- 1996 — Braden Looper, RHP, Wichita State (3rd)
- 1991 — Dmitri Young, 3B, Rio Mesa HS, Oxnard, Calif. (4th)
- 1989 — Paul Coleman, OF, Frankston (Texas) HS (6th)
- 1984 — Mike Dunne, RHP, Bradley (7th)
- 1981 — Bob Meacham, SS, San Diego State (8th)
- 1979 — Andy Van Slyke, OF, New Hartford (N.Y.) HS (6th)
- 1977 — Terry Kennedy, C, Florida State (6th)
- 1971 — Ed Kurpiel, 1B, Archbishop Molloy HS, Queens, N.Y. (8th)
- 1966 — Leron Lee, INF, Grant Union HS, Sacramento, Calif. (7th)
6. No One Has More Money To Spend Than The Mariners
Picking early is good, but in baseball’s draft, the pool money you have to work with is just as important—if not more so.
Because the Mariners pick third overall and have an extra pick in the first supplemental round, they own the largest total bonus pool of the 2025 draft at just over $17 million.
Each pick in the first 10 rounds is tied to a “slot value” that is determined each year based on MLB revenues. The total of each team’s slot values represents their total “bonus pool” which is the money teams are able to spend on their entire draft class. Baseball doesn’t use a hard slotting system, but a soft one. This means that a player taken with the Mariners’ third-overall pick isn’t guaranteed the $9.5 million slot value the pick is assigned as their signing bonus.
The Mariners could try and sign a player for less or more than that value. If so, they simply have to account for those savings and overages in their total bonus pool, with penalties coming for teams who go beyond their bonus pool at different thresholds.
The bonus pool system has existed in the draft since 2012 and is intended to cap bonuses for amateur players. But baseball’s soft slotting system does give teams some creativity in how they want to deploy their savings and attack the draft board.
You can read more on how baseball’s slotting system works and see the full 2025 slot values and bonus pools for each team here.
It’s also a common misconception that teams are being “cheap” when they sign a player to a deal worth less than the slot value of the pick they were selected with (an “underslot deal”). This is almost never the actual case. Every team in baseball spends their full bonus pool and a majority of teams incur the overage tax penalty that comes when you spend up to 5% more than your full bonus pool.
For more on the different strategies that teams commonly use in the draft, see how each team spent their bonus pool in the 2024 draft here.
However the Mariners choose to spend their money this year, they’re the running favorite to have the most exciting draft class when we look up on July 15.
7. Why The White Sox And A’s Are Picking 10th and 11th
If you’re still catching up on how MLB’s new draft lottery system works, you might be wondering why the White Sox and A’s are picking 10th and 11th despite being bottom five teams in baseball in 2024.
The 2022 CBA created a draft lottery in which the 18 non-playoff teams all have a chance to earn a lottery pick—a top six pick in the draft. The rules of the lottery state that teams aren’t able to pick in the lottery in back-to-back years or three consecutive years, depending on revenue sharing status.
The White Sox, as a revenue payor, aren’t eligible to pick inside the lottery in back-to-back years. That means, after having the fifth-overall pick in the 2024 draft, they weren’t eligible to have a lottery pick again in 2025 even though they had a the worst record in baseball and would have been given the first-overall pick under the previous system.
The A’s are a revenue receiver and aren’t eligible to pick in the lottery in three consecutive drafts. They picked fourth overall in 2024 and sixth overall in 2023, making them ineligible for the lottery again in 2025.
When teams aren’t eligible to earn a lottery pick, their odds are proportionally allocated to each of the eligible lottery teams and cannot pick sooner than 10th overall. In the first three years of the draft lottery, the Nationals, White Sox and A’s are the only teams to be prevented from picking in the lottery under these rules.
In the 2026 draft the Rockies, Nationals and Angels will be ineligible from picking in the lottery.
8. Will We See A Historic Group Of Shortstops?
You don’t need a lottery pick in this year’s draft to have a chance at an impact shortstop prospect. Shortstop capital has been on the rise in recent drafts and the position is perhaps the single biggest strength of the 2025 class.
There are currently 13 players ranked inside the top 30 who have a chance to be selected as shortstops on draft day. In our most recent mock draft, we projected 12 players who currently play shortstop for their teams inside the first 30 picks. There are several others just outside of that range who have realistic chances to join them.
In the 60-year history of the draft, there have only been five years where eight or more shortstops were selected inside the first 30 picks. The most we’ve ever seen were the 10 players selected in both the 2023 and 2021 draft classes.
This year, with lots of intriguing names available such as Ethan Holliday, Eli Willits, Aiva Arquette, Billy Carlson, JoJo Parker in the top 10 of our rankings and others like Kayson Cunningham, Marek Houston, Steele Hall, Wehiwa Aloy, Daniel Pierce and Gavin Kilen in the top 25, we could see the record fall.
While much of this record depends on the position players are selected at, it feels like pretty good odds that we see the most shortstop heavy first round of all-time.
9. The Youngest & Oldest Players In The Class
One of the unique aspects of baseball’s draft compared to others like the NBA and the NFL is the fact that both high school players and college players are eligible.
This creates a huge spread of ages and requires teams to figure out ways to compare and contrast 17-year-old players who will look radically different by the time they are major league ready with 24-year-olds who are essentially plug-and-play prospects with no projection necessary.
Below are the 10 youngest and 10 oldest players we have ranked inside the BA 500:
10 Youngest
- 17.6 — Eli Willits, SS, Fort Cobb-Broxton (Okla.) HS (3)
- 17.7 — Gustavo Melendez, SS, Colegio La Merced HS, Cayey, P.R. (123)
- 17.8 — Frank Cairone, LHP, Delsea Regional HS, Franklinville, N.J. (113)
- 17.9 — CJ Hughes, SS, Junipero Serra HS, San Mateo, Calif. (214)
- 17.9 — Angel Cervantes, RHP, Warren HS, Downey, Calif. (51)
- 17.9 — Taitn Gray, C, Dallas Center-Grimes Community HS, Dallas Center, Iowa (130)
- 17.9 — Diego Velazquez, SS, Crespi Carmelite HS, Los Angeles (239)
- 17.9 — Shane Brinham, LHP, Hansworth SS, North Vancouver, B.C. (481)
- 18.0 — Uli Fernsler, LHP, Novi (Mich.) HS (71)
- 18.0 — Aiden Barrientes, RHP, Katy (Tex.) HS (280)
10 Oldest
- 24.9 — Jake Knapp, RHP, North Carolina (471)
- 24.0 — Antoine Jean, LHP, Houston (458)
- 23.2 — Ryland Zaborowski, 1B/DH, Georgia (442)
- 23.1 — Zane Taylor, RHP, UNC Wilmington (151)
- 23.0 — Kade Snell, OF, Alabama (197)
- 22.9 — Hunter Elliott, LHP, Ole Miss (388)
- 22.9 — Ryan Ure, LHP, Oklahoma State (447)
- 22.8 — Pico Kohn, LHP, Mississippi State (168)
- 22.7 — Ryan Prager, LHP, Texas A&M (178)
- 22.6 — Jay Woolfolk, RHP, Virginia (253)
10. The 2025 All-Name Teams
The draft will produce great players, yes, but it will also produce some exceptional names.
Below are the official Baseball America “All-Name” teams for the 2025 class, which has been vetted and cross checked by members of the BA editorial staff and is also a very serious exercise.
PositionFirst TeamSecond TeamThird TeamCEnzo InfeliseAdonys GuzmanOwen Ten OeverCICharlie BucklesXavier NeyensRyland ZaborowskiCIRyker BenzBeau AnkeneyMaddox MihalakisMIMalosi Mata’Afa-AlferosMaximus MartinWehiwa AloyMIElijah BuffaloeJackson Van De BrakeMario MaganaOFSlater de BrunQrey LottAustin KillingsworthOFWill Van WieEzra EssexEli PittsOFMakani TanakaCardell ThibodeauxDylan DubovikSPKruz SchoolcraftRoman BracamonteZach CrotchfeltSPAnakin UnderhillJoe AriolaGavin Van KempenSPMalachi WitherspoonSinjon LashVedant SharmaSPAmp PhillipsAlexander MercuriousReid WorleySPCase BeamesZion TheophilusJustice De Jong