2024 MLB Draft 10 Biggest Storylines to Know
It's just about that time of year when hundreds of guys in their late teens and early 20s will hear the call of professional baseball.
The 2024 MLB draft is coming, so let's get into what you need to know.
The basics start with how the draft will unfold over three days in Fort Worth, Texas, beginning on Sunday, July 14, and ending on Tuesday, July 16. There will be 20 rounds of picks, starting with the Cleveland Guardians making the No. 1 overall selection.
There are otherwise 10 storylines worth tracking as the draft plays out. These cover which teams have an advantage, how the draft class stacks up and which programs and players stand to come away from the proceedings feeling triumphant.
Without further ado, let's get into it.
See also: 2024 MLB Mock Draft 5.0
The Diamondbacks Have a Sneaky Advantage
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A year after going to the World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks find themselves with the second-to-last pick in the first round of the 2024 draft.
The No. 29 pick has produced the likes of George Brett and Adam Wainwright, so it's not impossible to find impact talent at that spot. Granted, it's hardly a gold mine either, as guys like Carlos Quentin and Joe Panik are more representative of the kind of talent that is typically available at that point in the first round.
The Diamondbacks do have an advantage that could help, though.
While they only have the 29th pick, their $12.7 million pool for signing bonuses is the 10th-highest of any team. It helps that they also have the No. 31 and No. 35 picks, the former of which is courtesy of Corbin Carroll's NL Rookie of the Year win in 2023.
The recommended bonus for the No. 29 pick is a little over $3 million. So if signability concerns cause a top prospect to slide—a la Brock Porter in 2022—the Snakes will have the financial leeway to pick him up for a potential steal.
A First for the Guardians Franchise
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The Cleveland Guardians have been around for a lot longer than the MLB draft has. They came into being in 1901, whereas the first draft was held 65 years later.
Surprisingly, though, this is the first time they've ever had the No. 1 pick.
It was likewise surprising when the Guardians netted the top pick when the draft lottery took place in December. They only had a 2.0 percent chance of getting it, putting them below eight teams with better odds.
"We look at this as an extraordinary and exciting opportunity for us," president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti told Tom Withers of the Associated Press. "Often times when you're thinking about your first pick, you're trying to guess who's going to be off the board before you get an opportunity to select.
"This year, we don't have to guess."
The Guardians holding the No. 1 pick in the draft must be a scary notion for the rest of MLB. Even without the benefit of drafting that high, they already have a first-place team that is comprised of more homegrown players than any other club.
There Are No Top-of-the-Scales Tools
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Around this time last year, the sheer tools that were about to be available in the MLB draft were getting harder to keep under wraps.
Word was spreading about Paul Skenes' fastball, but also Enrique Bradfield Jr.'s speed. Both got 80 grades on the 20-80 scouting scale from MLB.com, and then Cole Carrigg made a case for his arm strength as an 80 at the draft combine. He touched 100 mph on throws from both the infield and the outfield.
There are likewise good tools to be found in this year's draft class, including an arm on Texas A&M outfielder Braden Montgomery that grades as a 70 and looks like this in action:
However, there are no 80-grade tools among this year's draft prospects, according to MLB.com. There are a few 70s and even one 75 by way of prep shortstop Kellon Lindsey's speed, but nothing at the tippy-top of the scales.
A dang shame? Absolutely. But also indicative of the overall strength of this draft class.
This Is Not a Strong Draft Class
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The 2023 MLB draft class was widely seen as being historically strong. Keith Law of The Athletic even likened it to the legendary draft class of 2011.
This wasn't a random occurrence. Because the COVID-19 pandemic shortened the 2020 draft to only five rounds, some of that year's best prep prospects went to college instead of the pros. Three years later, the draft class benefited from the backlog.
That was only ever going to be a one-year phenomenon, and the general thinking is that talent decline from the 2023 draft to the 2024 draft is a big one.
Per Carlos Collazo of Baseball America, evaluators regard this year's crop as "one of the weaker drafts of the past decade." A shortage of impact high school talent is a notable storyline, regarding both position players and pitchers.
To wit, B/R's Joel Reuter doesn't have a high school player going in the top five in his latest mock draft. Not counting pandemic years, that has happened only twice before (in 2006 and 2018) since the turn of the century.
There's a Switch-Pitcher!
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While this year's draft might not be loaded with high-end talent, rest assured, there are interesting players aplenty.
For instance, how about a pitcher who can throw 95 mph...with both arms?
His name is Jurrangelo Cijntje and, yes, he is a real player and not a video game creation. He's entering the draft out of Mississippi State, for whom he struck out 113 batters over 90.2 innings in 2024.
The 21-year-old is a natural left-hander, but he wanted to be a catcher and therefore pretty much had to learn to throw right-handed. Now it's his dominant side.
"I throw 99 from the right side," Cijntje told Matt Monagan of MLB.com in April. "And from the left side, I top out at 95."
Since he throws better as a righty than as a lefty, whether Cijntje will stick as a switch-pitcher is the big question. He's nonetheless a first-round talent, with Reuter's latest mock putting him in the No. 24 slot to Atlanta.
Here Come Chase Burns and Hagen Smith to Blow Everyone Away
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Elsewhere on the topic of talented pitchers, college hitters mostly just hit air when they took hacks against Hagen Smith and Chase Burns this season.
Smith, a 20-year-old lefty for Arkansas, led the NCAA ranks with a rate of 17.25 strikeouts per nine innings. But Burns, a 21-year-old righty for Wake Forest, was only a smidge behind him with a rate of 17.19 strikeouts per nine innings.
Come Sunday, there's a chance that both hurlers will go in the top 10.
According to MLB.com, Hagen and Smith rank as the two best pitchers in the draft class at No. 5 and 6 overall, respectively. The former has a plus fastball-slider combination and a funky delivery that doesn't make it easy to pick the ball up. The latter has as many as three plus pitches, including a fastball that has touched 102 mph.
If Burns does go in the top 10, it'll be two years in a row that a Wake Forest pitcher has gone that high after the Cincinnati Reds chose Rhett Lowder at No. 7 in the 2023 draft.
It Should Be Another Good Draft for Wake Forest
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Speaking of Wake Forest, Burns isn't the only Demon Deacon who stands to have a good day on Sunday.
Also in the running to go in the first round are first baseman Nick Kurtz and infielder/outfielder Seaver King. They rank as MLB.com's No. 7 and No. 17 prospects and are projected by Reuter to go No. 13 to the San Francisco Giants and No. 19 to the New York Mets, respectively.
At 6'5" and 240 pounds, the 21-year-old Kurtz is built like a slugger. He's also a plus hitter, as he notably drew 36 more walks than strikeouts as he racked up a .531 on-base percentage for the Deacs this season.
King, who's also 21, is more of a bat-to-ball hitter, albeit one with plus speed and a profile as a versatile defender. He stands to develop into a multi-use leadoff type.
Beyond these three, Wake Forest players are represented four more times in Baseball America's big board for the 2024 draft. Assuming all of them get picked, it'll be another big draft for a school that had a program-record 10 players taken in the 2023 draft.
Jac Caglianone Is the Latest Shohei Ohtani Hopeful
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MLB is a league of copycats, and right now, it's in an era in which Shohei Ohtani proved that it is actually possible for a player to be both a star hitter and a star pitcher. It therefore wasn't surprising when a record number of two-way players were picked in the 2023 draft.
Jac Caglianone is at the top of the spear for two-way hopefuls in 2024.
The 6'5", 250-pounder took 316 plate appearances and logged 73.2 innings for the Florida Gators this season. The former, at least, was a smashing success by way of a 1.419 OPS and 35 home runs.
The innings? Less so on account of Caglianone's 4.76 ERA, but he did salvage 83 strikeouts. He's been known to touch triple digits with his fastball.
It bears noting that the success rate of turning two-way prospects into two-way major leaguers is...not great. And the 21-year-old Caglianone is not a high-probability bet to break the mold. The lefty swinger's bat is clearly ahead of his arm, which has also been subject to Tommy John surgery already.
He's nonetheless bound to get his chance to both hit and pitch. And if he makes the most of it, Ohtani will look like less of a unicorn.
The Golden Spikes Winner Could Also Go No. 1
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Even as dominant as Caglianone was at the plate this season, he wasn't even the most dangerous hitter in the Southeastern Conference.
That was Charlie Condon, who in 60 games for the Georgia Bulldogs hit a record-setting 37 home runs while leading the nation with a .433 average and a 1.009 slugging percentage.
The 21-year-old Condon won the 2024 Golden Spikes Award as the year's best amateur baseball player, and there's a chance he could now do something that used to be common but has since become rarer. That is, he could follow winning the Golden Spikes Award with going No. 1 in the draft.
David Price, Stephen Strasburg and Bryce Harper did it in 2007, 2009 and 2010, respectively. The feat has since only been replicated by Adley Rutschman in 2019.
As for whether Condon will go No. 1, a July 4 report from Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com has the winds blowing in another direction. But as the top player in the draft for both Baseball America and The Athletic, Condon certainly has talent worthy of the honor.
Travis Bazzana Aims for MLB Draft History
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Though Condon still has a shot at being the Guardians' No. 1 pick on Sunday, the favorite appears to be Travis Bazzana.
And why not, really?
The 21-year-old is coming off a huge season for the Oregon State Beavers in which he slashed .407/.568/.911 with 28 home runs in 60 games. He had previously won MVP honors in the Cape Cod league, which notably uses wood bats.
Bazzana gets plus grades for his hit, power and speed tools, the first of which is the best of any hitter in this year's draft class. To this end, it's not a bad bit of evidence that he had 39 more walks than strikeouts for Oregon State this year.
If Bazzana does go No. 1, he'll make two different kinds of history. For one, he'd be the first second baseman ever to go with the top pick. He'd also be the first Australia native to go that high.
For him, the latter seems more important.
"The premise of everything I want to achieve is I want to make Australia a powerhouse in baseball," he told MLB.com's Sonja Chen in April. "It's not going to come from me, but I want to start that trend."
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference.
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