Roch Cholowsky & Grady Emerson headine loaded ’26 draft; MLB draft odds as AFL begins | Hot Sheet
Hey, we’ve got hot sheet every single week for you 3:30 Eastern time on YouTube or you might be watching on one of the TV stations that we are on. Scotty Brown along with JJ Cooper and Carlos Collazo from Baseball America. I think it’s worth a little plug on pre-orders for the Baseball America Prospect Handbook, JJ, and how people can get a hold of it eventually. baseballamerica.com/store. Yeah, we we will finish it. We will send it to the printer right around uh the very end of December and it’ll ship out very end of January, but we are working on it already. You can see the bags under our eyes as we start uh diving in on the best prospects, the top 30 prospects for all 30 organizations, scouting reports, cools, grades, uh you know, everything you want to know about basically the top 900 prospects in the game. Yeah. And you can pre-order the prospect handbook right now if you go to baseball.com. Let’s hit first move. Carlos is here. Let’s talk 2026 draft prospects and teams prepping for life besides the postseason if you’re the 22 other major league franchises right now. But Carlos, first let’s start at the top here. Do we have a big big high school class looming here for the 2026 draft? We do have a good high school class this year. I think everyone that I’ve spoken with and just watching the high school players this summer, I feel like this year’s high school class, the 2026 high school class is at least the best since 2023, and that maybe doesn’t sound like a huge separator. 2023 wasn’t all that long ago, but 2023 was a class where we had Max Clark, Walker Jenkins at the top, a number of really impressive hitters in that class. Kevin McGonagal um has been tremendous. So, I I think it’s a very deep class. It’s a class that has a chance to have multiple impact players at the top on the high school side. The premier position group for the class appears to be shortstop. It’s always really compelling when there are a lot of high upside athletic high school shorts stops with tools and with track records of performance. There are a number of players who fit those sort of qualities in this year’s class. And I also feel like too, I know high school pitching isn’t the most sexy demographic. There’s a lot of risk there. teams are are really afraid to pull the trigger on high school pitchers in the first round, but it does seem like everyone in this class is throwing mid90s fast ball with 3,000 RPM banger breaking ball. There are a number of really talented pitchers as well. Again, both in terms of like top- end guys who have a chance to go into the first and also just a huge volume of quality pitchers. So, if teams want to get risky and and go for that high school pitching demographic, I think they’re going to be a lot of appealing options there as well. Um, and even moving beyond the high school class, I think there’s a chance for this college class to be pretty impressive as well. The the 2026 class as a whole, I think, is is getting some of the most hype that I’ve experienced in my time covering the draft at Baseball America. So, obviously, we’ll have to see what happens next spring. Um, but we’ve got really high expectations for this group. And we we do we’ve been hearing kind of that this when we were hearing about how bad the 25 draft was, which I do think ended up being better than everyone feared. Everyone worried about it this time last year. We always kept hearing about how good the 26 class was. Well, here we are. And for all of that that you talked about with the high school class and the depth and all that, but Carlos, I feel like that more than anything, what we have here is is a player who has a chance to be the most obvious one- one pick in in a number of years. Um, coming into the year, right? Obviously, we’ve had guys like Paul Ski step up and things like that, but but this is a draft where we have a I think a pretty clear and a pretty clear favorite to be number one overall next year. Here we are what, nine months before the draft. Yeah. So, the favorite for us right now is Rock Chilowski, the UCLA shortstop. I mean, he won Baseball America’s College Player of the Year. As a sophomore, it’s exceedingly rare for a sophomore to win that award for us. the group of players who have done that historically are a pretty strong group of major league players. Um, and I just think he has a chance to be like you see here. We we wrote it in a piece we’re doing in the offseason kind of diving into some of the top players in the class. You can get a better feel for what these who these players are, what they bring to the table. But Chilowski is is one of the more impressive college shortstop prospects we’ve seen in a decade. We haven’t seen a college shortstop go with the first overall pick until uh the 2015 draft when Dan B. Swanson went first overall. Alex Bregman went second overall. two pretty good players there at the top of that draft class. I think Chilowski is the most well-rounded college shortstop prospect since that duo of players. He’s the best college shortstop prospect that I’ve personally covered in my time at Baseball America. Um, and I think you look at his game and I was trying to kind of poke holes in the profile and see what the biggest weaknesses are, but there are really not a lot of obvious ones. Like maybe his summer offensive performance is not quite as loud as you want it to be, but he hits. He hits for power. He can still run despite adding strength over the past few years. He’s a phenomenal defensive shorts stop, one of the better defenders in college baseball. He’s got a great arm and I think in terms of his prospect stock right now, he is sitting in that sort of clear one spot to the same degree that Adley Rushman was at this time in 2019 to the same degree that Dylan Cruz was in 2023. Now in 2023, we obviously had Paul Ske come on the scene at a a massive degree. We’ll see who makes that jump next year. We’ll see if Rock can hold off all the other contenders. There’s still plenty of time for things to change, but right now it’s a pretty enticing package across the board. The thing that jumps out with him is is like you said, he already has put so much to his resume already that I I can’t help but think of like if you want an example of like, okay, because things can happen. There could be poor performance, that’s one thing. But if you have you’ve had players that have had injuries. Nick Herz had an injury in his draft year and it didn’t he came back but it didn’t really push him down much because he had already done so much. In Rock’s case, I feel like that this is a guy who he ideally he gets even better. But Carlos, if he’s just what we saw last year, he’s a strong candidate to be 1-1, right? Like he was as good as any player in college baseball basically last year. He just was an underclassman who wasn’t draft eligible. I think if Rock Chilowski was draft eligible last year, he would probably been the favorite to be the number one overall pick. Um, so I think if he replicates that this year and barring again any sort of jumps from players who are not named Rock Chilowski in the class, I think he’s in a in a pretty good position. I mean, when I look at the profile, you can maybe say, okay, he doesn’t have the sort of elite contact ability of like a Jacob Wilson or a JJ Weatherhold. He doesn’t have the sort of elite batting eye that Nick Curts had. At the same time, you look into his Woodbat track record and he hasn’t shown the same sort of pop. Um, he’s been a little bit more aggressive with Team USA and in his brief time on the Cape, he’s not playing in the SEC. So, there are places that you can maybe nitpick his profile, but at the same time, none of the other players that I just mentioned were shortstops to the degree that Rock Chilowski is right now. And we expect him to be moving forward. We expect him to be a gold glove caliber shortstop. UCLA head coach John Savage said he’s very similar to Brandon Crawford in that regard in the sense that he is a quarterback at the shortstop position, dominates the game defensively. Uh it’s interesting to think through his shortstop defense uh compared to a guy like Merrick Houston who just went in the first round a year a year ago. I think those two are are different styles of defenders. Um, but I think they have a chance to be be a similar impact on the defensive side. And then Rock brings just a whole different level of dynamism and offensive upside than than what Merrick was able to bring to the table in college. So, he’s going to be a really fun player to watch. I think for anyone who’s interested in watching Chalowski next year with UCLA, this this team is also going to be pretty competitive. He’s a player who’s going to impact the game on all sorts of levels. So if he’s not hitting, he’s doing something defensively, he’s running, he’s stealing, um it’s just a very dynamic player. So he’s our number one prospect. But the thing that also stands out here is, as you said, it’s a really good class. 2019, we talk about the Adalie Rushman class. You look back on that, the other guy who was in that consideration was Bobby Whit Jr. who ends up I I would say that now has kind of moved ahead. That Bobby Whit Jr., if you were going to have to do over again, he’s the guy you want out of that class. We have Grady Emerson, the high school shortstop at number two. Is this like a clear pretty massive golf or does Emerson or someone else have the talent? Like is Emerson talented enough to where it could be one of those one in1A type situations by next year? Yeah, potentially. I think it’s a little bit different. I mean, what separated Bobby Jr. at the time was just his tremendous physical tool set. I mean, it was plus tools across the board for everything for Bobby Whit at the time outside of the hit tool. I mean, he had a little bit of swing and miss at the time. Even throughout the minor leagues, he would swing and miss. He maybe wouldn’t walk as much as he wanted. There were questions about like what is the quality of Bobby Wood Junior’s hit tool going to be. Now, he’s answered all those questions obviously in the majors. I think Grady Emerson is is maybe less impactful on the secondary tool side and is more proven as a pure hitter at the same time in his high school career. So, Grady Emerson has been one of the top high school players in this class for years now. He became the first ever USA baseball player to play for multiple 15U national teams and multiple 18U national teams. We’ve never seen anyone do that. That just speaks to the longevity of him being one of the top players in his class. He comes from a long line of recent Dallas area high school shorts stops. Bobby Jr. who we were talking about in 2019, Jordan Lawler in 2021 he went sixth overall. Jet Williams in 2022 he went 14th overall. So, I do think we’re talking about a player who fits in that conversation. Right now, I have not gotten the feedback and I just don’t think he has quite the dynamic secondary tool set to be in the Bobby Whit Jr. conversation. Um, but I do think that he has a perfectly good case to be 1-1 at this stage. If he comes out a little bit stronger, shows more power, is running faster next year, um, it’s it’s also a pretty well-rounded profile. So, uh, I I think while I wouldn’t go quite Bobby Jr., Um, a lot of the top high school hitters in recent recent years, I think Grady Emerson fits along with perfectly fine. And if you’re wondering which team has the best chance at landing the number one overall pick, let’s do that next. We’ll do a little MLB draft lottery discussion on the other side. FTF fam, another reason why you should love Arena Club is the grading system. So, you recently pulled a slap pack and then you said, “Hey, it’s not graded. grade it for me. They gave you an 8.5 out of 10 on your auto whitey Ford card and then they show you all the details of the grading system. It’s very interactive within the app and then you’re done. If you want to sell the card or you want to know what it’s worth, you’ve got it. Yeah. It’s like getting taken to school on cards. And I think that’s the coolest part of it. If you’re young or old, you understand, hey, this is how it gets deciphered all the way through. It shows you the numbers and how they went through it. I think that’s the coolest part about this whole thing. And then you can keep it traded or sell it to whatever you want. And it’s so much more efficient to do this through Arena Club. Whether you’re ripping a pack, there’s the slab packs, buying a card, selling a card, grading a card, it’s all there for you. We talk about it all season long. arenacub.comfol is where you can go to give it a shot. 20% off your first card purchase. arena.com/foul. Use the code foul at checkout and get 20% off. Hey, we’re back and we’re talking about the MLB draft lottery. Scott Braun, JJ Cooper, and Carlos Collazo. So JJ, let’s let’s really lay this out for everyone to understand because obviously things have changed in the last few years and and it definitely in my mind is for the better. We could probably push it even further, but we are at least trying to penalize teams that continue to finish at the bottom of the standings. So yeah, what do you think? You will notice something very quickly here. You go, wait a second. When I look at those, not everyone who was terrible this year is there. Where are the Rockies? The Rockies were one of the worst teams we’ve ever seen this year. Well, we could say this for the Rockies. They didn’t tank because they were terrible and they wanted the number one pick because they can’t get the number one pick this year. The rule says that if you are a revenue sharing recipient, you can only have a lottery pick for two years in a row. If you are a payee, if you pay into the revenue sharing process, you can only have a lottery pick. you have if you get a lottery pick, you can’t get one the next year. So that means that the Rockies, that means that the Nationals, and that means that the Angels are all ineligible here. And really, Carlos, one of the things that does, it really kind of ups the odds for the White Socks. The White Socks would have had 16.5% odds of having the number one pick, and as that graphic shows, they have way higher than 16.5% odds now. Yeah. Uh so how it works is when there are teams who are not eligible to receive uh a lottery pick, their odds are proportionally assigned to all of the teams who are eligible. So like you were mentioning under the the default odds, it’s the White Socks, the Nationals, the Rockies, they would all be tied for the best odds to get the first overall pick at 16.5%. Because both the Rockies and the Nationals are ineligible for the reasons you mentioned. The White Socks are in the clear number one spot for best odds. their odds go from 16.5% to 27.7% just a little bit over that number. Um, so it’s a great win for them. I know a year ago White Sox fans weren’t weren’t happy because they were not picking in the lottery because the year prior to that they did have a lottery pick. They’re a payee. They can’t pick backtoback. But if you’re a White Sox fan now and you’re looking at how the draft classes are sort of shaping themselves up, I think you probably would would rather have the first overall pick in 2026 than 2025. At least as we understand the classes right now, 2025 was a very muddled group. 2026, we just finished talking about how Rock Chilowski has a chance to be a generational type, a player who can move very quickly through the major league. So, I think it’s great news for the White Socks. Um, I look down at some of these other teams at their odds. The Twins, they have the second best odds now at 22.18%. The Pirates are a really interesting team, especially in the conversation with Rock Shilowski at 16.81%. because I think they’re almost the the team best equipped or or not best equipped, but the team that Rock Chilowski could maybe move the needle for the most. It’s a very pitcher heavy farm system. The Pirates desperately need some offensive reinforcements. Connor Griffin has moved into the position of the number one prospect in baseball. And Rockch Chilowski would be a player who I would expect to move on a a pretty aggressive timeline to where he would be debuting in the majors or getting started with his major league career around the same time I would expect Connor Griffin. So imagine the Pirates winded up with the first overall pick and add a talent like Chilowski and pair him with Connor Griffin and pair him with this elite homegrown starting rotation that’s fronted by Paul Skins. That’s that’s got to be pretty compelling to really anyone who’s watching baseball, but for Pirates fans in particular. I’m going to take that even a little bit further. Like I look at this and you say if the Pirates win this and they’re number one pick, right? Okay. So Griffin’s going to be up next year. I would say that he’s going to be up there. I’d be stunned if he’s not up. They’re gonna the the Pirates going to have the problem that Connor Griffin’s going to show up to spring training and he’s going to be the best player position player they have and maybe they can hold him off a little while, but he’s going to be up. He was in double A this year to end the year. He’ll be up at some point next year. Edward Florentino is a prospect who, you know, is probably still flying a little bit under the the normal radar, the the the, you know, the high level radar. You have to have a lowlevel radar to pick him up, but he’s a guy who’s also a premium prospect, position player, prospect. If you have those two guys and we talked about the pitching staff and then you add Rock Jowski to that who should move I would say like you would expect him to be in the big leagues in 27 all of a sudden this looks like a very different team now it’s the Pirates they would you have to bring this you have to carry this you know to fruition but at the same time a team that has Paul Ske and Bubba Chandler and Jared Jones and a number of other arms who will still be there in 26 and 27 and You add the best prospect in baseball, Connor Griffin, who we would be stunned if he’s not basically a stud. And then on top of that, add someone like Rochowski, who also would move very quickly and could give them a d I don’t that I don’t know who plays shortstop in that scenario. You could have two stud shorts stops. Okay, Connor Griffin also could be a seven in center. Fun decisions to have to make, but I do think that they are the team more than any that you look at and say, “If this happened, watch out. Yeah, and I’ll just point out for everyone how much of an impact a player can make so quickly in today’s sport, right? I mean, JJ, let’s look at Trey Savage from over the weekend. You went through all five levels of the organization. He’s like, I’m the only one that knows everybody in the organization right away this year. That’s the kind of impact that could be made. We’re seeing this more and more, too. Like obviously him, he’s the one that we’re talking about right now because what he did really, it’s one of the better playoff starts, not for a rookie, not for a 22- year old. It’s one of the better playoff starts you can have. He struck out 11, five and a third hitless innings, he was completely dominant in a uh on a big stage. But it’s not just him. We saw Nick Curtz obviously this year who not only 2024 draft who’s not only going to be the slam dunk rookie of the year, but he might be the best first baseman in baseball right now. Like you can make that argument. You look back a year before that, it’s like, oh yeah, Paul Sches, who was one of was basically the best pitcher in the National League from about the day that he arrived in the majors, who’s the 2023 number one pick. And it’s obviously not just them. Like we’ve had other guys step through. We do see now that the top level college players, Wyatt Langford obviously fits this, Zach Neto from a couple years ago, we are seeing these players jump to the big leagues quicker than we have in recent years. Not I want to say the past because there used to be a few more examples of this, but we’re seeing that now. And the other part of this is is that it does mean that I we wrote about this going into last year’s draft. We always say that you don’t draft for need. You don’t draft for need. And I still completely agree that you don’t draft for need. But you are now looking at that there are reasons to say, “Hey, but if we draft this player who we really like, who we think is a top talent, he could help our team. he could fix a problem on our team quite quickly. I do think now we are seeing where really you could have draft picks and if you hit on them, it kind of alters your free agent approach, your free agency approach in the off season because players are moving that quickly. Well, uh oh, I think you got Bob nutting a little bit too excited, the Pirates owner that we always like to pick on. And it’s not just us. I mean, he’s s hearing that and going, “Wait, I’m getting some pretty good top-end prospects. I’m often picking towards the top of a draft and having lots of draft pool money, and you’re saying that these guys are flying through the miners quicker than ever.” Another reason why I don’t have to invest in the free agent market. And see, and I would say this the other way, which is is knowing that you have what you have of Connor Griffin coming to go with Paul Skins, to know that Bubba Chandler’s there, Jared Jones should be back from injury, all that. That’s actually much more of a reason to add say a first baseman who can actually play to add maybe I know they have a thousand catchers but to add maybe a veteran catcher who you feel good about or to add a you know they Jared Triello is okay in third base but to add an outfielder you know to add the pieces where when these guys arrive they’re arriving to a team that actually should become a playoff contender not that they’re the group that can really lift us lift elbows up and get come to 82 wins. We’re looking for 86 wins, 90 wins here. Get into the playoffs, see what you can do. Have Paul Schmes, by the way, because if you have Paul Ske in a playoff series, you’re in a great situation for at least one, you know, if not more games in that playoff series, too. Get to there. But to do that, you know, that does involve spending money. They traded away uh, you know, guys again at the deadline this year and Cabrian Hayes and all that frees them up. Okay, spend some of that money. You know what else is interesting here, too? You’re talking about these players moving really quickly uh in the draft. I’m I’m just struck by the number of teams that are at the top of the draft lottery this year that should be competitive in the very near future. I mean, teams like the Orioles and the Braves are top six in draft lottery odds. They’re both coming off of just kind of iffy seasons where you expected the Braves to be a competitor prior to the year. I mean, we had our critiques with what the Orioles did over the offseason in terms of lack of spending, lack of of upgrading the starting rotation, but they’ve got a great young core. They should be competitive. The Twins could be competitive any given year. You look down a little bit further, the Rays, the A’s at five, both of those teams could be competitive. There are a lot of teams that are not years and years away from a rebuild who need to compete. So, I I think it’s going to be really interesting and hopefully it makes the draft for our sport a little bit more fun for people to watch because previously, I know the critique was, “Okay, there are a lot of bad teams picking at the top. They’re taking players who we’re going to forget about for the next three or four years.” That’s really not the case anymore. Um, I’m really curious to see what the A’s are going to do. They’ve been a team that’s been unlucky in this draft lottery process. They’ve slid um further than you would expect based on their odds and they’ve made excellent picks. Um, despite that, the Braves are a team that has not picked this high in years. I think going back to the 2018 2019 draft for them, picking in this range. So, I just think the the collection of teams that have a chance to pick very high in addition to how fast prospects are moving could make the 2026 draft just all the more compelling. Hey, coming up next, we do have a fan question in the chat that we’ll get to because it was a topic that we wanted to give a little love to for a couple minutes at the finish line. So, we’ll be right back. FTF fam, let’s talk about superpower. Eric Kratz is a proud Superpower customer and he’s going to give us more of the personal experience, but I’ll just start it with this. You ever go to the doctor and doc’s just like, “Oh, drink more water. Are you looking for more data, more of a game plan?” Superpower does that for you. They give you the experience that athletes get with teams. Lab, the lab results came back for me. Now it streamlines everything that I kind of had an idea of, but now it really lets me focus on the things that I’m deficient in, the things that I’m that I that I have good good lab test results from, and I can go in the direction I want to go. Nutritional guidance, supplement suggestions, you name it. There’s so much more info to check out at superpower.com, and you can lock in the special $199 price while it lasts. After you sign up, they’re going to ask you how you heard about them. Mention FT to support the show. Your biology decoded. Your blueprint activated with superpower. Hey, we’re back. Luke has a question. Nice and simple. Who do we think has the best Arizona fall league roster? I’m going to have to go Scottsdale. And it’s not because they have the most top hunter prospects. They have one. But it’s Kevin McGonagal. It’s one of our top uh prospects in the game. One of the best pure hitters out there. You know, Carlos already mentioned him before. He was part of that great 2023 draft class and I would expect to see him in Detroit next year. Actually, to be honest, he had such a really good year. He did miss a little bit of time with injury, but such a good year that he really does stand out like he’s the kind of profile that often doesn’t make it to the fall league because he really did check off a lot of boxes this year. We’ll see kind of defensively kind of focus on him defensively. The other team I would say is is Peoria. Just checking to make sure I got my my rosters right because you got an Alfredo Duno picture right there that you see. Uh Duno is kind of one of the fascinating guys. Him and uh Johnny Farmelo are both on that Poria team. Duno was one of the best players, was the best player in the low Florida State League this year. He is a truly massive catcher, massive power, great strike zone discipline, really understands understands his own. It’s going to be interesting to see kind of how he does defensively out there, but also how he hits. He could be kind of a better defensive version of the massive Jose Brceno, who you saw kind of have a breakout season last year in the NFL. So those two jump out. I if you’re a surprise fan, Sebastian Walcott obviously is the name to to know there because Walcott is again one of the best uh shorts stops in game. I’m a surprise fan because every time I go to Surprise, I get to see Luke Air Force Base and see all the the F-35s flying over and I will always take a little detour to see them in the landing pattern. Very cool. I like that. And by the way, cue the uh Tigers fans being like, can we borrow Kevin McGonagle now for our offense? I I saw a lot of people commenting about that. The thing about it is is Kevin McGonagal is not ready to do that as a shortstop. I don’t know if he’s going to be a shortstop long term, but if you watched him this year and said, “Is he ready to be a big league shorts stop right now?” I would say no. I would say that that’s the real problem is is if you want him at second base, maybe, but he hadn’t played a whole lot of second base this year. Okay, so there’s your answer, Tiger fans. Defense needs some work and they’re probably like, “Cool, we would have shoved him at DH or anything just to find some offense here.” And hey, maybe that’s a moot point. Maybe they take down the Mariners in the next couple days and they keep moving. I think they certainly surprised some people in the first round against Cleveland. But we shall see. Talking prospects here every single week on Hot Sheet. Go to baseball.com for much more information. And check out their podcast page. Many more pods to look at. Carlos JJ, thank you. We’ll see everyone next Monday live 3:30 Eastern time on YouTube.
JJ Cooper, Carlos Collazo and Scott Braun unpack the “generational talent” atop the 2026 MLB Draft class. The class is more than just UCLA superstar Roch Cholowsky – there are prime high school players coming.
The guys unpack this year’s MLB Draft odds and discuss why the Colorado Rockies are on the outside looking in on adding from the top of the draft.
The hosts also preview Arizona Fall League action. Join the conversation in the chat!
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1 comment
I love BA because they talk about the pirates so much. Seriously. Let’s go bucs!