John Paul Head is the No. 55 overall prospect for the 2027 MLB Draft, according to Baseball America.<\/p>\n
The former Vestavia Hills High School standout and UAB outfielder earned the ranking following a breakout sophomore season. The publication also tabbed Head as the No. 27 college prospect, the No. 7 outfielder overall and the No. 4 college outfielder in the class.<\/p>\n
Head became one of the most productive hitters in the American Conference in 2026. He started 55 games, hit a league-best 22 home runs and led the conference with a 1.167 OPS and .710 slugging percentage. He batted .329 with a .457 on-base percentage, 56 RBIs and 147 total bases, the seventh-most in a single season in program history.<\/p>\n
His 22 home runs rank second in UAB history, one shy of Shayne Carnes\u2019 school record of 23 set in 1998. Head also became the first Blazer to hit 20 home runs and steal 10 bases in the same season, and one of four players in American Conference history to reach 20 homers.<\/p>\n
The highlight came March 6-7 against Middle Tennessee, when Head went 9-for-14 with six home runs, three doubles, 10 runs and 10 RBIs across the series. Baseball America named him to its national team of the week.<\/p>\n
Head earned first-team all-conference honors and was named to the ABCA\/Rawlings Southeast All-Region first team, becoming the first player in UAB history named to an all-region first team. He spent the summer with the Hyannis Harbor Hawks of the Cape Cod Baseball League, hitting three home runs in 14 games.<\/p>\n
At Vestavia Hills, Head was a two-time Alabama Sports Writers Association all-state selection in both football and baseball and a member of the Rebels\u2019 2023 Class 7A state championship team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Paul Head is the No. 55 overall prospect for the 2027 MLB Draft, according to Baseball America.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2276],"tags":[5,102132,102135,2291,4,1586,102134,102133],"class_list":["post-845243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb-draft","tag-baseball","tag-john-paul-head","tag-kyle-parmley","tag-major-league-baseball-draft","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-draft","tag-vestavia-hills-baseball","tag-vestavia-hills-high-school"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117556319562121092","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}