Over-Slot Baseball today released its updated ranking of the top high school prospects in the 2028 MLB Draft class. The board grows from the original Top 100, published in early August, to a full Top 150.
The update features 52 players new to the rankings and significant movement throughout the board, based on a summer's worth of live evaluations, data review, athletic testing data and conversations with sources across the industry.
TOP 150
Highlights of the update include:
• A new No. 1. Rochester Adams (Mich.) outfielder Koltyn "Flip" Watters moves up from No. 4 to the top spot, followed by Theo Swafford (Sierra Canyon, Calif.), and Jacob Welch (Lehi, Utah).
• Major movers. Harrison (Ga.) outfielder Breck Hemphill posts the largest jump on the board, rising 51 spots from No. 61 to No. 10.
• Fresh faces. Westchester Country Day (N.C.) outfielder Ashton Pittman is the highest-ranked newcomer at No. 23. Ben Byeman (Eastlake, Wash.) and Cam Rakaczewski (Greencastle-Antrim, Pa.) join him in the top 50.
• More pitching depth. The Top 150 includes 38 primary pitchers, up from 25 on the August board. Fourteen of the 52 newcomers are arms.
Methodology
We aren’t interested in who the best player is today. Anybody with a box score can tell you that.
The heartbeat that drives every board, every ranking and every report at Over-Slot is the same one beating in 30 war rooms across Major League Baseball: who will be the best player from this class five years from now? It demands a different process. So we built ours to mirror the people who make these decisions for a living, blending the same measures that MLB scouting and analytics departments lean on to separate the 18-year-olds who flop from the ones who flourish.
Our evaluations stand on four pillars.
1. Live Looks
Everything starts in the bleachers. Over-Slot is a site rooted in traditional scouting, and a willingness to go to games is a prerequisite for every member of our staff. As much information as data can provide you, it often fails to provide critical context for what a player’s capabilities are, and where there may be limitations –physically, emotionally and intellectually. We sit behind chain-link fences, take notes, write reports and grade tools the way the industry has for half a century. Data can’t tell you how a shortstop’s feet work on a ball to his backhand, how a pitcher carries himself after a walk, how a catcher leads, or what a body might look like in three years. You must be there and you must see the players multiple times.
2. Pitch Design and Batted-Ball Data
What the eye sees, the data confirms or challenges. What the data suggests can help take you to the field. Through our league sources and partners, we gather pitch design data and batted-ball data on the players we cover: spin, shape, extension, approach angle, exit velocity, swing decisions, bat to ball, and more. That information feeds our value-guided models, which measure both present skill and predictive projection. The models don’t make the call for us, but they point us in specific directions. We believe this independent analysis separates us from the crowd, and concurrently brings us more in line with Major League Baseball scouting department processes.
3. Athletic Testing
Athleticism is the engine of projection, and we bake it into our process. Force plate testing, grip strength, 10-yard splits and other performance measures are built into our evaluations to quantify just how explosive and twitchy a player really is. When a scout calls a player a “plus athlete,” we want to know what that looks like on paper, and whether there’s more coming. As a means of transparency, for many players, especially high school prospects, you can find our “Twitch” and “Athleticism” grades on player cards.
4. Conversations With the Industry
No evaluator, and no publication, is without blind spots. We work to find ours. Over-Slot has spent years building relationships with the decision makers who run amateur and professional scouting across the league, and the Over-Slot Podcast has hosted a scouting director from 26 of the 30 MLB organizations. Those conversations shape how we think, push back on what we think we know, and keep our process honest. Furthermore, those relationships fostered in those conversations help gather insight in off-the-record conversations year round.
Put together, these four pillars give us something few outlets can offer: an outside view built from inside-the-industry tools. When you read an Over-Slot ranking, you’re reading a five-year forecast, built the way the league builds its own.