While there may not be Major League Baseball in the near term, there is a lot of baseball to follow. Amateur scouts are already being kept busy recruiting college and high school games around the country. Each week, I'll take a look at whose stock is rising or falling, provide links to interesting mock drafts and update my personal Top 8 draft prospects. 

The return of baseball has been a welcome sight to fans. No, we’re not talking about Major League Baseball (yet), but we are talking about the rest of baseball. College seasons have started, with many northern playing teams having flown south for the spring. High school seasons are getting underway in some parts of the nation, while the Midwest will have to wait - for the most part - until the snow clears up. The season is upon us and there has been plenty happening already.

Carlos Collazo of Baseball America dropped his weekly draft stock watch. Collazo was in Florida for the weekend where he was able to see one of my favorite prospects in this year’s draft, prep outfielder Elijah Green. He followed that up with another piece of rising and popup prospects. 

The Athletic took a very thorough look at shortstop Brooks Lee of Cal Poly. Lee, who many consider that top collegiate bat, would be a welcome sight if he were still available when the Twins come on the clock.

ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel put out his first draft ranking of the year. As exclusive ESPN+ content, it’s behind a paywall. The story of this draft is in both the prep-hitting class and how many of those top prospects - Druw Jones, Green, Jackson Holliday - are sons of former professional athletes. 

With the return of college baseball, the dudes over at Fangraphs posted their first-weekend update. 

The Twins are set to pick eighth, so I’ll leave you each week with my Top 8 Prospects. At this point, it is a baseline only based on who I like and less on anything else. As the draft approaches, I’ll try to make this reflect how I think the Twins will stack their board with some explanation.

1) Druw Jones, OF, Georgia prep (Vanderbilt commit)
2) Brooks Lee, SS, Cal Poly
3) Elijah Green, OF, Florida prep (Miami commit)
4) Termarr Johnson, 2B, Georgia prep 
5) Jacob Berry, 3B, LSU
6) Dylan Lesko, SP, Georgia prep (Vanderbilt commit) 
7) Jace Jung, 3B, Texas Tech
8.) Chase DeLauter, cOF, James Madison

MOCK DRAFTS / PROSPECT BOARDS

• Baseball America - v1.0 (2/10/22) / Top 100 (1/17/22)
• MLB.com - Callis - Top 10 (12/15/21), Mayo - Top 20 (7/20/21) / Top 100
• The Athletic
• ESPN - Early Draft Rankings (7/26/21) ($$$ - ESPN+) / McDaniel’s Draft Rankings (2/24/22)
• Fangraphs - The Board / 2022 MLB Draft Rankings and Offseason List Primer (11/30/21) 
• Just Baseball v1.0 (2/10/22)
• Prospects Live v1.0 (1/24/22)
• My MLB Draft (1/18/22)

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If we can nail Delauter, I'd be satisfied.

No college pitchers in your top 8? Is it a weak year for them? 

32 minutes ago, HrbieFan said:

No college pitchers in your top 8? Is it a weak year for them? 

I don't have a great feel for what the Twins are thinking yet (nor do they, given the time of the year), but for reference, BA has their top college pitcher at 13 and MLB has their top college pitcher at 12. So I think it's fair to say that the general consensus is that it's not a great year for high-end college pitching.

2 hours ago, Jeremy Nygaard said:

I don't have a great feel for what the Twins are thinking yet (nor do they, given the time of the year), but for reference, BA has their top college pitcher at 13 and MLB has their top college pitcher at 12. So I think it's fair to say that the general consensus is that it's not a great year for high-end college pitching.

One would think the 2020 weird season (or no season) might be a partial reason for this, right?

I look forward to these articles every year. Thanks!

Thanks for keeping us updated, Jeremy.  I am a draft junkie--mostly for baseball but I love to follow the NBA, NFL, WNBA and NHL as well.  So feel free to pump out as many takes as you can! Everything I have read agrees with your assessment that this will be a position player heavy draft at the top end.  I can't see the Twins taking another high school RHP, so I suspect they will focus on the position players, be they college or prep players.  What we don't know yet of course is if any of this changes due to injuries or breakouts by some guys this spring.  Getting the 8th overall pick is the ONLY, and I mean ONLY, good thing about last year.  Keep up the great work.