Latest news with #JaceLaViolette
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Guardians select Texas A&M outfielder Jace LaViolette in first round of MLB Draft
The Guardians selected Texas A&M outfielder Jace LaViolette with their first-round pick in the 2025 MLB Draft. LaViolette, a power-hitting left-handed hitter, was ranked as the No. 20 overall prospect by MLB Pipeline. The Guardians used overall pick No. 27 to add him to their minor league system. During his three seasons with Texas A&M, LaViolette set school records with 68 home runs and 169 walks drawn while leading the Aggies to the College World Series Finals in 2024. Jace LaViolette drafted by Guardians in 1st round At 6 feet, 6 inches and 230 pounds, LaViolette is an imposing hitter who might have been considered for the No. 1 overall selection if not for some concerns with his hit-and-miss swing. He was named a third-team All-American by Perfect Game and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association, and he was a semifinalist for the 2025 Dick Howser Award, given to the national collegiate player of the year. LaViolette is noted by MLB Pipeline ha possessing as much raw power as any hitter in the draft. His 25 percent strikeout rate during his junior year at Texas A&M is the lone concern, and the only reason he was still on the board at No. 27. LaViolette played all over the outfield during his three years in college, though his profile is likely best to fit in right field in the pros. 2025 MLB Draft results: Guardians select Tennessee infielder Dean Curley in second round Dean Curley was ranked as the No. 60 overall prospect in the draft by MLB Pipeline. As a freshman with Tennessee, Curley went 6-for-12 in the College World Series and helped the Volunteers win their first national championship. Curley is listed at 6-3 and 218 pounds and has "solid-to-plus" raw power. Defensively, he relies on one of the strongest infield arms in college baseball. Guardians take outfielder Aaron Walton at No. 66 overall Aaron Walton, out of the University of Arizona, is another outfielder with raw power but plenty of swing-and-miss in his bat. The Guardians might be anticipating some over-slot bonuses with their first two picks, as Walton was ranked 160th among all eligible prospects, nearly 100 spots lower than where the Guardians drafted him. Guardians draft pitcher, Wake Forrest commit Will Hynes Canadian right-handed pitcher Will Hynes only turned 18 years old a few days before the draft, and his fastball is already up to 94-95 mph. He also throws a high-spin slider and a changeup, though he does't rely on it as much as his other pitches. Hynes has committed to Wake Forest. He was ranked 163rd overall by MLB Pipeline, so selecting him early might be enough to sign him away from college. Oklahoma State slugger Nolan Schubart drafted by Guardians in third round With their fifth and final pick of Day 1 of the MLB Draft, the Guardians used selection No. 101 on Oklahoma State hitter Nolan Schubart. Schubart, who hits left-handed and stands 6-5 and 223 pounds, came two hits shy of winning the Big 12 Conference's triple crown last spring, batting .370 with 23 home runs and 68 RBIs in 49 games. Schubart is known to be a one-tool player, relying on potentially elite raw power from the left-handed side. Like LaViolette, just at varying degrees, Schubart has immense strength and power but will need to show he can cut down on his strikeout rate while facing pro pitching. Schubart also provides little in the way of speed or defense. He could shift to first base and, perhaps, even become a regular DH at some point down the road. This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: 2025 MLB Draft: Guardians select OF Jace LaViolette in first round
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Texas A&M Baseball 2025 MLB Draft Tracker
It's that awkward time of year again when college baseball coaches must wait a week or two to find out who will be on their rosters, thanks to the timing of the MLB Draft. For Texas A&M coach Michael Earley, entering a season with a razor-thin margin for error means he needs every player possible to field a competitive team next year. All eyes are on the 2025 MLB Draft and who might end up in Aggieland. Several current and future Aggies are on the radar of MLB clubs, with nine players listed in the MLB Pipeline Top 250 Prospects. Familiar names include Jace LaViolette, Kaeden Kent, and Justin Lamkin, while lesser-known but highly talented high school athletes such as Johnny Slawinski and Nico Partida are also turning heads. Advertisement Being drafted doesn't guarantee a player will sign. They still have the opportunity to weigh their options, either attend college or enter the minor league farm system. If they choose to attend college, they must stay for at least three seasons before re-entering the draft. Check out the list below to keep track of Aggies selected in the 2025 MLB Draft. Jace LaViolette - 1st Round - Cleveland Guardians - 27th overall Justin Lamkin - 2nd Round - Kansas City Royals - 71st overall Johnny Slawinski (2025 commit) - 3rd Round - Los Angeles Angels - 79th overall Kaeden Kent - 3rd Round - New York Yankees - 103rd overall Joisah Hartshorn (2025 commit) - 6th Round - Chicago Cubs - 181st overall Myles Patton - 7th Round - Boston Red Sox - 208th overall Kaiden Wilson - 9th Round - Miami Marlins - 258th overall Wyatt Henseler - 9th Round - Washington Nationals - 261st overall Ryan Prager - 9th Round - Cleveland Guardians - 282nd overall Matthew Boughton (2025 commit) - 11th Round - Chicago White Sox - 316th overall Luke Jackson (Transferred to DBU) - 11th Round - Tampa Bay Marlin - 327th overall Barrett Morgan (2025 commit) - 11th Round - Boston Red Sox - 328th overall Blaine Bullard (2025 commit) - 12th Round - Toronto Blue Jays - 352nd overall Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Jarrett Johnson on X: @whosnextsports1. Advertisement This article originally appeared on Aggies Wire: Texas A&M Baseball 2025 MLB Draft Tracker
New York Times
14-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Guardians stockpile college bats in 2025 MLB Draft, take Jace LaViolette with first-round pick
CLEVELAND — It's a little different having the 27th pick in the MLB Draft from owning the top selection with the largest bonus pool in league history. Last year, the Cleveland Guardians could evaluate every prospect, knowing they could draft anyone they wanted with the No. 1 pick, the benefit of a fortunate bounce of ping-pong balls for a club that had a 2 percent chance of landing the top spot. Advertisement After a 92-win season, the Guardians wound up with the No. 27 pick in the 2025 draft. Yet, they still made a decision with that pick that should pique the interest of the Cleveland fans. The Guardians drafted Texas A&M outfielder Jace LaViolette with their first choice Sunday night. He's a 6-foot-6, 240-pound outfielder with power and athleticism to make scouts salivate. Earlier this year, his name surfaced in chatter about the No. 1 pick. 'He's a massive guy,' said Paul Gillispie, the Guardians' senior vice president of scouting. 'Speed, power, patience.' So why did he fall to the end of the first round? That's the part that should have Guardians fans glued to his journey in the coming years. Let's start here: The Guardians have been working for years to solve their hitting development riddle. They have had profound struggles in the outfield, in particular, for more than a decade. LaViolette is the seventh outfielder they have selected with their first pick in the last 14 drafts. That time stretches back to 2012, when they tabbed Tyler Naquin — another left-handed-hitting outfielder from Texas A&M — with the No. 12 pick. They took Clint Frazier in 2013, then Bradley Zimmer in 2014. They went with Will Benson in 2016 and Quentin Holmes in 2017 (in the second round, since they coughed up their top pick to sign Edwin Encarnacion). They drafted Chase DeLauter at No. 16 three years ago, and he's finally on the cusp of the majors, but injuries keep interfering with his progress. In March, The Athletic's Keith Law ranked LaViolette the No. 7 prospect on his big board, but he wrote: 'I don't know about this one. LaViolette has the power to go 1-1, but there's a mixed camp on whether he stays in center, and he struck out 81 times (24.2 percent) last spring, an unthinkable number and rate for a top-10 pick. … It's a high-risk, high-reward package — we haven't seen guys whiff this much in college and end up good big-league hitters.' With the 27th pick in the 1st round, we have selected OF Jace LaViolette from Texas A&M University. In 188 games at the college level, Jace slashed .285/.432/.651 with 68 HR and 202 RBI.#GuardsBall — Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) July 14, 2025 LaViolette is Texas A&M's all-time leader in home runs (68) and walks (169). He slugged 29 homers in 68 games as a sophomore in 2024, and compiled a .305/.449/.726 slash line. His output dipped in 2025, though, to .258/.427/.576. He slipped to the No. 24 spot on Law's big board before the draft, with Law projecting that 'his dismal performance this spring ended (talk of going first) and probably pushed him to the back of the first round or beyond.' Advertisement The primary issue? As Law noted, his whiff rate on pitches in the zone is concerning. 'He has no load in his approach,' Law wrote earlier this month, 'making very hard contact because he's extremely strong and has enough hand speed to get the bat going in time to catch up to good velocity, with a hard-hit rate on the year of 53 percent. He does know the strike zone well enough to see solid OBPs with power, likely pulled down by a low batting average and probably a strikeout rate above 25 percent when he gets to Double A. … If you think you can solve some of his in-zone miss, whether it's by adjusting his swing to give him a load and some more rhythm or if you think it's about pitch recognition, he does have 30-homer upside.' That last sentence is the key, and it falls upon an organization that has reached an inflection point when it comes to hitting development. The Guardians are widely regarded as one of the model franchises for pitching development, but they have yet to replicate those processes on the position player side. LaViolette might be the right case study to evaluate their progress. Can they remedy what ailed him this past season at Texas A&M and guide him toward being the hitter who was once drawing consideration for the top pick? 'His upside is obviously quite high,' Gillispie said. 'I don't know if I would characterize it as extreme value. I'd say he's a player who does a lot of things really well, and I think if you take those things that he does and bring him into an environment like ours and get him around our people, our resources, I think the potential upside for him is really high. In some ways, it's unknowable exactly how good he can be.' They could certainly use more power in the system. Cleveland's top prospects list is filled with hitters — DeLauter, CJ Kayfus, Ralphy Velazquez, Angel Genao, Cooper Ingle, Jaison Chourio and, of course, Travis Bazzana, last year's No. 1 pick — but none has the power potential that LaViolette wields. How else do you wind up with the nickname 'Lord Tubbington'? The last six years (including the first half of this season), the Guardians have ranked 27th, 12th, 29th, 30th, 12th and 20th in home runs among the league's 30 teams. Advertisement Despite his skepticism about LaViolette's path forward, consider Law a proponent of the pick, given where in the draft it occurred. Law joked he wanted to build a time machine and tell Cleveland's brass in February that it would land LaViolette with its first-rounder. 'This guy was supposed to go top 10, and he's at 27, but he's not hurt or any different,' Law wrote Sunday night. 'He just had a bad year when the whole team around him fell apart. You have to think you can improve his swing decisions and probably clean up the swing.' In all, the Guardians made five selections on Day 1 of the draft. Four of them are 21-year-old position players. No. 27: Jace LaViolette, LHH OF, Texas A&M No. 64: Dean Curley, RHH SS, Tennessee No. 66: Aaron Walton, RHH OF, Arizona No. 70: Will Hynes, RHP, Lorne Park Secondary School in Ontario No. 101: Nolan Schubart, RHH OF, Oklahoma State Curley was ranked No. 34 on Law's big board, thanks to an 'excellent feel to hit with a simple swing that gets the ball in the air, although as the season went on, he started to have more trouble picking up off-speed stuff from the better pitching in the SEC. … He's not a shortstop and probably has his best shot to stay on the dirt at third base.' Want to feel old? Hynes was born July 7, 2007. Maybe it's meant to be that someone born on 07/07/07 was taken with pick No. 70. Gillispie said he's confident the team can sign him away from his Wake Forest commitment. Walton, a 6-foot-3 center fielder, transferred from Samford ahead of his junior year. Schubart, who stands 6 feet 5, is another outfielder (for now) with mega pop — he hit 59 homers in three years in Stillwater, Okla. — and a concerning strikeout rate. As for LaViolette, he suffered a broken hand during an SEC tournament game in late May and had surgery that night. He played the next day. Gillispie said LaViolette recently underwent another procedure to clean up and reinforce the initial operation, and said the Guardians have no concern about the injury.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
3 Texas A&M players are expected to be selected in the 2025 MLB Draft
Ahead of the 2025 MLB Draft, which will begin on Saturday, July 13, Texas A&M will see at least one player selected in the first round, as junior outfielder Jace LaViolette is expected to be chosen on Sunday, while junior pitcher Justin Lamkin and sophomore pitcher Shane Sdao are the following players in line to hear their names called over the next two days potentially. However, senior ace pitcher Ryan Prager is not ranked within MLB Pipeline's Top 250 prospect list despite being selected in the 3rd round by the Los Angeles Angels in the 2024 MLB Draft. Choosing to return for what was expected to be his final season in College Station, Prager struggled during the majority of his starts, finishing with a 4-4 record, 4.21 ERA, and 73 strikeouts. Advertisement Compared to his 9-1 finish during the Aggies' College World Series run in 2024, Prager was expected to improve, but as we've seen with star pitchers in the past, it's sometimes a mistake to return after being selected in the first three rounds. While there is a slight possibility that Prager returns, Justin Lamkin and Shane Sdao are the two other players to watch, especially Sdao, who, after missing the entirety of the 2024 season, may not see his draft status rise any further than it currently sits. Lamkin, who finished with a 5-7 record and 3.42 ERA, finished with 98 strikeouts, while his complete, hitless game against the Georgia Bulldogs included 15 Ks in the best outing of his Aggie career. According to MLB Pipeline's 250 rankings, LaViolette comes in at No. 20, Lamkin at No. 111, and Sdao at No. 116. Even if all three players are selected, they still possess the option to return to Texas A&M for the 2026 season. Advertisement Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Cameron on X: @CameronOhnysty. This article originally appeared on Aggies Wire: Three Texas A&M players expected to be selected in the 2025 MLB Draft
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Texas A&M junior shortstop selected 103rd overall by the New York Yankees in the MLB Draft
Day 1 of the 2025 MLB Draft impacted Texas A&M's 2026 roster, as junior outfielder Jace LaViolette was selected 27th overall by the Cleveland Guardians, followed by junior pitcher Justin Lamkin going to Kansas City wth the 71st overall pick, and culminating with junior shortstop Kaeden Kent going to the New York Yankees in the 3rd round with the 103rd overall selection. LaViolette and Lamkin were expected to go in the first three rounds, and while Kaeden Kent's legendary status with the Aggies was cemented after the 2025 season, his draft status was up and down, and he was not ranked inside MLB Pipeline's Top 250 prospect rankings. Yes, Kent is the son of Jeff Kent, who should be in the Hall of Fame by now, but like his son, defense was an issue throughout his career. Advertisement However, Kent improved significantly this season as a defender, while his big-game offense has produced several memorable moments over the last two seasons. Kent shot on the scene with scouts during the 2024 Super Regional round vs. Oregon, breaking the game wide open and sending the Aggies to the College World Series. Kent's career numbers in College Station include 135 appearances and 101 starts, a .290/.389/.494 slash line, 18 home runs, 100 RBIs, 23 doubles, 61 walks, a .948 fielding percentage, and just 72 strikeouts. Kent's decision to compete in the MLB Combine in Phoenix was likely a sign that led to Earley adding shortstops Chris Hacopian and Maddox Latta from the transfer portal. According to GigEm247's Carter Karels, Ken's assigned slot value as the 103rd overall pick is $744,400, which is likely too enticing to pass up. Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Cameron on X: @CameronOhnysty. Advertisement This article originally appeared on Aggies Wire: Texas A&M SS Kaeden Kent selected 103rd overall New York Yankees
