Vol Baseball and the 2026 MLB Draft
A few things to note before I give my specific thoughts
- The MLB Draft is decidedly different than other major sports. It's not about what round or pick number someone is; it's about the player's asking price.
- MLB uses a bonus pool system. Every pick in the first 10 rounds is assigned a specific dollar or slot value. The sum of a team's slot values creates their total bonus pool.
- The catch is that the team can assign the bonus money however they want. They can cheap out on a player in the first round to offer a bigger bonus to another player later in the draft.
- If a player taken in the top 10 rounds doesn't sign, his selection's value gets subtracted from his team's pool
- Therefore, high schoolers have a lot of leverage, draft-eligible college sophomores and juniors have some, and a player out of NCAA eligibility has none.
- Because of this, almost all draft selections in the first ten rounds sign their contracts. It is worked out in advance. Players taken in the first ten rounds sign 99% of the time.
- Rounds 11-20 are wild. There is no slot value, and money saved in the first ten rounds can be leveraged to meet a player's asking price. There are usually surprises in rounds 11-14 or so (Jared Dickey was coming back to Tennessee in 2023 until the Royals offered him his asking price).
- The kicker this year is that the NCAA passed the 5-for-5 rule, granting players another year of eligibility. This affects someone like Andrew Duncan, a Wright State transfer to Tennessee, entering his fourth season of college ball.
- While this is good news for the players and fans of college ball, the uncertainty surrounding the labor dispute between MLB and the players' association adds pressure. Duncan has leverage this season, but what if the draft shrinks considerably by next summer?
- The league just submitted its first proposal to shrink the draft to 12 rounds and abolish high school draftees.
- Because of this, there is heightened pressure on players whose timelines are drastically impacted by a looming MLB lockout.
With all of that being said, the draft is extremely hush-hush, and the only real way to know any of this is if you know the players' families, agents, and every MLB team's interest. It is very inexact, but I've offered my best guesses. I generally lean towards "if a player gets drafted, he's gone." The last 5 drafts have pretty much proven that, with just a few exceptions. I'm happy to be wrong in those cases.
| Player | Pos | Status | Percent Chance He Plays For Tennessee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trevor Condon | OF | Signee | 0% |
| Jared Grindlinger | LHP | Signee | 0.10% |
| Cole Koeninger | SS | Signee | 15% |
| Kaiden McCarthy | RHP | Signee | 25% |
| Gannon Grant | RHP | Signee | 35% |
| Tyler Putnam | RHP | Signee | 35% |
| Sean Dunlap | C | Signee | 40% |
| Gary Morse | RHP | Signee | 40% |
| Shawn Sullivan | RHP | Signee | 49% |
| Jake McCoy | LHP | Transfer | 49% |
| Travis Sanders | 3B | Transfer | 50% |
| Andrew Duncan | CF | Transfer | 50% |
| AJ Curry | 1B | Signee | 51% |
| Jack Dugan | SS | Signee | 51% |
| Ricky Ojeda | LHP | Transfer | 51% |
| Cody Boshell | 1B | Signee | 60% |
| Jaxson Wood | SS | Signee | 60% |
| Parker Detmers | RHP | Transfer | 70% |
| Cade Allen | RHP | Signee | 80% |
| Cooper Shrum | RHP | Signee | 80% |
| Michael Teasley | 3B | Signee | 80% |
| Colt Springall | 2B | Signee | 80% |
| Drew Christine | LHP | Signee | 80% |
| Kai Bratton | RHP | Signee | 80% |
The Tennessee staff is smart; they know what they're working with. If you take returning players, transfers in, and the number of players >50% above, that's 32 players. There is a high chance that a player less than 50% above makes it in. I'm just going off combine buzz and overall chatter.
TL;DR I think Tennessee is about to get hammered in the draft, but that's okay because the strategy moving forward is to get a few high-impact freshmen (Appy, Grindlinger, Clark) and backfill the roster with transfer portal additions. The days of a guy sitting for a season are mostly over.