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The college baseball season starts today, which means it is officially draft season. I wanted to highlight a few college prospects that could be available for the Nats to select with the 11th pick. It is supposed to be a very good draft this year, so the Nats will have plenty of options.

We have already written about a few prospects the Nats could take like Tyler Bell, Cameron Flukey, Jackson Flora and Chris Hacopian. The three prospects we are highlighting today are Florida RHP Liam Peterson, TCU outfielder Sawyer Strosnider and Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey. All of these players have wide ranges, but have a chance to be the pick for the Nats at 11th overall.

I want to start with Peterson, who is the most famous of the three. Some early rankings had him as the top college pitching prospect in this class, but Cameron Flukey and Jackson Flora are ahead of him on most boards now. As an SEC pitcher, he will be facing a higher caliber of hitter compared to Flora and Flukey, who play at UCSB and Coastal Carolina. That means he could end up being SP1 by the end of the season.

Peterson arguably has the best raw stuff of any pitcher in college baseball. His fastball is in the mid to upper 90’s with explosive life at the top of the zone. He also has two breaking balls with a chance to be plus pitches, showcasing a slider and a 12/6 curve. Peterson also shows a changeup with some promise, but is not as comfortable throwing it. One stuff model actually thinks Peterson is the nastiest returning pitcher in all of college baseball.

Consistent strike throwing is the question mark for Peterson right now. His BB/9 went from over 6 his freshman year to 4.2 as a sophomore. However, that is still a bit higher than you would like. He also allowed more hits than you would think for a guy with his stuff, giving up 67 hits in 69.1 innings. Both Fangraphs and MLB Pipeline note some stiffness and effort in his delivery, which is worth monitoring. That could be why they both rank him at 13th, while Baseball America has him at 9th. 

Peterson has very loud stuff, and that could attract Paul Toboni. At 6’5 205 pounds, Peterson also has a prototypical frame. There is a ton of intrigue here, but Peterson will need to perform in his final season at Florida to maintain his stock. He has yet to have a season with an ERA under 4, and that will have to change this year.

The next guy I want to talk about is Sawyer Strosnider, a toolsy outfielder from TCU. Strosnider is a draft eligible sophomore, so he will be younger than most college prospects, having just turned 21 before draft day. He is a freak athlete, with speed and power for days.

Strosnider is not just pure projection though. In his freshman year at TCU, he hit .350 with 11 homers, 10 steals and a 1.070 OPS in 56 games. That made him one of the most productive freshmen in the nation. His speed, power and production make him a tantalizing prospect.

He is not a perfect player though. That is why Fangraphs has him ranked at 15th and Baseball America has him at 18th. Pipeline is the highest on Stronsider, ranking him 9th overall. Both Pipeline and BA note Strosnider’s chase happy approach as a question mark. Fangraphs has some swing and miss concerns, but he was making more contact as the season went on.

Strosnider actually started his college career very slowly, going 5/35 with 17 strikeouts. However, he turned things around after that, hitting .389 with a 14% K rate the rest of the way. Strosnider actually plays right field due to TCU having another high profile outfield prospect in Chase Brunson. He has the tools to play center though, and whoever drafts him will try him out there.

This is a player that could intrigue Paul Toboni. Strosnider has massive tools and big time production. If he has another good season, he could be in the Nats range, and potentially be a top 10 pick.

The last player I want to talk about is Georgia Tech catcher Vahn Lackey. Based on the rankings, he seems like a pretty divisive prospect. Fangraphs is very high on him, with Lackey being their number four overall prospect. Baseball America is much lower on him though, putting the catcher 25th in their rankings. Pipeline is in the middle, ranking him 12th.

With the addition of Harry Ford, the Nats are not as desperate for catching in their system, but Lackey could be a player they like. He is universally praised for his defensive ability and athleticism. Lackey is a lock to stick behind the plate and could be a plus defensive catcher.

However, the offense is where the disagreements come from. Lackey advocates like Fangraphs see him as a good contact hitter with the potential to add average power down the road. However, skeptics are not as convinced by the power and are worried his approach is too passive. He also hits the ball on the ground more than you would like due to his flat swing. Lackey has decent raw power, but will he get to it?

Lackey has only hit 10 home runs in two seasons at Georgia Tech. He also does not have a very long track record. Lackey was not super highly touted coming out of college, and only hit .214 his first year at Georgia Tech. However, he had a huge breakout in 2025, hitting .347 with a .921 OPS. 

That makes this season a huge one for Lackey. If he can show his 2025 was not a fluke, he could be an option for the Nats. However, if the power does not come and he takes a slight step back, he will become more of a late first or early second round guy. The defense makes him a high floor prospect, but the bat will determine his ceiling.

This is going to be a very exciting college baseball season. I am going to try to watch as much as I can to monitor these prospects. It is a shame the Nats were not eligible to pick first overall because Roch Cholowsky is the best college shortstop prospect in over a decade. However, there is a ton of talent and depth in this class. I trust Paul Toboni to strike oil here.

I have my complaints about the Hal Steinbrenner-Brian Cashman administration, with one of the big ones being that it’s not always clear where Cashman’s decision authority stops and Hal’s starts. The one thing you can never take away from the duo though is that when they want a guy, really want him, they pull out all the stops to get him. Following a devastating loss in the 2019 ALCS, the Yankees needed a true ace to compete with the Red Sox and Astros, the two teams that had bounced them from the postseason in the previous three years.

Meanwhile, Gerrit Cole was putting up numbers that made him look like a hydrogen bomb going up against coughing babies with Louisville Sluggers. As the lead photo to this post commemorates, Cole also famously grew up a Yankee fan, and his signing was something of a homecoming — one that bar a devastating Tommy John surgery, has paid off in spades.

Gerrit Cole
Signing Date: December 16, 2019
Contract: 9 years, $324 million

Cole’s kind of always been the golden boy. His senior year of high school at Orange Lutheran High he sat 96 mph, striking out 121 batters in 75 innings. Of course the Yankees actually drafted him long before signing him in 2019, 28th overall in the 2008 draft. The club offered an overslot $4 million bonus, but the righty stuck to his commitment with UCLA. Three years later, Cole went 1-1 and signed with the Pirates for $8 million.

But then, he did go to the soon-to-be-resurgent Pirates, a franchise that was being widely celebrated at the time for building strong pitching, backed by Ray Searage’s encouraged use of sinkers and two-seam fastballs. Cole was never bad with Pittsburgh, putting up a 5.1-fWAR season in 2015 and finishing fourth in NL Cy Young Award voting, but it always felt that he had another gear to reach. Perhaps a philosophical misalignment—with Cole rivaled perhaps only by Justin Verlander in this era of taking a “screw you, hit this” approach to his repertoire—kept Gerrit from being the ace he would later emerge as.

Regrettably we got to see that pairing for two years, as the Houston Astros added Cole to a very, very dangerous rotation ahead of the 2018 season. That philosophical match was there, as was some sticky stuff, and the big righty put up 13.4 fWAR in two years with Houston — fanning 40 percent of batters he faced in a 326-K 2019!! If only he didn’t dogwalk the Yankees while doing so, we’d all probably remember this fondly.

What I do remember fondly is the famous Boras Corp. hat Cole sported after going unused in a World Series Game 7 loss, signaling that the game’s best pitcher was going to be available to the highest bid. The Yankees, with their Baby Bomber core already starting to show some cracks — love you forever, Gary Sánchez — were in need of A Guy to pair along with Aaron Judge.

Of course having one of the most dominant pitching seasons since Peak Pedro right before becoming a free agent meant there were many suitors, with the Angels, Padres, Phillies, and Astros all expected to be significant competitors, and the Yankees not even considered favorites. The club did catch a break when the Angels bit on Anthony Rendon just before Cole signed, with the former Nationals’ third baseman going to Orange County, and that tale is a much less happy one.

In the end, the Yankees pulled out all the stops on this one. The organization showed up at the right-hander’s door with an entourage that included his childhood hero Andy Pettitte, who spoke about the uniqueness of success in pinstripes. New pitching coach Matt Blake was also part of the delegation, detailing his plans to revamp Yankee pitching development, and appealing to the often-professorial attitude Cole takes to his craft.

The $324 million, nearly double what the Yankees landed CC Sabathia for just over a decade earlier, certainly helped as well. Gerrit Cole was going to be the Opening Day starter for the New York Yankees, in an ironic echo from what might have happened 10 or so years before.

That first start was a strange one, coming in July in an empty stadium as baseball grappled with continuity in the time of COVID-19. Perhaps we could see that first start as an omen of sorts, with the time since seeing Cole win a Cy Young, start a World Series game, and twirl one of the more impressive regular season outings in recent Yankee history on July 10, 2021:

Yet just like all of Aaron Judge’s lofty, indeed historic, accomplishments, everything that Cole has done as a Yankee has ended in a bit of disappointment. In the 2021 AL Wild Card Game, the win-or-go-home playoff outing that you expressly sign a player like Cole for, he gave up a pair of home runs early to put the Yankees down 3-0 and was out after two innings (due in part to a nagging hamstring). The Yankees couldn’t recover and went home.

The team had their backs to the wall in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series, this time in the Bronx, once again the exact type of scenario you imagine when you ink an ace to a deal commiserate with his talent. Gerrit Cole played a pivotal role in that nightmare fifth inning, not agreeing with Anthony Rizzo on who should cover first base, and unable to re-establish control over the frame after other errors in the way that we have seen him do so before.

And then came that bad news last spring, just about exactly a year ago. Elbow discomfort, MRI, Tommy John surgery, and a lost year. We don’t know at press time when Cole will be back—probably mid-to-late May by the updates the club has provided—but just like that your nominal ace is 35, hasn’t pitched in anger since that World Series game, and hasn’t had a season without elbow trouble since 2023.

If nothing else, Gerrit Cole is a marked case of Get Caught Trying. Nothing is guaranteed, no one player means that you’re going to win the last game of the season. No active pitcher has a higher career WAR without a World Series ring than Gerrit. Even one of the last, great, 200+ inning workhorses can be felled by a ligament about the size of a Q-tip. Man proposes and baseball disposes, but put it all together and try. The biggest criticism of the post-dynasty Yankees has been that they’ve refused to push it all in at once, but signing Gerrit Cole was probably the closest we’ve gotten to it, and there’s a reason there’s a No. 45 jersey in my closet.

See more of the “50 Most Notable Yankees Free Agent Signings in 50 Years” series here.

Sports give us a socially acceptable outlet for our pettiness. They let us boo, roll our eyes, and carry grudges that would be wildly inappropriate anywhere else in life. You’re allowed to hate teams, from division rivals to big-market behemoths.

Which team do you hate the most? There are several possibilities.

• The Yankees. Do you root for Darth Vader in Star Wars? Do you cheer when the blackjack dealer wins at the casino? You might be a Yankees fan. They’re called the “Evil Empire” for a reason.
• The Dodgers. They’re the new Yankees. They spend like it’s going out of style, and their fans leave games in the seventh inning to beat traffic.
• The Cardinals. Our cross-town rivals. They’re still chirping about Denkinger’s call in 1985 and how they’re the self-anointed “Best Fans in Baseball.”
• The White Sox. Division rivals. The Royals and White Sox have had dust-ups before, including the time two Chicago fans jumped on the field and assaulted a Royals coach.
• The Pirates. I dunno, I just don’t like the way they look at us.

Which team do you hate the most and why?

3pm FloSports.

The 2026 Diamond Dores Season begins… now. See my Season Preview for more on this team.

On the Mound

Friday @ 3:00pm FloSports

#39 Vanderbilt Jr. RHP Connor “The Spice” Fennell (6-0; 2.53 ERA*)

vs. #49 TCU Jr. RHP Tommy “The Pour” LaPour (8-3; 3.09 ERA*)

*Record and ERA from 2025.

The Lineup

See you in the comments.

Was today’s trade a precursor to another one coming soon?

Today the Astros traded OF Jesus Sanchez to the Toronto Blue Jays for a former Astros fan favorite – OF Joey Loperfido.

Clearly the Astros were sour on Sanchez after he performed poorly both at the plate (.199 AVG with Houston) and in the field, as this deal essentially equates to a salary dump. Sanchez was due to ear $6.8M while Loperfido still makes the MLB minimum $820K. Loperfido also has an option remaining.

With the trade, the Astros now sit close to $15.8M under the first tax line ($244M), and have more flexibility for another deal to bring in a player who would be a lineup upgrade. While a previous fan favorite, Loperfido profiles as a reserve OF capable of playing all three outfield spots.

What does this trade mean going forward?

Right now it means the Astros have a projected starting outfield of Zach Cole in LF, Jake Meyers in CF and Cam Smith in RF. But it’s important to note, that is as of right now.

Astros GM Dana Brown dropped the bomb at the end of his conversation with the media. “We’re not done.”

Now armed with more flexibility under the first tax line, perhaps Brown can now be more aggressive in his pursuit of another left-handed OF bat, possibly one that can play LF every day and set up a RF platoon of Cam Smith and Zach Cole, or lead to a trade of Jake Meyers and a shift of Cole or Smith to CF?

Meyers has been the topic of trade discussion all off-season, as has 3B Isaac Paredes who has been caught in a logjam in the infield with 1B Christian Walker. While the club likes Paredes bat and toughness, Paredes has far more value on the market than Walker does due to his age, contract, production and positional flexibility. Reports have indicated significant interest in Paredes and near none in Walker.

In addition to a left-handed hitting power bat in the outfield, the Astros could also benefit from a backup catcher to replace Victor Caratini and another high-leverage arm in the bullpen due to uncertainty surrounding closer Josh Hader and reliever Bennett Sousa. Hader had a setback in his recovery from a sprained shoulder capsule as he developed bicep tendonitis, and Sousa’s season was cut short due to a flexor/pronator strain in his left elbow.

Sousa also had Thoracic Outlet surgery in 2024 but returned to pitch the best baseball of his career. Thoracic Outlet surgery usually leaves pitchers with diminished stuff, but Sousa was surprisingly at his best.

There isn’t much in the way of a viable backup catcher on the free agent market that would offer an offensive upgrade from Cesar Salazar, so it seems the best way to achieve that would be the trade market. The Astros have been linked to Pirates catcher Joey Bart.

While the Astros didn’t get their final roster truly settled before Spring Training began, it is clear that they are still working on that potential final roster. They’re not done yet.

Tell us in the comments what additional moves you would like to see the Astros make.

With spring training officially rocking and rolling, this is definitely as good of a time as any to hear from both Atlanta Braves President of Baseball Operations/General Manager Alex Anthopoulos and the newly-promoted manager, Walt Weiss. Both of them spoke with the media one-after-the-other on Friday afternoon and the first thing on my mind was to confirm how AA felt about the state of the rotation.

“We’ve got four guys right now in Strider, Sale, Holmes and López in our rotation We’ll have competition for our fifth spot,” confirmed AA when I asked him about the rotation. “We know what Strider can be, we know what Sale has done. López was an All-Star the year before and Holmes did a nice job for us in the rotation before he went down. We like some of the arms we have and some of the talent we have.”

He went on to add that he feels like the team as a whole can step up in order to make sure that the burden of bringing this team back to success is equally spread amongst the squad. “I think the big key for our club is that offensively for the past two years we haven’t performed the way we hope,” said Anthopoulos. “Part of that is performance, part of that is injury. We have a deeper group of position players, a deeper bullpen and that should take a lot of pressure off of the other parts of the team.”

Anthopoulos was also asked about Ha-Seong Kim during the press conference and we got a tiny bit of good news on that front. “We’re hopeful and optimistic that he’ll be back at the beginning of May,” revealed AA. That bit of information is new, as that appears to be on the shorter side of recovery from Kim’s icy calamity.

“That’s why we have guys like Mauricio Dubon. He can play everywhere and we’re excited to see him at shortstop where he’ll have an opportunity, ”Anthopoulos affirmed shortly afterwards. “If we didn’t sign Kim then we were prepared to go with Dubon at shortstop. Hopefully it’s not that long of an absence for him and he’ll have the remainder of the season to have a chance to have a lot of at-bats and make a big impact on our team.”

AA also shared his reasoning behind the signing of catcher Jonah Heim, as he confirmed that he’ll be getting an opportunity to serve as the backup backstop around here. “He had a tremendous 2023 as starting catcher on a World Series team. He was a Gold Glove, it was great. The last two years offensively, he hasn’t performed nearly as well and the numbers certainly bear that out. Even defensively, he hasn’t been the same,” stated AA.

“He’s still young — he’s only 30. He’s got a switch-hit bat with a lot of upside and Walt Weiss talked about during his interview about how he wants to get Drake Baldwin’s bat in the lineup as often as he can with the DH spot. Having someone who’s been durable as an everyday guy, I’m not going to put it on him to be the guy he was in 2023 but he’s young enough, he’s capable and he’s done it before. We think he can do better offensively and defensively as well.”

We also got a bit of an update on Sean Murphy’s status as well, which was basically just confirming that they’re expecting to have him back in May as well before evaluating their options at the catcher spot. “We think Sean Murphy will be probably be back sometime in May but we start at the end of March so that’s a long period of time,” said AA. “Having a guy like Jonah who’s been a starter and we think he has upside, it was a no-brainer for us. He knows when Sean Murphy comes back that we’ll see where we’re at with the roster but we’re excited to have him. We think he’s certainly capable of being a better player than he’s been and that’s certainly the goal and we think our staff might be able to unlock some things.”

With two players already heading to the 60-Day IL in the form of Spencer Schwellenbach and Joe Jiménez, AA also had to talk about the injury situation as well. He did acknowledge the issues with injuries but also made sure to bring up everybody’s track record in that regard.

“We’ve been a healthy club, we had a bunch of durable players. Some guys had pre-existing things, especially some of the guys that pitched,” said Anthopoulos. “We knew that there was some risk with some of those guys. [When it comes to] position players, guys getting hit in the hands, sliding into a base, I don’t know that you can really address those things.” He went on to say that the Braves were looking into “their throwing programs, their bullpens. We’ve looked at if a guy has had a recurring injury on the position player side. It’s obviously an issue across the game and we had a really good run of success with the same group of coaches and trainers and all the medical staff — a long run of success that led to six divisions and seven postseasons in a row. We had injuries but not like we had the last few years. Like anything, you should review and tweak and make adjustments and we’re certainly going to try to do that as well.”

I also asked Alex Anthopoulos about how he envisions new outfielder Mike Yastrzemski fitting in with the current Braves squad. As you can tell, he’s pretty excited about having Yaz in that clubhouse at the moment. “Right now with Sean Murphy being out, the thought is that Jurickson Profar will get the majority of DH at-bats against right-handers. Mike Yastrzemski would start in left field against right-handers. Against left-handers, Walt Weiss will move some things around.”

AA went on to talk more about how he’s looking forward to seeing Yaz get deployed heading into the new season. “Knowing Yastrzemski is the strong side of a platoon facing the right-handed starter should get a lot of playing time. We also like the fact that he can cover us at all three outfield spots. We don’t view him as an everyday center fielder but he can certainly fit in there short-term and we just like the upside,” stated AA. “We thought he got back to some of the really good things he had done with his swing when he went to the Royals so we like that. We think there’s offensive upside as well as a left-handed bat and the fact that he protects us at so many positions. He’s just a great fit.”

Overall, AA seems pretty optimistic about the state of the club — though to be fair, everybody’s excited about the state of their club at this time of year. With that being said, there is actual reason to be optimistic about things surrounding the Braves heading into the new season and we’ll have to see how things play out going forward. We’ll have more information from Walt Weiss in the near future so keep an eye out for that. For now, what do you think abut AA’s comments here on Friday?