Paul Skenes and Dylan Crews made history Sunday in the 2023 MLB Draft as the first college teammates to be taken first and second overall, a fitting honor for a duo that dominated their way to a national championship with LSU.
The Pittsburgh Pirates took the first step by selecting Skenes with the first pick. The Nationals followed with Crews at No. 2.
Just weeks ago, Crews and Skenes lifted the College World Series trophy at the end of a dream season for LSU, beating conference rival Florida 18-4 in a Game 3 Finals win-win. . Florida star Wyatt Langford moved up to 4th overall for the Texas Rangers on Sunday.
The LSU pair didn’t need a championship to establish themselves as top prospects, however.
Are the Pirates getting Stephen Strasburg 2.0 with Paul Skenes?
Fourteen years ago, a San Diego State pitcher named Stephen Strasburg entered the 2009 MLB Draft, billed as the best pitching prospect of a generation.
His arsenal featured a fastball that regularly hit triple digits, one of the nastiest breaking balls in the college ranks, a change that proved to be immense, and the command to make the whole package work. This year, the Draft saw a prospect with essentially the same set of tools, plus a record of SEC dominance and a College World Series title.
Skenes joined LSU as a transfer from the Air Force last offseason and quickly established himself as an electric prospect, even before beginning to mow through SEC competition. In 122 2/3 innings over 19 starts, Skenes posted a 1.69 ERA with 209 strikeouts (15.3 strikeouts per nine innings), 20 walks and a 0.75 ERA.
He won College World Series MVP honors, with 21 strikeouts and two earned runs allowed in 15 2/3 innings over two starts. He also won the Dick Howser Trophy, National Player of the Year and National Pitcher of the Year.
Due to the existence of Shohei Ohtani, it’s also worth mentioning that Skenes was a legit two-way player before he transferred to LSU and focused on throwing. In his final year in the Air Force, he hit .314/.412/.634 with 13 homers, but he’s not expected to hit as a professional.
Skenes has generational stuff, a sparkling track record and a tall stature, at 6-foot-6 and 247 pounds. What’s the downside? Well, he’s a pitcher and pitching prospects are notoriously volatile. And while regularly launching at 100 mph is cause for excitement, it’s also cause for concern.
The roster of starting pitchers trying to live north of 100 mph, or even close to it, isn’t encouraging if you’re investing in Skenes’ long-term future. Jacob deGrom underwent two Tommy John operations. Strasbourg may never pitch again. Matt Harvey is retired. Noah Syndergaard could be right behind him. Dustin May just had his second major elbow surgery in three years.
There are counterexamples, such as the still-healthy Gerrit Cole and Sandy Alcantara (none of them throw as hard as Skenes), but recent history suggests the human arm just isn’t designed. to withstand dozens of 100 mph fastballs for 30 starts. per season.
Again, deGrom won two Cy Young Awards and Strasburg won a World Series MVP. Much good can happen even when injury seems inevitable – and sometimes it isn’t.
Dylan Crews lands with Nationals after 3 stellar years at LSU
With the second pick, the Nationals got the guy everyone was waiting for a few months ago.
Crews was considered a top prospect for the 2020 MLB Draft, but retired his name late in the process and opted to honor his commitment to LSU. He went on to play exactly like a top MLB prospect in college, earning National Freshman of the Year and All-American honors by hitting .362/.453/.663 with 18 homers in his career. first season in Baton Rouge.
Success continued to come in sophomore year, when Crews won co-SEC Baseball Player of the Year, but things picked up speed in his junior season. Crews’ batting average has lived north of .500 for several months, and its numbers have come in at .426/.567/.713, with 18 homers and 71 walks against 41 strikeouts. This effort earned Crews the prestigious Golden Spikes Award for Most Outstanding College Baseball Player.
Crews hit base in all 71 games he played that season, with his final hit coming in the form of a hat-trick against Florida in Game 3 of the College World Series Finals. Echo Angel Reese of the LSU women’s basketball team and Joe Burrow of the soccer team, he beckoned for a ring:
Although he was widely ranked as the best hitter in this draft, Crews is not a perfect prospect. His base numbers look incredible, but his batted ball data showed a significant increase in groundstrokes and a decrease in line drives in 2023. There’s also a chance he won’t stay in center field, which puts even more pressure on his bat to lift him to All-Star status.
Those weren’t big enough concerns to significantly diminish the Crews’ draft status, of course, but that was no small thing, given the other choices available.
Crews seemed like an obvious choice for the Pirates early in the season, but Skenes’ playoff dominance has made the choice a legitimate debate over which perspective to take. With signing bonus demands looming, Crews dropped to second.
The Pirates landed the top pick in the first MLB lottery
Prior to 2023, the Nationals would have automatically received the top pick after going a worst 55-107 in MLB in 2022. Instead, the Pirates skipped them.
It was the first year of MLB’s long-awaited draft lottery, the league’s answer to more than a decade of teams stripping their rosters at the posts to take on draft picks. While the strategy worked for teams such as the 2016 Chicago Cubs and 2017 Houston Astros, the dwindling number of competitive teams created a miserable experience for some fans and frustration for the MLB Players Association.
As a result, MLB agreed to institute a draft lottery in the last collective bargaining agreement, with the three worst teams all getting a 16.5% chance of being the first pick. The Nationals could have dropped much lower than the second pick, as they only had a 15.6% chance of being the second pick. The biggest loser was the Oakland Athletics, which was a theme this year. Despite holding the same odds for first pick as the Pirates and Nationals, the A’s have dropped all the way to sixth pick overall.
The other significant quirk of the draft lottery is that teams cannot be selected for the lottery more than two years in a row if they receive from the MLB revenue share pool, while teams that contribute revenue share (read: large market teams) cannot participate in the lottery for consecutive years.
This means that each of the top six teams from this year will be eligible for the lottery next season, but earning a top six pick again would lock them out for 2025.
The first full round of the MLB Draft
1. Pittsburgh Pirates: Paul Skenes, RHP, LSU
2. Washington Nationals: Dylan Crews, OF, LSU
3. Detroit Tigers: Max Clark, OF, Franklin Community High School (Indiana)
4. Texas Rangers: Wyatt Langford, OF, Florida
5. Minnesota Twins: Walker Jenkins, OF, South Brunswick High School (North Carolina)
6. Oakland A’s: Jacob Wilson, SS, Grand Canyon University
7. Cincinnati Reds: Rhett Lowder, RHP, Wake Forest
8. Kansas City Royals: Blake Mitchell, C, Sinton High School (Texas)
9. Colorado Rockies: Chase Dollander, RHP, Tennessee
10. Miami Marlins: Noble Meyer, RHP, Jesuit High School (Oregon)
11. Los Angeles Angels: Nolan Schanuel, 1B, Florida Atlantic
12. Arizona Diamondbacks: Tommy Troy, 3B, Stanford
13. Chicago Cubs: Matt Shaw, 2B, Maryland
14. Boston Red Sox: Kyle Teel, C, Virginia
15. Chicago White Sox: Jacob Gonzalez, SS, Ole Miss
16. San Francisco Giants: Bryce Eldridge, TWP, James Madison High School (Virginia)
17. Baltimore Orioles: Enrique Bradfield Jr., OF, Vanderbilt
18. Milwaukee Brewers: Brock Wilken, 3B, Wake Forest
19. Tampa Bay Rays
20. Toronto Blue Jays
21. Cardinals of St. Louis
22. Seattle Mariners
23. Cleveland Guardians
24. Atlanta Braves
25. San Diego Padres
26. New York Yankees
27. Philadelphia Phillies
28. Houston Astros