2024 MLB draft rankings: Top NCAA and high school prospects - ESPN

Last year's draft class was a historic one, both for the top tier of talent (the five top players selected all landed in the top 15 prospects in all of baseball on my recent Top 100) and the depth (with 2023 draftees littering the back half of that Top 100 list).

This year's group appears to be a more typical draft class. It doesn't feature close to the star power of 2023, but it does have plenty of candidates to improve throughout the spring and the depth is seen across the industry as strong. The standout quality at this point is that the top 13 on my list are all college players. I do expect there will be at least one prep prospect in the top 10 picks come draft day, but it'll probably take a month or so for that player to emerge.

You can check out more on the Future Value (FV) system, the scouting scale, and see where these players could slot into a top 100 or your team's prospect list.

Here's a snapshot of where we stand right now, leading into the second weekend of college baseball and with the high school season just getting started in warm weather states.

1. J.J. Wetherholt (21.8), 2B, West Virginia
2. Travis Bazzana (21.9), 2B, Oregon State
3. Nick Kurtz (21.1), 1B, Wake Forest
4. Chase Burns (21.4), RHP, Wake Forest

Wetherholt will miss this weekend's series against Charlotte due to a hamstring injury, but early indications are that it isn't serious. He's the favorite to go No. 1 overall right now — but not by a ton and there's some expectation that the Guardians will price-shop the pick at least as much as recent teams.

(Price-shopping a pick means that if it isn't clear who the best player is, Cleveland would take the prospect with the cheapest signing bonus ask or who is the best value among the players they