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With the 2015 MLB Draft less than a week away, final lists of the top prospects available are being released. Three of them in particular, from Minor League Ball, ESPN and Baseball America, have a consensus that a shortstop is the best player on the board, though they do not necessarily agree on who that shortstop is.
ESPN's Keith Law and the staff at Baseball America both have Florida high school shortstop Brendan Rodgers as the top prospect on their boards. Law had this to say about Rodgers:
Still the top prospect in the class for me, a true shortstop with feel to hit and the potential for average or better power down the road. Questions about his bat (such as his bat speed) seem spurious given how well he hit velocity all of last summer, garnering well more than 100 at-bats against the best prep pitchers in the country, with excellent results.
Minor League Ball, on the other hand, has Rodgers fourth on their list, though still with a glowing scouting report. Instead, they have LSU shortstop Alex Bregman, who is hitting .318/.414/.548 with nine home runs for the Tigers this season, at the top of their list, saying this:
The bat is the real reason to be excited about Bregman. He hits everything hard. He smokes line drives, he can hit a ball 400' with ease. He does get pull happy and it can cause him to struggle but the skills are there for him to be a star.
As far as pitchers go, all three boards have college right-handers as the best available, with ESPN and Baseball America going with UC Santa Barbara righty Dillon Tate as the best arm, ranking him fifth and third overall respectively, and Minor League Ball rating Vanderbilt right-hander Carson Fulmer as the best pitcher, and second best player overall, in the draft.
While Minor League Ball deviates from the other two at the top of the board, each of the three draft boards has its own unique quirks, for example, Law has shortstops in the top four spots and has Fulmer, ranked second and sixth on the other two boards, as the 43rd best prospect in the draft.