What were the biggest surprises of the 2022 MLB draft?

The 2022 MLB draft featured all of the expected players, if not exactly in all of the expected places, that had been spoken about in scouting reports. A few eyebrows were raised with the sheer number of sons of former players selected, but while the N-word (no not that one. Nepotism. Get your mind out of the gutter) was whispered in some quarters of the media, it is not taken seriously by baseball folk. All four of the MLB progeny are serious prospects in their own right, salivated over by scouting offices all around the league.

But the real surprises in this draft came not in the personnel, but in the order. While Druw Jones and Jackson Holliday were widely expected to go early, most pundits had Druw going first and Jackson a few spots later. The inversion of that was interesting, though not shocking in itself. Both of these guys are top-5 material in any draft year.

The only part of Jackson Holliday going first that was interesting for this writer was the fact that I had expected the Orioles to balk at his over-reliance on power, which causes him to often reach for pitches and have a high strikeout rate. I honestly expected them to go for either Jacob Berry or Termarr Johnson, both more natural contact-makers. Evidently, the Orioles are confident that they can teach the young Holliday more patience in his swing, and if they can pull that off, then he is definitely an All-Star in the making.

By a long way, the selection of Kumar Rocker at third overall by the Texas Rangers is the shock move of the draft. Rocker is a serious talent, and had gone 10th in last year’s draft, but failed to reach terms with the Mets after they didn’t like something in his physical. After shoulder surgery and a season in an independent league, he was seen as a low first or even second round prospect by most. Texas taking him at three caused quite a stir.

With the selection of Rocker at three, Texas brought up one of two, almost contradictory, surprises in the draft. The first was how high pitchers went this year, with three going in the top ten. In all, 31 pitchers went in the first two rounds, and that reveals the truth of the matter. Pitchers were actually way down on the MLB signings. The fact that Ben Joyce, the fireballer from Tennessee who set the NCAA record for the fastest pitch in college baseball not once, but twice, this season, and regularly tops three digits as a middle reliever, went 89th overall in the third round, shows just how under represented pitchers were in this year’s draft.

There were some bargains to be had in the draft as well, with some late picks that will surely pay dividends in the long run. The Blue Jays got a steal with Cade Doughty at 78, and the Braves picking up Blake Burkhalter at 76 will be seen as the bargain of a lifetime in a few years time. Logan Tanner should be a great addition to the Reds clubhouse and the highly-touted Ivan Melendez going at 43 to the Diamondbacks is almost jaw-dropping for him to have fallen that low.

Of course, there is no way to know who is going to be a star and who is going to be a bust. If anybody says they know, then they are lying, because they don’t. You have feelings. You have stats. You judge character. And that is it. But you can’t control circumstance. Or injury. Or any number of a million factors that will play into each and every one of these young mens’ future. It is a wide open book for all of these guys, plus all those who were overlooked entirely. Only time will tell how it all pans out.