An Early Look at 2023 Draft Class Performances

Checking in on a few position players

We are nearing the end of the 2023 minor league campaign, which is sad to say as the writer of a minor league baseball newsletter, but it also gives us time to reflect on the 2023 season. In today’s post, we’ll review several hitters from the 2023 draft and evaluate how they performed in their professional debuts this past year.

Dylan Crews - CF - Washington Nationals - Rd:1 Pick: 2
One of the more famous players in college baseball, Crews had a decent shot to go number one overall, but the Pirates opted to go with the best pitching prospect since Strasburg in Paul Skenes. Crews was my #2 prospect in the draft but would have easily been #1 in others. So far, his pro career has been a mixed bag. He demolished Single-A, hitting .355/.423/.645 before falling off since his promotion to Double-A, where he has hit just .208/.318/.278. While others from the class have made it to Double-A and succeeded, there is probably not much to worry about with Crews. He played a lot of high stress games this past spring and summer, and is likely just tired. What is encouraging to see is that he’s lifting the ball more. In college, he ran a 1.9 GB/FB rate — so far in Single-A it was 1.1 and in Double-A, it’s 1.25. Hopefully this allows Crews to tap into all of his power.

Max Clark - CF - Detroit Tigers - Rd: 1 Pick: 3

The fourth overall pick in the 2023 draft, Clark was lauded for his plus hit tool (drawing a lite Corbin Carroll comp from me), but has struggled so far in Single-A to start his career. I’m not really worried about him yet though. A couple demographic things are working against him, namely that the Florida State League is a pitcher friendly league, and also he is a cold weather bat, even if he was well known on the showcase circuit.

While he is hitting just .151/.353/.180, under the hood, there are positives. His 13.2% Chase Rate Over Expected (CROE) puts him near the top of the league, albeit this comes with an extremely low 32.7% swing rate, so that number is a bit deceptive. He’s showing a bit more power than I expected, posting a 104.4 MPH 90th percentile exit velocity and a 27.2% dynamic hard hit rate. He’s hitting a lot of grounders (~50% GB%), but Clark is still a plus runner so he can outrun some of those grounders.