What Ole Miss fans should keep an eye on with the MLB Draft

The 2023 MLB First Year Player Draft starts on Sunday and over the following two days players will realize their dream of getting a chance to play professional baseball and others will have decisions to make.

For the Ole Miss baseball program it has two paths mapped out regarding this year’s draft. There is the path of the expected with players who are sure things to get picked and picked high enough to make the move to go pro, starting with first-round projection Jacob Gonzalez.

Then there is the path that Ole Miss and its fans will be watching more closely and it is the path of uncertainty littered with current players getting selected mixed with high school signees. This is the path where decisions will be difficult, or not so difficult, to make.

Gonzalez is going early on Sunday and the only questions left are when and by which team. As draft day creeps closer mock drafts have moved Gonzalez up and down the first round, moving out of the Top 10 and back in.

The latest mock drafts released on Thursday and Friday have Gonzalez going as high as the overall sixth pick to the Oakland — soon to be Las Vegas — Athletics (ESPN) and as low as No. 14 to the Boston Red Sox (MLB.com).

According to the slot values Gonzalez is set to land in the $6.6 to $4.4 million range.

Nothing has led to the belief the former Ole Miss shortstop will be on the board past the first 15 picks. Gonzalez will become the fifth player in program history to be drafted in the first round. Three other Ole Miss players have been selected in the supplemental portion of the first round.

There is a pair of current Ole Miss players who should get their name called on the second day of the draft.

Ouftfielder Kemp Alderman and catcher Calvin Harris have seen their draft stock rise throughout the season and during the summer in workouts. Alderman’s performance in last month’s MLB Draft Combine turned the rest of the heads that were not already keeping an eye on him from his 2023 effort.

Alderman is ranked as the 55th best prospect according to MLB.com. If that stayed true in relation to his draft selection then Alderman will be taken in the early to mid-portion of the second round on Monday. The slot values in that range are about $1.5 to $1.4 million.

For Harris his prospect ranking is sitting at No. 133 and if his draft fortune matches up with that then he is looking to be selected in the late fourth round or in the compensatory portion of the fourth round. Slot values in that neighborhood are around $500K to $470K.

No other current Ole Miss players are inside the Top 250 prospect rankings. Slot values are not assigned to picks past the 10th round and end at $164.4K. The 11-20 round selections do not come with assigned slot values, though any money spent over $150,000 for those players will come out of the team’s bonus pool.

This is notable as Jack Dougherty is another current player to keep an eye on in the draft but it depends on what number is his threshold to go or come back.

Related: Fast-approaching MLB Draft complicating the calculus, but portal-hunting trudges on for Ole Miss baseball

Then comes the high school signees the Rebels already have on campus or hope to get on campus by this fall.

Realistically the odds off getting all four of the program’s top high school prospects is not going to happen. But nobody can predict the draft and what might happen or where a player eventually lands.

The quartet of Ole Miss high school signees are shortstop Cooper Pratt, pitchers Zander Mueth and Josh Knoth, and Oxford prospect Campbell Smithwick.

Pratt is the first player expected to be selected out of this group, sitting at No. 45 in the prospect rankings. That puts Pratt as an early second round pick and puts in him a slot value range of just under $2 million. He is asking a high number but hard to think a high school senior would not want that kind of money.

Mueth is sitting at No. 83 in the prospect rankings. Matching that up with the draft order it is a third round selection currently owned by the Red Sox. If the tea leaves read correctly Mueth is going to be staring at a decision of taking around $850K and heading to the minors or coming to Ole Miss.

From there the ranking numbers get higher and the slot value figures get lower for Knoth and Smithwick. Knoth barely stays inside the top 100 at No. 98, putting him as a potential late third round pick and a slot value of around $685K. Smithwick is ranked at No. 155, putting him as a potential fifth round pick at around $400K slot value.

The 2023 MLB First Year Player Draft begins on Sunday at 6 p.m. CT on ESPN and will run through Tuesday.