Where South Carolina players, signees sit in draft prospect rankings

South Carolina’s season is over and heads now turn to the MLB Draft looming in just under a month. 

The Gamecocks have a handful of guys who could, and should, hear their names called over the course of the 20-round draft. Here’s where a few different prospect rankings have different players both on the team and in the recruiting class. 

The highest-ranked players on the South Carolina roster were two pitchers in Will Sanders and Jack Mahoney. 

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Both are typically the consensus top two prospects for the Gamecocks this past season. Sanders is rated higher than Mahoney in most lists. 

Baseball America’s top 500 rankings had Sanders at No. 55 overall while Mahoney behind him at No. 167. The Athletic’s Keith Law had Sanders as the No. 90 overall prospect in the class. D1Baseball had him as the No. 28 college prospect at the midpoint of the season. 

Law didn’t rank Mahoney in his top 100 prospects. But D1Baseball put him at No. 30 in the college prospects list at the midseason update.

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MLB.com had Mahoney ahead of Sanders by a few spots, ranking Mahoney at No. 115 overall while Sanders checked in at No. 133. 

Mahoney had a more productive season this year statistically, finishing with a 4.16 ERA and a 1.36 WHIP over 17 starts without missing one. He struck out 84 to 29 walks. 

Sanders struggled at times this season, missing five scheduled starts (four for injury) and ending up with a 5.46 ERA and a 1.34 WHIP over 14 appearances (11 starts) and 62.2 innings. 

Those are the two highest-rated current players. But there were five others who made Baseball America’s top 500 in the latest round of updating. 

The highest after Mahoney was Noah Hall at No. 193. Wimmer checked in at 246 with Gavin Casas at 334 and James Hicks rounding things out at No. 470. 

Hall only threw 41 innings this year after a back injury seven starts into the season. He had just a 3.29 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP. He was one of the better starting pitchers in the SEC before going on the shelf. 

Wimmer missed time this season with a hamstring injury. But did what he was supposed to after spurning the draft last summer. He slashed .304/.409/.561 this season with 14 homers and 42 RBI. 

Casas had an up-and-down season but ultimately finished slashing .259/.407.569 with 19 homers and 56 RBI last season. 

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Hicks started his season in the bullpen before turning into a starter once the postseason started. He finished with a 3.48 and a 1.08 WHIP in 67.1 innings. Over his last three starts (16.2 innings) he allowed three earned runs, all against Florida. 

South Carolina also had a pair of signees in the 2023 class crack the top 500 in Baseball America’s rankings.

The biggest name is third baseman George Wolkow, who reclassified up to the 2023 class and is draft eligible. Baseball America rated him as the No. 88 overall prospect in this year’s draft class. 

“Wolkow ranked as the No. 6 player in the 2024 high school class before announcing in March 2022 that he was reclassifying for 2023. At a towering 6-foot-7, Wolkow jumps out immediately for his size and big lefthanded power. It’s an easy projection to plus raw power and not hard to envision future 70-grade power on the 20-80 scale. There are strikeouts that come with that power, and Wolkow looked overmatched at times after reclassifying, with a 33% miss rate in 24 games logged by Synergy in 2022,” Baseball America wrote.

“His swing works well for someone his size, with a chance for 35-plus home runs down the road and he did show solid on-base ability during the fall at Perfect Game’s WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Fla. He has a strong arm that projects to be plus, with a chance to play third base, but right field is another possibility. Wolkow runs well for his size and his big, loping strides could allow him to cover solid ground in the outfield. While there’s plenty of risk in his profile given the swing-and-miss, Wolkow is exceptionally young for the class (he doesn’t turn 18 until January 2024) with massive tools to dream on. He is committed to South Carolina.”

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Keith Law has Wolkow as the No. 74 overall prospect while MLB.com has him at No. 68. The other signee to crack the Baseball America top 100 is shortstop Lee Ellis (No. 254). 

The 20-round MLB Draft kicks off July 9 and will run through July 11.

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