2026 MLB Draft Preview: Justin Lebron scouting report.<\/p>\n
The 2026 is about a month away \u2014 the first round kicks off on July 11, 2026 \u2014 so its time to start offering capsule looks at players the Texas Rangers could select with their top picks. The Rangers\u2019 first round pick is at #16, their second round pick is at #54, and their third round pick is at #89.<\/p>\n
Leading up to draft day, we will be doing writeups of some of the players who could end up getting selected by the Rangers with one of their first three picks. Today we are looking at University of Alabama shortstop Justin Lebron.<\/p>\n
Justin Lebron is a 6\u20192\u201d, 180 lb. righthanded hitting shortstop at the University of Alabama, where he has been a three year starter. Lebron was undrafted and largely off of folks\u2019 radars out of high school in Florida. He turns 22 in November.<\/p>\n
Lebron is a toolshed who Keith Law says would probably be the \u201cobvious 1-1 pick\u201d 30 years ago. The reports praise his bat speed and his ability to handle velocity. He also has impressive power, with his raw power grade projecting at 60 to 70. Unfortunately, he also has major contact issues, and struggles with pitch recognition. The result is a hit tool that lags behind everything else \u2014 if his hit tool profiled even as average, he\u2019d be a top 3 pick.<\/p>\n
Defensively, he\u2019s a true shortstop who should have no problems sticking at the position, and who could be an above-average defender. He also has very good speed. MLB Pipeline says that all his tools other than his hit tool are plus, and Lebron gets good marks for his makeup and athleticism as well.<\/p>\n
As a freshman, Lebron slashed .338\/.429\/.546, with 20 walks against 53 Ks in 254 plate appearances. He improved as a sophomore, slashing .316\/.421\/.636, with 18 homers, 68 Ks and 35 walks in 281 plate appearances while going 17 for 18 on the basepaths. His junior season has been more difficult, however \u2014 his slash line dropped to .277\/.384\/.536, with 27 walks against 56 Ks in 281 plate appearances, though he was an eye-popping 41 for 42 in stolen base attempts.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve seen Lebron described as a big wild card in this draft, due to his extreme upside\/extreme risk profile. He has arguably the most upside of anyone in the draft, but the pitch recognition issues and difficult against non-fastballs means that there\u2019s big bust potential there that could scare teams in the top half of the first round off.<\/p>\n
Lebron\u2019s disappointing junior season would appear to have hurt his draft stock, although he picked things up late in the year, and impressed early on in the College World Series, though Alabama was eliminated yesterday. I saw multiple write-ups discuss him as fitting the profile that the Orioles, who pick 7th, like. He doesn\u2019t seem to fit the profile of what the Rangers have gone after in the draft in recent years, though the upside may be high enough that Texas would roll the dice on him at #16.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2026 MLB Draft Preview: Justin Lebron scouting report. The 2026 is about a month away \u2014 the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[357254,64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-740467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-2026-mlb-draft","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}