{"id":669561,"date":"2026-05-14T19:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/669561\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T19:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:26:09","slug":"new-mlb-draft-2026-big-board-rankings-for-top-100-prospects-revealed-by-expert-keith-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/669561\/","title":{"rendered":"New MLB Draft 2026 Big Board Rankings for Top 100 Prospects Revealed by Expert Keith Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2026 MLB draft class is starting to come into focus with the NCAA tournament starting in two weeks and high schools wrapping up their seasons. <\/p>\n

Now, almost exactly two months to the day before the MLB draft begins, The Athletic’s Keith Law<\/a> has unveiled his new top 100 big board that features UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky as the No. 1 player in the class. <\/p>\n

Here are the top 10 players in the upcoming draft, per Law’s rankings. <\/p>\n

The first thing that stands out among Law’s rankings is how college-heavy the top of this class is. Grady Emerson and Eric Booth Jr. are the only high school players to crack the top 10. <\/p>\n

Cholowsky is the consensus top player in this class, though there remains some uncertainty if that means he will be selected by the Chicago White Sox with the No. 1 overall pick in July. <\/p>\n

Law noted the rest of the field “has gotten closer” to Cholowsky as the spring has gone on, but his floor is considered “an everyday MLB shortstop” with solid power and plus defense at short. <\/p>\n

As things stand right now, the White Sox are believed to be strongly considering Cholowsky and Emerson. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel<\/a> noted in his most recent mock draft that it seems to be essentially a coin toss between the two players for Chicago. <\/p>\n

MLB.com’s Jim Callis<\/a> suggested last week that the White Sox could throw a curveball by cutting an underslot deal with Florida high school shortstop Jacob Lombard. <\/p>\n

Lackey’s development at the plate has him in the mix to be a top-three pick. The Georgia Tech star is currently hitting .386\/.502\/.696 with 13 homers in 51 games. He had a total of 10 homers in 96 games over his first two college seasons. <\/p>\n

Law noted that Lackey is “very close” to Cholowsky as a prospect, but the UCLA star gets the slight advantage for having more power. Lackey’s value as a player who projects to stay behind the plate will likely help him come off the board very early. <\/p>\n

The top pitching prospect in Law’s ranking is UC Santa Barbara’s Jackson Flora. After posting ERAs over 4.00 in each of the previous two seasons, the right-hander is having a dominant 2026 with a 1.38 ERA and 103 strikeouts in 78.1 innings. <\/p>\n

Flora has a three-pitch mix with a fastball that can touch 100 mph and a changeup that might be his best weapon. <\/p>\n

The next marquee event on the college calendar is the NCAA tournament starting on May 29. <\/p>\n

This year’s draft will take place on July 12-13 from Philadelphia as part of MLB’s All-Star festivities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 MLB draft class is starting to come into focus with the NCAA tournament starting in two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-669561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}