Major League Baseball held its draft lottery on Tuesday, deciding the order of the 18 teams that didn’t make last year’s playoffs. What followed were several way-too-early mock drafts based on which teams would pick where.
And while there’s still an entire college season to be played before the 2025 MLB Draft next summer, right now it looks like Arizona might be on its way to producing another first round pick.
Junior Brendan Summerhill is projected to go in the first round by both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline. If that happens he’d be the 15th Wildcat to go in the first round and fourth in the last six years.
Summerhill, a left-handed hitting outfielder, had a breakout sophomore season at the UA when he batted .324 with eight home runs and 59 RBI. He started 58 games, mostly in center field, after making 18 starts as a freshman.
MLB Pipeline has Summerhill as its No. 10 draft prospect but has him going 5th overall to the St. Louis Cardinals, noting he “sports one of the sweetest left-handed strokes in this Draft and could develop into a center fielder with five solid or better tools.”
Baseball America has Summerhill going 27th to the Cleveland Guardians.
The earliest pick in school history was Eddie Leon, who went 9th to the Minnesota Twins in 1965. The best in recent years was Daniel Susac, who went 19th to the Oakland A’s in 2022, while a year later the Cardinals took Chase Davis 21st, and in 2020 the New York Yankees selected Austin Wells 28th and he finished 3rd in the AL Rookie of the Year voting this season.
Summerhill is one of a slew of Arizona players on the 2025 team that is expected to get drafted. Others include shortstop Mason White, third baseman Maddox Mihalakis and catcher Adonys Guzman along with some of the transfers the Wildcats added this offseason.