MLB Draft 2025: Scouting Ethan Holliday, Eli Willits, JoJo Parker, other top HS talents

Ethan Holliday (Stillwater, Okla., HS) came into the spring as the most famous prospect in this years MLB Draft class.

He was listed at No.

1 on some preseason lists, which is a double-edged sword for most prospects its great to be so talented that people see you in that light, but thats a lot for anyone to live up to.

That pressure is even more acute in Ethans case, as his brother, Jackson, was the No.

1 pick in 2022 and is now in the majors at age 21, while their father, Matt, also played a minute or two in the big leagues.

Advertisement On Friday, I got to see Ethan Holliday in a game against Eli Willits son of former Angels outfielder Reggie Willits as well as Carson Brumbaugh, in a triple-header that had the three best high school players in Oklahoma all playing each other at one site in one day.

It was enough of a draw to get six scouting directors there from teams drafting in the top nine spots, plus a couple of others from further down in the first round, with a lot of chatter about how much credit their coaches deserved for putting a day like this together.

Hollidays day was a mixed bag; he played much, much better defense at shortstop than I expected, showing plenty of lateral range and good hands, but didnt have a great BP and struck out twice on breaking balls in the games.

Hes still in that upper echelon of players in this draft class, but I could see him going anywhere from first overall to maybe fifth or sixth.

At the plate, Holliday just didnt have his best day, not showing any of the plus in-game power hes shown other times this spring and last year.

His front side flies open, which leaves him really vulnerable to anything on the outer third hes going to make weak contact on anything middle-away if he hits it at all and because he swings very hard, he mistimes pitches too often, even ones he probably should hit.

He does keep his hands inside the ball well to hit the inside pitch, which is great for those pitches, but not an all-the-time approach.

He does know the strike zone he saw a lot of pitches on the day, commensurate with his showing last summer/fall, where he chased pitches out of the zone just 18 percent of the time, just 12 percent on pitches beyond the shadow of the zone (the area the width of one baseball outside the strike zone).

Last year, he struggled with good velocity up in the zone; on pitches 92+ mph, he swung 17 times in data collected by Synergy and whiffed on 12, almost all of them in the upper third of the zone.

On Friday, he punched out twice on breaking balls from a good high school lefty, one at the knees, one just below them.

Advertisement In the field, he played plus defense, ranging well to his right, with excellent hands and a plus arm, contrary to a lot of what I heard from scouts about him in the offseason, where they thought he had no chance to stick at short in pro ball.

Holliday reminds me a lot of Corey Seager, not so much the high school version although I did not see any way that Seager was going to stay at short with that frame at the time but the version I saw in Low A after the Dodgers drafted and signed him.

Seager had issues with his front side flying open as well; the Dodgers saw it, worked with Seager to correct it, and because hes so talented he was able to do it and become a superstar.

Like Holliday now, Seager also had the bigger body and lack of foot speed (Holliday is a 45 runner on the 20-80 scouting scale) that caused many of us to believe hed end up at third base.

Im not saying Holliday will have 38 WAR by the time he turns 31; Im saying there are reasons for optimism on the other side of some very valid questions about the hit tool.

Willits has the glove and speed for shortstop Eli Willits (Fort Cobb-Broxton, Okla., HS) reclassified into the 2025 draft and is one of the youngest players in the class, as he wont turn 18 until December.

Hes a slam-dunk shortstop with a compact swing that is going to get him to a big hit tool, with a lower ceiling than some of the other high school shortstops in the class because hes probably going to top out around 45 power.

Hes a plus runner and an agile defender at short with really soft, easy hands, along with a plus arm, maybe a future 70 defender, certainly plus when he gets to the majors.

At the plate, hes a contact-first hitter who rarely whiffs just a 16 percent whiff rate in tracked events in 2024, down to 13 percent on pitches in the zone thanks to what looks like elite bat speed.

Hes not very physical, especially his lower half, and the swing is definitely geared towards putting the bat on the ball, even if its not squared up.

His hardest-hit ball on Friday was scooped I dont have a better word for it, really and lifted in the air.

Advertisement He is going to get stronger, perhaps not enough for over-the-fence power, but I see enough for quality contact to keep his batting average up.

The floor here is pretty high; shortstops who dont strike out are usually at least good utility infielders.

Kevin Newman might be the worst-case scenario for Willits, and Willits is a better defender now than Newman was in his draft year at age 21.

Brumbaugh impresses on Friday Poor Carson Brumbaugh (Edmond Santa Fe, Okla., HS), who is a solid prospect in his own right, committed to Arkansas, and yet he was the third-best shortstop playing on his own home field on Friday.

He actually hit more balls hard than either Holliday or Willits did, going the other way a couple of times for line-drive hits and even showing some feel for spin by staying back on a slider and blooping a single just over the infield.

He also pitched, briefly, going 92-95 without much command.

Brumbaugh is an average runner with the hands for shortstop and obviously the arm for anywhere.

Its probably average range or a tick above, so if he slows down at all as he gets a little older, he might move to third or second.

If he goes to Arkansas, dont be surprised if hes a first-rounder in 2028.

Parker brothers dominate the board in Thursday look On Thursday, I was in Purvis, Miss., to see the Parker brothers of Purvis HS, who come from a hard-scrabble background and have a monopoly on high school hitting talent in the state this year, at least for those of us who have a clue.

(Im sorry.

I took a risk, and now I cant stop!) JoJo Parker is the higher-ranked and more famous of the two, but Jacob Parker is a strong prospect in his own right, with more swing-and-miss but more power, enough that hell probably go somewhere around the middle of Day 1.

JoJo is a shortstop with a chance to stay there, an above-average runner with a solid-average arm where the tools all play up because he has great instincts.

His real appeal is at the plate, where he just doesnt swing and miss; his whiff rate last year at tracked events was 14 percent, and just 4 percent on pitches in the zone.

Yes, 4 percent, two whiffs in 56 swings at strikes.

He also had just a 14 percent chase rate, and that combination is going to make the computers running teams draft models start smoking and spit out pages saying the secret ingredient is love.

Advertisement I saw just a couple of swings, all very balanced, with good hand speed, probably average power (going off the game and the extensive BP the brothers took).

Ive had scouts tell me they thought he was drifting too much over his front side, which I didnt see; he does lock that front knee sometimes, and that may cause some issues with pitches down as he faces better competition.

This was not against better competition, but lets put a pin in that.

Jacob is a center fielder, bigger, absurdly strong he looked like Michelangelos David in gym shorts when he took BP with a swing that probably doesnt tap into all of his raw power.

He showed more power in BP than JoJo did, but the game swings are shorter and dont take full advantage of all of the strength in his lower half.

Hes an average runner going all-out, which he showed on a triple down the right-field line.

Jacob probably ends up in an outfield corner but he has enough defense right now that Id at least send him out in center and see how it plays.

This wasnt the ideal scouting look at the Parkers, as they were playing a doubleheader in the first round of the playoffs, and it was a mismatch.

Purvis HS scored 18 runs in the bottom of the first, and the coaches agreed to roll the inning after two outs, something I have never seen before at any level in any game that counted.

Its the sort of thing that happens in minor-league spring training games, extended spring training, instructional league all games where no one is really keeping score.

The first game ended after an inning and a half, again by mutual agreement, and the second ended at 15-0 after three innings.

I give the players on the other team (McComb HS) a ton of credit for showing up and clearly playing hard, especially in that second game, as Im sure they knew all along what they were in for.

It was a good reminder that its not all about us, or the players were there to see.

(Top photo of Holliday, left, and Willits: Sarah Phipps / The Oklahoman / USA Today Network via Imagn Images).

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