Video: Is There A Case For The Twins To Draft Jackson Flora Third Overall?

[Destination The Show]

The top of the 2026 Draft Class is heavy with position player prospects. Jackson Flora out of UC Santa Barbara leads the way among pitchers in this year's class, but is he good enough for the Twins to take a flyer on with the third overall pick when the position players provide much more upside?

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[ashbury]

Obviously if the team's analytics group tags a potential draftee as having a serious shot at a Hall of Fame career (only a couple of guys per year wind up actually achieving that of course), you have to take him at #3.  If either of the two shortstops falls to the Twins, the choice is probably simple.

I understand the argument about a position player having an impact every game while a good starter only contributes in 32 games or thereabouts.  Still, if you look at Batters Faced, the league leading pitchers generally are up in the 800s, while the position players rack up Plate Appearances in the 700s. Those pitchers have more opportunity to affect outcomes at the plate over a full season than the batters do. 

A good batter has a chance to contribute something every game (and the best ones do something good nearly every game), but the impact is necessarily watered down by the other 8 players in the batting order.  On the other hand a stud pitcher, if you are lucky enough to acquire one, can pretty much dictate the outcome for the 7 innings he pitches, 32 times a season.

All that said, a look at the tippy-top leaders in WAR generally have higher values among hitters than pitchers.  The developers of the various versions of WAR were presumably careful to balance their calculations so that pitching and hitting (plus fielding) are faithfully represented.

Tangentially I want to add - a topic you didn't include in your video - the perceived risk of injury to pitchers, making a position player a safer pick at the top.  I hope that's not seen as a strawman, because I point to the debilitating effects on Byron Buxton and Royce Lewis as the immediate counterargument.

The position player that worries me in this calculation is the Catcher.  And if form holds, it will be a catcher that the Twins will have to weigh against choosing a pitcher.  Many position players play upwards of 155 games a season, but catchers generally don't.  Behind the plate, they simply have less opportunity to rack up WAR, even when WAR includes their defensive contribution.

Yes, the best-hitting catchers are in the lineup on their nominal day off - as DH, or maybe at a corner position where the arm is an asset.  But then, you don't have the option to sign a full-time DH like Nelson Cruz because that free agent will simply refuse.  Cruz was a fantastic bargain because you didn't have to pay anything for his glove.  There's a reason why negative defensive value is assigned to a DH when computing WAR - it cuts down on your roster flexibility.

Now, Cal Raleigh goes and makes a liar out of me by racking up 7.2 b-WAR last season.  But Will Smith was second among catchers at 4.4 and nobody else cracked 4.  The previous season William Contreras and Raleigh were at 5.0 and 4.6 respectively.  If you believe at all in WAR as a rough guide to a player's value, catchers are a pretty big risk at the top of the draft, in terms of opportunity cost.

I say this in full knowledge that I would have missed out on a Hall of Fame career from Joe Mauer with my draft philosophy.  I'd take one of the shortstops but I would take Flora instead of Lackey.