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The Dodgers have a pretty good run going. Eight straight division titles, three pennants in the last four years, and they are the reigning World Series champs. To keep the player development pipeline pumping, what if they had every Max Muncy?
Specifically, what if they had every baseball professional named Max Muncy with a birthday of August 25?
The latest mock draft from Eric Longenhagen and Kevin Goldstein at FanGraphs is brave enough to consider such a world. They have the Dodgers using their first-round pick, No. 29 overall, to select the shortstop from Thousand Oaks High School, about 45 miles from Dodger Stadium. Longenhagen and Goldstein admit the name had something to do with this projection:
Rumors say the club has been busy lining up the bevy of high school infielders who could go between 20 and 40, including Wes Kath, Isaac Pacheco, Peyton Stovall and Carson Williams. Let’s face it, by the time you get to end of first round, we are playing an educated guessing game, and it’s just too much damn fun to give them another dude named Max Muncy, who will likely go in this range.
We’ve profiled Louisiana’s Peyton Stovall as well as Torrey Pines High School’s Carson Williams thanks to previous mock drafts.
As for the younger Max Muncy, he’s relatively local, good enough to be named the Los Angeles Times high school player of the year on Monday. From Eric Sondheimer: “Muncy would finish the 2021 season with 11 home runs, 49 RBIs and a .459 batting average for the 29-1 Lancers, who won the Southern Section Division 2 championship. He hit four grand slams.”
The older Muncy was born on August 25, 1990, and was drafted in the 41st round out of high school in 2009. Three years later, after playing for Baylor, Muncy was picked in the fifth round by the A’s.
The younger Muncy was born in 2002, and is ranked the No. 38 prospect in the draft by FanGraphs. Baseball America ranks Muncy 52nd, and MLB Pipeline ranks Muncy 38th. From MLB’s scouting report:
Muncy has the chance to be an average hitter with perhaps above-average power when all is said and done. He has the ability to use that power to all fields. He can get too big and his overall approach still needs work, leading to some swing and miss, but the future impact is definitely there.
Muncy has a college commitment to Arkansas.