‘Completely committed’: Trio of Oregon prospects highlight class of 2025 heading into MLB Draft

On July 13, the MLB Draft will take place in Cumberland, Georgia. Hundreds of baseball players from all over the world will hear their names called as Major League Baseball teams look to find their future stars.

Among those players taken in the early rounds are likely to be three baseball standouts from Oregon’s high school ranks.

And in the most recent

MLB mock drafts

, Sunset’s

Kruz Schoolcraft

and Summit’s Slater de Brun are expected to go in the first round. Barlow’s River Hamilton was placed at No. 99 in the

MLB’s prospect rankings

and is likely to hear his name called in the early rounds as well.

They would be following in the footsteps of a number of recent Oregon high schoolers taken early in the draft.

Notably,

Jesuit’s Noble Meyer

was taken 10th overall by the Miami Marlins in 2023. In 2020, Jesuit’s Mick Abel was selected 15th overall by the Philadelphia Phillies. A year before that, Adley Rutschman (a Sherwood alumnus) was taken first overall by the Baltimore Orioles after a career at Oregon State.

Similar to Meyer, Schoolcraft is a tall pitcher who can sling the ball at over 90 miles per hour. The Tennessee commit said he thinks that Oregon’s baseball stock has been on the rise in recent years, and the prospects being scouted by MLB teams is the proof.

“I think that we’re starting to catch up with the rest of the country,” he said.

So what changed? Schoolcraft said more and more baseball players in Oregon are choosing baseball to be their primary sport.

“I think that some guys found a way to be completely committed to baseball,” he said. “To be honest, I just think that the three guys this year and the guys in past years are just completely committed and you don’t really see that happening too often here. Other kids want to go play football, or baseball’s not their number one priority.”

Standing at 6-foot-8, Schoolcraft was a two-way star for the Apollos this year. As a left-handed pitcher, he had a .389 earned run average with 96 strikeouts to 22 hits allowed in 54 innings pitched. On offense, Schoolcraft was the Apollos’ lead-off hitter with a .637 on-base percentage. He had a .482 batting average with 41 hits, 30 runs batted in and 10 home runs.

Schoolcraft was the Apollos’ star player as Sunset played in the 2024 and

2025 Class 6A state championship games

.

With more Oregon high schoolers getting drafted early in the MLB Draft, Schoolcraft said he’s hopeful that this success will snowball in future years. When he was younger, he looked up to Abel and Atlanta pitcher JR Ritchie (who is from Bainbridge, Washington). Schoolcraft’s family also hosts players for the Hillsboro Hops, so he said he remembers having Alex Young (Cincinnati Reds pitcher) and Ryan Burr (Toronto Blue Jays pitcher) at his house when he was younger.

In Class 5A, de Brun also led his team to the state championship this spring. The Summit Storm stunned No. 1 Wilsonville in the semifinals and then

bested Canby 5-1 in the title game

.

De Brun, a Vanderbilt commit, had two RBIs in the Class 5A title game. The outfielder ended the season with a .370 batting average with 26 RBIs. He was dangerous with his legs, scoring 35 runs and stealing 22 bases this year.

Early in the 2025 season, the Storm travelled to Arizona to play against teams from all over the west, from California, Arizona and Nevada. De Brun said Oregon teams, in a player-for-player sense, have shown just as much talent in recent years as other states that tend to boast more draft talent.

The only difference, de Brun said, is that Oregon teams tend to lack the same level of depth.

“So I think that’s the only difference, just depth. More kids that want to play baseball, versus here,” he said. “There’s a couple kids that want to play, who kind of carry but there’s just not as much depth.”

De Brun agreed with Schoolcraft, saying that commitment to baseball has been a big shift for Oregon players. He also made sure to praise Schoolcraft for his ability to stay on top for so long.

“Like, Kruz has been good for a really long time, and he’s maintaining that level of always being a top-ranked player, dealing with the attention for like, five or six years now,” de Brun said. “That’s hard to do. You know, some kids fall off. Some kids come on late, like me. But Kruz has maintained that. So I think that’s a testament to like, never settling for him and always, you know, seeking new information, never falling off of his routine.”

De Brun, who is self-admittedly undersized in comparison to Schoolcraft — Schoolcraft is 6-foot-8 and de Brun is 5-foot-10 — said he knew he needed to put more work in to make sure he got noticed.

“I have to do more than other people. So I do,” he said. “I put in seven hours a day in the offseason towards baseball. So I think that’s what it took for me. It doesn’t mean that, you know, some people couldn’t do it another way, but that I figured out that’s what I needed. So I did.”

When he was coming up through middle school and high school, de Brun looked up to Meyer as he was a physical example of an Oregon high schooler getting drafted early.

“Noble kind of showed that you could make it out of high school baseball at a high level like that out of Oregon,” de Brun said.

De Brun also looked up to Baltimore Orioles catcher Rutschman. And in keeping with his northwest roots, de Brun said he is a big fan of Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll, who is from Seattle and was selected by the Diamondbacks 16th overall in 2019.

Standing at 6-foot-3, River Hamilton is a right-handed pitcher who flipped his commitment from Oregon State to Louisiana State in the fall. Hamilton’s fast ball also clocks in the mid-90-mile-per-hour range and he has a slider and a changeup that get a lot of movement.

Hamilton is expected to hear his name in the first three rounds of the draft.

More Oregon high school sports

• Central Oregon baseball star selected by American League East team in 2025 MLB draft

• Sunset baseball star selected by National League West power in 2025 MLB draft

• Portland wrestler grabs All-American freestyle finish at national tournament

— Nik Streng covers high school sports in Oregon. Reach him at nstreng@oregonian.com or @NikStreng

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