YOUNGEST TOP PICKS IN DRAFT HISTORY

One top 2025 draft prospect has a chance to make history

- by MATT EDDY

In the history of the draft, a dozen players selected with the first overall pick were 17 years old on the day their names were called.

Another 15 players drafted first overall were 18 years old, and three were 19. All told, half of all No. 1 overall picks in history—30 out of 60—were teenagers on draft day.

Ah, but the concept of “draft day” is fluid. Over the years, MLB has conducted its draft on dates ranging from June 1 to July 14. So players with birthdays in June or July could be aged up or down arbitrarily, simply because they were born on one side or the other of a moving line of demarcation.

To get around this, Baseball America determined the “baseball age" of every first-round draft pick. This is calculated as the player’s age as of June 30 of his draft year. This is also the cutoff used to denote player age by resources such as Baseball-Reference.

We discovered that one top prospect for the 2025 draft has a chance to make history.