2015 MLB Draft: mock draft season begins

With the 2015 MLB Draft a month away and rapidly approaching, pundits and writers across the baseball universe are busy gathering rumors, shifting innuendo, studying draft history, and making some educated guestimates about where the top prospects will land. This process got started in earnest today with the release of two key expert mock drafts, Baseball America's Mock Draft Version 1.0 and Kiley McDaniel's Fangraphs Far-Too-Early 2015 Mock Draft.

Both are well worth your time, of course, being based on the most up-to-date rumors and information from well-connected sources. And both McDaniel and the BA staff led by John Manuel are quite open about the fact that while mock drafting is very fun and very popular it simply cannot not be especially accurate for every team this early in the process, especially with the 2015 draft class looking very unsettled.

Just look at the their projected top fives:

1) Diamondbacks: BA projects UC-Santa Barbara RHP Dillon Tate, McDaniel projects Vanderbilt shortstop Dansby Swanson. Both agree that Arizona is not linked with high school shortstop Brendan Rodgers, despite Rodgers being considered the top player in the draft by many teams.

2) Astros: BA projects Swanson, McDaniel projects Rodgers. Either makes sense talent-wise.

3) Rockies: BA projects Rodgers, McDaniel projects Tate.

4) Rangers: Both see a college pitcher going here but with different names, BA looking at Missouri State's Jon Harris and McDaniel going with Louisville's Kyle Funkhouser.

5) Astros: Both go with a high school outfielder here, BA picking Kyle Tucker and McDaniel going with Daz Cameron.

So who knows? Both lists are based on insider rumors and solid speculative logic yet come to totally different conclusions.

But that's the fun of mock drafting. We'll be doing that here at Minor League Ball of course, beginning with a mock draft of our own soon, as well as the yearly Minor League Ball Community Mock Draft, which we will be organizing next week.