Cubs Select High Octane College Arm with No. 23 Overall Pick in First 2026 MLB Mock Draft

[Jamie Cameron]

Welcome to the 2026 MLB Consensus Draft Board. This is the fifth version of the board, which started in 2022 as a top 30. Since then, it’s expanded to around 150 players on an annual basis, featuring at eight different team sites. So what is the Consensus Board? How is it made? How should it be used?

The concept is loosely based on Arif Hasan’s NFL Consensus Board. It’s meant to be a tool for folks getting interested in the MLB Draft. As I was learning about the draft, I struggled to navigate wildly varied rankings and evaluations of players. The Consensus Board takes every major publicly available board and combines them into a consensus ranking, eliminating some of the noise and variance of an extremely challenging evaluation process. We’ve found this process to be useful in ranking players in appropriate ranges through around the first five rounds of the draft.

On the board, you’ll find player names, handedness, listed height and weight, age, and a write-up, walking through their strengths and opportunities as a prospect. As we go through the cycle, these will be updated with tweaks, final college stats, etc. Every time a major outlet (Baseball America, ESPN, The Athletic, etc.) releases an updated list, the consensus ranking shifts. As such, the board is a lagging reflection of what the industry thinks of the class and its key players. The final Consensus Board will incorporate at least 10 other boards as inputs.

New MLB Mock Draft Board Features
There are a few important features to point out to help you navigate the board. There’s a search bar to help you find players of interest. If you click ‘expand’ the board will focus on the writeup you are engaged with, in addition to one immediately above it and one immediately below it. Additionally, you’ll find the logo of your team next to their draft slots to help understand where they are picking. There will be a player slotted there, based on their consensus ranking. Rather than using that ranking as an indicator of who they might actually pick, it’s more useful to use it as a proxy for what caliber of talent is available at that slot. We’ll dig in deeper to team-specific mock drafts later in the cycle. The last important note is that this year the board features ‘push’ updates. It updates automatically every hour. The board is typically updated with new write-ups five days per week, so check back regularly for updates.

At #23, The Chicago Cubs Select: Logan Reddemann, RHP, UCLA
Reddemann has surged up draft boards, after not featuring prominently on pre- or early-season lists. A transfer from San Diego, the 6-foot-2 righty has turned a developmental corner for an outstanding UCLA team and is putting it all together in his draft-eligible junior season.

Reddeman has a little bit of a jerky delivery to the plate. Even so, he keeps the baseball well hidden behind his frame until release, creating some deception for hitters and making the ball difficult to track. Reddemann is an excellent strike thrower, which (in concert with an uptick in velocity this year) has left Big Ten hitters with little chance against his stuff.

Reddemann relies on a fastball that sits 94-96 mph, but can grab 98 mph. There's a sinker and a cutter, too, to round out a trio of fastballs. He has a slider, which he throws in the low 80s, although it tends to blur with his cutter, and a high-70s curveball to round out a diverse arsenal of pitches. He's striking out over 30% of hitters through mid-April, and walking less than 5%. If that trend continues, he has a chance to be a top-20 pick. Though it's in the same range of the first round, this would be a different type of pick than Jordan Wicks was in 2021; Reddemann is more of a high-upside power arm.

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