SAN FRANCISCO — The player expected to go No. 1 overall in the 2026 MLB Draft is a UCLA shortstop whose father went to high school in San Jose and college at Cal. The top catcher available is from Georgia and grew up not far from the hometown of a certain president of baseball operations. The top pitcher is a Walnut Creek native who grew up cheering for a dynasty at Oracle Park. When Giants officials, scouts and advisors sit down in conference rooms and spend hours debating the pluses and minuses of potential draft picks, there are a lot of connections. But ultimately all that does is make for good stories.
As members of the front office talked about the No. 4 overall pick this week, they all offered some variation of the same thing: “We’ll take the best player available.” That’s usually the case in baseball’s draft, but this year, there’s still some uncertainty within the industry about who that player is.
That UCLA shortstop, Roch Cholowsky, has long been viewed as the top pick, but the Chicago White Sox also could go with Vahn Lackey, the catcher from Georgia Tech, or Grady Emerson, a prep shortstop from Texas....