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Draft  | Rankings  | 2/15/2013

Simpson's Top 200 2015 Prospects

Allan Simpson     
Photo: Perfect Game
Familiar Name Ranks At Top
Of Early Draft Rankings

In the 48-year life of Major League Baseball’s first-year player draft, the son of a former big leaguer has been selected with the No. 1 pick overall on only one occasion. That came in 1987, when the Seattle Mariners chose Ken Griffey Jr.

That rare occurrence could happen again in 2015—on the 50th anniversary of the draft—when outfielder Daz Cameron, an outfielder from Eagles Landing High in McDonough, Ga., becomes eligible. He ranks No. 1 on Perfect Game’s recent ranking of the nation’s best high-school sophomores, and ranks No. 1 on PG’s list of the Top 200 Prospects in the Draft Class of 2015.

Cameron is the 16-year-old son of former Gold Glove outfielder Mike Cameron, who hit .249 with 278 home runs in a 17-year big-league career that ended in 2011.

Perfect Game Vice President of Player Personnel David Rawnsley has seen the younger Cameron play on a number of occasions and has little doubt that the 6-foot, 185-pound outfielder is a legitimate candidate to be selected first overall two years from now.

“Daz has as much hitting talent at his age as I've ever seen,” Rawnsley says. “He is very mechanically polished and has beautiful hitting mechanics. At our World Underclass (in Fort Myers, Fla.) in late December, as a 15-year-old, he hit seven straight balls off the Monster at Fenway South, which might have been the best BP in PG history.

“He's very strong right now and the ball explodes off his bat, and he's obviously not done growing. He's handled high-velocity game pitching already without issue. He was basically born to hit genetically and his dad is doing all the right things to develop him, including retire at the right time.”

Cameron may not be quite as gifted athletically as his father—or for that matter Griffey, who went on to a Hall of Fame career—but should end up with at least 6.7 speed in the 60 and throw well enough to settle into right field at the pro level.

The 2015 college crop, by contrast, does not have an obvious candidate to challenge Cameron for the top spot, but should begin to sort itself out today with the beginning of the 2013 NCAA Division I baseball season. Vanderbilt righthander Walker Buehler, an unsigned 14thround pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in last year’s draft, ranks as the top college prospect on the accompanying list.


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