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College  | Story | 5/7/2026

Coppy's Corner: May 7 POY Deep Dive

John Coppolella
Each week I huddle with Vinnie Cervino and Craig Cozart to discuss Top 25 rankings and Players of the Week. In Coppy’s Corner, I dive deeper into these Players of the Week, providing analysis from 20+ years working in baseball front offices at the highest level.  

Player of the Week: Tyce Armstrong – Baylor University 

Armstrong is a big man with a big bat that produces big power. Just the second player in the history of Baylor to reach 20 HR in a single season – if you knew the other one was Charley Carter in 1998, you get the gold star – Armstrong brings an impact bat that can turn the game around with one swing. Listed at 6’4 / 228 he is Texas-strong and has been tearing up the Big 12 this season. Armstrong spent his first three season at the University of Texas – Arlington before transferring to Baylor for the 2026 season. He had a great week, but, really, it’s been a great season with a .330 AVG / .437 OBP / .760 SLG (!) / 1.196 OPS over 179 At-Bats this year. 



Armstrong reminds me a lot of Luke Voit. Both are big and strong right-handed power bats. Voit – who finished 9th overall in AL MVP voting in 2020 – played only 1B and DH and had a little thicker body at 6’2 / 260. Armstrong is more athletic and has played 1B and some Corner Outfield. As was the case with Voit, you are buying a bat with Armstrong, and a look inside the numbers reveals some interesting data. Armstrong has more than held his own against RHP with .367 AVG / 1.327 OPS, performed on Friday nights against top pitching with .390 AVG / 1.431 OPS, and hung in there against all breaking balls hitting .303 AVG and 1.150 OPS. Armstrong is a senior who will turn 23 years old just before the MLB Draft (DOB 7-3-03), but impact right-handed power like this is hard to find. Amid a breakout senior season, his draft stock is rising and the next couple of months should be exciting. 

Carry Tool: POWER!!! I wrote that in all capital letters with three exclamation points because it’s A LOT OF POWER!!! Hitters with .760 Slugging Percentages aren’t hanging out on every corner, and Armstrong has continued to improve throughout his college career. Whatever his professional future may be, it will be completely tied into his power. Magnolia Field at Baylor Ballpark is a balanced / neutral ballpark that doesn’t favor hitters or pitchers, but I would love to see what Armstrong could do in an organization like the Colorado Rockies or the Arizona Diamondbacks. 

Pitcher of the Week: Isaiah Magdaleno – University of Hawaii  

The movie Encino Man is terrible. I’m not sure what compelled Brendan Fraser to be a part of this movie – probably money? – but it’s awful. Magdaleno, who is from Encino, but in no way affiliated with the movie, has been the opposite of awful this year pitching for the University of Hawaii at Manoa (the flagship university for the islands, but in no way affiliated with Alek Manoah). Magdaleno’s best outing of the season was Friday night, when he went CG SHO with 1 Hit, 1 BB, and 16 SO for the Rainbow Warriors. It’s the culmination of a breakthrough year that saw him pitch well in the Cape Cod League this past summer before dominating in 2026 by producing 5-4, 2.75 ERA with 89 SO vs. 29 BB and only 3 HR allowed over 72.0 IP.  

Magdaleno does it differently than most college pitchers that we profile. He’s got a five-pitch mix starting with an average FB 87-93 that is sometimes 87-91 and sometimes 90-93, and he only throws it 39% of the time. He mixes the FB with a killer CH (thrown 28% of the time), a good downer CB (17%), a CUT (8%), and a SL (7%). He is a good athlete with advanced feel to pitch, and he continues to get better. It’s not top-shelf stuff, and this isn’t a Day 1 selection, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t have a future at the highest level.  

Carry Tool: Changeup. It’s a real weapon, with a 59% Swing Rate, 49% Miss Rate, and 46% Chase Rate. Over the course of the season, hitters have only managed to hit .139 AVG / .392 OPS against the CH this season. Magdaleno reminds me of a little bit of Kris Medlen and Jair Jurrjens, two pitchers I saw a lot during my time in the Atlanta Braves front office. Medlen and Jurrjens were both very successful MLB starting pitchers using the CH as their out pitch, and both threw their CH roughly 25% of the time. I don’t know that Magdaleno has that type of ceiling – and I don’t know that he doesn’t, either – but using a similar approach will give this Encino man the best chance to thaw opposing hitters’ bats. 

Freshman of the Week: Christian Serrano – North Carolina State University 

Serrano comes from a baseball family. His father, Sammy, was a catcher who was selected in the 2nd Round of the 1998 MLB Draft by the San Francisco Giants out of Stetson University. Older brother, Eli, is an outfielder and was taken in the 4th Round of the 2024 MLB Draft by the New York Mets – and, like Christian, played for North Carolina State. Serrano was originally set to graduate high school in May 2026, but reclassified and came to Raleigh, North Carolina, a year early. Instead of getting ready for prom, he is terrorizing ACC pitching.  

Under the watchful eyes of our own Craig Cozart, following from scout seats this weekend, Serrano made the most of his first real opportunity to contribute for the Wolfpack. After a big weekend, he is sporting Landon Hairston-type numbers with a .455 AVG / .481 OBP / .682 SLG / 1.163 OPS albeit in only 27 PA’s. North Carolina State has been just as impressed with the defense – playing a perfect SS with zero errors at the time of this writing – as with the offense. It’s still early for Serrano but expect an expanded role for the remainder of the season and into 2027. This prospect is coming on at just the right time for NC State, and time will tell if his name is called before his father’s, and brothers were in the MLB Draft.  

Carry Tool: Power. Standing 6’4 / 185, Serrano is lean, athletic, and ultra-projectable with room to fill another 25-30 pounds of muscle. Serrano is an above average defender and a plus runner, who Perfect Game timed at 6.71 in the 60-Yard Dash last year, but his carry tool is Power. If you squint your eyes hard enough, you can see a little bit of a young Troy Tulowitzki build and power type upside. It’s still really early, but there is a lot to be excited about with Serrano – it will be fascinating to see how his Power develops, his career progresses, and where he is drafted. 

National Nuggets:

We celebrate performance in this column with our Players of the Week, but sometimes it’s instructive to profile a prospect after a tough outing or series … as I mentioned above, Craig Cozart was in Winston-Salem this past weekend and saw Wake Forest’s Friday Night Starter, Chris Levonas, saying he didn’t see a Fastball under 98 in the 1st inning and saw several 99’s along with strong off-speed stuff … Levonas went 4.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 7 SO at home against a resurgent Louisville lineup, but has been much better overall in the 2026 season at 8-3, 3.28 ERA with 60.1 IP, 41 BB, 27 BB, 96 SO … it’s a big step forward from an uneven freshman season (5.91 ERA) for the New Jersey prep product who has two plus-plus offerings with his FB and a wipeout hard CB … the CB has been his out pitch and, this year, hitters are only hitting .104 AVG / .424 OPS with 42 SO in 67 AB against the CB … the opportunity for Levonas is to develop a third pitch, as he has thrown his CH less than 5% of the time and has struggled more against LH hitters (.247 AVG / .885 OPS) than he has against RH hitters (.154 AVG / .493 OPS) … good organizations can help him neutralize LH hitters in pro ball by developing a CH, but it’s hard to teach 98-99 with a plus-plus hard CB … Levonas was the highest-drafted prep pitcher (#70 overall by the Milwaukee Brewers) not to sign in the 2024 MLB Draft … it makes sense the Brewers took a chance on Levonas because that plus-plus CB frequently exceeds 3,000 RPM and his pure stuff (if not his physical appearance) probably most closely resembles that of Milwaukee ace Jacob Misiorowski – how scary would that starting pitching tandem be? … the only player not to sign taken ahead of Levonas was Tyler Bell (#66 overall by the Tampa Bay Rays), who has a chance to go in the top-half of the first round in the 2026 MLB Draft … watch for Levonas to be taken in a similar range, if not higher, in the 2027 MLB Draft, especially if he can continue his development and progression 
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College | Story | 8/7/2026

Cape Cod League Notebook: August 7
Perfect Game Staff
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RHP Jason Flores (@BaseballUGA) Showed some electric stuff, up to 98 several times CT, SL, CH to round out the arsenal in his 5IP 9K performance. @HarwichMariners So./‘27 elig pic.twitter.com/p2nTvkFnWh — PG College Baseball (@PGCollegeBall) August 5, 2026 Jason Flores | RHP | University of Georgia | Harwich Mariners  Flores heads to Georgia this fall looking to reestablish himself as one of the premier arms in the 2027 draft class after showing significant promise during his freshman season at Texas. Flores posted a 2.78 ERA over 32.1 innings as a freshman before a limited sophomore campaign in which he logged just 12 innings. The stuff was on full display this summer, highlighted by a dominant five-inning, nine-strikeout playoff performance in which he touched 98 mph five different times. His fastball averaged nearly 96 mph throughout his time on the Cape, pairing the...
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Michael Albee
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Tyler Henninger
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Tyler Henninger
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The landscape of the MLB Draft continues to evolve each and every year. What teams value at the top of the draft can change based on the strength of a particular class, shifts in player development philosophy, and, perhaps most importantly, the way organizations evaluate risk and upside. Some trends are subtle, while others become impossible to ignore when viewed across multiple years. For this study, I set out to answer one question: What player profiles do teams value at the top of the draft? To answer it, I analyzed the Top-100 picks from each of the last six drafts (2021-2026). That gives us 600 total selections to examine and provides a large enough sample to identify both the profiles that have remained consistently popular and those that have gained or lost significant ground. The data was broken down by position, handedness and level to create individual player profiles. While...
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First Look: Class of 2031 Rankings

Perfect Game Staff
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Chubb Jones Jr. Enrolls Early

Tyler Henninger
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Harry Chubb Jones Jr. is getting an early start on the next chapter of his baseball career. The Perfect Game All-American announced Sunday that he will enroll early at the University of Alabama, giving the Crimson Tide an early addition from one of the more intriguing two-way prospects in the 2027 class. See y’all at The Joe! 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 pic.twitter.com/Kn0T0mJxq7 — 6._.chubbjones (@chubb_hitter) September 6, 2026 Jones, a 6-foot-4, 190-pound SS/RHP from Georgia, was ranked No. 39 in the 2027 class and came in at No. 83 on the initial Top-100 2027 Draft Board. Chubb Jones Jr (‘27 GA) smokes this one the other way for an RBI single & we’re all level in the 6th. Adv bat speed, impacts w/ authority to all fields #PGAAC@PG_Georgia pic.twitter.com/FZ46IvYVp1 — Dick’s Sporting Goods All-American Classic (@PGAllAmerican) August 16, 2026 The McEachern...
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Tyler Henninger
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Ryan Miller
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Perfect Game Staff
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Tyler Henninger
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2027 Top 100 Draft Board  Current Favorite: SS Dylan Seward, Norco HS (Calif.) In our first iteration of the 2027 Draft Board, Norco shortstop Dylan Seward ranks No. 1 overall. The switch-hitter is an ultra-twitchy player with a lot to like on both sides of the ball. He is a supreme athlete that should stick up the middle. Explosiveness is shown in all aspects of his game and gives the profiles big time upside.  In the event that Seward does not go 1:1, each member of our draft team selected a player that they think could wind up in that spot. We are still nearly a full year away from draft day, but here are our “Way Too Early” predictions for the 1st overall pick next July.  Henni’s Pick: C/UTL Gavin Kelly, West Virginia    Gavin Kelly (@WVUBaseball) sends this over the wall in CF for a solo 💣 (100 EV/ 416 ft). Adv. hitter with accurate...
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Class of 2029 Rankings Update

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