Three High School Pitchers Trending Up in the 2026 MLB Draft Class
High school pitching is always the riskiest crop of players to choose from in the MLB Draft, but the 2026 class is unique in that it’s one of the deepest when it comes to prep pitching that a draft has ever seen. At the top end, lefties Gio Rojas and Carson Bolemon are likely the only prep pitchers you can pencil in as first round picks, however, there are roughly 10-15 names at the moment that have a legitimate shot at being first rounders. For reference, only Seth Hernandez (6th overall) and Kruz Schoolcraft (25th overall) were the only first round prep right-handers a year ago. Before jumping in to these three profiles, I also recently dropped a piece over on JustBaseball.com on five prep right-handed pitchers you need to know for this year’s draft. You can find that piece here. With that being said, let’s dive into these trendy high school pitchers.
Cooper Sides, RHP, Orange Lutheran HS (CA)
Age on draft day: 18.6
HT/WT: 6’5”, 215 lbs
2026 MLB Draft ranking: 39
Given the strength of the prep right-handers in this year’s draft class, I almost feel like a team that wants one can simply throw about 15 names in a hat, blindly choose one, and feel good about who they got. However, if I was to put my money on one right now to come out on the other side of this class as the most successful big league starter, it would be Cooper Sides.
The Southern California standout is an LSU commit, so his sign-ability might be tough given recent pitchers LSU has steered away from the draft. If he does end up at LSU, I can only imagine what the finished product might look like three years from now in the 2029 class given his current tools and future projection. For most pitching profiles, it starts with the stuff, but for Sides, it starts with the polish on the mound. The command and pitch-ability are the standout tools for Sides before you even get into the arsenal. He works down the mound well with a low-effort, repeatable delivery while his arm speed immediately jumps out to the naked eye. It’s a real unique combination of physical tools and athleticism, and he has plenty of room to mature physically.
As for the pitch-mix, Sides throws a fastball, slider, curveball, and a changeup. The fastball has been up into the mid-90s touching 97 mph this spring and will settle in to the lower-90s. However, there are evaluators that believe he is going to touch triple digits at some point in his career due to his immense arm speed and physical projection. He can tweak his arm-slot to manipulate the shape of the pitch, either throwing it with more ride through the top of the zone, or with more sink and run in to right-handed hitters and away from lefties. The breaking pitches have both flashed plus, with the slider featuring more of a sweeper shape in the mid-80s, and the curveball showing a lot of depth and downer break in the upper-70s. His ability to spin the ball definitely suggests Sides is a supinator which would explain why his changeup is fourth in line, but he is showing more improved feel for it, and his ability to mix in his pitches well leads me to believe it can be at least an average offering.
For Cooper Sides, he comes from what I call the “Ryan Sloan” starter kit. Sloan was a right-handed prep two years ago from the Illinois high school ranks and was selected by the Mariners in the second round as the 55th overall pick. Seven different prep arms were taken ahead of him, but fast forward two years and he is the best prep pitcher to have come from that class thus far. It was a very similar profile to Sides right now - projection, command, feel for multiple pitches, but a lack of legitimate first round buzz due to a lack of high-end stuff which is usually required of first round prep arms. However, Sloan matured physically and also got into a very advanced pitching lab in Seattle, and is now potentially looking at being the top pitching prospect in baseball by the end of 2026. It’s hard not to see the same type of potential in Cooper Sides.
Brody Bumila, LHP, Bishop Feehan HS (MA)
Age on draft day: 18.4
HT/WT: 6’9”, 250 lbs
2026 MLB Draft ranking: 52
There perhaps hasn’t been a trendier name than Brody Bumila’s over the past two weeks as the unicorn southpaw has quickly grabbed the attention of the industry with just a few outings. A Massachusetts kid, Bumila’s season naturally started later in the cycle, but he also got an even later start due to the fact that he was busy leading the Bishop Feehan High School basketball team to a state championship and winning the Massachusetts Basketball Player of the Year award. For the evaluators big on two-sport standouts, Bumila is your guy. He dropped a casual 36 points and 20 rebounds with five blocks in the state championship game, so there’s no doubt that this is an elite athlete.
The reason Bumila has caught a ton of steam recently is due to how he has lit up the radar gun early on. With the weather in the thirties and forties in New England, Bumila has already been up triple digits with the fastball. It’s a true outlier fastball when accounting for the movement profile and Bumila’s deception. He throws from a lower slot with some cross-fire action, creating a flat approach angle, but also manages to get behind the ball to produce extra carry on the pitch.
Bumila’s low to mid-80s changeup is his secondary of choice, which makes his profile that much more interesting. On one hand, it’s rare that any prep pitcher has legitimate feel for an offspeed pitch, but on the other hand, that’s usually the case because they have present feel for at least one breaking pitch, something that’s still a work in progress for Bumila. The changeup plays great off the fastball with plenty of velocity separation and a ton of fade and depth. He still needs to show more command of the pitch in order for evaluators to feel confident in it being a plus pitch at the next level, but the foundation is there. The breaking ball of choice is a low to mid-80s slider that is at its best when thrown with a tighter shape, but he hasn’t really found consistency with a single shape.
While this is an electric profile, there are a few knock on it that are sure to give teams some pause this July. For starters, Bumila already has an elbow surgery under his belt, one that sidelined him for his junior campaign and his final chance at proving himself on the summer circuit. With that being said, Bumila lacks recent track record and a spring season in Massachusetts isn’t going to do him much help either. Although there are ballplayers in the northeast, he’s going to miss out on facing some of the top competition in the country, something that the aforementioned Cooper Sides has been able to do in Southern California and at multiple top high school invites. Considering the level of competition, there hasn’t been a need for Bumila to show much pitch-ability, and that’s been pretty apparent in the fact he has blown the doors off of nearly every hitter he has faced off primarily two pitches.
When you’ve got a prep left-hander pumping triple digits, it’s hard not to ask why this kid isn’t the favorite to be the first overall pick. That would have been a good question 10-15 years ago, but there’s a lot more nuance for an arm like this. Luckily we have a pretty comparable prospect from last year’s draft to help forecast Brody Bumila. Jack Bauer was breaking records in high school a year ago, running his fastball up to 102 mph from the left side, immediately warranting the first round and then some conversation. However, Jack Bauer is now pitching at Mississippi State. Bumila is committed to Texas, so there’s definitely a chance he joins Bauer in the SEC next year if teams feel the same way about Bumila as they did Bauer. There are some differences between Bauer and Bumila - Bumila is a better athlete and mover at the same stage as Bauer, but also has more injury risk and the same command questions. A lot taller than Bauer as well, there’s added command questions given the difficulty of getting pitchers as tall as Bumila to average strike-throwing with how much harder it is for longer-levered pitchers to repeat their deliveries. Perhaps the closest comparison to Bumila that has been drafted in recent years is White Sox 2022 first round pick (26th overall), Noah Schultz. For Schultz, he was the same size as Bumila coming out of high school, but started struggling to find the zone in the upper levels of the minors after suffering an injury.
While I’ve laid out the risk that comes with a pitcher like Bumila, he can certainly answer some of his concerns this spring as he continues posting. That’s why he’s “trending up” according to the title of this piece. He has been away from the mound for a while but is now breaking out as a draft prospect in a big way.
Sean Duncan, LHP, Terry Fox HS (CAN)
Age on draft day: 18.1
HT/WT: 6’2”, 175 lbs
2026 MLB Draft ranking: N/A
He’s not currently ranked on the Baseball Focus draft board, but Sean Duncan is one of the names trending towards landing on it when it is expanded to 75 players here shortly. Duncan doesn’t quite have the same advanced tools as Cooper Sides or the high-end stuff of Brody Bumila, but he’s a player that has been on the radar of evaluators for this class dating all the way back to as far as his age 14 season. Fast forward to 2026, and Duncan is shaping up to be what his track record suggested he could become.
The top draft prospect in Canada, Duncan is dealing for Terry Fox Secondary High School in the Vancouver area where he won the Prep Baseball Canada Player of the Year award in 2025. In a similar fashion to Brody Bumila in New England, there’s perhaps some questions concerning the quality of competition Duncan has faced, however, he has performed against a lot of talented hitters as he has gone to the summer circuit and has also played for the Canadian Junior National Team. Not to mention, youth is also on Duncan’s side as he’s still only 17 and will only be 18.1 on draft day, putting him on the younger side of the prep class, a feature that draft models always love. With that being said, Duncan is very projectable and has a lot of time to grow into his 6’2” frame.
It’s a bit of an unconventional operation on the mound as he has a big arm swing that comes over the top which would naturally create a steeper approach, but he also gets a good amount of extension which brings his release point down a few ticks, giving hitters a unique look. It doesn’t look super fluid, but he repeats it well to command his arsenal at an above-average level.
It’s a three pitch mix for Duncan, one that is advanced for his age. The fastball has sat in the upper-80s to low-90s over the past calendar year, but has more recently crept up into the mid-90s where he has topped out at 95 mph while showing the ability hold 92-94 mph. It’s a run and ride shape that he can locate to either side of the plate. His low-80s slider is his best pitch as he can use it to get chases outside of the zone and can even get whiffs in the zone with it due to it’s late bite. It’s going to be a true wipeout pitch, especially for left-handed hitters as he adds some ticks of velocity to it. It’s a tighter shape that he can spin up over 2500 RPMs and he can take some velocity off of it to add some depth with a more traditional two-plane shape. His changeup works in the low to mid-80s with plenty of vertical separation off the fastball and some arm-side run, performing as the equalizer against right-handed hitters. Although it’s only three pitches, it feels like a legitimate starter’s pitch mix that will find a lot of success at the pro level.
There is an excellent foundation to build off of here with Duncan. The remaining factor in his profile that could help him keep climbing draft boards is more consistent mid-90s velocity. A Vanderbilt commit, Duncan would be draft eligible again in 2029 if he were to make it to campus.
