2 The Bigs

Prospect Profile: Sebastian Walcott

“The Rangers gave Walcott a $3.2M signing bonus, which was the 6th-largest for the international pool in 2023. Many scouts believe Walcott can become the best baseball player to come out of the Bahamas (sorry Jazz Chisolm). He has the tantalizing tools and upside that teams seek to have in their farm system.”

By Matt Castagna: Mar 1, 2024

Pack your bags, we’re going international. The international pool has supplied many of baseball’s brightest stars, as well as ones deemed to be next up (we recently highlighted two others that we love). These international prospects are often signed at a much younger age, which means longer learning curves and development processes before being able to reap the rewards. It also means higher risk. I like to think of these players as lotto tickets, as many seemingly don’t pan out. But, if one does it can set your team up for years to come.

Slot in the Texas Rangers, coming off a world series win, in which two of their top prospects (Evan Carter & Josh Jung) attributed to key moments along their triumphant trail. At the deadline, the Rangers were very aggressive in their pursuit; and this aggressiveness means depleted your farm system to acquire the players they needed to bring the crown to your major league team. This means outside of Wyatt Langford and Evan Carter, the rest of the top of the Rangers prospect list is wide open. This brings a major opportunity for young international shortstop Sebastian Walcott, who could be the biggest prospect of them all.

The Rangers gave Walcott a $3.2M signing bonus, which was the 6th-largest for the international pool in 2023. Many scouts believe Walcott can become the best baseball player to come out of the Bahamas (sorry Jazz Chisolm). He has the tantalizing tools and upside that teams seek to have in their farm system. At 6-foot-4, 190-lbs, and lightning fast bat speed, he has 30+ HR potential in his future. Scouts have already seen consistent exit velocities of 110+ MPH in his first year at rookie levels. Now, he’s 17-year-old and has only played in 48 professional games, most at DSL, so we wont’t look into his metrics too deeply. However, 34% is a pretty significant K-rate across roughly 200 plate appearances. He’ll have plenty of time to get into his groove and develop his plate approach. Like every other 2023 international signee, we can play the waiting game until at least 2025 before making any long-term determinations.

At 1:30, you can see the upside from his bat speed. At 1:35 you can the downside from his discipline:

Now let’s talk cards. Walcott is one of those unique cases (think Brady House, Jackson Merrill, etc), who have a 1st Bowman, but no 1st Bowman autograph. You can find that 1st Bowman in the 2023 chrome set, which is the cheapest of all of the releases last year (currently $230/hobby). His colored cards range from $25-$50 and a sapphire base can be had for $8-$15. If you like risk, go ahead and grab some color on the cheap, the reward is always exciting when one of these guys breaks out