Angels draft Zach Neto 13th overall
With the 13th pick in the 2022 draft, the Angels selected 21-year old shortstop Zach Neto out of Campbell University.
Neto began his college career during the COVID-shortened 2020 season as a bench player, where he only stepped into the box six times. That summer, he played in the South Florida Collegiate Baseball League, where he had a ridiculous .439/.537/.765 slash line in 40 games. He became a regular starter for Campbell in 2021, hitting .405 with a 1.234 OPS in the Big South conference. Last summer, he played 16 games in the Cape Cod League, continuing his excellence with a .304/.439/.587 slash line using wood bats against top college competition. Neto entered the 2022 season as a potential first round pick if he could repeat his sophomore performance, and then he got even better. He hit .400 for the second year in a row, but massively improved his approach and had a .514 OBP. He went from 17 BB/30 K as a sophomore to 39 BB/19 K as a junior while also clubbing 15 homers and slugging .769. In short, he’s performed at every level of college competition and has a chance to move quickly through the Angels system. But let’s go deeper into his skillset as a player and some of his batted ball data from his time in college.
First off, you can watch some video of his swings from MLB Pipeline here.
Neto doesn’t demolish baseballs into the shadow realm, but his raw power is perfectly passable and he gets to it in games quite frequently. His hardest hit ball this year came at 108 mph, above average for a college hitter. I think his raw power will end up being above average but not plus at the major league level. However, he still does a ton of damage and has plenty of extra base hits because he hits the ball in the air, as 80% of his balls hit in the sweet spot (by launch angle) were registered as hard hits. Unsurprisingly, his 14.8% barrel rate ranks in the 94th percentile of college hitters. Despite hitting the ball in the air so much, he doesn’t pop out much (which is good because popouts are always outs just like strikeouts). His 4.2% popout rate ranks in the 80th percentile of hitters. Combined with just a 7.4% strikeout rate in 2022, Neto puts tons of balls in play. And when he puts balls in play, good things happen.
A couple months ago when I wrote about Taylor Ward’s breakout, I discussed the importance of launch angle tightness in player success. At the time, Ward was slugging over .700 (around .500 now) with pretty average raw power, and Neto profiles quite similarly. His sweet spot rate ranks in the 78th percentile. More importantly, his standard deviation in launch angle (sdLA) was 26.37 (compared to an average of 30.78, and in the 94th percentile of hitters). sdLA has been found to have a very strong correlation to BABIP, so Neto both puts balls in play and rains down the hits when he does.
To continue mirroring the structure of my piece about Taylor Ward, let’s talk about Neto’s approach at the plate. With Ward, his decision to swing less paid big dividends, and while Neto isn’t quite that patient, his swing decisions are excellent and he attacks the right pitches. Over the past two seasons, he has a miniscule chase rate of 22.5%. But when he does chase, he still makes contact about 79% of the time, well above the 62% collegiate average. He’s not great at making contact on pitches in the zone, but he more than makes up for it with his aggressiveness, swinging at nearly 3/4 of pitches seen in the zone.
I know quite little about evaluating defense so I tend to defer to what the experts say, but I watched a good bit of video of Neto. He’s not the quickest guy out there, and I’m somewhat skeptical of his ability to stay at the six. One of the resources I used (which will be linked below) calls him a “45 at short, and a 55 at third”, indicating he could stay up the middle but wouldn’t be great there, but would do really well if moved to third base. I don’t have the requisite knowledge to make a strong assertion of my own, but with his bat I think he profiles as an everyday regular regardless of where he ends up defensively.
From an organizational standpoint, Neto is the first college hitter who the Angels have drafted (and not traded away) since 2016, when they took Matt Thaiss 16th overall. After drafting 20 pitchers in 20 rounds last year, they’ve decided to take a highly ranked position player which the system is severely lacking in, especially on the domestic side. Before drafting Neto, their highest ranked infielders from the domestic draft are either Jeremiah Jackson or Kyren Paris (depending on who you ask), who were drafted in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
I would personally slot in Neto as the team’s #1 prospect already. While arguments can be made for Ky Bush or Chase Silseth, I think that Neto is the only prospect in the Angels’ system likely to become an everyday regular with impact in the lineup. Various publications have differing opinions on him, but FanGraphs is probably the highest, ranking Neto as the fifth best player in the class and 54th overall among all prospects. I wouldn’t call him a top 60 prospect myself yet, but he’d likely be in my top 100 and could very well jump higher if his pro debut goes well. All in all, I really like this pick for the Angels. Hopefully it’s a good sign of what’s to come over the next two days.
Fun fact: Neto was actually a two-way player during much of his college career, pitching 24 innings out of the bullpen during his sophomore season in 2021. He’s not going to continue pitching, though. He pitched a bit because he was the most athletic player on the team, not necessarily because he was the best pitcher.
Thanks for reading! I’ll be writing another article doing a 20-round breakdown of every Angels pick (although each player’s writeup will be less detailed than this). I also might do a shadow draft for the Angels, but it’ll be a little while before that. Enjoy, and feel free to ask any questions.
A lot of the data in this piece comes from a couple writers who I’ve learned a lot about baseball from (not just this draft class, just baseball in general).
Tieran Alexander: https://medium.com/@tieranbaseball/mlb-draft-top-500-prospects-fba9fe7fceaf
Mason McRae: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CRtv1fP4mDlXy7GrWn6iduN5u6tVUt9i-O9-H4lT_f0/edit#gid=1949220356
