2013 MLB draft prospect outhomering most Division I teams

Crushing the competition and any pitcher who gets in his way, Kris Bryant is on his way to being drafted in June.

By Marc Normandin@Marc_Normandin May 14, 2013, 12:03pm EDT

The scouting scale in baseball goes from 20 to 80, with 80 being elite. Value on the scale is not a concept that everyone immediately grasps, especially when it comes to scoring the actual tools of players instead of just reading about them. With that in mind, Baseball America's Jim Callis tried to explain some of the amateur draft prospects that we'll spend the next month getting to know before Major League Baseball's amateur entry draft by telling us who has 80 tools in a particular field.

Kris Bryant, from the University of San Diego, has 80 power. Normally, you might want to see him in action before trusting that or understanding exactly what it means, but this tidbit from Callis should suffice:

Bryant hit three homers over the weekend, boosting his total to 28, a school record and nine more than any other player in NCAA Division I. He has outhomered 228 of the 296 teams in Division I. His combination of bat speed, strength, pitch recognition, discipline and barrelability give him elite power.

Bryant had hit 23 homers in 110 games for San Diego before this year, and has more than doubled his career total with some season still left to go. He's hitting .346/.506/.880 with 43 extra-base hits in 52 games, according to College Splits, and Baseball America thinks he's the third-best prospect on the board this year.

It's probably safe to assume, whatever his other skills, that the guy outhomering 77 percent of Division I college baseball has 80-level power. No wonder 80s are so rare in the scouting world.