{"id":121263,"date":"2026-05-04T17:28:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=121263"},"modified":"2026-05-04T17:28:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:28:22","slug":"gavin-grahovac-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2026\/05\/04\/gavin-grahovac-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s All Coming Together at the Perfect Time for Gavin Grahovac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every player in the 2026 Major League Baseball Draft will face adversity at some point in their career. For Texas A&M star Gavin Grahovac<\/a>, handling adversity has become second nature. After bursting onto the scene as a freshman, Grahovac watched the coach who convinced him to attend college leave the program, and then suffered a season-ending injury.<\/p>\n

Now in his draft year, the Aggies standout is climbing his way back up MLB Draft boards<\/a>. With two more home runs over the weekend, Grahovac is looking more and more like the surefire first-round pick that many scouts touted him as during his first year at College Station.<\/p>\n

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Hitting His Stride at the Right Time<\/h2>\n

Coming out of high school, Perfect Game had Grahovac ranked as the tenth-best outfielder in the Class of 2023. Instead of remaining in the draft, though, the California native held firm to his commitment to Texas A&M and went on to have one of the best freshman seasons in program history. Starting all 67 games, Grahovac set a single-season freshman program record with 23 home runs and 66 RBIs, earning him the SEC Freshman of the Year award.<\/p>\n

To round out his historic freshman campaign, Grahovac would also hit a lead-off home run in the College World Series Final, immediately putting him in the discussion to be a Top 10 pick in the 2026 MLB Draft<\/a>. Even though his head coach, Jim Schlossnagle, would leave A&M for Texas shortly after their College World Series loss, Grahovac remained loyal to the program and announced he would run it back with the Aggies instead of entering the transfer portal.<\/p>\n

With expectations at an all-time high entering his sophomore season, Grahovac would quickly rack up three extra-base hits in six games before it was announced he would miss the remainder of the season with a torn labrum in his non-throwing shoulder. Suddenly, the A&M stars’ draft stock was plummeting amid the injury and scouts’ initial concerns about his high swing and miss rate in his freshman year (95 strikeouts).<\/p>\n

Entering his ever-important junior season, Tyler Jennings of JustBaseball<\/a> ranked Grahovac as the 51st college prospect in the draft, while PerfectGame had him ranked 102nd on their Top 300 Draft Prospects list. Those rankings have quickly become outdated, though, as Grahovac is playing like a potential SEC Player of the Year. Through 45 games, the now corner infielder is hitting .361 with 16 home runs, 61 RBIs, and a 149 wRC+, which is the eighth best in the conference.<\/p>\n

Where Gavin Grahovac Fits Into the 2026 MLB Draft<\/h2>\n

Any questions that scouts had about Grahovac entering this season are being answered. Not only does the junior rank inside the top ten in the SEC in OPS (1.174), wOBA (.490), and SLG (.728), but he’s cut down on strikeouts significantly. In his freshman year, the Aggies’ star had the ninth-highest strikeout rate in the SEC at 29%, but with only 31 punchouts in 180 at-bats this season, he is down to a 14.4% strikeout rate.<\/p>\n

Grahovac’s raw power was already enticing to teams across the league, so with him improving his swing-and-miss numbers, it was unsurprising to see MLB Pipeline rank him as the 32nd draft prospect in their latest rankings. If the draft shook out exactly like the rankings did, which is not going to be the case, then that would put Grahovac in the Comp-A round. As of right now, that could be considered his ceiling, with the end of the second round being his draft floor.<\/p>\n

There is no denying that Grahovac’s hitting tool will play for any team, so the biggest question remaining is which position teams would want to draft him at. While he’s been playing first for most of this season, Grahovac does have the arm to play third base at the next level, and the athleticism to play a corner outfield position if needed. Depending on where teams would want to play him, his spot on draft boards is likely different throughout the league. But one thing is for sure, he’s overcome a lot of adversity to get his draft stock back on track.<\/p>\n

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Main Photo Credit: Brianna Paciorka\/News Sentinel \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every player in the 2026 Major League Baseball Draft will face adversity at some point in their career. For Texas A&M star Gavin Grahovac, handling adversity has become second nature. After bursting onto the scene as a freshman, Grahovac watched the coach who convinced him to attend college leave the program, and then suffered a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5819,"featured_media":121290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1071,29143,35],"tags":[29499,1308],"class_list":["post-121263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","category-mlb-draft","category-news","tag-gavin-grahovac","tag-mlb-prospects"],"modified_by":"Augustus Oswald, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5819"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121263"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":121293,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121263\/revisions\/121293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}