With the 30th overall pick in the 2026 MLB draft, the Kansas City Royals selected Taylor Rabe, a right-handed pitcher from the University of Mississippi.
Rabe is a classic power pitcher. Standing at an imposing 6’ 5”, Rabe’s biggest strength is a high-octane fastball that sits in the upper 90s and touches triple digits. Rabe threw 76 innings across 17 games for Ole Miss this year, posting a 3.55 ERA, a 34.2% strikeout
rate, and a brilliant 4.9% walk rate.
Pundits and scouts placed Rabe between the late 20 and mid 40s in terms of overall big board ranking, a pretty clean match to the 30th overall Competitive Balance pick the Royals spent to get him. Notably, Rabe is a draft-eligible sophomore—meaning he is one year younger than most of his pitching peers. Some of the savings the Royals achieved by drafting Zion Rose at sixth overall would presumably be directed here to lure him away from returning to school.
Rabe has already had Tommy John surgery, but that is an unfortunately common scenario these days as more and more young pitchers go under the knife and more and more pitchers overall are able to come back from multiple Tommy Johns.
Taylor Rabe scouting reports
Rabe redshirted as a freshman in Oxford as he recovered from Tommy John surgery, then threw just 16 innings in 2025, allowing 22 hits and striking out just eight. He emerged as a dominant starter down the stretch this season for Mississippi, however, with a 35 percent strikeout rate and 3.4 percent walk rate through the SEC tournament. He finished the regular season with 27 strikeouts in his final two outings across 12 innings. He sits 96-98 with some late hop to it, with a hard slider as his primary secondary pitch, a plus weapon with abrupt downward break, distinct from his sweeper slider that’s a few miles per hour slower and is more of a power slurve. He has a straight changeup but it’s not a factor for him right now and he’ll need to refine or alter it in pro ball. Rabe is tall and still has some projection left, while he’s obviously a plus control guy who’s very online to the plate and repeats his delivery well. He’s not a finished product but has at least mid-rotation upside.
Rabe’s fastball elicits plenty of chases, empty swings and groundballs thanks to its combination of velocity (averaging 96 mph, topping out at 100), carry, command and deception. Both his upper-80s cutter and mid-80s slider have improved over the course of the season, and they were untouchable when he struck out 13 in six shutout innings in a Southeastern Conference tournament start against Alabama. He hasn’t shown much aptitude for an upper-80s changeup with some depth.
An athletic 6-foot-5, 200-pounder, Rabe repeats his delivery so easily that he issued just one unintentional walk to 79 batters faced a year ago before logging a 5 percent walk rate and ranking fourth in NCAA Division I with a 7.0 K/BB ratio this spring. Not only does he pound the strike zone, but he’s adept at working around the edges and rarely leaves balls over the plate to get pounded. One of the hottest college pitchers down the stretch, he could become a mid-rotation starter.
Rabe is a plus athlete, strong with good body control and a short arm swing. He has both fastballs, a four-seamer that brushes the upper 90s and a sinker with late and short sink. Pitch classification systems are having a hard time categorizing his breaking balls. He mostly throws a cutterish short breaker in the mid-to-upper 80s and a north-south slider with late depth, but he either lengthens that last one or has a separate curve. They’re all a work in progress to some extent, with the mid-80s slider the nastiest and furthest along of the three. He also flashes an above-average change with fade and sink. How well Rabe can maintain arm strength over a long season is a big variable in his projection. The arm strength and athleticism are there for a mid-rotation starter, but he’s going to need to hold his velo over the long haul, particularly on the secondaries, which are viable, if not especially nasty to the eye. He’s an intriguing upside bet, particularly for dev-oriented orgs inclined to take the athlete with arm strength and figure out the details later.
