The Boston Red Sox are being lined up for a college arm again, and this time the name is Taylor Rabe. Multiple analysts have Boston taking the Ole Miss right-hander at No. 20 in Saturday’s MLB Draft, betting on a fastball that has added three ticks of velocity in a single year.
Boston’s front office under Craig Breslow has leaned on college pitching in each of the last two drafts, and Rabe fits the pattern nicely, with a sizable frame, top-tier arm strength and a statistical breakout that arrived just in time for evaluators to notice.
@takespractice Taylor Rabe (Ole Miss) handing out a few 🪑’s #collegebaseball #pitching #baseball
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Taylor Rabe’s Rise From Outside the Top 200
A year ago, Rabe barely registered on draft boards. He missed his entire freshman season at Ole Miss recovering from Tommy John surgery, then threw only 16 1/3 innings as a redshirt freshman in 2025, according to his official Ole Miss Rebels biography page. His velocity sat in the low-90s, and his delivery lacked the extension that scouts want to see from a 6-foot-6 hurler.
This spring, however, Rabe was named Ole Miss’ Sunday starter and finished 5-3 with a 3.55 ERA that ranked seventh in the SEC, striking out 105 batters against just 15 walks over 76-plus innings. That strikeout-to-walk ratio led the conference and ranked fourth nationally.
His fastball now touches 99-100 mph, up roughly three mph from a year ago, while a cutter in the high-80s has become his go-to secondary pitch, generating seven of his 11 whiffs in a College World Series start against North Carolina, Baseball America’s Jacob Rudner reported. Ole Miss lost that game 6-2, but Rabe left with the score tied, striking out seven over 5 2/3 innings.
It wasn’t the 21-year-old’s sharpest outing. Rabe walked a season-high four batters and threw strikes at just a 59.3% clip, well below his spring standard. Yet he still had the stuff to keep a College World Series lineup off balance, which helped alert scouts to what they now see as his high ceiling.
Boston Red Sox Draft Buzz Builds Around Ole Miss Righty
Rudner’s reporting placed Rabe as Baseball America‘s No. 39 overall prospect in the class, a jump evaluators attributed to his rebuilt arm slot, added extension and sharply improved strike-throwing. Rabe now throws four pitches for strikes at least half the time, a dramatic reversal from a year ago when command was his biggest question mark.
Evaluators who spoke with Baseball America described Rabe as a still unfinished product. His spin rates remain below average even on his best nights, and his slider and changeup are works in progress. That flaw bothers scouts less with Rabe than it would with another pitcher, since his cutter and slider tunnel well off a fastball that already touches 100 mph. What teams are betting on, Rudner wrote, is “a horse of a right-hander with a premium fastball package.”
That evaluation lands him squarely in Boston’s range. Baseball America‘s own Mock Draft 6.0 slots Rabe to the Red Sox at 20, and Keith Law of The Athletic did the same in his most recent projection.
The Red Sox have taken college pitchers early in three straight drafts, including Payton Tolle in the 2024 second round, Kyson Witherspoon in the first round last year, and Connelly Early in the fifth round in 2023.
Rabe’s Tommy John history and unfinished secondaries remain concerns. But a 6-foot-6 arm reaching triple-digit velocity with an elite strikeout-to-walk ratio rarely lasts to the back half of round one.
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