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Despite rumblings from the baseball prospect online echo chamber, North Carolina State ace left-hander Carlos Rodon is still the best pitching prospect in college baseball and potential big league ace.

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Rodon, a 6-foot-3, 235 pounder, burst onto the prospect scene as a freshman; posting a 1.57 ERA, striking out 135 batters in 114.2 innings, not losing a single game and winning every relevant national award for freshman. As a sophomore, Rodon struck out the seventh most batters any college pitcher has this millennium.

From Baseball America:

That’s Rodon’s sophomore year. Every single one of the pitchers above could only surpass Rodon as juniors.

Suffice it to say that after one of the best underclass careers in the history of college baseball, expectations were high for Rodon entering the 2014 season. Rodon has not been as great this year as in the past but that is in no way the same as saying Rodon has played poorly.

For a couple of starts early in the season, Rodon’s velocity was down a tick (“only” 91-93 MPH from the left side). He’s been worked very hard by NC State coaches (note: not the same as saying he’s definitely been overworked). Rodon’s win-loss record is a paltry 2-6. Those 6 losses are twice as many as he’d loss in the rest of his college career combined. Whether they say so or not, getting an ‘L’ next to your name affects the way some scouts view a player, at least unconsciously.

But who cares about win-loss record? Rodon uses a mid-90’s fastball with above-average sink and nigh unhittable slider to generate K’s for about 27% of the batters he’s faced (a number that would place him in the top 5 of MLB starters last year). Rodon’s walk rate is a career low.

There aren’t many pitchers in the big leagues, much less the amateur ranks, who can boast pure stuff as good as Rodon. His velocity is back up. His slider will make All-Stars take feeble hacks. His changeup is a solid offering that plays up a bit when hitters have to guard against two 70-grade pitches. Rodon’s command is now a tick above-average.

Rodon is a big, strong guy and a terrific athlete. Currently hitting .344 in part-time DH duty, Rodon would rank second on the NCST team in average if he had enough at-bats to qualify. Rodon’s arm action has the “three S’s”; it’s smooth, short and simple.

From a purely scouting perspective Carlos Rodon looks like a front of the rotation workhorse. Add in a three-year record of elite performance and you have a legit number one overall draft prospect.

The state of young pitching in baseball is incredibly, perhaps unprecedentedly, strong. Carlos Rodon only adds to that. He has the potential to be a top-10 overall pitcher in the big leagues. The kind of guy who K’s 200 a season with terrific ERA and WHIP numbers.

Rodon’s been atop the 2014 prospect rankings for long enough that people want to poke holes in his resume, but at this stage Rodon is a better prospect than either of the two most recent college hurlers taken first in the draft, Gerrit Cole or Mark Appel.

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