The 2025 Bowman Draft Class: 3 Months Later

Back in January, HobbyMonitor published two pieces on 2025 Bowman Draft — one laying out the top chases and strategy recommendations, and one breaking down breaker pricing team by team. The calls were specific. Sell base autos at release. Buy singles in the offseason. Target color /150 or lower. Avoid pitchers. Fade the hype teams.

It's April. The data is in. Let's see how those calls held up.

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The Chase Recap

The thesis in January was simple: release-week pricing on base autos is almost always the ceiling, and 2025 Bowman Draft would be no different. Four months later, the pattern held — mostly.

Base autos across the top 5 chases moved an average of -4%, but that average masks a wide spread: Hernandez ripped 27% higher while Willits and Parker gave back a quarter of their release value.

The "sell at release" advice? Vindicated for three of the five, and the two that rose were names where the talent justified holding. If you listed your base auto pulls within the first 10 days, you're sitting on realized gains instead of watching eBay comps drift south on Willits and Parker. This isn't a victory lap — it's just what almost always happens with Bowman Draft base autos once the rip frenzy dies down.

Color parallels told a different story. The /150 and below recommended in January have compressed less than base, and in a few cases actually held their release prices. That's the gap worth repeating: base paper autos bleed value, but meaningful color tends to hold better because the supply is naturally constrained and the buyers at that tier are more patient collectors than quick-flip breakers.

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Breaker Value Revisited

In January, we broke down team break pricing and flagged which teams looked overpriced versus undervalued. Here's where those calls landed.

The big-ticket teams at release were Washington, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. Those prices were driven almost entirely by one or two names per team — which is exactly the problem with team breaks. You're paying a premium that only makes sense if you hit the marquee auto, and the odds are not in your favor.

We called out Arizona, Houston, Oakland, and Texas as value teams. The logic was straightforward: lower prices, decent prospect depth, and the math worked even if you didn't hit the top name. The value teams performed roughly as expected — none produced a breakout star, but the lower entry prices meant the losses were proportionally smaller. If you bought Houston at a discounted team price, Xavier Neyens at $43 and the supporting cast didn't blow you away, but you also didn't light $375-$470 on fire chasing a single name.

The broader takeaway hasn't changed. Singles beat breaks for targeted exposure. Always have, probably always will. If you wanted Eli Willits cards, buying his singles directly in January would have cost you $185 for a guaranteed base auto versus rolling the dice on a $470 Washington break and probably pulling a mid-tier auto instead. Even at $185 release pricing — which was too high, as it turns out — singles were still the smarter play than team breaks at nearly 3x the cost with no guarantee of pulling the guy you actually wanted.

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Our Hits and Misses

Not everything landed perfectly. Here's an honest scorecard.

What We Got Right

Sell base autos at release. This was the loudest call, and it played out as expected. The hobby has a short memory for release products, and Bowman Draft base autos follow the same gravity as every other Bowman release. Billy Carlson is the starkest example — $76 at release, $46 now, a 39% decline in four months. Willits dropped 27%, Parker 24%, Doyle 22%. The pattern is consistent enough to be a rule at this point.

Pitchers are a trap. We said this in January, and the data keeps confirming it. Steele Hall dropped 26% ($66 to $49), Liam Doyle dropped 22% ($85 to $66), and Dax Kilby slid 6% ($108 to $102). Position players as a group had a mixed bag — some rose, some fell — but pitchers in this product went almost uniformly down. Arm injuries, development timelines, and the hobby's impatience with pitching prospects make this a losing bet at release prices most of the time.

Jamie Arnold as a riser. Arnold essentially held steady — $50 at release, $47 now, a modest 6% decline that's basically noise. The call was "riser," and he didn't rise, but he also didn't crater like most of his Bowman Draft classmates. For a guy ranked #41 in the Oakland system, treading water while the broader product corrected is actually a decent outcome. The jury is still out here.

What We Got Wrong

We missed Seth Hernandez. Hernandez wasn't flagged as a top chase, and he's the only name in the product that meaningfully appreciated — $150 at release to $191 now, a 27% gain. Ranked #29 in the Pirates system, he was overshadowed by the bigger names in January but the hobby found him anyway. The lesson: don't sleep on the second or third name in a loaded org pipeline. Pittsburgh had the Hernandez buzz building through February and the analysis wasn't on it early enough.

Tyler Bremner's quiet run. Another name not highlighted in January — Bremner went from $37 at release to $47, a 27% gain on a card that most people ripped and threw in a box. It's a small dollar move, but percentage-wise it's tied for the best in the product. Sometimes the plays are hiding at the bottom of the price sheet, and the original analysis was too focused on the $100+ tier to notice.

Better to get specific about misses than vague about wins. That's how this works. If we're asking you to trust the analysis in the next article, we need to show you where this one fell short.

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The Offseason Window Is Open

This is the section that matters most. If you agreed with the January thesis — that 2025 Bowman Draft has real talent but release prices were inflated — then the offseason is your buying window.

Here's what stands out right now:

• Eli Willits base auto at $135. Down 27% from release, ranked #15, and a 2024 first-round shortstop with a plus hit tool. The talent hasn't changed — just the hype cycle. If he gets promoted to High-A or Double-A with strong numbers this summer, this card re-rates.
• Kade Anderson base auto at $110. Only up 9% from release, which means the post-release correction everyone else experienced largely didn't happen here. Ranked #21 in the Mariners system, lefty arm with projection. The market seems to agree this one was priced closer to fair value from the start.
• JoJo Parker base auto at $90. Down 24%, and the Toronto prospect pipeline isn't generating excitement. But a switch-hitting shortstop at $90 has real upside if the Blue Jays' rebuild timeline accelerates. This is a patience play — you're buying a $90 lottery ticket on a guy ranked #45 with tools to climb.
• Tyler Bremner color autos if you can find them. His base is at $47, up 27% from release. Any color /150 or lower in the $80-$120 range is worth a look for a stash. Angels pitching prospect, so the risk is real, but the entry price is right.
• Seth Hernandez base auto at $191. Yes, it's up 27% already. But Hernandez is ranked #29, and Pittsburgh's farm system is loaded with attention-getters (Griffin, Chandler). If he keeps performing, the rising tide in that org lifts all boats.

The general framework: color autos (/150 or lower) of players who have either maintained or improved their prospect stock since January, at prices that reflect the post-release cooldown rather than current talent level. The market underprices patience.

HobbyMonitor's take: A portfolio built around Willits raw base autos under $140, Parker around $88, and a Kade Anderson color /150 would represent under $500 of total exposure to this product — less than a single Washington team break cost in January. That math alone should tell you something.

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Eli Willits Update

Willits was the headliner of the product and the reason Washington breaks commanded $470 in January. Four months later, here's where he stands.

On the field: Willits is working through the early stages of his pro development as expected for a 2025 draft pick. He's following the standard timeline for a prep shortstop who signed in the fall. The development trajectory looks on-track but there's nothing to report that would move the needle in either direction. The next meaningful data point is his full-season assignment and early-season performance numbers.

In the market: Base auto dropped from $185 at release to $135 now — a 27% decline that tracks almost perfectly with the typical Bowman Draft base auto correction curve. The PSA 10 market is at $361, putting the raw-to-graded multiplier at about 2.7x, which is healthy for a top-20 prospect. Color auto trends have been more stable, with /150 and lower holding closer to their January levels.

HobbyMonitor ranking: #15 overall. No movement since January — the prospect lists haven't reshuffled yet, and Willits hasn't given evaluators a reason to move him in either direction. The next ranking cycle (midseason updates in June/July) will be the tell.

The take: Still a hold at current prices, and approaching a buy for anyone who sold at release and wants back in. The risk profile hasn't changed — he's a toolsy shortstop with a plus hit tool and a realistic path to the majors, but he's also a teenager with a long development runway. At $135, you're paying less for the talent than you were in January, and the talent is the same.

Willits was the right call as the star of the product. The question was never talent — it was price. If you sold at release and are looking to re-enter at a discount, that window is opening. A $135 base auto for the #15 prospect in baseball is a more reasonable entry point than $185 was. Setting alerts in the $120-$130 range makes sense — the floor is close, and once full-season stats start rolling in, the next move will be determined by performance, not product-cycle gravity.

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Quick Reference: Our January Calls vs. Reality

Hit rate: 5 of 7 calls landed correctly, one push, one clear miss. Average price movement across tracked names was -12%, confirming that the "sell at release, buy in offseason" framework works for Bowman Draft base autos. The lesson going forward: the framework is sound, but pay more attention to the second-tier names in loaded org pipelines — that's where the Hernandez-style misses hide.

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The January articles weren't predictions — they were frameworks. Sell the hype, buy the dip, target color, avoid pitchers, prefer singles over breaks. Four months of data suggests the framework mostly works, even when individual calls miss. That's the point. You don't need to be right about every player. You need a process that keeps you on the right side of the math more often than not.

The window to buy is now open. Use it.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed before publishing. Always verify latest market data, stats, or news.