Hernandez vs. Willits: Top 2025 Draft prospects meet in a High-A spotlight game

Two of the most anticipated players from the 2025 MLB Draft and two of MLB Pipeline’s top-ranked prospects turned up for a marquee High-A matchup Tuesday, with Seth Hernandez taking the mound for Greensboro and Eli Willits making his debut for Wilmington. The meeting was less about futures talk and more about immediate execution, and Greensboro ultimately won 7-5 at First National Bank Field after a three-run seventh inning that shifted the game’s momentum.

Hernandez entered the outing as the Pirates’ top prospect, while Willits, a Washington draft selection and MLB Pipeline’s No. 1 prospect, had been climbing through the system quickly enough that his High-A debut arrived after time at Single-A. Even without his sharpest stuff, Hernandez kept the game from getting away from him by sequencing swings, limiting damage in key innings, and working through baserunners even when commands slipped.

The right-hander struck out seven in just four innings, but he did have to work for each out. He finished with 70 pitches, 44 for strikes, allowing three runs (two earned) on six hits and two walks. Through two levels this season, Hernandez’s ERA sat at 2.36, and after promotion his numbers continued to hold up, with a 4.15 ERA across five High-A starts and opponents hitting just.213 in those five outings.

The contest turned on the way runs were permitted, not simply how many. Hernandez opened by issuing a leadoff walk to Willits, then allowed a Yeremy Cabrera single in the first. Greensboro managed to get out of the first-inning traffic, aided by batter interference that prevented the early frame from turning into a bigger crater. From there, Hernandez’s innings were uneven, with one especially productive moment for Greensboro coming in the second.

In the second inning, Jacob Walsh started a rally with a leadoff single, and Elijah Green followed with a homer to put Greensboro ahead. Hernandez’s third was his cleanest, surrendering a leadoff double to Ronny Cruz but retiring the next three hitters in order. The fourth inning exposed the kind of mistakes young pitchers work to eliminate at this level, when an errant pickoff attempt after another leadoff double allowed Angel Feliz to score.

Hernandez closed with a sequence that reflected both his competitiveness and his ability to regroup, finishing on a strikeout, a single, and then a double play to end the stint. Meanwhile, Willits did not wait long to get into the flow of High-A pitching from the hitter’s side, but the day still belonged to Greensboro’s ability to turn a late inning into separation.

High-A games like this can be more than a developmental box check. They offer a snapshot of whether a top draft class translates its talent to a more demanding schedule of hitters and more advanced scouting, and Tuesday’s duel underscored why teams and evaluators track these specific matchups. Hernandez’s stat lines suggested the control and swing-and-miss skills are trending in the right direction, while Willits’s debut placed a highly ranked bat in a demanding environment immediately.

What to watch next is whether Greensboro can sustain the kind of late-inning run creation it showed in the three-run seventh, and whether Hernandez can tighten the small margins that surfaced in the fourth inning. For Wilmington, the key question will be how quickly Willits adjusts once High-A hitters start forcing clearer, repeated bats against advanced pitching patterns.

For context, this game featured High-A affiliates, not Major League club rosters, and individual performances here are most valuable as indicators of development rather than guarantees. Even so, when the No. 1 prospect and one of the class’s top-ranked draft selections meet on the same day, the performance details tend to become the early markers teams remember at the next level.