2025 MLB Draft Deep Dive: Dean Curley
With a new college baseball season upon us, Just Baseball rolls out our 2025 MLB Draft deep dives, continuing with Tennessee shortstop Dean Curley.

In the coming weeks and months at Just Baseball, we’re excited to bring you high-quality amateur baseball content, working to make college baseball and the draft more accessible. Part of this work will be deep dives into draft-eligible prospects balancing scouting and analysis to give you a thorough portrait of a particular player.
Next up is Tennessee shortstop Dean Curley.
- Age: 21.3 on Draft Day
- B/T: R/R
- HT: 6’3
- WT: 215
- Hometown: Pomona, California
- 2024 Stats: 67 G, 268 PA, .285/.386/.502 (.888), 51 R, 10 2B, 1 3B, 12 HR, 9 SB, 31 BB, 47 SO
Dean Curley: Background and Bio
Dean Curley was an old-for-the-class high school prospect out of Northview High School (CA) who was a little lost in the shuffle of an absolutely loaded 2023 prep class.
At the time, Curley’s profile centered on power, with some swing-and-miss to his game and concerns about his hit tool, making some evaluators wonder how often he’d be able to access that power. Evaluators generally liked his approach and patience at the plate.
Defensively, there were mixed reviews, with most commending the arm but commenting that his physicality and heavy-footedness might eventually move him off shortstop.
Curley is now a draft-eligible sophomore coming off a National Championship with the Volunteers. Like teammate Christian Moore in the 2024 cycle, he’s a candidate to shoot up boards when the college season gets up and running.
College Performance and Scouting Report
Curley couldn’t have managed to have a more encouraging freshman season at Tennessee, handling shortstop for the eventual National Champion Volunteers in his age 20 season. Not too shabby. It was a loud offensive year, too. Curley hit .285/.386/.502 (.888) with 12 home runs (23 extra-base hits, nine stolen bases, 31 walks, and 47 strikeouts in 67 games.
It’s an efficient swing from Curley, who relies on quick hands and great rotation in a pretty right-handed stroke. A shoulder-high handset with some bat waggle gives way to a smooth load before a small step forward as he begins to unload. It’s generally a quiet operation in the box.
Taking a peek into Curley’s 2024 data, it’s easy to see the appeal of the profile and how he might take off in 2025.
2024 Data
Much like Aiva Arquette (who we covered in our first entry in this series), Curley’s offensive profile is driven by doing serious damage on contact.
His 91.2 mph average exit velocity was 84th percentile in D1 baseball, with his 107.3 mph 90th percentile exit velocity (89th percentile), and 110.8 mph max exit velocity (81st percentile) putting him in the upper echelon of power hitters in this class. He’s also pulling fly balls at around a 31% clip, maximizing damage inflicted on batted ball events.
While as a prep prospect some evaluators doubted his hit tool, there are strong foundations in place there, too. Curley’s overall 80.4% contact rate is solid-to-good, and this improves to ~88% in zone. You won’t be able to sneak fastballs past Curley, even at velocity, he does damage against them.
There is still some swing and miss to his game, though. Curley swung and missed 12% of the time in the strike zone, which is good but not great (60th percentile). Out of the strike zone, his 63% contact rate was just average.

Areas of Opportunity: In-Zone Aggression
When does patience become passivity? We’ve discussed that there are some strong foundations to Curley’s approach. I’d add that an excellent chase rate of ~20% (78th percentile) resulted in his average out-of-zone contact not impeding his production much.
It’s notable that Curley is allowing pitchers to get leveraged counts against him too often. His 37% swing percentage is low. That’s not a bad thing, in and of itself, unless we add some more context.
Curley’s swing percentage in the strike zone is just 59% (12th percentile). In short, there are occasions where he’s allowing pitchers to get ahead too easily.
What I’ll be watching for in 2025 is if Curley can be more aggressive swinging at pitches in the strike zone, particularly those over the heart of the plate. That will maximize his strength of hitting the ball hard and doing damage on contact.
Defense
What about the defense? One concern from Curley’s prep profile was his being a little heavy-footed. He has a strong arm and can make all the throws playing shortstop requires. His actions are good, not great, and it’s not the smoothest defensive operation, particularly when it comes to lateral movement.
I’d argue that without improvement, Curley eventually moves to third base, where the arm still plays (and the bat certainly does, too). There’s no reason he won’t stick at shortstop for the medium term, though, particularly after two years of SEC experience.
Dean Curley: Headlines and Takeaways
Curley is already solidly a first-round name in July, for me. I suspect if he can get a little more aggressive on pitches thrown in the strike zone, he might be one of the sharpest risers of the notable college bats between now and draft day.
He’s one of a few college players that make up the intriguing sophomore-eligible class ahead of July. How high Curley climbs will be dependent on the level of consistency with which he can access his excellent quality of contact.
With thanks to @TimStats for support with data viz.