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Major League Baseball's owner-imposed lockout remains ongoing, but that doesn't mean Prospect Watch is caught on the wrong side of a padlock. Rather, each Friday CBS Sports will be bringing you analysis on a draftee or an industry-wide trend worth monitoring. 

The college baseball season remains in a nascent phase, but you wouldn't know it based on the emergence of North Carolina State freshman first baseman Tommy White, otherwise known as "Tommy Tanks." How does one earn such a moniker? 

Sit back and observe:

White has started his collegiate career by hitting .588/.650/1.412 with nine home runs, 29 runs batted in, and more walks than strikeouts in 40 plate appearances. To frame it another way, he has more home runs on his own than hundreds of Division-I teams do as units. There's hot, there's red-hot, and then there's … well, White-hot.

Predictably, White's ball-tracking stats are equally impressive. 

According to data obtained by CBS Sports, White's average exit velocity so far is 100.9 mph and some 86 percent of his batted balls have had an exit velocity of 95 mph or greater. For reference, New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge led big-league qualifiers in both categories last season: his average exit velocity was 95.8 mph and 58.4 percent of his batted balls went 95 mph or quicker. White's production is coming in a small sample, with an aluminum bat, and against amateur pitching, but the gist is the same: he's smoking the ball right now.

Whenever a college freshman performs like White has, it's reasonable to wonder: why isn't this player in a professional organization? 

White went undrafted last summer, but not for a lack of talent or exposure. Rather, he preferred to go to college and made that clear in his monetary demands. "[We] set a certain financial number to go pro and the teams knew what it was," he explained to Inside Pack Sports. "I was going to be strict and stand by it, and it didn't hit."

White won't have another opportunity to turn professional until after his junior season. There's a long time between now and then, making it a fool's errand to forecast where he might land in the draft. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that teams tend to be skeptical about right-handed first basemen -- especially when they're on the shorter side. (White is listed at 6-foot even officially). The tide has turned in recent years, with both Andrew Vaughn and Spencer Torkelson coming off the board within the top three picks over the course of the past three drafts.

Perhaps White will join them when his time comes. For now, he has a legend to continue to build.