Welcome to this year’s ranking of the top 100 prospects in baseball. I’ve been compiling and writing such rankings for 19 (!) years now, and those of you who’ve read them before will find the format here similar to those from the recent past. My farm reports covering at least 20 prospects in each team’s system, and notes on prospects who might appear in the majors this year, or who might be breakout prospects for the 2027 rankings, will appear starting the week of Feb. 2.
This isn’t just a ranking of which prospects had the best seasons in 2025. There are players on my list who had worse statlines than some players who weren’t on the list. This ranking is about future potential, about how I think these players and others will grow and develop over the next several years, how their skills and bodies will change over time for better or for worse. That means looking at their performance, at the underlying data, watching players live and on video, talking to scouts and analysts and more to try to come up with coherent projections for their near- and long-term outlooks.
Players change constantly, and we all need to update our opinions on them accordingly. Kevin McGonigle is the No. 2 prospect in baseball right now, but he wasn’t even drafted in the first round out of high school; like the man who was turned into a newt, he got better. I thought he was a pretty good prospect out of high school. I didn’t think he was Rogers Hornsby.
The minors are extremely hitter-heavy right now, with position players accounting for three-fourths of the names on the top 100. Pitchers are getting hurt at higher rates, and they produce less in the majors because they don’t rack up as many innings, which is (mostly) a smart baseball strategy but hasn’t helped the on-field product’s appeal — nor has it kept anyone healthy. This list reflects that shift in baseball philosophy, but you will still see plenty of pitchers on the individual team top 20s, because someone has to throw the ball.
To be eligible for this list, a player must still retain Rookie of the Year eligibility for 2026, and have no experience in NPB/KBO, as those are major leagues and calling, say, 29-year-old Kazuma Okamoto a prospect is pretty silly (not to mention it takes up the space I’d rather use on an actual prospect). I also don’t include the international free agents who just signed in January, since in nearly all cases those guys haven’t been scouted by other teams in a year or more.
Notes: Ages are listed as of July 1, 2026. Scouting grades are on the traditional 20-80 scouting scale. EV = exit velocity. EV50 = the average exit velocity of the top half of all of a player’s balls in play, ranked by exit velocity — that is, the top 50 percent of his batted balls; EV90 is the same concept but the top 90 percent of a player’s balls in play.
Team Arizona Diamondbacks Athletics Atlanta Baltimore Orioles Boston Red Sox Chicago Cubs Chicago White Sox Cincinnati Reds Cleveland Guardians Colorado Rockies Detroit Tigers Kansas City Royals Los Angeles Dodgers Miami Marlins Milwaukee Brewers Minnesota Twins New York Mets New York Yankees Philadelphia Phillies Pittsburgh Pirates San Diego Padres San Francisco Giants Seattle Mariners St. Louis Cardinals Tampa Bay Rays Texas Rangers Toronto Blue Jays Washington Nationals
Position 1B 2B C CF IF LHP OF RHP SS
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2025 Ranking: 84
Griffin was the No. 9 pick in the 2024 draft, a toolshed from Mississippi who starred for Jackson Prep as a shortstop, center fielder and pitcher, showing power and speed, but with broad questions about whether he’d actually hit decent pitching. It turns out that he can, in fact, hit decent pitching, and good pitching, and do so with authority. In 2025, he started out in Low A, hit .338/.396/.536 there, then moved up to High A, and hit .325/.432/.510 there, and then moved up to Double A in August just so he’d get some quick exposure to the level where he’s likely to start 2026 … and he hit .337/.418/.542 there in 21 games.
The physical tools are still all there; it’s probably 80 power, it’s definitely 80 run and he’s got at least a 70 arm. Even as he’s filled out a little already, he’s also shown much better instincts and agility at shortstop than you’d expect from a 6-foot-4, 225-pound (listed) guy who’s bigger than Corey Seager or Carlos Correa already. Griffin has also shown exceptional ability to make adjustments, even within games or at-bats, bringing his chase rate down throughout the season and ending the year with a chase rate on pitches well out of the zone of just 21 percent.
I’ve pointed out before that Griffin bars his lead arm, which for most hitters is a hindrance, but nothing stopped Griffin from hitting last year, even when he got to Double A, and he may just be such a good athlete and have such a high aptitude for hitting that it won’t end up mattering. He’s probably going to stick at shortstop and be a plus defender there, while posting high OBPs and hitting 25+ homers a year. I think he’s the most exciting prospect we’ve had in the minors since Mike Trout, and I think he’s going to end up one of the best players in baseball once he gets established.
2025 Ranking: 23
McGonigle was the No. 1 prospect on my midseason update, and he didn’t do anything to lose that spot; he just got lapped by the new Robin Yount. McGonigle’s 2025 season started a little late because of injury, but once he arrived, he mashed, hitting .372/.462/.648 in 36 games in High A, and then hitting .254/.369/.550 in 46 games in Double A, while walking more than he struck out at both levels. And he only turned 21 in late August. The Tigers sent him to the hitter-friendly Arizona Fall League to try to make up for some of the lost at-bats, and all McGonigle did was hit .362/.500/.710 with 19 walks and 12 strikeouts.
He’s an elite hitter for hard contact, pairing that with outstanding swing decisions, so the result is that he hits the ball in the air and pulls it a ton, getting to surprising power for a guy with more of a medium build and frame. He’s still playing shortstop and I know people who think he’ll stick there. That said, while he has clearly improved on defense since he was drafted, my guess is he gets bumped to second base by a plus defender at short. If he’s at second base, fine, he’s Rogers Hornsby, that’ll play. His projection is going to be high averages and OBPs with 20 homers, and if you do that, you can play anywhere.
2025 Ranking: 78
Made only turned 18 in May, but started 2025 as one of the youngest players on any full-season roster, skipping the Arizona Complex League entirely. He started strongly, as did the entire Low-A Carolina roster last April, then after some adjustment periods he earned a promotion to High A in August, hitting so well there the Brewers gave him a week in Double A to close the season.
He’s an advanced hitter for his age — he’d be an advanced hitter if he were 21 and played like this — with a real two-strike approach and an understanding of when and how to use the whole field. His bat speed is electric — he should walk up to “Danger! High Voltage!” — and even though he’s still lean and looks his age, he’s capable of hitting the ball extremely hard because of how fast his wrists are, with a peak exit velocity in 2025 of 111 mph. The biggest surprise in his season was his defense, as a year ago it looked like he’d probably end up at third or second, but he played easily plus defense at shortstop this year, with a quick first step and excellent range to his right, and at this point I’d say not only does he stay there but he’s going to be at least above-average in the majors.
I said last year in the top 100 that he could be a top-20 prospect this time around, but I undersold him; he’s in that tiny echelon of teenaged hitters who are so good so young that they can shoot to the majors even before they turn 20. You just don’t see many hitters, ever, with this combination of quickness, athleticism and aptitude at age 18.
2025 Ranking: 5
The Mariners’ first pick in the 2023 draft, Emerson is already on the brink of making the big leagues, even though he won’t turn 21 until July. After an injury-shortened 2024 season, Emerson got a full year’s work — exactly 600 PA — while playing at three levels in 2025, hitting .285/.383/.458 overall and making excellent swing decisions until he spent the final week in Triple A, where he was the second-youngest player after Nelson Rada. He has quick hands and generates plus bat speed, combining it with very advanced pitch recognition for his age, as he doesn’t chase much at all (22 percent in High A, where he spent most of the year) and picks up pitch types well already. He started the year putting the ball on the ground too often and appears to have dropped his hands just a little by year-end, with much lower ground-ball rates in Double A and Triple A, although he might want to drop them a little further to at least cement those gains in his line-drive rates. He’s kept the possibility of playing shortstop in the big leagues alive due to his hard work, as he’s a 45 runner and doesn’t have the naturally quick actions you want in a shortstop, and is more likely to end up at another position, probably third base. He really, really looks like he’s going to hit, both in the sense of making contact and hitting the ball hard enough to matter, and will do so while playing some position of value on the dirt. If he ends up at 20-plus homer power, which is probably his ceiling, he’s a superstar. Maybe he’ll hit .300-plus with enough secondary value in walks, doubles and defense to be a superstar even without a gaudy home run total. I’m not betting against him given how fast he’s moved and how hard he works.
2025 Ranking: 6
Clark has been overshadowed by his teammate and fellow 2023 draftee McGonigle, but is still a potential All-Star in his own right, a true center fielder with speed, a strong approach and above-average power right now that could still get to plus. He spent most of last year in High A, walking more than he struck out there while hitting .285/.430/.427, and then moved up to Double A and hit .251/.360/.439 in 43 games at the higher level, while still keeping his strikeout rate to 16.7 percent. Clark has excellent bat speed and a very advanced eye at the plate, which combined to produce just an 18 percent whiff rate on the season, along with an 18 percent chase rate that dropped to 10 percent on pitches well out of the zone. He ran better this past season and seemed to hold up more as the season went along compared to the latter part of his first full pro season in 2024. Clark’s power also started to show up more in games, as he put the ball in the air more often as the season progressed, going from a 50 percent ground-ball rate in April to a 36 percent rate in the second half.
He’s an extremely competitive kid who’s already shown he can adjust quickly to better pitching, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him reach the majors this year. His MLB ceiling is as a plus defender with high OBPs and 18-22 homers a year, which is going to at least make him an All-Star and a big fan favorite.
2025 Ranking: 13
Miller is a power-hitting shortstop who’s improved in almost every aspect of the game over his two full seasons in the Phillies’ system, and he’s going to push the Phillies into making some hard decisions about their middle infield before this year is out. Miller started slowly in Double A last year and was hitting just .234/.354/.379 at the All-Star break with a 26 percent strikeout rate, as he wasn’t getting on plane nearly often enough. After the break, he decided to lower his hands at his setup and increase his leg kick, helping him square up the ball for more hard contact and in-game power. He posted a 15 percent line-drive rate before the break and a 24 percent rate from that point until his promotion to Triple A in September, with a .307/.443/.511 line across both levels in the second half. He’s at least a plus defender at shortstop now and has boosted his game speed to the point where that’s plus as well, leading to 59 steals last year in 74 attempts (80 percent). Even when he was struggling, he didn’t come out of his approach, with strong swing decisions across the board that will probably lead to a high OBP this year when he’s in Triple A, where walk rates are higher anyway due to ABS. I don’t think he needs a full year at that level before he’s ready for the majors, just needing to refine some of his pitch recognition, and there’s a good chance that by July 1 he’ll be the best choice for shortstop at Citizens Bank Park.
2025 Ranking: 32
The Cardinals couldn’t believe their luck when they landed Wetherholt with the No. 7 pick in the 2024 draft, as the West Virginia shortstop had missed a big chunk of his junior season with a recurring hamstring injury that often limited him even when he was able to play. St. Louis skipped him over High A and had him start his first full pro season in Double A, where he hit .300/.425/.466 with more walks than strikeouts, and he hit even better after a promotion to Triple A just before the All-Star break, hitting .314/.416/.562. He’s not going to play shortstop, definitely not with Masyn Winn in front of him, but has the hands and instincts to play second or third and will stay on the dirt. Wetherholt doesn’t have huge raw power, much closer to average than plus, but he squares the ball up very consistently and his hard-hit (49 percent) and Barrel (12.6 percent) rates were well above the median in Triple A, so he might end up with more in-game power in the end. I wouldn’t want to change anything about his approach, as he benefits by using the whole field and is very selective until he gets to two strikes, when he expands the zone more than a hitter with his hard-contact profile should. He’s the National League prospect about whom I’d feel most confident saying that he’ll win a batting average title some day.
2025 Ranking: 3
Basallo’s meteoric rise to the majors has somehow gotten less attention than you’d expect from the profile: He’s a catcher, easily the best catching prospect in the minors right now, who hits and has significant power, and reached the majors just four days after his 21st birthday. Basallo was the only player under 21 to get even 300 plate appearances in Triple A last year, hitting .270/.377/.589; that slugging percentage ranked sixth among all Triple-A hitters, and his ISO was second only to 27-year-old Matt Mervis. He’s got power to all fields, peaking at 116 mph and hitting a third of his Triple-A homers the other way, and his Barrel rate was 21 percent. Only two MLB hitters last year topped that, and each won his respective league’s MVP award. While Basallo did walk at a very high rate (13.7 percent) and didn’t strike out excessively (23.7 percent), his swing decisions do leave something to be desired: he chased pitches well out of the zone 30 percent of the time, and with two strikes, that jumps to 42 percent. He’ll work the count once he’s ahead, but once he’s behind, he gets much more aggressive, to his detriment.
He’s got at least a 70 arm, and he’s improved significantly on defense over his time in the minors, but he’s still a below-average receiver and would need more time at the position before he could take over as a full-time catcher. It’s possible that will never come to pass, with Adley Rutschman also in Baltimore, and Basallo’s bat close to major-league ready, but I am ranking Basallo here on the belief that he could, in a neutral environment (e.g., if he’s traded tomorrow to a team without an incumbent catcher), become a 45 all-around defender, in which case his potential for 25+ homers would make him an All-Star. If he ends up at first base or DH for the majority of his time in the majors, he could still end up an All-Star because of the power — which might be more 30-35 homers — but he’ll have to show better command of the strike zone before he gets to that point.
2025 Ranking: NR
I regret to inform you that the Dodgers are at it again, as they signed Quintero in 2023 out of Venezuela for a paltry $297,500 bonus, and now he’s one of the best prospects in baseball. He was originally a catcher, but the Dodgers put him in the outfield because they thought he had a chance to stick in center and moving him would get his bat in the lineup more, and he’s advanced to the point where center is very much a viable outcome for him. Given where his bat is, that would make him an easy All-Star, as he’s already a very advanced hitter who’s starting to come into power already at age 19. His 88 walks were the fourth-most of any teenager in the minors last year, as he’s a very patient hitter, almost to the point of passivity, swinging at just 37 percent of pitches he saw last year and only 62 percent of pitches in the zone, putting him down in Juan Soto territory. He starts out with an open stance and doesn’t always close it entirely after his stride, but when he does he gets excellent hip-shoulder separation and can drive the ball to all fields with authority.
2025 Ranking: NR
Jensen began the 2025 season in Double A and finished it in the big leagues, getting better at each stop and posting one of the best debuts of any rookie hitter last year. Of all rookies with at least 50 PA — still a small sample — Jensen’s .391 OBP and his .550 slugging percentage each ranked third. He’s a real two-way threat as a plus defensive catcher with a plus arm and above-average receiving skills who also happens to have plus power and an advanced feel for the strike zone. When the Royals took Jensen out of a Kansas City high school in the third round in 2021, his body wasn’t great and the assumption was he’d move out from behind the plate and just go be a power-hitting DH, but he’s worked extremely hard on his conditioning since then, with his body in the best shape of his life right now (and for once, that phrase actually means something), so that now his athleticism comes through more in his defense and he’s even showing close to average speed on the bases. He has always drawn walks, but in the past two years he’s converted that patience more into production by capitalizing on those favorable counts. In the minors last year, when he was ahead in the count and then put the ball in play, he hit .420/.563/.614. He’s going to be a legit Rookie of the Year candidate this year as a true catcher who could hit 20 homers with a strong OBP, and with 3-plus WAR potential right away thanks to the defense and positional adjustment.
2025 Ranking: 4
Jenkins played 84 games last year, up two from 2024, so he still hasn’t played a full season since the Twins took him with the No. 5 pick in 2023. He did finish the year in Triple A after hitting .309/.426/.487 in 52 games in Double A, showing a glimpse again of what he’s capable of doing when he’s on the field. After starting the year on the IL with a recurring ankle sprain that he first suffered in spring training, Jenkins showed continued improvement at the plate even as he was young for Double A, with small increases in his exit velocities and his bat speed, while the Twins’ player development staff worked with him on getting the bat head out more so he could get his raw power to play more in games. He showed an advanced approach at the plate all the way until his brief stint in Triple A, where he expanded the zone at an unprecedented rate — he chased pitches well out of the zone 12 percent of the time in Double A, then 30 percent in Triple A — that at least should encourage the Twins to give him a long runway at that level before promoting him to the majors. He’s an above-average runner who has mostly played center in the minors, but given his injury history and the physical projection he still has, he’s probably going to end up in right field. I’m worried about his trouble staying healthy, but not worried about the offensive profile, even with the hiccup in St. Paul to end the year. He’s got a fantastic swing that will allow him to barrel the ball very consistently, and there’s 25-plus homer power in there as he refines his approach.
2025 Ranking: 42
Arias is an extremely advanced hitter already, playing all of 2025 at age 19, so much so that the Red Sox challenged him by moving him up from Low A after just 19 games there in April (and only 54 games there in total). He responded with one of the highest contact rates of any hitter in High A, regardless of age, striking out just 8.9 percent of the time, second among qualifiers behind a 24-year-old org player, while flashing some of his power potential and playing strong defense at short. He rarely swings and misses, with an overall whiff rate of just 12 percent on the year, and just 4 percent on pitches in the zone. He might benefit by swinging a little bit less often — at least until he gets stronger and can do more with the contact he is making, as right now he’s getting the bat to the ball but doesn’t square it up consistently enough, with a weird spike in his pop-up rate in High A last year. He’s barely begun to fill out physically, with room to add probably a full grade of power as he matures, but he’s such a smart hitter that he’s moved up the chain faster than most prospects his age. He’s a natural shortstop with excellent instincts and is at least a 55 defender there already, probably plus or better in the end. He’s less of a finished product than the other players around him in this range of the list, but if he were a college sophomore right now, we’d be talking about him as a potential 1-1 pick in 2027.
2025 Ranking: 31
When the Padres sent De Vries to the trademark-pending Athletics at the 2025 trade deadline, he became the most significant prospect to be traded in ages, probably since the December 2012 trade of Wil Myers, who ranked No. 4 on my top 100 a few weeks after the Royals dealt him to Tampa Bay. At the time of the trade, De Vries was in the midst of his first truly full (injury-free) season in the minors, eventually playing in 118 games and finishing the year in Double A, with an overall line of .255/.355/.451. He kept improving as the season went on, hitting .279/.364/.548 in the second half even with a trade and then a promotion to Double-A Midland, all before his 19th birthday. He’s a legit switch-hitter who makes a ton of contact both ways, with a batting-side split in 2025 that was the reverse of his split in 2024. He’s already showing above-average power even though he was essentially a high school senior in High A and above. He’s a natural shortstop who has the hands and arm to stick there, but I heard from several scouts over the summer that they thought De Vries’ defense at shortstop had regressed, which may be one small reason why the Padres were willing to trade him (the main reason being that A.J. Preller would trade his grandmother in the right deal). It’s a star-level ceiling even if he ends up at second base, and MVP-level upside if he does end up showing he can stick at short.
2025 Ranking: 19
Chandler is the top pitching prospect in the minors right now because of his combination of present ability — with the fastball and changeup alone, he’s a mid-rotation starter — and his ceiling as a true top-of-the-rotation guy if he continues to develop as he has thus far. Chandler sat at 98.9 mph in his major-league debut at the end of 2025, and picked up an extra inch of vertical break over 2024 after some offseason work. Added to a low release height and some deception in his delivery, Chandler’s fastball is an 80, and if he locates it up in the zone it’s almost impossible for hitters to square up. He pairs it with a plus changeup with fading action, and he’s still developing his command of and feel for the pitch, which will be more effective if he works more down in the zone with it and stays more up with the four-seamer. He’s got a slider and curveball, and should probably ditch the latter because the two pitches blend together. He got his slider up to 91.8 mph and gets more vertical break on the pitch the harder he throws it, which may be the solution for his third pitch. A former quarterback and shortstop, Chandler is an otherworldly athlete and his arm action is one of the best in the minors, so I expect him to continue to improve his command as he gets more experience and to be able to make further adjustments over time. He’s not a finished product, but has enough present stuff and feel to help the Pirates in 2026, even as he continues to grow as a pitcher.
2025 Ranking: NR
McLean’s path from the Oklahoma State bullpen to the Mets’ rotation is a heck of a story: He threw 25 1/3 innings as a sophomore, all in relief and rarely more than one inning per game, while starting 52 games at third base and another 10 in the outfield. The Orioles took him in the third round in 2022, then walked away without even making another offer after something came up in his medicals, instead using the money they’d allocated to him to pay 17th rounder Carter Young, who hit .163/.230/.211 last year in Double A and is, obviously, not a prospect. McLean returned to OSU in 2023, threw 30 innings with the same stuff but worse strikeout and walk rates, and still played more in the field than on the mound, after which the Mets took him in the third round again and signed him for slot. After turning pro, he started more games in April 2024 than he did in three years in Stillwater, making 43 starts over two years before his debut, and kept getting better with the help of the Mets’ strong pitching development team.
Primarily a two-pitch guy in college who lived off that top-rail four-seamer, McLean can show six pitches now, with the fastball still a plus pitch, a bigger-breaking sweeper than he had as an amateur and a new curveball with huge two-plane break. His changeup gets a ton of tumble to it, and he barely even had to use the pitch in the majors because everything else was so good. He’s an elite athlete, as you’d hope a former third baseman-reliever would be, and has shown an incredible capacity to make adjustments already. The command is the one facet of his game that separates him from the true No. 1-No. 2 starters, and I’m betting that will improve with more experience — McLean has thrown just 332 total innings in five years, most of that in the past two seasons — and because he’s already improved in so many other ways. He’s got a high floor as a No. 3 starter already, and could be a top of the rotation guy given another 200 or so innings of repetitions.
2025 Ranking: 2
The Rangers continued to push Walcott very aggressively, starting him in Double A in 2025 even though he only turned 19 in March, making him the youngest player to start anywhere above A-ball. He hit a respectable .256/.355/.386, showing outstanding contact skills and plate discipline for his age but not turning that into much high-quality or even medium-quality contact, getting too many fastballs in the upper half of the zone and popping them up or getting on top of them and hitting them into the ground. He’s already reached 115 mph exit velocity, indicative of his enormous raw power, and perhaps we would have seen more of that last year had he been at a level more typical for his age. It’s to his credit that he only struck out 19.6 percent of the time, with just a 28 percent whiff rate and 25 percent chase rate, but he also clearly sacrificed a lot of power to avoid striking out. He didn’t have an extra-base hit all year on a pitch above 93 mph, which is mind-boggling because he has plenty of bat speed. He’s still primarily playing shortstop, even though he’s at least going to move to third base and could follow the Kris Bryant path to the outfield, given his present size and his enormous frame. I’m still a big believer, because he does know the strike zone and the power isn’t going anywhere, but he might need to repeat a level here to catch his breath, so he can convert his aptitude into more production.
2025 Ranking: 70
Rainer got off to a flying start in his pro career, hitting .288/.383/.448 in 35 games for Low-A Lakeland, but the Tigers’ 2024 first-rounder dislocated his throwing shoulder while diving back to first and had to undergo surgery that ended his season. When he played, he showed a bit of everything, with power (peaking at 111.6 mph EV, with a hard-hit rate over 52 percent), patience, plus defense and, at least before the injury, a plus-plus arm. He had no trouble with better velocity, hitting .333/.440/.476 last year off 94-plus mph in a sample of 80 pitches. Hitting velocity was my one concern about him in the draft, as his bat speed looked more average than plus and he didn’t do much as an amateur against good fastballs, but he seems to have figured that out. He’s a very instinctive player who showed excellent on-field leadership in high school as well, and at least has the aptitude to move quickly despite the lost time. The injury was lousy, to put it mildly, but at a minimum he showed us that the Tigers might have crushed yet another first-round pick.
2025 Ranking: NR
The Mets’ 2024 first-round pick, Benge was a two-way player at Oklahoma State who gave up pitching when he signed — smart move all around — and really took off last year after making a small adjustment at the plate to stop rolling his front ankle. He’s an excellent athlete with very quick hands and more power than his home-run total (15) would imply, getting to some more power as the season went on with plenty more to come if he continues to adjust. Because of the way he strides and lands and the start of his hand movement, he can end up having to make a huge move to get the barrel into the zone, flying open as a result and, especially early in 2025, rolling his front ankle because he can land too closed. The more he loosened that up — and he did improve it between April and June — the more he could get to his pull side without having to overexert, and he has easy plus power that way. He showed more advanced swing decisions last year than I expected, with excellent pitch recognition, although he gets way, way too aggressive with two strikes. He’s a center fielder now and could end up an above-average defender there, with plus defense in right field his absolute floor, as he has a cannon for an arm that used to produce mid-90s velocity in relief. I’m more of a believer now that I’ve seen him make some adjustments at the plate, even though there’s more work to do.
2025 Ranking: 100
The No. 32 pick in the 2022 draft out of Westminster Christian School in Miami, Stewart hit at every level he played in the minors, never posting an OBP below .377 at any stop, and capping his rise with 10 homers in 38 games in Triple A before his call-up to the majors in September. He can flat-out hit, making frequent hard contact all the way through the minors, with a Barrel rate of 21 percent in Triple A in a small sample, peaking at 113.7 mph there, and even in a not-so-hot MLB debut he still barreled up 17 percent of the balls he put in play and topped out at 112.6 EV. It’s not pretty — I mean, his name is Sal, what did you expect? — but he makes it work, showing great instincts on the bases to make up for below-average speed, and catching what’s hit to him at third base. He may end up at first base, which might be the kiss of death for most prospects, but he really looks like he’ll hit enough to be an above-average regular there. He murders fastballs, and hits other pitch types more than well enough to see high averages in his future, with a hit tool comparable to JJ Wetherholt’s. With last year’s power spike, Stewart projects to 25 or so homers a year, and that plus his outstanding contact skills give him a real chance to be a star even at first base.
2025 Ranking: 26
De Paula’s 2025 season was more a plateau year than a growth one, as his second half was interrupted by hamstring issues that limited him to 99 PA after the All-Star break — including an 0-for-18 showing in his four games in Double A — and prevented him from going to his assigned spot in the Arizona Fall League. He still had an impressive year for a player who turned 20 in May and spent most of the year in High A, batting .263/.406/.421 at that level with almost as many walks as strikeouts. He’s incredibly disciplined, swinging at pitches in the zone 68 percent of the time, while only chasing pitches out of the zone 14 percent of the time — and that drops to 8 percent on pitches well out of the zone. He hits the ball extremely hard, and consistently, although that hasn’t translated into home runs yet, with 12 in 102 games last season his career high. He’s a sneaky-good basestealer despite being a 40 or 45 runner, and he’s probably going to end up an adequate defender in an outfield corner as opposed to earlier fears he’d just have to go to first base. His approach at the plate is one of the best anywhere in the minors, and his ceiling comes down to how much he can convert that into greater damage — maybe 25-30 homers a year, in the best scenario — as he finishes filling out physically.
2025 Ranking: NR
Sloan has all of the ingredients you’d want in a No. 1 starter: He’s big, he fills up the zone, he’s got three pitches that might all be plus, and while it’s not a necessity for the job, he does have a giant fastball that hits triple digits. The Mariners’ second pick in 2024, Sloan went to Low A to start his pro career and wasn’t just dominant — he was efficiently dominant, peaking at five innings per start and never needing more than 72 pitches in any outing. His sweeper is his best pitch right now; when he finishes it out front, it breaks sharply downward with a little tilt, and hitters whiffed on the pitch 46 percent of the time they swung. He also throws a kick-change — who doesn’t — that dies just enough as it approaches the plate to get hitters to swing right over it, although he has to keep throwing it to improve his feel for the pitch. His arm action is a little bit long in back, not enough to keep him from repeating it or throwing strikes, which he did all year with a 4.5 percent walk rate. The Mariners bumped him up to High A in August, and he was hit around a little bit, as he looked tired and wasn’t finishing as well over his front side. If I have any concerns about Sloan, it’s just that he is so good, so soon. He turns 20 on Jan. 29 and is already showing velocity that would put him among the hardest-throwing starters in the majors. Protect him at all costs — he looks like an ace in the making.
2025 Ranking: 12
Painter returned in 2025 after missing two full regular seasons due an elbow injury that eventually required Tommy John surgery to fix. He pitched briefly in the AFL in 2024 (that league remains worth every penny MLB invests in it, with the controlled environment it provides for players who are coming back from injuries or need reps), and the comeback tour was … let’s call it a modest success. He made 26 starts, 22 of them in Triple A, and threw 118 innings without incident, still sitting 95-98 on the four-seamer and showing a hammer curveball. He posted a 5.40 ERA in Triple A, however, and it wasn’t a result of bad luck or bad defense — you can’t blame the defense for making you give up 18 homers — but poor command and some pitch selection issues. The Phillies want Painter to throw a slider and it was his primary breaking pitch last year. I think the slider is jumbled up with the curveball so that neither is as effective as it could be. (Painter throws a curveball and a slider, but Statcast splits his sliders into sliders and cutters; they look extremely similar in person and the pitch spray charts are almost identical.) He does have a plus changeup, and if any one of the breaking pitches, whatever you call them, were plus, he’d be a potential top of the rotation starter — which is what I thought he might become after his tremendous 2022 season. He also needs to work in the strike zone more, but I’m inclined to forgive that for any pitcher just coming back from major surgery. His ceiling hasn’t really changed from where it was pre-TJ, but his probabilities have shifted, where he might need more time to hit that No. 1 ceiling, or is slightly less likely to get there at all.
Photo:
Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs
2025 Ranking: 29
Eldridge remains the Giants’ best prospect and offers huge offensive upside, but the way the franchise has handled him the past two years is baffling. He finished his whirlwind 2024 in Triple A, but the Giants wisely had him start 2025 in Double A, as he was still just 20 and had a little over a year of pro experience. It didn’t last; after 34 games, San Francisco ran him back up to Triple A, where he still hit for power but struck out 30.8 percent of the time, including a 54.1 percent whiff rate on breaking pitches. He’s 6-foot-7 but has a shorter swing than most hitters of that size, which should allow him to make more contact than other hitters of that size, and perhaps he would if he were playing at levels more apposite for a player of his age and inexperience. The upside here is evident. When he puts the ball in play, it’s hard contact: he maxed out at 114.6 mph in Triple A, and his EV50 of 104.8 mph would have ranked in the top 10 in the majors. Eldridge was a pitcher and DH in high school and remains a work in progress at first base, a position he should be able to play in time, so all the pressure is on his bat. I’m still in, despite the amount of negative information in this capsule. There is the foundation here for a massive power hitter, the anchor in a lineup for a long time, if he gets the time he needs to develop as a hitter.
2025 Ranking: 98
The Yankees’ 2023 first-round pick broke out to start the 2025 season, tearing up High A for 24 games, after which he got a too-quick promotion to Double A, where he hit .215/.337/.358 the rest of the way as he struggled to adjust to pitchers who could change speeds on him and attack him with better stuff. He has excellent bat speed and understands the strike zone, still limiting his chase rate to 19 percent in Double A, with good balance through contact and somewhere around average power now. He does work the count well, seeing 4.27 pitches per plate appearance at the higher level, but pitchers could mess with his timing and he would often expand the zone significantly with two strikes. He couldn’t do anything with good velocity in Double A, which is concerning but also odd given the bat speed, and he didn’t get the kind of consistent hard contact he flashed before the promotion. He is a definite shortstop for me with very easy actions and plenty of arm, although he drops down on a lot of throws, which I don’t love because it tends to make the ball tail away from the first baseman. If he’d spent half the year in High A instead of four weeks, his year would probably look more promising on the surface, and since he won’t turn 21 until June he has time to return to Double A and show he can handle the pitching there. He’s at least a future everyday shortstop and still has upside beyond that because of the potential for a plus hit tool.
2025 Ranking: 96
I don’t want to overrate Yesavage on the basis of a few incredible starts in September and October, but I don’t want to ignore them, either, as at the very least it looks like he’s ready to step right into a big-league rotation thanks to an improved slider and a ton of confidence in his stuff. Yesavage was Toronto’s 2024 first-round pick out of East Carolina, where he dominated with a plus splitter and a mid-90s fastball with good carry, throwing both from a very high slot that gives the fastball more riding life and more generally makes it harder for hitters to pick the ball up out of his hand. The Blue Jays have leaned into this, raising his arm slot a little more and giving him the highest release point of any current MLB starter, while also helping him improve his slider by throwing it much harder, over 2 mph faster than it was in college. That meant that in one playoff start against Seattle where he didn’t have his splitter, he had another weapon as a fallback option rather than just throwing fastball after fastball. The separating factor for Yesavage will be his command; he’s succeeding much more with stuff than location or even control right now, and that arm slot generally (but not always) makes it hard to repeat a delivery. If he’s healthy, he should be at least a solid No. 3/above-average starter, with further upside a function of whether and how he improves his command.
2025 Ranking: N/A
The No. 5 pick in the 2025 draft out of Tennessee, Doyle had the best fastball in the class, sitting 96-99 all spring and living up at the top of the zone with the pitch, missing bats over 40 percent of the time that hitters tried to offer at it. He has four pitches, with a plus splitter, an average to above-average slider and a potentially plus cutter. He throws everything for strikes, working well to both sides of the plate and getting some added deception from his delivery. Some teams were concerned about his ability to repeat his delivery as a starter, which I didn’t share, and the biggest issue I could see about his ability to stay a starter is that he throws so hard all the time — several miles an hour above where he was the year before, while he was at Mississippi. He moves well on the mound and should be able to make some small adjustments to try to tighten up the slider and separate it more from the cutter, beyond which I don’t think he has much left to do before he would be ready to pitch in some role in the majors. He’ll probably start in Double A, but don’t be surprised if he debuts this year as long as he stays healthy, with at least No. 2 starter upside.
2025 Ranking: NR
Peña has been overshadowed by the superstar usually playing to his left (Jesús Made), but he’s an outstanding young hitter with plus-plus speed and surprising pop from a strong lower half. Peña jumped from the DSL to Low A to start last season, tagging along with Made. He hit .308/.375/.469 at the level with a very impressive 13.3 percent strikeout rate, with only one teenaged regular at Low A striking out less often than Peña did. He’s an aggressive hitter with excellent hand-eye coordination, with High-A pitchers exploiting his willingness to go beyond the zone after his promotion there in July. He also has a short swing that’s geared towards contact over power but still has some loft in its finish. He keeps his hands inside the ball well on pitches in and does have a bigger swing in there when he sees something to drive, all of which looks fairly advanced for a player who only turned 19 in November. He’s played short, second and third, with second the best bet given his average arm, although I imagine he could handle center field given his speed, too. I believe in the hit tool over everything else here — he can put the bat on the ball, and needs to just tighten up the swing decisions a little bit to be a plus hitter for average with 10-15 homers a year and a slew of stolen bases.
2025 Ranking: N/A
The No. 3 pick in the 2025 draft, Anderson was dominant at LSU last spring, working with five pitches (counting his fastballs separately), showing excellent feel already for the zone and for mixing all of his weapons to get left- and right-handed hitters out. He’s 91-95 and it plays up thanks to a plus changeup that has hitters off-balance, while his slider is his best breaking pitch and I think the Mariners should probably deprecate the curveball, at least for now, to focus on developing the slider. He really repeats his delivery and holds his mechanics very deep into starts — occasionally too deep, as he threw 130-plus pitches twice in his draft year. Even as is, he has at least average command already of a major-league arsenal, maybe without the wipeout pitch to make him a front-line starter just yet, and could pitch in the Mariners’ rotation this year if they need him. There’s at least No. 2 upside here beyond that as he’ll probably pick up some velocity and should tighten the slider with more focus on the pitch.
2025 Ranking: NR
The one other Cardinals players know as “Hulk” got the nickname through his physique but more than earned it with 20 homers in 84 games last year, all of which came before his 19th birthday this January. Rodriguez is an offense-first catcher who does project to stay behind the plate, although he’ll need time back there. That said, there’s always a chance his bat is so advanced that the Cardinals move him to another position to get him to the big leagues sooner. He hits the ball extremely hard, already topping 111 mph with an EV50 of 91.3 in the Florida State League, and pairs that with strong contact skills and feel for the strike zone. He does it with strength and bat speed, with a swing that’s short to the ball with a big finish, pulling the ball in the air at a high rate already even though he does have power the other way. He’s going to need work behind the plate but has the hands and athleticism to stick there, and his brick house build suits the position well. If he stays a catcher, he’s an All-Star, and if he doesn’t, he might still be one because he’s going to have so much impact with the bat. He’ll be 19 all of this year and if he plays a full season, I think he’ll lead all minor-league catchers in homers.
2025 Ranking: 38
Montgomery had a full, healthy season in 2025, with some positives on both sides of the ball and some warning signs that he’s not as advanced as some of his peers from the 2024 draft. Montgomery didn’t play after June 2024 due to a broken ankle he suffered in the NCAA postseason, then woke up in 2025 with a new organization after Boston traded him to the White Sox in the Garrett Crochet deal. Chicago started him in Low A, where he raked, and bumped him up to High A after 18 games, which was a more appropriate spot for his age and experience. He hit .260/.348/.445 there in 290 PA, with a 24.1 percent strikeout rate. He then moved to Double-A Birmingham in late July and hit .272/.364/.416 with a concerning 28.7 percent strikeout rate before fracturing a bone in his foot. He did return in the Arizona Fall League, after I was there unfortunately, and was one of the best hitters there with a .366/.527/.634 line in 55 PA. That’s four stops in a whirlwind year that saw him rehab two different bone breaks, so even completing the year with some production is a positive.
Montgomery is a good athlete with a 70 arm and 55 speed who should end up a 55 or better defender in right. He’s a switch-hitter with much better feel to hit from the left side but more raw power from the right; he hit better right-handed on the year as a whole, but in the small sample in Double A he struggled batting from the right side, which I think is much more indicative of his present skill set. He was a two-way player in college, and then lost his first pro summer and autumn to the ankle injury, so he’s a little behind players his age, but his upside as a switch-hitting 25-30 homer right fielder with strong defense is still here if the White Sox are patient with him.
2025 Ranking: 54
Genao’s 2025 season started late as he sprained his right shoulder during an infield drill in spring training, then didn’t look like his 2024 self over the summer as he often seemed hesitant to swing at full speed. The Guardians did send him to Double A right off the injury after he’d spent only 66 games at High A to finish his breakout 2024 season, so he also was adjusting to facing better pitching. The good news is that he played better defense at shortstop this year and showed a little more arm strength, with second base still more likely but at least shortstop still a possibility in the long term. He did play in the Dominican Winter League this offseason and hit very well, showing more full extension on his swings, so perhaps he’s regained the strength or confidence in the shoulder. His 2025 was mostly a lost year, unfortunately, but given the injury as the likely cause of the reduced output, I’m not lowering my expectations for him as an above-average regular somewhere in the middle infield.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Arquette was the first college hitter taken in the 2025 draft, going at pick No. 7 to a Marlins organization that needs bats like his. He excelled last spring for Oregon State as the Beavers played an independent schedule, showing outstanding hand-eye coordination and rarely swinging and missing, especially when he swung at strikes. Arquette is built like a 747, at least for a shortstop, as he’s legitimately 6-5 and already 230ish, which will make him one of the biggest shortstops in MLB history if he stays at the position. It’s much more likely he ends up at third base, even though he has good hands and a plus arm. The main question I had on Arquette from the draft was how he’d fare against pitchers with better secondary stuff; in his brief time in High A after signing, he whiffed about a third of the time against sliders and changeups, not alarming, but an area for improvement for him. He has 25-30 homer upside with a good feel for the strike zone. If you think he can stick at shortstop, he’s a potential All-Star who could be the best player on the Marlins when he arrives.
2025 Ranking: 57
White was the second high school pitcher the Marlins took in 2023 but he has blown past the first pick, Noble Meyer, as White throws far more strikes and has already had success in Double A, even finishing last year with two starts in Triple A. White sits 95-97 with a very easy arm stroke, although the pitch can be flat and may not miss as many bats in the majors as it has through Double A. His sweeper — I’ve seen it called a slider or a curveball, the name doesn’t matter a ton — is plus, easily, with big tilt and a lot of horizontal break, reminiscent of Andrew Miller’s slider at the same stage of his career. White’s changeup actually generated more whiffs in Double A, although it’s more of a 50/55 pitch, with some late fade and good separation from the fastball, benefiting also from the fact that he maintains a consistent release point on all of his pitches. He’s been a big kid since the draft, listed now at 6-5, 240, and even with that easy arm stroke he’s still learning his body and has to gain more coordination, such as getting extended better out front, to help him throw more strikes and command the ball better in the zone. He struck out 39 percent of batters he faced in Double A while walking 12.6 percent, then in two Triple-A outings he walked 10 batters and struck out 17, all of which implies that he is probably going to miss bats at a very high rate if he trusts his stuff more and has the ability to work in the zone consistently. I’ve only seen him twice, in the past two Futures Games, and he hasn’t thrown strikes either time, unfortunately, throwing just 26 strikes in 58 pitches — a very small sample, but one that at least lines up with his results at the higher levels so far. He has No. 2 starter upside, with a wide range of outcomes depending on how the command and control develop. He’s one of the top left-handed pitching prospects in baseball, and with more and better strikes he could be the best one in a year.
2025 Ranking: 65
Waldschmidt was the Dbacks’ second pick in the 2024 draft but was ranked at No. 11 on my final draft board, one spot ahead of the guy they took with their first pick, Slade Caldwell. So far, Waldschmidt has more than justified the pick with a .426 OBP in pro ball. He’s a good athlete who ran better last year and played surprisingly solid defense in center, both of which were improved from 2024 when he was still recovering from a torn ACL from the summer of 2023. He has excellent feel for the strike zone, chasing pitches well out of the zone just 12 percent of the time, although Double-A pitchers showed that he needs to work on picking up spin, as he demonstrated a markedly higher propensity to whiff on sliders and curveballs at that level. His raw statlines last year were boosted by spending half his season playing for Double-A Amarillo, where the wind could take a bowling ball from home plate out to center, with all nine of his homers in Double A coming at home. He has no stride, just a heel-tap, still rotating his hips well to get to above-average power, but there could be more in here if he loosened up and even took a short stride towards the pitcher to help with his weight transfer. I believe in his bat, particularly his patience and potential for high OBPs, but I wouldn’t look at his production last year and expect him to race to the majors — and he’s going to go off in Reno, elevation 4,400 feet, whenever he gets there this year. He looks like a solid regular with above-average defense in an outfield corner who could get to All-Star level in years when he gets to 20-plus homers.
2025 Ranking: NR
Atlanta’s 2024 first-round pick is now their best prospect, as Caminiti, the cousin of the late NL MVP Ken Caminiti, continued to show premium stuff in his pro debut while throwing strikes and limiting hard contact in Low A. Caminiti sits 92-95 already from a low three-quarters slot with a plus changeup that hitters whiffed on half the time they swung at it. His breaking ball is now more of a sweeper, missing some bats in the zone but not generating a lot of chase; it grades out as a 55 or 60 on paper, and I’ve had scouts come in anywhere from average to plus, but right now it plays more as average with hitters. The low slot helps the sweeper play up against lefties, and he comes slightly across his body due to where he lands on the mound, which helps everything look better against lefties. On the season, he allowed just a .184/.283/.207 line to left-handed batters, with just two doubles and no other extra-base hits, while righties hit .251/.328/.371. He’s an excellent athlete who was a two-way player in high school, and getting him a little more online to the plate would improve his results against righties while also letting that athleticism show more in the delivery and the command. He’s also passed the biggest test for high school pitchers, surviving the first year in pro ball without injury, and if that continues he’ll be one of the top lefties in the minors by next spring.
2025 Ranking: 58
Hope spent almost all of 2025 in High A, and that’s where he needed to stay, even with all of the much-deserved hype around his bat and his power after his breakout 2024 season. Acquired from the Cubs in the Michael Busch trade, Hope has electric bat speed and is an excellent athlete who came from a small town in Virginia and wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near this advanced as a hitter, swinging so hard that he seemed very likely to swing and miss too often to get to his plus power. His whiff rate did rise last year as did his strikeout rate; he was vulnerable to fastballs up and didn’t have any real two-strike approach, expanding the zone too much in those situations. He does know the strike zone better than I think anyone anticipated when he was an amateur, with just a 20 percent chase rate last year and a 14.9 percent walk rate, although when he does go out of the zone he whiffs at huge rates. He’s a good enough athlete and runner to be a center fielder but doesn’t show the instincts for it and is already primarily playing right field. He’s an incredible athlete and very, very strong, likely to make a ton of hard contact; whether that’s for average or power or some combination of both will determine how high his ceiling is. I’m betting he ends up hitting for average with a ton of line drives, rather than getting consistently to 25-plus homers.
2025 Ranking: NR
Jump was the Athletics’ second-round pick in 2024 out of LSU and his first pro season couldn’t have gone much better, as he made 24 starts, beginning by slapping High-A hitters silly in six outings and then going to Double A for the bulk of the season, where he continued to get left- and right-handed hitters out with his three-pitch mix. He’s sitting 94-95 now and gets good ride at the top of the zone, helped by a very low release height (sometimes it’s OK to be short), and both his slider and changeup are above-average pitches that miss enough bats. The changeup might be plus, with heavy tumble to it as it approaches the plate, although he doesn’t throw it a ton. I have never liked Jump’s delivery, leaving him off my draft top 100 in 2021 (when he was in high school) because I thought there was too much risk that he’d get hurt and/or not throw strikes. He went to UCLA, walked 11 in 16 innings, and blew out his elbow, but since his return and transfer to LSU, he’s been healthy, effective and in the zone much more, with an 8.3 percent walk rate in Double A this past year. He should see the majors at some point in 2026 and has the repertoire and command to stick in the rotation, assuming he stays healthy under a starter’s workload, with a mid-rotation ceiling and extra points for being so close to helping a major-league club.
2025 Ranking: NR
The Giants signed Gonzalez in January 2025 for a $2,997,500 bonus, the largest bonus they’d given an international free agent under the current system at that point. He was one of the stars of the Dominican Summer League last year on both sides of the ball, hitting .288/.404/.455. He showed plate discipline and some power already, with feel to hit from both sides of the plate and no reason to doubt that he’ll continue to switch-hit for the long term. There’s real strength in his wrists already for at least 55 power, and he’s going to fill out to be a 20-25 home run guy, if not more. He might be an 80 defender at shortstop already, with outstanding actions and instincts at the position, and is a plus runner. He could be a Jesús Made-type who shoots into the top 10 a year from now if he continues to produce in the Arizona Complex League or even Low A and holds that level of defense at short.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Holliday was the No. 4 pick in the 2025 draft and probably the most famous name selected, thanks to his dad, his brother Jackson and years of hype around Ethan’s easy power and potential to be more of an impact hitter than Jackson. He’s a shortstop now, with really good hands and a plus arm, but he has no chance to stay there given his size and lack of lateral range, with third base the best-case scenario and right field a realistic outcome. As a hitter, he has plenty of bat speed and the raw power is probably a 70, but last spring he seemed to be trying too hard to launch the ball to his pull side, so his front side was flying open and he had a hole on the outer third as a result. Holliday struggled mightily in his pro debut, as the Rockies sent him to Low A and he struck out 33 times in 84 PA (39.3 percent), even having trouble against good fastballs and looking stiffer and slower in the box. While that doesn’t undo everything he did before the draft, it’s very concerning for someone picked that high, and at the very least he’s going to need more time to develop than the typical high school hitter taken in the top few picks of any draft class. He knows the strike zone well, and even in that stint in Low A didn’t chase pitches out of the zone excessively (25 percent overall, 16 percent on pitches well out of the zone), consistent with what he showed as an amateur. I had Holliday ranked at the top of the 2025 draft class, which was a weak one at its uppermost echelon, based on the 30-homer upside and good instincts all around, but the near-universal sentiment after his pro debut is that he’s a much higher-risk prospect than it seemed a year ago.
2025 Ranking: NR
I’ll take the L on this one, as Tolle has one to spare in his surname anyway. Tolle was Boston’s 2024 second-round pick and seemed like a safe starter without much ceiling, as he lived and died by the fastball, which was up to 96 mph at TCU, and didn’t have a plus secondary pitch. The Red Sox have started to do some great work on the pitching side — half of New England just spit out their chowder reading that — with Tolle probably the best example to date. He averaged 95.5 on the four-seamer in the minors and 96.7 in the majors, still throwing the pitch 64 percent of the time, with everything he throws playing up because he gets 7 1/2 feet of extension out front, tying with Joey Cantillo for the most among left-handed starters in the majors last year. He still doesn’t spin the ball particularly well, so the Red Sox added a cutter to his repertoire and it’s probably his best off-speed pitch now; his “slider” is almost identical to the cutter, but he raises his hand slightly to get more sweep and tilt to the pitch. His changeup has a little tail and fade when it’s in the upper 80s, but it straightens out at 90-plus and isn’t likely to be as effective. Tolle was also a full-time DH in 2023 at Wichita State, and still took 55 at bats in his draft year, so some of his progress probably came from focusing just on pitching, while the Red Sox clearly helped him boost his velocity, expand his arsenal and improve the consistency of his delivery. He’s at least a No. 3 starter now given how well the fastball plays, and improving that changeup might be enough to get him to a No. 2.
2025 Ranking: 33
Alcántara’s first full season in Triple A went reasonably well, as he hit .266/.349/.470 despite playing through a sports hernia for a good chunk of the season, still showing flashes of that big power ceiling with a max exit velocity of 112.3 mph. He struck out 29.8 percent of the time, but did improve some of his swing decisions over the course of the year, swinging less often in the second half overall and cutting his chase rate by four points, so there was progress in spite of the injury. He’s still lanky and has a lot of room to fill out, with enormous power upside. Presently, he’s a plus runner and defender in center — not that the Cubs need a center fielder right now — who might lose a half-grade or so as he gets bigger. He’s got the most upside of anyone in the Cubs’ system, with the potential for 30-plus homers with plenty of doubles, strong defense somewhere in the outfield, and enough other offense to make him a two-way star, but has more risk than most of the guys ahead of him on this list. He’s also reaching the point where he’ll have to take a big leap forward on offense. He’s going to require a fourth option year if the Cubs want to send him to Triple A, and MLB will probably grant it, but even so it means the clock is ticking on his development — an example of how the option rules adversely affect players signed as international free agents, because they start their pro careers younger.
2025 Ranking: NR
Signed in January 2024 for $395,000, Florentino had a respectable debut in the DSL that summer, but it was 2025 when he really broke out, hitting .347/.442/.642 in the Florida Complex League and then hitting .262/.380/.503 in Low A, all before he turned 19. He swings hard and he connects often, with a whiff rate in Low A of just 16.3 percent, while flashing plus power that is only going to increase as he matures physically. He’s a 40 runner who won’t stick in center, even playing some first base in the FCL and Low A last year, as that’s a possibility given what he’s probably going to look like when he’s 24 and fills out his 6-4 frame. He also had a huge platoon split last year, hitting .320/.429/.636 against righties and .169/.286/.203 against lefties, all in small samples. Given his age and inexperience I’m not concerned about that yet — he has fewer than 100 career PA against southpaws. The ceiling is enormous, a power-hitting corner outfielder or first baseman who hits for a high batting average as well.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Arnold came into 2025 as the top left-handed pitcher in the draft class, but his stuff backed up a little bit and a couple of other lefties soared past him into the top five, which is how the Athletics got the preseason No. 1 lefty at pick 11. He sat 91-95 this past spring with a hard slider, coming from a very low three-quarters arm slot that earned him comparisons to Chris Sale, with a release height that looks like a typo at around 4.5 feet and plus extension over his front side. He’s got some feel for a changeup already, particularly in how and when to deploy it to keep hitters off-balance, although that’s the pitch that needs the most help in his present arsenal. His release point is in a really tough slot for hitters to see, and he’s consistently in the zone, thanks to his ability to repeat the delivery. He’s not Chris Sale — Sale threw harder in college, with an excellent changeup and less breaking ball — but Arnold does it a little easier than Sale did, and I think he’s a clear mid-rotation starter who may have some stealthy upside if he does regain a couple of mph on the heater.
2025 Ranking: NR
Bonemer could have been a first-rounder in 2024, but he made some swing changes and had a very inconsistent spring against bad competition in the Michigan high school ranks, making him available for the White Sox to grab him in the second round on an over-slot deal. That looks brilliant now, as Bonemer found his swing and had a tremendous debut last year, hitting .281/.400/.458 as a 19-year-old in Low A, finishing in the top 10 in the Carolina League in OBP and SLG, before capping it off with a strong 11-game finish in High A. He has a good feel to hit and for the strike zone, with a whiff rate on the year of just 23 percent and a chase rate of just 20 percent. He also has a pull-oriented swing that can give him some extra length on stuff away — but he murdered pitches on the outer third last year, so it’s not a problem right now, at least. He’s also hitting the ball pretty hard already with clear room to add some strength as he matures, with 20-plus homer power a very realistic expectation. Bonemer split time between short and third, mostly at the former, although he may be best suited to second base as he’s not a shortstop and his arm may not be enough for the hot corner. He’s going to be a bat-first player somewhere on the dirt, maybe a guy who moves around the infield but gets his 500 at-bats every year, with enough production to make him an above-average regular between his on-base percentages and growing power.
2025 Ranking: 61
Williams bounced back from an injury-shortened 2024 season to play a full season in 2025, hitting .281/.390/.477 in 96 games in Double A and then .209/.285/.433 in 34 more games in Triple A, while moving between shortstop, second base and his most likely position of center field. Williams is a fun-sized hitter who has an excellent eye at the plate and swings very hard to produce more power than you’d anticipate from his frame, with 17 homers in 2025 and a max EV in Triple A of 108.4 mph. He’s a 70 runner who plays and runs and swings hard all the time, which probably works better in center, where he can put that speed to use, than at shortstop where his clock can be too fast. Even in his first stint in Triple A, where he didn’t hit well, he didn’t whiff or chase excessively, and he should see better results the next time around. It’s possible moving to just one position will help as well. He’s an everyday player whether he’s in center or at second, with an excellent chance to be an above-average regular as long as he keeps taking his walks and making hard enough contact.
2025 Ranking: 34
Condon’s first full pro season got off to a miserable start, as he broke his wrist making a diving catch in spring training, missing seven weeks before he got back to High A. He hit fairly well there, with his power diminished likely as a result of the injury, posting a .312/.431/.420 line with a modest chase rate of 20 percent. He then moved to Double A and hit .235/.342/.465 as he had real difficulty picking up off-speed stuff. Condon has electric bat speed and hammers fastballs, showing at least 70 power in college, but he moved his hands back up in 2025 after dropping them in his draft year, and I think it’s one of the reasons he’s not reacting to breaking pitches or changeups that well. (There are, unfortunately, rumors that while he was at Georgia, the Dogs were stealing signs, so their hitters might have known what was coming.) He did bounce back a little in the AFL, reaching 111.6 mph and showing better swing decisions, although the pitching out there was not close to what he saw nightly in Double A. Condon is a good enough athlete to handle an outfield corner, though the Rockies played him primarily at first base last year, as it’s a position of real need for them and he has experience on the dirt at third base. He has 30-plus homer upside, easily, and he has the patience and zone awareness to be a valuable hitter even if he hits .240-.250. The new regime in Denver should have a clear plan for helping him get back to the hitter he was in 2024 when he was the No. 3 pick in the draft.
2025 Ranking: 46
He ain’t heavy, he’s my hitter? It’s very easy to see Ballesteros’s body and dismiss him as a prospect — I know I had that thought when I first saw him standing by the back fields in Mesa — but man can he hit. He’s pretty aggressive, with excellent hand-eye coordination that helps him hit even pitches out of the zone, so while he will chase it hasn’t hurt him yet because he’s a good enough bad-ball hitter. He doesn’t whiff, he hammers fastballs and because he’s got a short path to the ball (shocking, for a 5-8 guy) and gets his hands moving quickly, he can let the ball travel a bit before committing. He’s not going to stick behind the plate, as he’s just not a good receiver or blocker, but he’s surprisingly OK at first base, and maybe he could catch once a week to avoid burning a roster spot on a backup catcher. I think he’ll hit for a high average with some pop, maybe 12-18 homers a year, with consistently high contact rates, enough to be at least a solid regular at first.
2025 Ranking: 41
Crawford led Triple-A hitters in batting average last year, which isn’t as important as it seemed 25 years ago but is still something, especially when that batting average is .334 and comes with above-average walk and strikeout rates. He’s an 80 runner and a 70 defender in center with good instincts as well, perhaps ending up an 80 defender in time, while he has excellent bat speed and hits the ball much harder than you’d expect from his low ISOs, including a .118 figure last year that was his lowest yet in any full-season league. He puts the ball on the ground a stupid amount of the time, and I don’t use that adjective lightly: He has too much raw power to continue to hit like this, with a high-hands setup and a swing that is geared to get on top of the ball and hit it into the ground. He’s still a valuable regular as it is because he rarely whiffs (7.3 percent swinging strike rate last year), even with a tendency to chase pitches out of the zone, and while he hits the ball on the ground 60 percent of the time, enough of those ground balls are hit hard enough to get him on base. It’s long past time to rework his swing to get him to drive the ball, but if this is what he is, he’ll still be a 2+ WAR player just on speed, defense and contact.
2025 Ranking: 81
Arroyo signed back in January 2022 for $1.375 million, which feels like forever ago, but he just turned 21 in November and has already reached Double A, showing superlative contact skills and an outstanding eye at the plate. His carrying tool is the bat, as he hit .269/.422/.512 in High A and .255/.376/.341 in Double A, actually cutting his strikeout rate at the higher level down to a career-low 15.6 percent. He’s got a very simple, direct swing that’s geared towards low line drives, with line-drive rates in his career consistently in the 20-27 percent range, including 25.6 percent in that stint in Double A. He loves the ball middle-down, with some weakness on fastballs towards the top of the zone, and he has very strong ball/strike recognition overall. He’s an average to above-average second baseman, with some throwing issues early in 2025, and played a couple of games in left field in the Colombian Winter League to try to add some versatility given the Mariners’ surfeit of infielders. His bat will make him a regular anywhere, while his chances to be an above-average regular are probably tied to him playing second base for somebody.
2025 Ranking: 25
Bazzana missed two chunks of the 2025 season with oblique strains, one on each side (that is, all of them), and his performance while he played was certainly not what was expected of the No. 1 pick from 2024. Even before the first injury, he was hitting just .252/.362/.433 in Double A — which was an aggressive assignment for his first full season — with a 26.1 percent strikeout rate. He made more contact with less power on his return, and then moved to Triple A and showed more power but bumped back up to a 26.7 percent strikeout rate. He has excellent hand-eye coordination and made plenty of contact in Double A, whiffing on just 20 percent of his swings, but that went up significantly after his promotion and he had particular trouble with anything that wasn’t a fastball. He did maintain strong hard-hit and Barrel rates in Triple A, even with a swing path that can be very steep and makes it harder for him to stay on plane, so he did flash the hit and power tools that made him the first pick even if the raw statline doesn’t show it. He’s still playing second base, where his defense isn’t great but might be adequate, even with rumors that he would move to left field last season. He’s got to hit, and he’s got to stay healthy, and I’m not sure how much the second variable affected the first last year.
2025 Ranking: NR
Sirota went into the 2024 draft season as a potential top-10 pick, then got sick before games began and lost some weight. He didn’t feel or look right until about halfway through the year, by which point a lot of teams had shifted their focus to other players. The Reds stayed on him and took him in the third round, then traded him to the Dodgers that same winter for Gavin Lux, only to have Sirota break out with his new organization after he got that strength back. Los Angeles started him in Low A, very conservative for a college player, but after he destroyed the level they moved him up to High A, where he kept hitting, with a .316/.458/.556 line at the higher stop and just one more strikeout than walks. He’s a solid defender in center who probably ends up a 55 or 60 defender in right. Sirota is probably more of a power hitter than a pure hitter for average at this point, with some of that patience a function of not swinging very often, but he could disprove that somewhat if he continues to mash in Double A as a 23-year-old this year. His season did end early after injuring his knee on a slide, but he should be good to go this spring. I see a solid regular floor here, and if the hit/on-base parts of his game hold up when he’s facing pitchers his age, he could be an All-Star.
2025 Ranking: 99
Mack might be the rare high school catcher drafted up top (pick No. 31, the Marlins’ second pick in 2021) who pans out as a catcher in the big leagues, as he’s a plus defender with the pull power to get to 20 homers a year, more than enough to be a regular in the big leagues right now. He has a very pull-oriented swing that puts the ball in the air a ton, probably at the cost of some contact, and striking that balance will be the key variable in whether he’s a second-division regular with sub-.300 OBPs or can be an occasional All-Star. He did start to chase more pitches out of the zone last year than he had in Double A and below, and he still needs to make more contact on pitches in the zone after a marginal improvement there last year that still has him well below the MLB median at 77.9 percent. He can really catch and throw, nailing a third of opposing basestealers last year, even though it seems like no one is ever holding runners any more. (Insert old man yells at cloud dot gif.) The one outstanding question on the defensive side is Mack’s game-calling, as the Marlins, for reasons I will probably never understand, have coaches call pitches in their farm system like this is high school, so Mack hasn’t been able to work on that aspect of his game. He’s a potential 20-homer catcher who saves runs with his defense, which plays every day for most clubs. Whether he’s more than that depends on whether he can improve his swing decisions, deciding when to go all-out for power and when to lay off or just be satisfied with putting the ball in play. The goal for Mack this year should be to keep his swing on plane, and for the Marlins to let him run the show by calling pitches even in Triple A.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Willits was the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, a talented player who was an analytical model darling because he was only 17 (I can’t write that without hearing Kip Winger’s voice in my head) on draft day. The son of former Angels outfielder Reggie Willits, Eli is a true shortstop with easy hands, a plus arm and plus speed. He’s a 55/60 defender now who could be a 70 when he gets to the majors. He has a compact swing that’s oriented toward contact rather than driving the ball, without a lot of lift to it for power, although he’s got some room to fill out his lower half and may be able to drive the ball better as he matures. The Nats were aggressive with him, sending him out to Low-A Fredericksburg after the draft, and he hit .300/.397/.360 in 58 PA with 12 strikeouts (20.7 percent); it’s a small sample, but for a kid who was still 17 and had just been playing high school ball in Oklahoma three months prior, it’s very promising. As a very likely shortstop with strong contact skills, he has a utility infielder floor, with 55/above-average upside if he adds that strength to become a hitter for consistently high batting averages and OBPs.
2025 Ranking: 8
Williams did make his MLB debut in 2025, but the season otherwise was a disaster, as his swing decisions or lack thereof — if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice — caught up to him in Triple A and ate him alive in the big leagues. He hit .213/.318/.447 in Triple A with a 34.2 percent strikeout rate, a higher rate than any qualifying big leaguer had in 2025 and the second worst in Triple A. He swings too often in general and often seems to decide too soon, so he’s even missing pitches in the zone — in Triple A, his contact rate when swinging at strikes was 78.2 percent, which would have ranked the fourth-worst among major-league qualifiers last year. He does have power and makes a lot of very hard contact when he does square the ball up, while he remains a 70 runner and easy plus defender at shortstop, all of which is a good foundation to at least give him a utility infielder floor. He’s still 22 and that was his first go-round in Triple A, so he has the benefit of time and an organization that is very unlikely to rush him. He needs to make a big adjustment in how and when he decides to swing at pitches, but he retains that All-Star upside of a shortstop who hits 20-25 homers and adds value on defense and on the bases, though with lower probability than he had a year ago.
2025 Ranking: 52
Ryan had Tommy John surgery in August 2024, shortly after his fourth major-league start where he outpitched Paul Skenes (granted, they did not face the same caliber of lineup that day). Ryan should be ready to pitch in some role this spring after hitting 100 mph during his rehab. If he were completely healthy, he might be the No. 1 pitching prospect in baseball. He has above-average to plus stuff across the board, with ride on the upper-90s four-seamer, a slider, a cutter that was new in 2024, a two-plane curveball and a changeup, with the cutter probably the worst pitch at the moment because his other stuff is so good. He’s an outstanding athlete who was a full-time infielder at UNC-Pembroke and only began to pitch somewhat regularly in his draft year in 2021, making remarkable progress in his delivery and his command since the Dodgers acquired him from the Padres for Matt Beaty in the spring of 2022. The only real knock on him as a prospect is that at age 27, he’s the oldest player on this list and I think the oldest I have ever put on a top 100. I said last year he could be a No. 2 starter if healthy, but with his stuff looking better than ever, maybe he could be even more than that.
2025 Ranking: 76
The 2025 season was mostly a lost year for Mitchell, the Royals’ first-round pick in 2023, as he broke a hamate bone in February, suffered a setback in the spring while rehabbing, and never got his hand strength back even through a stint in the AFL — which is within the normal timeframe for recovery from that injury. When healthy, he’s the best defensive catcher in the Royals’ system, a plus receiver and framer with at least a 60 arm, and has the raw power to be a regular at the position even if he doesn’t hit for a high average. He did at least post some high walk rates in 2025, with a .372 OBP in High A and .434 OBP in his AFL stint, even when he didn’t hit for average at all, a combination of some real pitch recognition and, in my opinion, a shift in his approach because he wasn’t completely comfortable letting it loose because of the injury. He did show some flashes of his prior self as the fall season progressed, hitting one ball at 116 mph in the third week of the AFL and getting over 100 mph in nine of his last 10 games where he put a ball in play, so there’s reason to believe he’s going to be 100 percent for spring training. He still projects as an everyday catcher who might hit .230 or so with 20 homers and plus defense, which is a regular for almost every team in baseball.
2025 Ranking: 21
Another year, another strong performance from Rodriguez and another injury. Rodriguez hit .258/.429/.423 in St. Paul in 52 games around three separate injuries, and so far in his five years in pro ball he’s missed time with injuries to his thumb (requiring surgery), knee, abdomen/oblique and hip. His 65 games played and 267 PA in 2025 were both the second-highest figures of his pro career. When he plays, he shows extreme patience to the point of passivity, chasing pitches out of the zone just 16 percent of the time in Triple A but also taking strikes 39 percent of the time, and hits the ball hard enough to project plus power if he ever plays regularly, maxing out at 113.6 mph last year. He’s a plus athlete who could probably play center if he could hold up, but at this point I’m questioning if sitting on the bench between innings is too risky for him — maybe the Twins should set up a hyperbaric chamber for him in the clubhouse. At some point, he will have a full, healthy season where he hits 25 homers and draws 80 walks. I just don’t know if he can do that often enough, between the injuries and the overly selective approach, to justify having him up in the top 50 as I did the past two years.
2025 Ranking: 49
Smith wasn’t on my midseason rankings last year due to his poor performance (he walked nearly 20 percent of batters he faced in April and May before hitting the IL), his elbow injury and questions about his mechanics breaking down. He was another beneficiary of the Arizona Fall League, as he looked much closer to his college self out there, even throwing strikes (10.5 percent walk rate) in a league where nobody throws strikes. Smith sat 92-96 in my AFL look, topping out at 97.5 mph, and has been up to 99 in the past, with a fastball that can overwhelm hitters in the zone because he comes from a lower slot that makes it hard to pick up. His slider showed tight spin again with average break, also playing up because of the arm slot. He has an average or better changeup but barely used it in the regular season or the AFL, and it’s a pitch he needs to throw more because his lower slot will always make him more vulnerable to right-handed batters unless he can deceive them with the changeup. Righties had a .347 OBP off him last year, although he did strike out 30.7 percent of the righties he faced. He’s probably always going to be a high-strikeout, medium-walks guy at his best, and a high-walks guy at his worst, but the arrow is at least pointing back up after his promising showing in Arizona. I’m not giving up on the No. 2 starter upside, although the probability of that is lower and he’s probably more like a mid-rotation, 160-170 innings starter who’ll run a lot of high pitch counts and compensate with a bunch of 10-plus strikeout games.
2025 Ranking: 59
Briceño is nominally a catcher, but his best position is in the batter’s box, and it’s likely he’s going to end up a regular at some position other than behind the plate. He has real power and he’s got a smart approach already, with excellent timing that helps him get more out of maybe 50/55 bat speed. He hit .296/.422/.603 as a 20-year-old in High A to start the year, then struggled after a promotion to Double A, hitting .232/.335/.381 at the higher spot where he was young for the level. He did still maintain his feel for the strike zone and continued to make plenty of contact in the zone (85 percent), so there’s reason to believe he’ll resume mashing with more reps at the level. It’s plus power already, even to the opposite field, as he understands how to hit the ball where it’s pitched (even when that violates the “pull the ball in the air” mantra). He’s not a great receiver to begin with and has already had one significant knee injury along with other lower-body issues, making it much more likely that he ends up at first base in the short term — which also has the benefit of getting his bat in the lineup more and maybe reducing his time lost to injuries. It’s a 25-plus homer first baseman with a good chance to hit for average as well, but perhaps taking more time to get to his ceiling than his teammates Kevin McGonigle and Max Clark will.
2025 Ranking: N/A
The No. 8 pick in the 2025 draft, Parker is an outstanding hitter for contact who barely swung and missed on the showcase circuit in 2024, when he was facing some of the best prep arms in the country. He controls the strike zone well, has excellent hand-eye coordination, and takes a short path to the ball that ensures he’ll put it in play at a high rate. He can drift over his front side through contact, losing some potential power there, although that’s a correctable issue and also doesn’t have to happen right away. He’s a shortstop now and has very good hands for the infield, but he’s not going to have plus range and probably gets pushed to third base. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t at least hit for high averages right out of the gate in pro ball; if you were looking for someone to be the next Kevin McGonigle from the 2025 draft class, it would be Parker.
2025 Ranking: NR
When Chourio reached Low A last July, he became the first pitcher under age 18 in full-season ball since Julio Urías debuted in Low A in 2013. Chourio signed last January for $247,500, began in the Dominican Summer League, then moved to the Arizona Complex League, and between those two stops he walked one batter in 28 2/3 innings for a 0.9 percent walk rate. He finished the year in the Carolina League, where his walk rate soared to 4.2 percent (that’s sarcasm) and he did have real issues with men on base, giving up a .340/.389/.740 line in a small sample of 54 PA. He doesn’t look like a 17-year-old on the mound, certainly, with exceptional command of a three-pitch mix that includes a 94-97 mph four-seamer with some ride and natural cut to it, an upper-70s curveball that seems to drop off the table, and an 84-88 mph changeup with good fade that he almost exclusively used against lefties. He’s already stronger than his listed weight of 160, with a good lower half to maintain that velocity and perhaps add a little more as he becomes an adult. There’s obvious risk with any pitcher his age throwing even moderately hard, and he does have to pitch better from the stretch, but this is everything you’d want to see in a young pitching prospect, including the potential upside of 80 command.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Boston’s first-round pick in 2025, Witherspoon was outstanding for Oklahoma in the spring, improving his control substantially even as he started throwing harder. He topped out at 99 and would sit 95-97, maintaining that level deep into starts, while working with five pitches that included a changeup that I think will turn out to be an above-average to plus pitch for him if he uses it more. Some teams were concerned about his short arm action and a very sudden move back right after hand separation, but it hasn’t caused any issues with command so far, and he’s so athletic I think he can continue to pitch this way without issues throwing strikes. He spins the ball well enough to have a plus breaking pitch somewhere, needing to finish them more out over his front side and possibly choosing one of the slider and cutter to be his primary breaking pitch. He’s further away than some of the other college pitchers in the 2025 draft but has No. 2 starter upside, giving Boston’s strong pitching development group a lot to work with already.
2025 Ranking: NR
Snelling was on my top-100 list going into 2024, then dropped off when he lost several miles an hour off his fastball that summer, which included (and probably precipitated) his trade from San Diego to Miami that July. The Marlins did well here as Snelling got his fastball back, sitting 94-95 in Triple A last year with a plus slider and average changeup, throwing strikes across the board, so he projects as a mid-rotation starter with a chance to be even better. The four-seamer gets some swing and miss because it’s a high-spin fastball that has some ride at the top of the zone, and on the rare occasions he’s allowed to work deep into games he holds his velocity. The changeup is his worst pitch for now, although he showed no platoon split in the minors last year. He’s a premium athlete who was also a quarterback and linebacker in high school, moving well on the mound and repeating his delivery. He could be someone’s No. 5 starter right now, with a realistic ceiling of a No. 3 and a chance he becomes even more if his command continues to improve and he develops the changeup more.
2025 Ranking: NR
Last offseason, I ranked Early only 16th in the Red Sox’s system even off a great first season in the minors, as his fastball sat only around 91-92 and he lived off his off-speed stuff, none of which was really plus. It was more about deception than pitch quality, as he’s a little across his body with plus-plus extension and also throws so many pitches all the time that hitters had a hard time figuring out what was coming. He’s a very different guy a year later, having gained over 2 mph on his fastball heading into 2025, so that he averaged 93.7 mph in the majors on all of his fastballs combined, and now his changeup is a plus pitch as well. He pitched more off the fastball last year, getting more whiffs and chases on it than the year prior. His sweeper, another result of Boston’s pitching development, might end up his best breaking pitch, as he doesn’t spin the ball that well and neither his slider nor curve is better than a fringe-average pitch. He didn’t walk anyone in his big-league debut, but that was by far his lowest walk rate to date and he wasn’t actually in the zone as much as it implies. If he gets down to a 6-7 percent walk rate from his 9.7 percent rate in the minors last year, which he did in his draft year at UVA and should be able to do with his delivery, he’s a very solid mid-rotation starter.
2025 Ranking: NR
Born in the Canary Islands, Morales signed for $1.897 million in January 2024 and has done nothing but hit at three stops so far in the low minors, including a .339/.420/.548 line in 143 PA in Low A to finish the 2025 season. Morales is extremely strong already, generating power with his legs as well as his arms when I saw him in the spring, with a big leg kick and some massive hip rotation to really drive the ball. It’s already shown up in the batted-ball data, with a peak EV over 110 mph as an 18-year-old. He’s a big kid already, not at all a shortstop, with third base his best long-term option, although he could end up in the outfield if he really fills out. There are still some mechanical things in the box for him to smooth out, like giving him a stronger base and getting him to stay balanced more on every swing, and the off-speed recognition is probably going to take some time — in his brief stay in Low A, he whiffed on 41 percent of his swings against non-fastballs. That he’s hit so well, so quickly, even coming from a non-traditional baseball country, is a tremendous sign. At the least, he has 30-homer upside, and the hit tool seems to be more advanced than it looked even a year ago.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Carlson is an electric defender at shortstop with an 80 arm and surprising power for someone who has barely begun to fill out his frame, coming into pro ball with a high floor thanks to that combination and the upside of a frequent All-Star if the White Sox can help him get to more contact with some swing changes. Carlson is among the best high school shortstops I’ve ever seen, combining instincts, hands, lateral quickness and that arm strength to look like a big leaguer already even though he was just 18 at the time I caught him at NHSI last April. At the plate, he loads his hands very deep, creating an arm bar that causes his hands to get a bit lost in back. His timing getting to the zone is not consistent and it’s hard for him to meet the ball out front to drive it. With his hand speed he should be a strong hitter for average, and reducing that deep hand load — which I’m not saying is an easy fix, to be clear — might be the ticket he needs. Chicago took him with the 10th pick last year given that combination of the floor from his defense and power along with the upside of an impact player on both sides of the ball.
2025 Ranking: NR
Gillen came out of the gate hot to start his first full pro season and was hitting .278/.435/.407 at the All-Star break, but he wore down as the season went on and became extremely pull-happy. He hit .224/.406/.306 in a short stint after the break before a calf injury sent him to the injured list for the third time last season, ending his year. The Rays drafted him in the first round in 2024, when he was a high school shortstop who was limited in the field after shoulder labrum surgery. They moved him to center and he took to the outfield very quickly, combining his speed and overall feel for the game to show above-average defense now that should end up plus. As you might guess from his OBPs, he is very disciplined at the plate, chasing pitches out of the zone 17 percent of the time and pitches well out of the zone just 11 percent of the time, but it’s as much passivity as patience, as he doesn’t swing at enough pitches in the zone. His 60 percent swing rate at strikes would have ranked as the 15th lowest mark in the majors last year, tied with Steven Kwan, a very good player whose offense was actually worth -0.4 runs last year. Gillen is quite strong and athletic, and should show more power in games over time — maybe it’s better swing decisions, maybe it’s health, maybe it’s both — and clearly has the strike-zone judgment to keep posting high OBPs. It was a solid debut year, with clear areas for development ahead of him, too.
2025 Ranking: NR
The Reds took Lewis with their second-round pick in the 2024 draft and paid him a first-round bonus, but then very wisely started him out in the Arizona Complex League in 2025 rather than rushing him to Low A, something I’d like to see more teams do given the absence of short-season ball between those two levels. He raked in Arizona, hitting .340/.396/.532 in 46 games, then went to Low A and had a mixed performance of hard contact and strikeouts that, to me, underscores that their plan for him was the right one. Lewis is a plus runner with a strong swing that has a lot of natural loft to it, making a ton of hard contact when he put the ball in play in the Florida State League, with a 50 percent hard-hit rate and an average exit velocity of 92 mph, peaking at 112. He did swing and miss quite a bit, however, striking out 35 percent of the time in Low A, with whiff and chase rates over 40 percent, none of which is sustainable for the long term. He came out of a Nebraska high school and only had 144 PA at that level, so I’m willing to roll with the power upside even with the red flags in the approach, in the belief that the latter will improve with repetitions. He’s not going to stick at shortstop, probably moving to third base, although center field would be an option with his speed and eventual size. He’s one of the most boom-or-bust prospects on this list — the chance is there for a bat with huge impact at some skill position, or he could swing and miss his way out of baseball in a few years.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Kilen was a top-10 talent in the 2025 draft in my view, and was a steal for the Giants at pick No. 14. He was one of the best hitters in the SEC last spring and he rarely swung and missed, while showing surprising power for a smaller-framed player. He got stronger last offseason after transferring to Tennessee, adding 2 mph to his average exit velocity and maxing out over 110 mph, all while striking out just 11 percent of the time in an era when a number that low is usually a typo. He played more second than short for the Volunteers, then played both in his 10-game pro debut. There’s no realistic chance he sticks at shortstop in pro ball as he doesn’t have the arm or the lateral range for it. His brief time in Low A was unimpressive as he tried to play through a bone bruise in his hip that he suffered back in the SEC championship game, eventually shutting it down in mid-August. He’s a high-floor player with an excellent chance to be an everyday second baseman thanks to his high contact rates, above-average power and solid-average defense at worst at the keystone.
2025 Ranking: 17
I don’t know what to make of Salas right now, as he missed nearly all of the 2025 season with a stress fracture in his lower back, playing in only 10 games and doing nothing when he did take the field. He’s still young, turning 20 this June, but the only place he’s hit was in Low A back in 2023, and he didn’t hit well in High A in 2024, although you can argue he was very young for the level at 18. Even now he’d be a college sophomore, and if he hits passably in Double A this year he’ll be ahead of the game. When healthy, he’s a plus defender who as a hitter has a good feel for the strike zone, flashing raw power in BP that hasn’t shown up in games. I don’t like giving up on prospects who are this young and inexperienced unless there’s some clear evidence that they can’t hit or they won’t throw strikes or something like that, and we don’t have enough evidence either way on Salas. His 2026 season isn’t a make-or-break year by any means, but it is going to be significant for everyone’s projections on him going forward because we haven’t had enough looks or data in the past 18 months.
2025 Ranking: 66
Montes’ 2025 season was a mixed bag, although it had more positives than negatives. He continued to post extremely high-end exit velocities along with very high hard-hit rates, a result of a combination of elite bat speed and his sheer overall size and strength. He hit 32 homers and had 58 total extra-base hits between High A and Double A. He did take his walks at both levels, though that came with too much tendency to chase pitches out of the zone at Double A (29 percent), even fastballs he should be able to pick up. The main negative last season was that his strikeout and whiff rates continued to trend up; he went from a 27.6 percent K rate in High A to 30.5 percent in Double A, and his swing-and-miss rate went from 35.4 percent in High A to 41.5 percent in Double A. Despite his bat speed, he still misses a lot of fastballs in the upper third, because he’s so tall that he has a hard time covering all areas of the strike zone. Some extremely tall hitters never figure this out. A few do, although it can take time — Aaron Judge wasn’t a big-league regular until he was 25, while Montes only just turned 21 in October. He’s still playing right field, moving around well enough to stay there for now, with a high probability he moves to first because he’s going to get even bigger — just a lower probability of that move than I thought a year ago. He has truly 35-40 homer upside with such hard contact that he could be a big-league regular even with a strikeout rate that’s well above the median, but that also can’t keep increasing as he continues to move up the ladder.
2025 Ranking: NR
Tong’s MLB debut didn’t go well, to put it mildly, but in his defense it was an aggressive assignment for a player with just nine innings above A-ball coming into 2025, and his season beyond that was exemplary. Tong led all of minor-league baseball with 179 strikeouts thanks to his very high arm slot and plus extension, which gives his 94-96 mph fastball nearly 20 inches of induced vertical break and generated a 36 percent whiff rate on the pitch in the minors. He pairs it with a changeup that wouldn’t be plus on its own — it has a little arm-side fade without much tumble — but plays way up because hitters can’t distinguish between the two pitches out of his hand, and the fastball rides up much more than they expect while the changeup doesn’t. He’s very north-south, typical for over-the-top guys, using a downward-breaking curveball more in the minors, but the Mets are trying to develop a slider or sweeper he can use to get some more lateral movement and force hitters to think more in four directions rather than two. His command and control have improved dramatically, as he walked 22 percent of batters he faced in 2023 (when he was still throwing 90-92) and cut that to 10.6 percent last year even as his velocity kept increasing. I don’t usually rank guys with this kind of arm slot anywhere near this high, as the overwhelming majority of them end up relievers. Tong’s stuff is on another level, he can get hitters on both sides out, and he’s an elite athlete who has already shown he can make a ton of adjustments. He should be at least a mid-rotation starter and could be a No. 2 starter if he finds a suitable breaking ball to expand his movement profile.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Aloy is a true shortstop with power, showing plus defense as an amateur with good lateral range and plenty of arm for the left side of the infield, while he led a loaded Razorbacks lineup with 21 homers and a .673 slugging percentage. Baltimore took him with their second selection, pick No. 31, as part of a very strong day-one draft class that included Ike Irish and two of the players they just traded to acquire Shane Baz. Aloy has the hard-contact data that many teams seek in the draft, with a 54 percent hard-hit rate with Arkansas, thanks to great bat speed and hand strength. He does have trouble with breaking stuff and generally with swinging at pitches beyond the strike zone. He’s got a big leg kick and gets his front foot down somewhat late, which might be contributing to some of his timing issues, although I think there’s some pitch recognition issues mixed in as well. His future is going to come down to the choices he makes at the plate; he would have gone in the first round proper had he shown better swing decisions, but model-heavy teams rated him lower than that primarily because his swing decisions were a net negative. He has 20-plus homer upside in a shortstop who should be at least a 55 defender — or a 60-plus if he ends up at third base — with his ultimate value coming down to whether he can pick up spin and cut down on the chase.
2025 Ranking: 15
Quero was a top-20 prospect in baseball before tearing the labrum in his throwing shoulder in April 2024, and I kept him up there while we waited to see his return, but his return in 2025 was something of a mixed bag that at least ended on a higher note. He finished his rehab stint in late May and went to Triple A, where he had an even 250 PA in 58 games, catching two to three times per week. He hit for no power for his first two months, with a .259/.333/.362 line when he hit the injured list with an injury to his left (non-throwing) shoulder on July 23, then came back and at least started driving the ball some more with a .250/.339/.470 line the rest of the way. The data do back it up — he went from an average EV before the IL stint of 85 mph to 88.9 mph after, while his hard-hit rate went from 24.8 percent to 34.9 percent, so things were trending up when the season ended. He was not throwing nearly as well as he did before the surgery, dropping from a 35 percent caught-stealing rate in Double A in 2023 to 19 percent in Triple A last year, and that arm strength is probably the least likely aspect of his game to return to pre-injury levels.
Quero has always been a high-contact hitter who likes to swing the bat, and he kept that up with a 36.8 percent chase rate in Triple A while still striking out only 14 percent of the time because he doesn’t miss pitches in the zone much and actually makes more contact on balls out of the zone than most hitters. I don’t know how much that formula will work in the majors, where pitchers have better command of better stuff, and if he has to change positions because his arm doesn’t return (or because the Brewers have an All-Star back there), his potential value is quite a bit lower than it seemed two years ago. I do believe the bat will keep coming back, however, and that could still make him a regular somewhere other than behind the plate.
2025 Ranking: 30
Sproat throws a 95-96 mph sinker and has been up to 98-99 on his four-seamer, which was good enough for him to race up to Triple A in his first full pro season in 2024. The Mets gave him a sweeper and a harder slider, which helped him get over the next hurdle, succeeding in Triple A to reach the majors last year. He has a five-pitch mix, with the hard slider — maybe a cutter, although it turns out the name you use for a pitch has no effect on what hitters do with it — the weakest right now but potentially a real weapon for him against lefties, who did hit him hard at both stops in 2025. He’s built like a starter and has a starter’s stuff, overpowering hitters for most of his baseball life so he could get away with some missed location. Developing some semblance of command, so that he’s not going middle-middle so much with his fastball and both sliders, and finding a pitch to get lefties out will determine whether he’s an elite starter, a starter or a bulk reliever. It shouldn’t surprise you that I think the middle outcome is the most likely, where he becomes an Edwin Jackson-like starter who seems like he should be a No. 2 but whose command and even control knock him down to a No. 4, and he has that upside that Jackson had but never reached.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Fien was the best high school hitter in the 2025 draft class going into the spring, hitting well in every way against the best pitching in the class in the summer and fall of 2024, but he didn’t hit nearly as well in his senior year and slid to the Rangers at the No. 12 pick. I think he’s a star, as Fien has a fantastic swing and an advanced approach already, rarely chasing pitches outside of the zone and showing strong feel for contact even in his senior year. He accelerates his hands well and gets the ball in the air quite a bit, just getting some more length to the ball last spring, which messed with his timing and cost him some contact quality. He projects to plus power, already showing at least above-average power as an amateur, and should be a 20-homer guy with high batting averages if the Nationals (who acquired Fien in the MacKenzie Gore deal with Texas) just get him back to where he was in 2024. He’s a shortstop now but won’t stay there for long, probably settling in at third base thanks to his 70 arm, with a chance to be a plus defender there. I’m a big believer in his bat and buy his results against better pitching from the previous year.
2025 Ranking: 24
Celesten’s stock took a big hit last year even though he performed reasonably well for a 19-year-old in full-season ball, as he didn’t show a lot of urgency or focus on the field or in the box, and his batted-ball data got much worse year-over-year. He hit .285/.349/.384 in Low A before struggling in an 11-game run in High A to finish the season, but even with peak EVs around 111 he didn’t make nearly as much high-quality contact as he did in 2024. He did miss time in May with vertigo, and was worse across the board after his return, notably in his contact rate as his strikeout rate went from 17 percent before the IL stint to 25 percent after, so it is likely that that was at least a contributing factor in his year. He does still have an outstanding left-handed swing and a good enough right-handed one to stick as a switch-hitter, with frequent hard contact in 2024 in the Arizona Complex League, and can show excellent actions at shortstop with soft hands. There’s too much potential here to ignore, with true All-Star upside as a shortstop with power, but he has to either grow up or get healthy or both.
2025 Ranking: NR
George plays like his hair’s on fire, and while that phrase gets thrown around a lot, in his case it seems to make him a better player in every aspect of the game. He’s a twitchy athlete with quick hands at the plate and he shoots line drives to both gaps, with fringy power right now. Then he runs like a madman out of the box and doesn’t stop until he reaches third base. He’s the kind of runner who’ll throw his helmet off because it’s slowing him down, which at least gets him points for artistic impression. He also shows plenty of range in center, thanks to his 80 speed and solid reads already, although he doesn’t have the same instincts on the bases and can be overly aggressive. The Orioles drafted George in the 16th round out of an Illinois high school about 50 miles south of Chicago, and when he went off at the plate in the Florida Complex League I was kind of skeptical. He kept it up in Low A, where he hit .337/.410/.491, and even earned a promotion to High-A Aberdeen (RIP) and hit .291/.380/.392 there in 21 games. He has All-Star upside, if he gets to 55 or so power (I think that’s his max), and could be an everyday player if he just gets his tendency to expand the zone in check.
2025 Ranking: NR
Rojas signed with the Cubs for $1 million in January 2022, and then he skipped the Arizona Complex League entirely in 2023, going right to Low A. He wasn’t ready for High A in 2024, struggling in every way at the plate except in making contact, but returned there in 2025 and had an excellent half-season, hitting .278/.378/.492. He’s stronger now as well as more experienced, while he made excellent swing decisions last year, rarely whiffing (21 percent) or chasing (22 percent), even after a promotion to Double A where he otherwise didn’t hit. He hammers fastballs, with eight of his 11 homers coming on fastballs or cutters, showing plus power when he gets his arms extended, although he also loses some batting average on contact with pitches middle-away. He’s probably going to top out as an average defender at short, which might keep him from becoming a star. His bat will clearly profile as an average or above-average regular at second or third, especially if his power keeps coming and he ends up a 25-homer guy. The feel for the strike zone is a great foundation, and I expect he’ll be much better the second time around Double A this year.
2025 Ranking: NR
Duno has huge power, and showed it in a repeat run through Low A last year where he led the Florida State League in homers, walks, doubles, OBP and slugging percentage. He did play 32 games at the level in the prior year, at age 18, but a broken rib ended his season early, and he was still young for Low A last year as well. He hits the ball extremely hard, averaging 91.2 mph and peaking at 111.3, with a hard-hit rate of 48.6 percent that’s excellent for his age. The patience is real, as he rarely swings at pitches out of the zone, but he swings so hard that he does swing and miss more than you’d like to see in a bat-forward prospect, whiffing on 31 percent of all swings last year. He’s a catcher for now, but he’s enormous already as a teenager, at least 260 pounds, and the odds are that that will increase, rather than decrease, from here given his age. He has plus arm strength but it plays down from there in games, as he’s not accurate enough and can take a beat to get rid of the ball. I’m skeptical that he can stay behind the plate given his size and the way he moves back there, but I’m not skeptical about the bat — he’s going to hit more than enough to profile anywhere, even if he ends up a DH.
2025 Ranking: 90
Last season was the same old story for DeLauter, who was the Guardians’ first-round pick in 2022: He hit well enough when he played, but he didn’t play much at all, with just 177 plate appearances in 42 Triple-A games before making his MLB debut in the playoffs. DeLauter had a serious foot injury when Cleveland drafted him, then reinjured the foot, and has had a litany of ailments since then, so he has never reached 250 PA or played in 60 games in any of his three full professional seasons. The 2025 season was actually his worst year at the plate, as he hit .264/.379/.473 in Triple A, but still walked as often as he struck out (15.8 percent) and made mostly hard contact, with a 52 percent hard-hit rate and a peak EV of 110 mph. The swing is ugly, and I do think MLB pitchers will be able to exploit it; he actually whiffed on 19.4 percent of pitches in the heart of the zone in Triple A in a small sample. He’s a good athlete who could, in theory, play center field, but Cleveland wisely moved him out of there last year, with all of his time in the corners and a good dose of starts at DH as well. The preponderance of evidence we have says he will hit with some power, and he will not stay healthy. I don’t think 2025 moved the needle on either of those points.
2025 Ranking: NR
The Twins’ 2024 first-round pick, Culpepper hit well at two stops last year, finishing with a .285/.367/.460 line in Double A that included an 18.5 percent strikeout rate, while playing above-average defense at shortstop. Culpepper has a beautiful right-handed swing that has produced solid line-drive rates for most of his career, although he can get uphill and end up putting the ball on the ground too often, which did happen last year at both High A and Double A. Despite his strong walk and strikeout rates, he doesn’t have that great of an approach, chasing pitches out of the zone 30 percent of the time, rising to 46 percent when there are two strikes on him, and it’s all much worse on non-fastballs. The moment he falls behind, he swings more often, which hasn’t mattered so far but is likely to slow his progress in Triple A or, at the very least, in the majors. He’s both strong and twitchy, getting to 55 defense on physical ability while still needing to work on his instincts at the position. He has tools, and he’s produced; it’s the skills that typically bridge those two things that he needs to improve, from better swing decisions to better reads on balls hit in his direction, to become an above-average everyday shortstop.
2025 Ranking: NR
Hopkins came over to Tampa Bay in the trade that sent Randy Arozarena to Seattle, and in his first full year after the deal, he finished second in the Rays’ system in strikeouts and strikeout rate. He punched out 28.7 percent of batters he faced, using a broad mix of pitches, including a new cutter that immediately became a weapon for him, and that number will increase if he can it dial back a little to throw more strikes. Hopkins has to work more in the zone with his fastball, with just 61 percent of his fastballs going for some kind of strike last year and only about 45 percent located in the zone. The pitch misses bats, as he sits 96-97 and comes from a very low release point that gets some ride on the pitch and is generally hard for hitters to see. His slider could be plus, but he doesn’t land it in the zone enough either, which is why the Rays had him add a cutter, a similar pitch in his case but with shorter break and that sits 90-92. He’s a superb athlete who was also a quarterback and safety in high school, but he doesn’t have that typical quarterback’s delivery. Instead, he uses a lower slot and a slinging motion that is hard to repeat — so there is a real chance he never gets to the command he needs to be a reliable starter in the heart of a rotation. He’s too athletic to give up on that potential, and with his arsenal he has the ceiling of a No. 2 starter who can miss a ton of bats to make up for even a 10-11 percent walk rate.
2025 Ranking: NR
Oakie was part of Cleveland’s group of high-upside high school pitchers selected in the 2024 draft, paid for in large part by their savings on the bonus for No. 1 pick Travis Bazzana. Oakie broke out from the remainder of the pack with a 2025 season that showed improved stuff and dominant performances. Oakie started his season in the Arizona Complex League and threw well, but by the time he moved up to High A in August, he was bumping 99 and sitting 94-98. He had back-to-back starts in late August where he threw a hidden no-hitter with 22 strikeouts over 9 1/3 innings, working mostly with that riding four-seamer and a plus slider up to 88 with mostly downward break. His arm is loose and very quick, with everything coming out hot, while he still has to work on his control (14 percent walk rate last year) and needs to develop a changeup. The Guardians haven’t tried to add a pitch so far, as he was an Iowa high school kid who saw his velocity dip in his draft season, so they took a conservative approach. He isn’t as safe a bet as a fellow Cleveland prospect from the same draft class, Braylon Doughty, who is more polished and has a hammer curveball right now, but he has a much higher ceiling. He has huge upside given how he’s barely scratched the surface of what he can do.
2025 Ranking: N/A
Irish was the Orioles’ first pick among their passel of selections on Day 1 of the 2025 draft, going at pick No. 19. He slid a little in the draft because of uncertainty over his position but still presented great value at that pick given what he can do at the plate. He started last season as Auburn’s primary catcher, but after fracturing his scapula he went mostly to right field, and the Orioles had him play more in right and at first than they did behind the plate. His upside is all about the bat: He makes very hard contact, works the count well and uses the entire field, with the potential for 20-25 homers if he trades some contact to try to pull the ball more. In the spring, he hit the ball the other way quite a bit more than he did to his pull side, so perhaps there’s a happy medium here where he pulls the ball somewhat more often without surrendering that now-rare skill of being able to go to the opposite field to discourage pitchers from attacking him on the outer third. The current plan is to develop Irish away from catching, although he may still get some reps back there, and focus on his offense instead. He’s about a 40 defender in right, but if that even gets a 45 he should hit enough to be an above-average regular. And since I’m sure some regular readers will ask: Irish is lower here than he was in the predraft rankings, relative to other players in this draft class, based on feedback I received after the draft from teams that passed on him and from pro scouts who saw his brief time in Low A. I don’t usually shuffle or move recent draftees much from their predraft order, but I do get new information after they’re picked that teams didn’t want to share beforehand.
2025 Ranking: NR
Escobar spent 2024 in the Florida Complex League, hitting .338/.495/.481 in 24 games and spending the rest of the year on the IL with shin splints. He was healthy in 2025 and showed what he can really do, hitting well enough to finish the year in Double A at age 20. Escobar is a hitter, not in the hackneyed “he’s a professional hitter” sense, but in the sense that his calling card is his ability to put the ball in play and hit for average, with some sneaky power that you really don’t expect from his frame or from most of his swings. His plan is to make contact, but he looks for pitches he can pull as well, with all but one of his homers going out to the pull side, with a peak EV of 110.8. He hits like someone who thinks he can hit everything, which isn’t far from the truth, but some cracks in the approach emerged last year — he will expand the zone, especially with two strikes, and right-on-right sliders gave him trouble. As for his defense, he’s a second baseman, and of all of the second base prospects in the minors, he’s one of them. I don’t think he’ll have to move off the position, and I don’t think he’ll be more than average, at which point the bat should make him a strong regular with a chance to be an occasional All-Star thanks to 15-20 homer power.
Philadelphia Phillies
SS
2B
2025 Ranking: 68
Freeland debuted last year for the Dodgers, getting 97 PA, but he still qualifies for this list because he’s with the Dodgers, who were one of the few teams that had no use for a major-league ready infielder who hit .263/.384/.451 in Triple A and could play three positions. Drafted in the third round in 2022, Freeland took off in his second full pro season in 2024, reaching Triple A for the first time thanks to his combination of patience and hard contact, all of which continued last season as well. He has above-average power, but takes more of an all-fields approach, so it shows up as much in the doubles column, with exactly 32 in each of the past two years, as the power does in home runs. He’s played shortstop, and could probably be a fringe-average big leaguer there, but he’s best suited to second or third. Born with a club foot, he has always run far better than people expected, although it’s probably 45 speed in the end. He doesn’t have the upside of most of the players on this list, but he would be a regular on at least 25 teams right now. It’s too bad the Dodgers aren’t one of them.
2025 Ranking: NR
Lagrange threw just 21 innings in 2024 due to injury, and came into last year with 95 2/3 total pro innings in three seasons, so his 2025 was a breakout in more ways than one: he stayed healthy, and he had his best showing to date when he did pitch. Lagrange made 23 starts and threw 120 innings in 2025, averaging 98 on his four-seamer — up a mile an hour from the year before — with a plus slider, a cutter and a hard changeup with good tumble. He comes from a high three-quarters slot, and despite his 6-7 frame doesn’t get out that far over his front side, working a little north-south without a pitch that really breaks laterally. He was superb in High A to start the year, striking out 38 percent of batters he faced across eight starts, then moved up to Double A and was less consistent, almost alternating dominant starts with four- and five-walk outings. His arm action is pretty clean, and he should be able to repeat it better than he does, especially out front, with average control probably as far as he’ll get. The Dellin Betances comps are inevitable here, but Lagrange moves better on the mound and has more weapons already. He should stick as a starter, and could end up in the top two spots in a rotation depending on how far his control improves.
2025 Ranking: 71
Nimmala tore out of the gate to start 2025, hitting .289/.372/.528 when the sun rose on June 1 with just an 18 percent strikeout rate, but it didn’t last, leading to a very mixed second full year in pro ball. A combination of some nagging injuries he played through, some fatigue and pitchers adjusting to him without him adjusting back in turn led to a collapse in his production. He hit just .184/.277/.290 the rest of the year, with a 24 percent strikeout rate that was still a huge reduction from the prior year. Toronto’s 2024 first-round pick, Nimmala was only 17 on draft day, and spent all of 2025 in High A at age 19, making him the fourth-youngest regular at that level — and two of the younger players ahead of him are on this list (Leo De Vries and Franklin Arias). He still has plus power, improved his contact rate while moving up a level and still projects to stick at shortstop. He’ll play all of 2026 at age 20, probably in Double A, and I expect him to continue to progress after an offseason of recovery. If he hits enough to get to his power, his profile is 25-plus homers with plus defense at short.
2025 Ranking: NR
Farmelo came back intact after tearing his ACL in 2024, still running plus and playing strong defense in center field, but actually played fewer games in 2025 than he did the prior year because he suffered a stress reaction in his rib cage just a month into his return and didn’t get back on the field until early August. He did play in the AFL and didn’t look 100 percent at the plate, hitting plenty of line drives but missing some pitches in the zone he should have hit, while he did run well again with that plus defense. He hasn’t hit lefties well to date in a tiny sample, which is at least something to watch if and when he gets a full season in. He really, really needs to stay on the field this year, as he’s now two-and-a-half years into his pro career and has only 350 regular-season PA. He still has above-average upside between the defense, speed and a line-drive swing that makes hard (but not elite) contact.
2025 Ranking: NR
I don’t know where Anderson can play, but I know he can hit. The Tigers’ 2023 second-round pick out Nebraska, Anderson had a lackluster full-season debut in 2024 where he posted a 50.4 percent ground-ball rate that was even higher after a promotion to Double A. He focused over the offseason on trying to change how he was making contact from getting on top of the ball to hitting it on the bottom half, and took off from the start of last season, with a .306/.358/.499 line in Double A in 90 games, then a .267/.327/.422 line in Triple A where he still had a 46 percent hard-hit rate. His production is almost entirely in his hit tool; he has average power, below-average patience and below-average speed, so he has to continue to post high contact rates given his lack of a current defensive position. He’s played second and third in pro ball and isn’t better than a 45 at either spot; he can field what’s hit at him but doesn’t have much range, and as much as everyone I ask says he should be a catcher, that’s not happening with a 24-year-old on the cusp of the big leagues. He’ll play every day at one of those infield spots as long as he keeps those batting averages up, and I think he will given the ability to square the ball up that he showed last year.
2025 Ranking: NR
Messick needed to pick up some velocity across his arsenal to get out of that finesse lefty/fifth-starter bucket, and he did so, gaining a little over a half a mile an hour on his fastball and over a full mph on his slider, leading to a very successful big-league debut where he walked fewer batters than he did in Triple A. He’s a big-bodied kid who comes from a three-quarters slot but hides the ball well behind his body, helping all his stuff play up. His changeup is his one truly plus pitch and his two breaking balls are more average but they help him get lefties out because they don’t see the ball until quite late in his delivery. He had some platoon splits in the majors, but didn’t in the minors and he should be able to continue to get righties out at a similar rate as he does lefties. He’s been durable since Cleveland took him in the second round in 2022, making 24 starts and throwing 121 innings his first year and then going up from there, and should be able to handle a full starter’s workload in the majors right now. He looks like a high-floor fourth starter, and could creep up to more than that with further development of either or both of the breaking balls, or another increase in overall velocity.
2025 Ranking: NR
Tait only turned 19 in August, a few weeks after the Phillies traded him and Mick Abel to the Twins for Jhoan Duran. He’s a high-risk, high-reward prospect who shows enormous power for his age and a cannon of an arm, but is a below-average receiver and blocker who swings at everything right now. He hit 14 homers and 32 doubles last season in 486 PA, the majority of them in the pitcher-friendly Florida State League, and topped out at 113.8 mph in that league with an EV90 of 105.9 mph. He doesn’t strike out much, but he has a well below-average sense of the strike zone, chasing pitches out of the zone 41 percent of the time and pitches well out of the zone 32 percent of the time, leading to a .286 OBP in his time in High A with a 3.9 percent walk rate. Behind the plate, he is very much a work in progress beyond his arm strength, needing help in all other aspects of his game; he’s athletic enough to do it, and still young, but it’s probably grade 40 defense all around and he’ll have to put a significant amount of work in to do it. He threw out 32 percent of runners who tried to steal off him in Low A, then for some reason couldn’t throw anyone out in 20 games in High A, with an 8.3 percent caught-stealing rate. He was still 1.8 seconds to second base but less accurate, and I think also had some pitchers who weren’t holding runners well to exacerbate the issue. I understand why the Phillies traded him, and why the Twins wanted him: if he stays at catcher and makes even a little progress on the swing decisions, he’s a 20-homer regular at the hardest position to fill. And if he doesn’t stay at catcher, he still has a path to be an above-average regular if he improves the plate discipline further.
2025 Ranking: 80
King’s first full season in the minors was mostly a fiasco, the result in part of someone in the Nats’ organization trying to get him to pull the ball in the air more, which led King to struggle to recapture his swing until he had the chance to reset in the Arizona Fall League. The silver lining for Washington’s 2024 first-round pick was that he proved himself to be a plus-plus defender at shortstop, a position he played only intermittently as an amateur, with excellent range in both directions and quick actions. He’s also a plus runner who showed excellent reads on the bases, with 30 steals in 34 attempts during the regular season. He started out in my backyard in Wilmington with a 2-for-26 stretch to open the season, striking out 14 times, then eventually hit well enough at the level (.263/.307/.380) that the Nationals moved him up to Double A, which also got him to a better hitter’s park in Harrisburg, but he hit .233/.287/.313 at the higher stop, with fewer whiffs and strikeouts but too many ground balls. He was a different guy in the box in Arizona, and much, much closer to the player we saw at Wake Forest in 2024. The AFL is a hitter’s paradise, but King excelled relative to the other hitters putting up gaudy numbers as well. He finished in the top 10 in the AFL in average, OBP and slugging, and looked looser and more fluid at the plate, rather than hitting in survival mode as he had for large portions of the regular season. He showed above-average power and made very consistent hard contact during his whole stint, peaking at 111 mph, while he made much better swing decisions, including staying in the strike zone much more — his chase rate after a midseason promotion to Double A was 35 percent, but he cut that to 25 percent in the AFL. I’m betting the version we saw in the desert in October and November is the real Seaver King, not the one who couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn back in April. We’ll see if the new regime in DC can capitalize on his gains in the Fall League.
2025 Ranking: 20
Schultz looks like he’s going to blow hitters away, but he’s a sinker/slider guy who induces ground balls and works with a bunch of grade-55 pitches, showing good control until this past season in Double A. Schultz is 6-9 or 6-10, and can dial his sinker up to 97-98, but he doesn’t make full use of that height by extending way out over his front side; his extension is about 6.35 feet, above the MLB average but not what you’d expect given his height, and as a result his fastball doesn’t miss many bats but it does generate grounders, at a rate of about 58 percent last year. His low three-quarters slot puts some extra sweep on his slider, and he destroyed lefties last year, although right-handed batters hit him quite well and he will need to throw his changeup more. His season was cut short by injury once again — this time a knee problem, while he’s previously had shoulder and flexor tendon injuries — and he has yet to throw 100 innings in any season. His path to success involves health, throwing more strikes and using that changeup more (or adding another pitch like a splitter). It might also include trying to get even a little more extension out front, as he’s already above the median and could see immediate gains from it. I think everyone, not just the White Sox, is expecting more from him than what we’ve seen.
2025 Ranking: N/A
The Rays’ first-round pick in 2025, Pierce is a true shortstop with outstanding instincts to go with a 70 arm and 70 foot speed. He projects to hit for average, showing a swing with some loft in its finish to put the ball in the air, probably more for line drives to the gap than for over-the-fence power. His data from high school pointed to 55 or better raw power, but he didn’t show that in games and scouts projected more fringe-average power from him based on their looks and his lack of huge projection. He also showed very good pitch recognition and command of the strike zone when playing at showcases in 2024. He didn’t debut last year, thanks to the geniuses at MLB who moved the complex season up so that it’s wrapping up just as the draft happens, so we’ll see him in the complex or in Low A this spring.
2025 Ranking: 82
Bradfield is still an 80 runner and a 70 or 80 defender in center field — it’s hard to call him an 80 when Vance Honeycutt is in the same system and he makes 80 look insufficient by a factor of 10 — with enough command of the strike zone to see a high floor for him as a second-division regular who generates 2 WAR in many seasons just on defense, speed and contact. Two and a half years after the Orioles took him with the No. 17 pick in the 2023 draft, his swing is still a work in progress; he got the ball off the ground more last year, but the net result was more flyouts and pop-ups to the left side, which is not what we’re going for here. With his speed, line drives to the gaps would be more than enough, and he has enough strength to do that even with below-average power. He’s going to save a ton of runs with his glove, as he combines good instincts with elite speed to cover a huge amount of ground and has already made a number of highlight plays, including a catch in the AFL last year where he stole a home run to end the game. I have long hoped he’d get to a consistent enough swing path to be that line-drive hitter who can rack up doubles and triples with his speed, figuring the Orioles would simplify his overly complex swing over time. It still could happen, but I think he’s more likely to be near his floor than his ceiling right now.
2025 Ranking: NR
The Mets took Ewing in the fourth round in 2023, signing him for a small amount over slot, and his full-season debut in 2024 was not promising, although I noted in last year’s rankings that he probably needed the defunct short-season level and was still young enough to turn it around. He showed up stronger in 2025 and continued to improve his defense in center, ending 2025 in Double A with a composite line of .315/.401/.429 across three levels with 70 steals in 81 attempts. It’s a contact-oriented approach, but he has more bat speed and pure strength than the statline implies, lacking the loft in the swing to put many balls over the fence. That’s a small adjustment that he could make at some point in the future, while for now, he’s a four-tool player who projects to hit, play plus defense in center, and add value on the bases. He’s similar to Jett Williams, who was ahead of him in the Mets’ system before the Freddy Peralta trade, although Williams is a better infielder and has more power. I’m sure Ewing’s emergence made it easier for New York to include Williams in the deal. Even if Ewing never gets to more than eight to 10 homers a year, he’s a regular in center, and will still be able to fill in at second or third if needed, and there’s a non-zero chance he becomes a star if he lifts the ball a little more to get to more home-run power.
2025 Ranking: 44
Pratt is a 70 defender at shortstop with excellent contact skills who needs to grow into some more power now to be more than a soft regular at the position. He continued to work the count well and get on base in Double A last year, with a 12.7 percent walk rate and 15.2 percent strikeout rate that were both well above the median for the level, although he showed some weaknesses against offspeed stuff for the first time. He has a good swing that should put the ball on a line — and it did until this past year, when the Brewers effectively jumped him over High A, where he scuffled in 23 games in 2024, straight to Double A to open the 2025 season. He went from a .361 BABIP in Low A to a .267 BABIP last year, and a good portion of that decline is a function of contact quality. If he can hit the ball harder on a more consistent basis, he’ll be an above-average regular at shortstop because of all of his other skills, even if he maxes out at 10-12 homers a year.
2025 Ranking: N/A
I have Hernandez lower than the rest of the industry, primarily because of his category (he’s a high school pitcher, the first one selected in the 2025 draft) rather than because of anything about him as a pitcher. He’s been up to 100 and more typically sits 94-97 or so, with a plus changeup that’s at least a 60, an above-average curveball and a slider that shows good spin and plenty of arm speed, just needing some consistency and perhaps some help on finding the ideal shape. The changeup is very hard to pick up and has an extended tumbling action, which should help him carve up Low-A hitters when he gets there this year, and he has an old-school two-plane curveball that those hitters aren’t going to like any better. His four-seamer is very straight, so even high school hitters were often able to put it in play, and there’s some head-snap in his delivery that is often (but hardly always) a harbinger of command issues. He does generate most of that velocity from his lower half, taking a huge stride towards the plate, and once he gets his arm to catch up more consistently both breaking pitches will probably improve. It is No. 1 starter upside if he throws strikes, stays healthy and tightens up the slider.
High school pitchers taken in the first round are as risky a demographic in the draft as there is. They tend to throw very hard, they’ve often pitched quite a bit as amateurs because they’re so good and pitchers just break, period. The only high school pitcher selected in the first round proper in 2023 was Noble Meyer, who is still in A ball and has not had much success at all in the minors. In 2022, we had Dylan Lesko, who blew out his elbow before the draft, was traded shortly after he returned and walked 33 batters in 18 innings last year. That class also included Owen Murphy, who is barely back from his own TJ and still in High A, and Brandon Barriera, who has thrown 27 1/3 career pro innings around conditioning issues, major elbow surgery and now a bone fracture in the elbow. In 2021, we had Jackson Jobe, who has thrown 53 innings in the majors but probably won’t pitch there again until 2027 after Tommy John surgery, and Andrew Painter, who blew out his elbow, missed two years and hasn’t yet reached the majors. In 2020, it was Mick Abel, who debuted last year in the majors and posted a 6.23 ERA. In 2019, it was Quinn Priester, the rare example of a top prep arm who didn’t throw extremely hard, and even he needed six years and two trades to just establish himself as a major-league pitcher.
You have to go back to 2017 to find a draft where the first high school pitcher taken panned out, and that year had two, Hunter Greene, who took seven years but is now a bona fide ace, and MacKenzie Gore, who needed six years and a delivery overhaul, but is now an above-average starter. Every one of these guys was supposed to be an exception to the rule, a high school pitcher whose stuff or command or delivery or some combination of those things would get him to the majors sooner and help him succeed and stay healthy enough to contribute to the big-league club in a reasonable period of time. I hope Hernandez is that exception, truly, but I’m not going to bet on any individual high school pitcher doing so.
