2025 MLB Draft Rankings Update
Day One of the amateur draft kicks off this evening, and I’ve done a top-to-bottom refresh and expansion of my draft prospect rankings, which you can see on The Board. Please go read those blurbs and explore the tool grade section to get a better idea of my thoughts on the players. The goal of the draft rankings is to evaluate and rank as many of the players who are talented enough to hop onto the main section of the pro prospect lists as possible, so they can be ported over to the pro side of The Board as soon as they’re drafted. Players for whom that is true tend to start to peter out in rounds four and five of the draft as bonus slot amounts dip below $500,000. Over-slot guys are obvious exceptions. By the seventh round, we’re mostly talking about org guys who are drafted to make a team’s bonus pool puzzle fit together, or players who need significant development to truly be considered prospects. That usually means ranking about 150 players, and this year’s class is right in that range; right now, I have 152 guys on there.
This is a pretty average draft class with roughly the usual number of players who’ll go straight to the Top 100 list (often six, give or take, and this year has eight). It has an above-average number of exciting high school position players, but a below-average contingent of college position players. Usually, my 45 FV grade tier runs through just about the end of the first round, and this year it is bang on at 33 players deep. The 40+ FV tier typically peters out in the middle of the second round, but because there are so many fun high schoolers, this year’s group runs through the second round. These are exciting developmental players but not overt impact prospects. Readers can kind of get the idea of the value of a draft pick in the area where the 45 FV tier transitions into the 40+ tier, because we just saw a one-for-one, big-leaguer-for-draft-pick trade when the Orioles dealt a good middle reliever (Bryan Baker) to the Rays for the 37th overall pick, right around where I think there’s a drop-off into the next tier of talent. Once upon a time, Alex Claudio was traded for a similar pick. Proximity is value when we’re talking about baseball prospects and draft capital.
Readers should peruse the scouting reports and tool grades of every 45 FV player and above. Those are the players who will be up near the top of team prospect lists as they’re drafted. Below that, unless you’re fixing to read 20,000 words, I have a chef’s selection of player clusters I think you should check out:
High-Upside, Projection-Based High Schoolers
This is the tier of player running from 34th to 45th overall. The high schoolers in this range often have a present flaw keeping them from the first round section of the rankings, but are big, projectable athletes who through physical maturation and development might not only polish those issues, but also ascend to a higher level of play. Teams that anticipate these players will improve, or that think their player dev group can help them achieve a new gear, could be on these guys in the middle of the first round. Gavin Fien and Daniel Pierce fit into this category. There are similar players I have ranked in the 50s (Mason Ligenza, Alec Blair, Dean Moss, Michael Oliveto) who have an extra element of risk compared to those other guys.
College Pitchers on the Starter/Reliever Line
FanGraphs readers no doubt understand that pro teams’ dev groups often make college pitchers better. The college arms in the no. 48-68 range are the ones who I think have exciting foundations already and are most ripe for improvement. Some of them lost reps to injury (like AJ Russell) or were multi-sport athletes (like Riley Quick) or transfers (like Anthony Eyanson), or spent most of college in the bullpen (like Mason Morris). I tend to view aspects of prospects’ skill sets that are shrouded or underdeveloped for some reason as positives. If two pitchers look exactly the same except one started for three years at a big school and the other is a Division-II guy who has never been exposed to the tools of modern development, I want the second guy. These pitchers have something like that going for them.
Freaky College Outfielders
The three center field prospects ranked no. 82-84 (Indiana’s Korbyn Dickerson, George Mason’s James Quinn-Irons, and Southern Miss’ Jake Cook) all have rare tools for college players and could have huge ceilings if they clear some developmental hurdles. Dickerson has plus power and speed, but his swing looks long and unplayable at times. It’s purely a visually identifiable issue that takes a certain amount of experience (mostly getting similar hitters wrong and learning from the mistake) to identify. Cook is a converted pitcher who might be the fastest player in the draft. Quinn-Irons is a 6-foot-5 small-school hitter with some of the best raw power in the draft, and he posted plus contact rates even though his swing is also a mess.
On the Top-of-the-Class Guys
I think Liam Doyle and Ethan Holliday are freaky enough to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. I’ve written about my concerns regarding Holliday’s swing and showcase performance, and they remain. Druw Jones had similar warning flags when he was in high school, but he didn’t have this level of physicality and bat speed. The risk I associate with Holliday’s swing and performance (go read the report for more) is the reason he’s not ranked first, but he’s too talented not to stuff.
I’ll continue working on my mock, with the aim to publish a bit before the first round kicks off. As always, I’ll be chatting during the first round, Wojing picks where I can.
Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
This draft reminds me of 2020 in the sense that there is a lot of depth but no player that I would feel comfortable drafting 1-1. Holliday’s struggles against better pitching seem like an enormous red flag regardless of his raw power.
I will co-sign all of that, and add that it was Eric who convinced me that Ethan Holliday should not be considered an elite prospect for that reason. Totally scary prospect even if he’s a good one overall.
I’m sure he’ll get this question many times in the chat, but how did he see enough *after* the showcase stuff to bump up Ethan Holliday from like a 45/45+ to a 55?
Yeah I am curious about this as well. Holliday’s raw power is great, but are we talking a 35 hit tool in reality here which would eat away at game power?
He said in a podcast that it didn’t seem like there was anything Holliday could do to change his mind, that the showcase stuff is the last chance to show what you can do against top prep pitching. I can see moving Holliday up to a 50 due to upside, but I don’t like him at 55 at all.
A similar thing happened before the season with Kristian Campbell bumping up to FV 60 despite obvious red flags. I pay more attention to the writeups than the numbers, but I have noticed some questionable changes lately.
He re-ranked a bunch of dudes during spring training because of their spring training performance specifically. It was wild, to me.
Especially since Campbell was awful during the spring both at the plate and in the field.
Woohoo excited to get the update even if quite late in the process. Obviously not deep into going through the update yet, but the contrasting opinion and in my view much more realistic take is what makes Eric’s analysis so much better.
It’s amazing how much better this is than anything else out there. There’s some major process issues to work out because there it is unlikely any of us can read everything before the draft starts but the quality is, as usual, top notch.
Seconding this. Programming issues aside it’s the best prospect content there is.
My appreciation to the Fangraphs prospect writers and editors for getting this out. It’s a big effort.
Thanks Eric. I appreciate the mock coming as close as possible to draft start, more chance of actual info not just speculation
What happened with the draft content this week? Eric catch the man flu?
I assume at some point next week Eric and the editors are going to get together and come up with a statement about it, but I think it is super clear that this was *not* the plan.
Fair enough, but it’s also kind of bonkers to complain about not getting yet one more mock full of guesswork 15 minutes after Eric published independent scouting on the top 150 draft prospects.
I mean, it’s pretty clear to me which of those is incredibly valuable analysis and which borders on clickbait.
I don’t care about the mock draft at this point, there’s a window of time when a mock draft is useful. It’s probably between “five weeks before” and “five days before.” Anything before that is irrelevant because most teams don’t have a clue, and anything that’s half a week from the draft is so close we might as well just wait and see. If mock drafts are a casualty of needing to prioritize the scouting reports, so be it.
But I think there are clearly some major issues with how this is all set up when over 100 new scouting blurbs with tool grades are all dropped on one day. There’s no way all of this should have been released at one time the day of the draft. Aside from the college postseason there’s not much new from June 1 to mid-July, and obviously some of this was done well beforehand.
If I’m being optimistic, which is not in my nature (hence the username) but I’m trying to be better, I’m thinking that if they posted “Draft Week” on the main page and then didn’t post the good stuff until the day of they know that this didn’t work out the way they wanted. And one would hope they would take that issue seriously.
The obvious answer to why this didn’t work–and I hope David and Meg and eventually Eric understand this–is that the team lists stretching on into the middle of the season makes it impossible to get other things done in a timely manner during it. The advantage of doing team lists in January is that there isn’t much new information from September-January, so you can write up all the data that was created between April and August. But in February you suddenly have to see people in Spring Training, and then the minor league games start, and the college season starts, and you have to watch all these things and get updates on the prospects there. That’s all way more intense than the Arizona Fall League and sourcing reports from winter ball. There has to be a way for Eric to get the team lists out before the season starts, otherwise there will be more of this.
I don’t disagree with any of that, and maybe there’s not a more appropriate place to make that point, but riibett’s tone felt really incongruous to me.
It’s obvious that EL has perfectionist / completist tendencies, and it’s almost as obvious that those same issues that inconveniently delay the publications are a huge factor in why his analysis is deeper and more original than pretty much any other prospect guru.
I too hope that he and the editors can come up with a better process going forward, like what you’ve suggested here and elsewhere. But if the choice is for FG to maintain the status quo or reduce the depth in order to fix the schedule, I pick the status quo and it’s not close.
I actually prefer the mock drafts that come out much closer to the actual draft. They are at least somewhat based on real intel and not just slotting the writer’s rankings with some previous player demo preferences from that team.
The way they go about the team lists is insane to me. The ones that release during the season usually have old rankings and information and have allusions to “when I update things from their summer performance their grade will change” the moment they’re published. It’s bad. It’s not a good approach that they’ve taken since Eric came on. They need to hire someone to help him and do something to keep that person around or find someone who is less of a perfectionist in a field where being a perfectionist doesn’t come with much benefit. He’s going to be wrong about a lot of the players anyway, the level of detail he goes into with so many prospects feels incredibly wasteful.
Couldn’t agree more with your comments and those of sadtrombone. I’m not going to speculate on Eric’s psychology as a “completist” or whatnot, and I respect the integrity of his commitment. It’s more a matter of FanGraphs allowing an incredibly unprofessional process to play out year after year. If Eric L. wants to write paragraphs and paragraphs about the #42 prospect in system X, then…more power to him, but perhaps FG management should crack the whip and tell him to do a top 20 for each team during the offseason and then write to his heart delight about prospects 20+ during the season. Or something…but the current system is just bizarre.
They do keep hiring people. And teams keep stealing them. It’s the “problem” with hiring qualified help
You really need to stop. So sad.
Very sad, it’s in the username
Honest advertising deserves a thumbs up.
I don’t think there’s a reason to downvote, as the published schedule shows that something went awry. I hope there was no sickness or real life issue involved and that it was simply a matter of being too busy.
Yeah I love Eric’s work and I’m obviously willing to deal with the issues to get to read his takes on prospects. But this was a horribly managed draft week and I think an explanation for it is in order if only for transparency purposes for paying subscribers.
I too love Eric’s work. But I do wish Fangraphs would be a little more receptive to what it’s members want. I think everyone wants more timely prospect coverage. And while the depth of coverage is great and insanely thorough … I’m not sure it’s the right path for 1-2 person prospect team. There were 33 45FV or higher prospects and 71 40+FV draft prospects. Those are the prospects readers most care about (and the most impactful) and it would have been great to get those updates published earlier instead of waiting for write-ups on all 150+ prospects thru the 35+ tier to be complete before publishing anything.
Said another way, per the prospect values on the Fangraphs farm system rankings page, 35+/40 prospects are worth 500k-2M. Would FG ever write so much about a guy signing a league minimum deal or being DFA? I think this logic applies to the team prospect updates too.
This evaluation of Jamie Arnold lines up much more closely with my thoughts on him. Sounds like he could go as high as 5 in the draft to the Cards which would be an obvious over-draft.
I’m not as big of a fan of Anderson either though he is likely still a top 10 talent. I actually prefer Bremner as an SP behind Doyle. Doyle’s stuff is freakish but unsure on how well he will hold up as a SP. The upside is there though.
I really like Seth Hernandez over all the college guys though and would have him as the best pitcher. He is an incredible athlete with 2 legit ++ pitches. The upside there is so great and I wouldn’t doubt he could move fairly quickly and be pitching in the bigs within 3 years. I typically am not a fan of HS pitchers so I didn’t expect to like Hernandez.
I previously had them ranked Doyle, Arnold, Anderson. I think after reading Anderson’s writeup I would put Arnold and Anderson (50) at the same level behind Doyle (55). An 80 fastball, 60 slider, and 55 changeup is a potential league ace if he stays healthy, which he probably won’t but that’s a hazard of pitching in general. Both Anderson and Arnold have a couple plus secondaries and a fastball that plays up due to the delivery.
I think I’d put Hernandez, Witherspoon, and Bremner in the next (45+) bucket. Hernandez’s upside is great but I think I would lean towards Witherspoon and Bremner since the track record of high schoolers who sit 97 is not great. Not sure about Marcus Phillips.
Out of the position players, I’m the highest by far on Arquette. He is the freak to me there. Huge frame with 70 grade raw power. If you wanted to really dream on his upside, something toward Elly De La Cruz would be his top end outcome to me.
Holliday is an obvious freak as well, but I have concerns about his hit tool holding up against big league pitchers. The raw power is for real though, but given Arquette looks to be a fringe SS with a better hit tool, I see Arquette as my #1 hitter.
Looking at the tool evals of Carlson and Willits, I would think Carlson would be the more highly rated of the two. Eric has Willits and Carlson both at a 60, but I think Carlson looks at least a half grade better to me. Carlson then has more power upside and I think that 15 grade game power beats out a 10 hit tool diff for sure for me.
I’m not as big on Cunningham. Hit tools are very difficult to project. Maybe I am just scared off of smaller HS 2B with ++ hit tools because of Termarr. If he was a true SS in my eyes, maybe I would be higher.
I think Carlson, Willits, and Arquette are all in the same tier for me.
I feel really strongly that Carlson is getting nitpicked too much. Scouts are saying that he might not be able to hit for power and average, that he might have to pick. But I don’t care. If he somehow does get to both, he looks like Troy Tulowitzki. If he manages to hit for average (but not power) then he looks like John Valentin, and if he gets game power (but not average) he looks like JJ Hardy. If neither one develops, he looks like Zack Cozart. When you’re a 60 or 65 fielder at shortstop with a 70 arm your floor and ceiling are both super high.
I like Willits has some special attributes. He’s probably not Jimmy Rollins, but it’s not a super crazy comparison (except on the longevity, which almost no one has). I think his middle-range outcome looks a lot like Erick Aybar, who is still a really good player.
I don’t think Arquette sticks at shortstop, but I think he’s got a pretty high floor. Troy Glaus is the guy he reminds me of if everything clicks, with Todd Frazier as a middle-range outcome, and Alec Bohm as a lower-end outcome.
I feel like I’m talking myself into putting Carlson and Arquette above Willits. Holliday, to me, is probably Kyle Seager if everything clicks, with Moustakas and Pedro Alvarez (hopefully with better defense) as a middle-range outcome. Kayson Cunningham is more in the Kolten Wong range for me, but I think there’s decent chance of him looking more like Jeff McNeil. Clearly a cut below the others, though.
I’m not in the prospecting side, just mostly here reading for fun. But I do appreciate how you manage to consistently get a lot of Aybar references in. For the love of the game.
You know about the hero with a thousand faces? Erick Aybar is one of the faces, one of the many incarnations of the shortstop who handles his business without standing out.
This seems like the obvious year to cut a deal at the top. IMO Doyle is #1 for me, and then maybe Carlson, with Anderson, Arnold, Willits, Holliday, and Arquette are all in one big jumbled pile. But if you have concerns about Doyle and Carlson, and clearly some analysts other than Eric do, this is probably the time to strike a deal. I don’t see an Adley Rutschman type prospect here, I see a lot of 50s and a ton of possible targets for overslot deals.
I appreciate Eric’s willing to go out on a limb with guys like Murf Gray and not just parrot MLB Pipeline and the industry consensus. This gives us a differing perspective on some of these guys and helps explain some of the “head scratching” picks that teams might make on Day 1.
There’s something to be said for a guy who makes contact on all the balls he’s supposed to and looks like he’ll have plus raw and game power.
I went to go look at MLB.com’s scouting report and they are really down on his swing. But Eric is almost always tougher on weird looking swings than anyone else, so it’s hard for me to say he’s not paying attention to it.
Draft chat later today?
Super thankful for the effort. Want that to be full stop.
The above said and completely true, I also have to say, the draft starts in like an hour. You simply can’t be in the draft and prospect game and having zero updates between like February and the few hours before the actual draft starts. That can’t be a controversial opinion.
I get that there is low accuracy on mocks before now. Fine.
Eric is leaning on industry sources to give updates. Fine.
But there has to be something done to avoid a repeat of this happening again. There has been almost literally nothing draft related before now and that’s supposed to be a thing this site does now.
It doesn’t even look like the mock will even come out at all at this point and certainly this hasn’t been a “draft week” of any sort.
FanGraphs needs to hire another Eric if he simply doesn’t have the capacity to do it all (I certainly wouldn’t).
I guess I will be a bit of a contrarian and say; mock drafts in all sports are kind of silly. The NFL is particularly guilty of having reporters doing mock drafts with players two years off and it’s like… why? Prospects in all sports are speculation. A mock draft is like speculation of speculation. It’s two degrees separate from reality now. I could do without them in every sport. I get all sports are kind of expectation and hope but the guy I might want them to draft could suck anyways. I’d rather spend my hopefulness energy on the actual games, since they matter.
So I could go without them.
If I have one thing – and look, I LOVE how detailed prospect coverage is here, it is the best, easily – but having teams list rolling out well past the halfway point of the season is tough. I know they are living lists and they get updates as the season goes. I appreciate that. But still. Have to imagine dynasty players are annoyed. And I would be annoyed if my team was one of the last ones rolled out.
A world where we get this detail and more timeliness would rule. I would certainly be willing to pay more. But I know it’s not that easy.
I copied and pasted one of the larger team lists into a word doc and the word count was absolutely bonkers. And yeah I love that. But that is an ungodly undertaking for every team.
As a dynasty player who drafts in February, I would love it if all team lists were done by then. But I also have to say, offseason lists are absolutely done to death because every outlet is doing them. I see people saying we could learn less about a team’s #35 prospect if it means the lists come out faster, but when I am looking up a guy midseason who has popped up, there is often only one place on the Internet that has written that player up. You guessed where. So I dunno…