2026 Top 100 Prospects

Griffin is not only clearly the best prospect in baseball, but one of the top handful of prospects ever evaluated during the current era of FanGraphs scouting, which goes back a little over 10 years. He’s a franchise-altering entity whose talent rivals that of Bobby Witt Jr., a young, level-headed Hanley Ramirez, or a faster Carlos Correa. The rate at which Griffin has become this good is astonishing. His supreme physical gifts were evident in high school, when Griffin was a turbocharged power-and-speed prospect with potential contact issues and an unclear defensive fit. In his first pro season, Griffin put every question to bed, made every aspect of his profile crystal clear, and slashed .333/.415/.527 while climbing three levels to Double-A Altoona, where he had a .960 OPS during about a month of play.

If you just watched all the players get off the bus, you’d know Griffin was the most talented one. He’s built like Eagles wide receiver A.J. Brown, at such a muscular 6-foot-4 that you can see Griffin’s lats bursting through his jersey from space. The added strength has allowed him to shorten up his swing and crush fastballs with greater regularity than he did in high school, including to his pull-side. He posted a roughly average contact rate in 2025, but his hit tool is going to play above that because of the concussive force with which he strikes the baseball. Griffin has become this strong without sacrificing any of his blazing speed, which helped him steal 65 bases in 78 attempts last year. He’ll show you the occasional 4.10 bolt from home to first, churning up a rooster tail of dirt behind him as he bounds down the line, like a human speedboat.

This sort of strength and speed combination is not normal, and when players do have tools like this, they tend to be outfielders. In Griffin’s case, there was a stretch when it looked like he’d be one. Though he played shortstop on his high school team, he wasn’t polished enough to play there with Team USA or during select high school events, when he was often relegated to right field. The progress he has made on defense is probably the most stunning and impressive aspect of his development thus far, because he is now a plus shortstop defender. At his size and speed, Griffin makes the baseball field look small. No grounder seems out of reach, no throw too difficult to make. Some plays that great big league shortstops need a ton of effort and athleticism to complete, Griffin makes look easy. His footwork around the second base bag can be a little awkward at times, but he’s nimble enough to find a way to get the ball to first even when he’s off balance. Griffin got sporadic reps in center field throughout the 2025 season, too, and he also looks good there, though not nearly as ready for prime time as he does at shortstop. At his size, there’s a possibility that he’ll eventually need to move off short, but that isn’t happening any time soon, and Griffin is going to be really good there in the meantime. This is a complete player, an absolute monster who might make Paul Skenes the second-best guy on his team in short order, who might one day be mentioned in Pittsburgh in the same breath as Mean Joe Greene if they can find a way to get an extension done, and whose daily impact can help return the Pirates to long-awaited glory.

Made torched the 2024 DSL with one of the league’s more cartoonish all-time stat lines: .331/.458/.554, with 21 extra-base hits in 51 games. His underlying TrackMan data was even more absurd — 90% in-zone contact, 89% overall contact, 15% chase rate, 108 mph max exit velo, 104 mph EV90, 47% hard-hit rate — especially when you consider Made’s age. Some of these marks are comfortably two standard deviations above the big league average. At the start of 2025, Made ranked as the 38th-best prospect in baseball, the second-highest ranking ever at FanGraphs for an international signee who hadn’t yet played in the U.S. (Luis Robert Jr., who was slightly older, ranked 21st overall in 2018 after playing in the 2017 DSL). In just a couple months of stateside pro ball, he began to climb even higher, and he ended the year as the second overall prospect in the sport.

Though Made’s underlying TrackMan data from 2025 wasn’t as nutty as his DSL debut (76% contact, 81% in-zone, 105 mph EV90, 42% hard-hit), it was still incredible for a kid who was sent to full-season ball at age 17. Made is an incredibly talented hitter with eruptive bat speed. The verve and explosion with which his body whips around like the head of an owl throughout his swing is not normal, and what’s nuttier is that he’s capable of it from both sides of the plate. He can impact the baseball with lift in much of the zone (including when he’s crowded around his hands), and his swing has a gorgeous finish when he takes his best cuts. This is as electric a swinger and athlete as there is in the minors, and all of that talent is weaponized by Made’s plate skills and feel for contact, which is great for a switch-hitter his age. Though he lacks the overt physical projection of 6-foot-3 shortstops like Corey Seager or Carlos Correa, Made likely isn’t done growing, and might have something approaching their power at peak thanks to his incredible bat speed, which might end up in Robinson Canó/Ketel Marte territory.

On defense, Made has unpolished talent but special long-term ceiling. His throwing accuracy needs to improve, but his acrobatic range and athleticism allow him to make some incredible plays, especially when he has to throw across his body. His throwing accuracy needs polish. On several routine plays, his tactile feel for releasing the baseball is poor; he’ll pronate over the top of one and short hop it to the first baseman, while airmailing the next. This is absolutely something to monitor, but it isn’t a physical shortcoming and is likely to be cleaned up with reps. Made has a shot to be a five-tool player where everything is plus or better, a franchise-altering talent who might debut before he’s 20.

McLean enters 2026 as the game’s top pitching prospect, the latest milestone in his meteoric rise from a talented two-way player at Oklahoma State to the front of the Mets rotation. Coming off of a 2024 season in which he posted respectable but mediocre numbers in Double-A, McLean worked his way into the big leagues by August and dominated from there. In 48 innings across eight starts, he posted a 2.06 ERA and 2.97 FIP with 57 strikeouts while surrendering only four long balls. Remember, this is a third-round pick, a guy who hit more than he pitched in college. The stuff was good and he was a real prospect heading into last year’s breakout campaign, but the idea that he was a prospective No. 1 starter was at least one bridge too far.

Not anymore. Last year, McLean learned how to harness his precocious raw spin into a couple of wipeout breaking balls, keying his transformation from interesting arm into frontline starter. He’s now got just about all you look for in a no. 1. He has arm strength, arsenal depth, multiple out pitches, elite movement, and good control (especially considering how violently his ball moves), and he even comes relatively stretched out after firing 90 or more pitches in each of his big league starts. Everybody has warts: You could ask for better fastball shape or a little more natural deception here, but the overwhelming quality of everything else does more than enough to shore up these comparatively minor deficiencies.

More impressive than the components is how they work together. McLean’s arsenal bends every direction, and he has the command to tunnel and sequence those pitches to their full effect. Righties in particular will have a hard time with his bread-and-butter sweeper-sinker mix: His fastball has plus velocity and late life, while the sweeper is firm and razor sharp. Guess wrong and you’ll look foolish; guess right and you may not hit it anyway. And of course, there’s still the curve to worry about, an 80-grade hammer that nobody could do a thing with last year.

And yet McLean still has paths forward. The 24-year-old has thrown only 332 innings since high school and, good health willing, there’s a lot of runway left to develop his command, find another inch or two of vertical break on the four-seamer, refine his changeup, find more ways to sequence — to learn how to pitch essentially. It’s a scary proposition given the weapons at hand, and one that justifies ranking this pitcher, with all the inherent volatility in the job, so high on our list.

Basallo has been a top 10 overall prospect in baseball since the 2023-24 offseason, a power-hitting kaiju catcher with freakish all-fields pop, sufficient bat-to-ball ability to weaponize it, and plus-plus raw arm strength. Though he has some flaws on both sides of the ball, Basallo has always performed as a young-for-the-level player, sometimes amid injury. Still basically the age of a college draft prospect, Basallo first reached Double-A as an 18-year-old back in 2023 and is a career .283/.366/.498 hitter in the minors. In 2025, he slashed an absurd .270/.377/.589 at Triple-A Norfolk and earned a mid-August call-up, which he languished through (he hit .165). He signed an eight-year, $67 million extension not long after making the majors.

Basallo’s power is special for a player of any position, let alone a catcher. He generates plus-plus bat speed even though his swing has been toned down and no longer features any kind of leg kick. He’s dangerous all over the strike zone, and sometimes even outside of it, capable of golfing out low pitches to his pull side or driving high fastballs the opposite way. His 57% hard-hit rate in the minors last year would have ranked fifth among all qualified big leaguers, and Basallo might have another gear in him as he matures into his prime. That said, a propensity to chase can make Basallo frustrating to watch for weeks at a time. He was swinging less often at bad breaking balls in 2025, but he still chased fastballs at a 40% clip, roughly twice the big league average chase against heaters. While this tendency will almost certainly make Basallo fight through ice cold stretches throughout a season, his talent is too explosive for him not to be a productive player, especially if he continues to develop on defense and can play perhaps the most valuable position on the field.

Injuries have limited Basallo’s time behind the dish and are probably a big reason why he’s underdeveloped as a catcher. A stress fracture (2024) and elbow inflammation (2025) at the start of each of the last two years limited his early-season reps and, for a while, nerfed Basallo’s arm strength. He’s had reps at first base (relevant given Adley Rutchsman’s presence) and DH, but he caught on back-to-back days with increasing frequency later in 2025 (and one time caught three days in a row). Because Basallo is so enormous (he’s still somehow officially listed at 180 pounds even though he’s more like 250), his exchange takes a while to complete, but he has plus-plus pure arm strength and ranked fifth among big league catchers who faced at least 10 stolen base attempts last year with an 83.9 mph average throwing velocity. His receiving isn’t good yet, but it isn’t so terrible that it damns him permanently to first base. His ball blocking (at least with his body) was better in 2025, but Basallo still has well below-average hands when he has to pick short hops in the dirt.

It’s often big, physical catchers like this who develop the strength and durability to play the position 100-plus times per year down the line, and we expect this of Basallo enough to feel comfortable projecting him as a primary catcher, though his hands are bad enough that he’ll always probably be a little below average back there. Ultimately, such a minor blemish won’t detract that much from what should be franchise-altering impact, as Basallo has the skill set of a lefty-hitting Gary Sánchez and is a potential 40-homer catcher with a huge arm.

It’s far too early to say, but there’s a chance that Detroit selecting McGonigle and Max Clark in the first round of the 2023 draft will wind up being a single-night turning point in the franchise’s trajectory. And while Clark is an excellent prospect in his own right, it’s actually the guy they took second who headlines a deep group of Tigers prospects. Built like a stocky, scaled-down version of Luka Dončić, McGonigle has a case as the best pure hitter in the minor leagues. Short-levered with plus bat speed, elite hand-eye coordination, and a great approach, he’s the total package at the plate. As you’d expect from someone with a 47% hard-hit rate, McGonigle is able to barrel all pitches in all quadrants. He’ll track and line a back door slider to left in one at-bat, and then hammer heat on the inside corner out to right in the next. He’s difficult to pitch around because he’s both selective on pitches off the plate and aggressive when he gets a ball he wants to drive.

He’s raked since he signed, and he found another gear last season when he torched every level. It’s tough to pick our favorite of his stops. Perhaps it was when he notched a 215 wRC+ at High-A, or when he bashed 12 homers with more walks then strikeouts in 46 games following a promotion to Double-A. Or maybe it was the .362/.500/.710 line he produced in 19 Arizona Fall League games, a run during which he was a mouthy, ultra-competitive spitfire in a league many players sleepwalk through. You can’t really go wrong — they were all excellent.

Shortstop defense is the only blemish here. McGonigle has soft hands and can transfer the ball quickly, but he often doesn’t, and his arm and range look light; he also doesn’t have the kind of frame or build you’d project to get any more nimble with maturity. The Tigers have mostly had him run out to short thus far, but he played third base a dozen times in the Fall League, where he was spotted doing infield work with Alan Trammell. He looked comfortable making throws at third with his body moving toward first. He position may be dictated more by Detroit’s needs than McGonigle’s best fit in a vacuum. Regardless of where he plays, McGonigle offers a great blend of a high floor with star upside. Nobody is a lock to hit, but guys with this kind of visual report and statistical performance at the ripe old age of 20 are as likely to do it as anyone. McGonigle projects as a middle-of-the-order bat, and he should be ready for the big leagues by summertime.

De Vries was unanimously viewed as the best prospect in the 2024 international signing class, a potential do-everything, switch-hitting infielder with power from both sides of the plate. He signed for just over $4 million, which is about what you’d expect from a top-of-the-market player. Same as they have with other of their recent high-profile prospects, the Padres wasted no time in pushing De Vries’ promotion pace; most players his age are in the DSL and the domestic complex leagues during their first two seasons, while De Vries broke 2025 camp at High-A Fort Wayne. He was dealt to the Athletics at last year’s deadline as part of the Mason Miller trade and instantly became the A’s top farmhand. After more than holding his own as an 18-year-old in High-A, De Vries delivered a mouthwatering cap to his 2025 season in Midland. In 103 plate appearances, he hit .281/.359/.551 with five homers and only 20 strikeouts.

While he’ll likely return to Double-A to begin the 2026 campaign, the pace at which De Vries has conquered the minor leagues thus far gives him a very real shot to debut before he turns 20. De Vries is a plus athlete, twitchy with good body control. He has a quick bat and a lofted stroke from both sides of the plate, with perhaps a little more verve and bat control from the left side. His exit velocities are more fringy or average than above at this point, which isn’t unexpected because — it is worth periodically reiterating — he was 18 years old last season and has plenty of physical development ahead. His hands are quick enough to make contact in all parts of the zone, and if his last week of action in Midland is any indication, he has home run power from line to line. It’s a little scary to say this about a young shortstop with a good approach and a decent contact rate, but plus in-game power is not out of the question here.

De Vries is less polished defensively. He has sufficient range and arm strength for the job, but the glove and throwing accuracy are both a work in progress. There are times when he’ll make instinctual plays, like getting rid of a ball with lightning speed and one-hopping a throw to first to just beat a fast runner, and others when he doesn’t make a play you’d expect a big league shortstop to handle routinely. Again, he’s a teenager. A’s fans should be thrilled with last summer’s trade, as it looks like they have yet another young positional star to build around.

In a normal year, Clark would have been a 1:1 candidate out of high school. In the 2023 draft, with Paul Skenes, Wyatt Langford, and Dylan Crews lurking around, he had to settle for third overall and the draft’s fourth-largest bonus at nearly $7.7 million. Even as that class has already produced multiple stars and nearly a dozen big leaguers, it still looks like Detroit chose well. And after hitting .271/.403/.432 across stints at High- and Double-A, Clark enters 2026 with a shot to debut later this summer.

Clark has a mature blend of tools and skills that belie his young age. His feel to hit stands out, and has since he was a high school sophomore. He’s a quick rotator with lightning-fast hands and a great ability to track the ball. He has a quick bat with a level stroke that facilitates contact up and down the zone, and he’s strong enough to pull his hands in and drive pitches on the inside corner. Clark has grown into more power than we forecast last year, comfortably average already, and at this point is likely to grow into more. He could be a 20-homer guy at maturity and if he falls a little short, the reliability with which he squares up the ball should still lead to plenty of line drive doubles and triples. A good approach helps all of this play up. It’s perhaps a tad passive, but Clark doesn’t swing at garbage, and he walked more than he struck out last season.

Defensively, Clark’s 70 speed facilitates above-average to plus range. His reads and routes are still maturing, but the overall package is that of an above-average outfielder, with a chance for more if he really takes to the finer points of the job. Ultimately, no one aspect of Clark’s game stands out because he’s so good across the board. He’s skilled on both sides of the ball, he has a bunch of ways to impact the game, and he’s had the production to match his quick ascent through the minors. He’s been preparing for the highest level for a long time now — he has a crew that travels with him everywhere and takes care of his social media accounts — and it won’t be long until he and his entourage reach Motown.

It almost feels silly ranking Yesavage, who just threw 40 innings of high quality (and higher visibility) baseball last September and October. He’s rookie eligible, though, so we can quickly recap what we all watched him do.

Toronto selected Yesavage with the 20th pick of the 2024 draft, and you can bet more than a couple of teams are kicking themselves for passing on East Carolina’s ace. He was practically unhittable across 50.2 innings split between both A-ball levels and then kept missing bats in subsequent promotions up the ladder. He then struck out 39 hitters in 27.2 postseason innings, and turned in dominant outings against the Yankees and Dodgers on the biggest stage. Just 22 years old, he’s arguably the best pitcher on the Blue Jays already.

There’s a special kind of joy watching a pitcher whose entire approach boils down to “here’s my best, I bet you can’t hit it,” particularly when they’re correct. While he has a slider, Yesavage primarily succeeds by tunneling his fastball and splitter. The fastball has huge outlier traits — 20-plus inches of vertical break on average from an extremely high and over-the-top release, not to mention above-average velocity — and the split is an 80 that just melts out of the zone. Hitters have to guess which one is coming, and even when they get it right, the movement on those pitches is often enough to avoid hard contact. He’s going to walk people and will give up a dinger on the occasional hanger, but he’s one of the hardest guys in baseball to make contact against, and that gives him a lot of margin for error.

Like any hurler, Yesavage is subject to all of the things that can happen to pitchers. He could get hurt; he could lose velocity. Or, if we want to stick to things more pertinent to Yesavage in particular, there’s some chance that the novelty of his attack loses some of its potency through repeated exposure. All are possible, as is the chance you get struck by lightning tomorrow; we live in an uncertain world. But Yesavage is a premier pitching prospect, and we’re treating him as such. He has a workhorse’s frame, a track record of logging innings, and monster stuff. He projects as a no. 2 and is among the handful of arms in the sport with no. 1 upside.

White has been a tantalizing projectable lefty for a minute now, and the way he looks fully realized adheres to the rule of three. First, he’s grown into a jacked 6-foot-5, 240-pound build while maintaining fluidity all the way down to a loose, and also fairly long, arm stroke. Second, he touched 100 mph this past season and held 94-97 through about 90 innings, and fashioned a shorter, harder, mid-80s version of his sweeper that carved to a 48% miss rate. Finally, he racked up 145 strikeouts across a season that saw him pitch across three levels, ending up at Triple-A, where his fastball was still whizzing by bats with major league experience. Combine that with a changeup that is firm, but that he kills a tremendous amount of spin on and also reliably locates out of danger, and White is a 21-year-old left-hander who has three pitches playing like 60s or better at Triple-A.

He also walked 10 batters in his 9.1 IP at Jacksonville at the end of the year, which is an evocative if overstated way to segue to discussing his control concerns, as a late-season back issue was a significant contributor to his shaky close to 2025. White ran a sub-10% walk rate in 2024, but got stuck in his back leg a lot throughout the past year and put a serious crimp in his delivery extension. The shorter stride is very difficult to time up with White’s longer arm action, and he was late into the firing position regularly throughout 2025 (he posted a 13.6% walk rate on the year). It’s a relatively new development rather than an intractable, long-term issue, and White’s operation is athletic enough to buy into the idea he can sync up his upper and lower halves. If he doesn’t, his stuff is still nasty enough to be a frustrating mid-rotation starter. If he does, this is the last time he’ll be on this list because he’s already primed for a mid-2026 debut.

Chandler was a two-sport, two-way high schooler who could have gone to Clemson for baseball and football. Instead, he signed for $3 million as the first pick in the 2021 third round and was developed as a two-way player for parts of two seasons before focusing on pitching beginning in 2023. Things have gone swimmingly. Chandler’s 2025 was his third consecutive 100-plus inning season and included his first big league cup of coffee, a 31.1-inning stint during which he walked just four and K’d nearly a batter per inning. He sustained a velo spike throughout the entire season, averaging 98 mph while setting a personal best for single-season innings at 131.1 total frames.

Chandler’s fastball is easily his best pitch. It plays best at the top of the zone and missed bats at a plus-plus rate in 2025. He is far from polished from a command and pitchability standpoint. His incredible arm speed helps him throw the occasional 86-90 mph plus changeup, including some that tail back over the zone to steal a strike, though many of them sail on him. His breaking ball lacks tight, nasty bite (though stuff models seem to love it) and relies on its upper-80s velocity to be effective. The ceiling on both of those pitches will be dictated by Chandler’s ability to develop a more consistent release point and command. To that end, his forecast is very positive; it’s common for pitchers with this kind of arm speed to develop better control later than their soft-tossing peers, and Chandler is the sort of athlete (both in size and mobility) who we should feel comfortable projecting on in this regard. We expect that the arc of his next several years will unfold like Hunter Greene’s career has so far.

The headliner of Seattle’s exceptional 2023 draft class, Emerson offers one of the best blends of tools and skills in all of the minor leagues. It starts with the bat, which projects plus. Emerson’s hands are fast and he’s able to direct the barrel to all quadrants of the zone. He sees spin early out of the hand and adjusts seamlessly off the fastball. His strike zone judgement is advanced. Even though he isn’t particularly big or projectable, he’s grown into average power quickly and probably has another half-gear left in him. The nitpick so far has been that Emerson tends to hit a lot of balls on the ground, but even there you can see progress: He’s showing an ability to turn on and drive fastballs in spurts, and he’s the kind of high-aptitude player who you can project to do so more often as he grows.

Defensively the arrow is up. Fully healthy from the fractured foot that sidelined him during the summer of 2024, Emerson looked much more spry at shortstop in 2025. His range was better, but he’d also progressed on some of the little things, like his footwork around the bag, getting the ball out quicker, and charging more aggressively. His ability to grow in real time is remarkable. More than once, Brendan saw him either misplay something or take an imperfect angle in a game on Tuesday, and then handle the same ball perfectly three days later. It’s this as much as anything driving the defensive projection. We’ve long been skeptical that Emerson would be able to stay at short with his size and speed, and still think there’s a good chance he needs to move to third base at some point, but for now it looks like he can be average or maybe even a tick better there.

There are plenty of good prospects — including some on this list — who divide opinion among evaluators, data darlings who appeal to analysts but not scouts, or scout favorites who leave the wonks cold. Emerson is not that kind of player. He lights up just about everything a model tends to like. Quality performance while being young for the level? Check. Demonstrable power? Yes. Great swing decisions? You know it already. Scouts also love the way this guy plays. He busts it out of the box, his head is always in the game, and he’s constantly looking for ways to take an extra base. He has several ideally calibrated characteristics: He’s confident but not cocky, fiery and competitive but not a danger to himself.

Brendan noted when Seattle’s list ran that, as a recovering creature of the Moneyball era, he’s still working through his thoughts on what it means to be “clutch,” but Emerson sure seems to have a knack for rising to the occasion in a tight spot. If you’re ever inclined to round up on a guy with intangibles or an “it” factor, he’s the player to bet on. Even if you’re not, Emerson’s ability and proximity alone warrant the top slot here. His feel to hit makes him as safe of a player as we’ll rank this year — yeah, yeah we know, nobody is a guarantee, we’re dealing in relative terms here — and there’s star upside if he learns to pull and lift regularly, as he seems to be on the cusp of doing. He’s not an electric athlete like Bobby Witt Jr., and thus perhaps not a threat to go supernova and throw down a 10-WAR season, but he projects as a guy who can rack up 3 to 4 WAR every year for a long, long time.

Wetherholt isn’t a perfect hitting prospect, but his torrid run through pro ball since a slightly surprising slide to seventh overall in the 2024 draft could get him mistaken for one. After finishing out this past season with a 10-homer, .314/.416/.562 flourish in 47 games at Triple-A, Wetherholt is a .304/.418/.487 career hitter in the pros with exactly as many walks as strikeouts (88). For a short-levered athlete who earns very high marks for his hit tool, including here, Wetherholt has some real length in his swing path, and he whiffs on in-zone heaters slightly more than the major league average. But it isn’t a flaw that he has no answer for, and a lot of his power – which has played better than his below-average top-end exit velos suggest – comes via his ability to flatten out his barrel and clear out the top rail of the zone to the right-center gap. Along with his remarkable ability to track spin, Wetherholt also has the barrel mobility to scoop backfoot breakers and stay on soft stuff low and away. As such, he winds up countering his slight fastball contact shortfall by touching an elite amount of spin, pairing it with excellent plate discipline that has seen him both run a sub-20% chase rate and swing at an above-average number of pitches over the heart of the plate.

This kind of bat would earn Wetherholt a 60 FV if he were a slam dunk at short, and his arm accuracy issues and range limitations aren’t severe enough that he should immediately move off the position, though he’s both more tightly wound and has a higher center of gravity than the average big league shortstop. But his offense makes him a candidate to break camp with the Cardinals this spring and play every day on a roster where Masyn Winn’s superlative physical tools provide a defensive present that far outstrips Wetherholt’s ceiling. The Cardinals have already tried Wetherholt at third, where his bat will certainly play even as his throwing accuracy will be a developmental focus, and at second, where it’s easier to see him playing average defense and hitting well enough to be an All-Star.

Miller became scouting famous as a high school underclassman, in part because he was old for his class (a little over 19 on draft day) and developed a bit earlier. His age and a broken wrist during his senior year contributed to his slide to the back of the first round, where the Phillies drafted him 27th overall and gave Miller just over $3 million to turn pro rather than go to Arkansas. He had a monster first full season in 2024, as he slashed .261/.366/.446 across both A-ball levels and got a shot of espresso at Reading to cap the year. His second full season started more slowly, and Miller struggled to hit for power during the first half, but he exploded after the All-Star Break and posted a .955 OPS en route to a September promotion to Lehigh Valley. He ended up slashing .264/.392/.433 on the season, hit 14 homers and 27 doubles, and stole a whopping 59 bases in 74 attempts.

Miller’s swing has been on time to pull pro pitching. His hands work in a lovely loop that create pull-side loft through the middle-in portion of the zone; it’s one of the cooler looking righty swings in the minors. This is a high-ball hitter who covers the inner half and top third of the zone with a potent contact and power blend. His hard-hit rate and peak exit velocities were both above the big league average in 2025, and Miller is a broad-shouldered kid in his early 20s and might add another half grade of power or so if he keeps getting stronger. Because he’s so geared to pull, Miller pulls off of a lot of sliders, including many that finish on the plate. His selectivity (all of his chase data, no matter the pitch type and count, was excellent in 2025) helps him hunt pitches he can pull until he’s forced to protect the outer third of the zone later in the count. Miller has been able to make an above-average rate of contact so far, but the way to beat him (locate breaking balls away from him) is clear enough that his grade here anticipates a little bit of a dip in this regard at the big league level, though his OBP skills and power are still very exciting for a potential shortstop. Fans should expect offensive output similar to what Zach Neto has been able to muster in Anaheim as Miller gets big league traction.

Miller still has some technical details to polish on the defensive end (his hands and throwing accuracy are still inconsistent), but he’s a great athlete who’ll do some acrobatic things to make tough plays around the bag or on the run. The Phillies have only ever played Miller at shortstop since signing him, and it’s the position at which he’d be the most valuable, but with Trea Turner entrenched ahead of him, it might behoove them to expand his defensive horizons in 2026 in case, be it via trade or injury, it turns out he’s needed at either second or third. Should he turn out to be a more comfortable, consistent defender at either of those positions, then a permanent move should be considered. Miller is going to be good enough at shortstop to play there, but only just so. If he can be a plus glove at second or third, that might be a better long-term fit.

Arias thrust himself onto the elite prospect map with a big 2024 season, when he hit .309 with nine homers split between the complex and Low-A. He arguably topped that performance last year, climbing three levels as a 19-year-old while hitting .278/.335/.388 and finishing at Double-A. That’s impressive for anyone, and highly encouraging for a plus shortstop defender.

Arias is a line drive shooter with a gorgeous, well-connected swing, and he’s among the toughest minor leaguers to strike out. He does so many things well at the plate: He makes elite rates of contact (88% overall, 93% in zone), tends to hit the ball hard when he connects (39% hard-hit rate), and has some of the easiest hitting mechanics you’ll see. He gets the foot down on time, lets pitches travel deep, manipulates the bat path, keeps his head still, and tracks pitches exceptionally well; you practically have to go frame by frame to find a flaw in this guy’s swing. We’ll see how much power comes; right now Arias looks like more of a singles and doubles hitter than a true power threat, similar to Royals star Maikel Garcia at the same age. Analysts and scouts are aligned here: This is a mature hitter with a good approach.

Eric dove deep on Arias’ glove last fall and persuasively argued he’s a plus defender. It’s worth reading in full — there’s accompanying video too — but the nuts and bolts are that he’s a polished and well-rounded shortstop. He ranges well to both sides, he’s a good bender who can get the ball out quickly and accurately from all angles, and he’s got a well-calibrated internal clock that keeps his operation under control unless he really needs to hurry. You’d like to see better glovework on scorchers, but that’s the kind of thing that can improve with time. Even if it doesn’t, he’s still quite good there.

Arias is among the highest-floored prospects in baseball. His defense at short and feel for contact should get him into the back of the lineup at minimum, and any additional strength or maturation in his approach could well push him to the top of the order. He doesn’t have the bat speed and physical projection combo (and therefore lacks the perceived ceiling) of the hitters in the 60-FV tier and above, but he’s just the age of a college sophomore and should grow into at least a little more power. For now, Arias projects as a low-variance, above-average everyday shortstop who is on track to debut anywhere from the very end of 2027 to early 2029, depending on Boston’s needs at the position and the way Arias’ physicality matures during that span.

The son of speedy former Angels outfielder Reggie Willits, Eli was originally going to graduate in 2026, but reclassified to 2025 and was still 17 (and a half) on draft day, when the Nationals made him the first overall pick and signed him for a whopping $8.2 million. Willits was assigned to Low-A Fredericksburg starting in late August and comported himself well there for the final few weeks of the season, slashing .300/.397/.360. He turned 18 during the Winter Meetings.

Willits’ youth makes it easier to project that he’ll add relevant strength to his medium frame over the course of the next several years, and if that comes to fruition, we’re talking about a true five-tool player. His track record as an amateur hitter was outstanding and he’s a great shortstop defender — power is arguably the only piece of his prospect puzzle that’s currently missing. Willits’ swing looks like Colt Emerson’s did three years ago; he creates big hip and hand separation, and his wrists turn over in that classically explosive, baseball-y way through contact. To say Willits was overwhelmed by pro velocity would be an overstatement (he hit .300), but again similar to Emerson, his spray chart against fastballs does not include pull-side contact; he was a little too late against A-ball fastballs for that. This is sometimes a warning sign that a hitter’s swing is too long for big league success, but in this case we think it’s simply the result a 17-year-old hitter going from seeing varsity pitching to hanging out and waiting for the draft, and then facing pros several years his senior. Willits has plus hit tool projection, and we like the quality of his hitting hands enough to project nearly average raw power for him even though he’s a smaller-framed athlete.

And we don’t want Willits to get too big, because excellent shortstop defense is a big part of his star-level forecast. He’s a plus infield athlete with great range and body control, and he made some sensational plays in the hole to his right after the draft, adjusting well to the speed of the pro game. His arm is fine for shortstop, and he’s one of the few players in the minors who makes us wish we still did present and future throw grades, because he’s young and athletic enough to justify projection on a skill that tends to be static for most players. Willits’ defense gives him a relatively high floor, and his feel for contact makes him a good bet to be an everyday shortstop eventually, but his profile’s X-factor is his power, which could make him a franchise-altering star with sufficient growth.

Eldridge signed for just shy of $4 million in the 2023 draft, an unusually large bonus for a high schooler widely expected to wind up at first base. It’s the kind of investment teams only make in outlier talents, which is the case here. At a supple 6-foot-7, Eldridge has immense power and enough hit skill to think he could be a 40-homer guy at maturity. After overwhelming the low minors, he continued to hit at Double- and Triple-A last summer and received a call-up as San Francisco attempted to cover for Dominic Smith’s injury amidst a desperate bid for a Wild Card berth down the stretch.

Long-levered power hitters often swing and miss plenty, and while Eldridge is no exception, he mostly kept it in check until his big league cameo. His bat path is inherently long, but he’s got big bat speed and is direct to the ball. His cut is ferocious and lofted, and when he gets ahold of one out front, it goes a long way. He’s already got plus power and projects to develop more as he fully fills out. The strikeouts mask it somewhat, but Eldridge also has hit skill. He can adjust off the fastball, he has a good understanding of the zone, and he’s aggressive enough to pull the trigger on most of the balls in his wheelhouse. Spin, particularly from the left side, has been a challenge for him thus far, but he’s shown an ability to barrel it in the zone sometimes. Some swing-and-miss on sliders is just the cost of doing business here.

Eldridge looks like he needs more seasoning. It’s not just the big league struggles either, as he ran a 27.9% strikeout rate in Double-A, and 30.8% in Triple-A. The big lefty produced alongside, but it’s worth a repeat engagement; there’s nothing wrong with letting him dominate the upper levels in 2026, and a steady diet of PCL breaking balls feels like an appropriate developmental challenge. Longer-levered guys often develop slowly, and it’s amazing that he’s this far along even with a few blemishes. It’s also possible that the issue dissipates somewhat now that he’s fully healthy (he had surgery to remove a bone spur in his wrist this winter).

Even as just a fair defender at first base, Eldridge is one of the top position player prospects in the game. Elite power tends to play to some degree if there’s any hit ability at all, and Eldridge’s ability to make adjustments and use the field gives us confidence he’s no one-trick pony. He projects as a middle-of-the-order thumper.

De Paula’s combination of present raw power and long-term physical projection give him a great shot to develop 40-homer raw power at peak, though it’s debatable whether his hitting skills are the kind that will allow him to actualize all of that raw thump in games. So far his raw power (De Paula turned 20 in the middle of the 2025 season, and his measureable pop is already a shade above the big league average) has played down in games, and he slashed .260/.412/.399 in 150 High-A games between 2024 and 2025 (a hamstring issue snuffed out his would-be Fall League stint). One might assume some of that was due to the miserable early-season weather in the Midwest League, but De Paula’s slug was well under .400 throughout the middle two thirds of the season. One reason for that is that De Paula’s best, most dangerous swings are grooved in the heart of the zone. He struggles to get on top of fastballs up and away from him, and he’s limited to much a lesser quality of contact when pitchers execute on the outer edge and force him to poke contact the opposite way.

The good news is that De Paula’s hands are strong enough to turn that oppo contact into singles and doubles already, and he’s only going to get stronger. This is a strapping, 6-foot-3 left-handed hitter with the broad, square-shouldered frame of a Ja(y)son Heyward or Werth. When combined with his projected pure strength, his soft skills as a hitter should help his hit tool play better than his 40-grade bat control. De Paula has remarkable breaking ball recognition and plate discipline. He rarely expands (including with two strikes) and will hunt pitches he can drive early in counts, just shy of two standard deviations better than the big league average in terms of his chase rates even when we split them by pitch type and count. He’s comfortable taking awkward swings if it means spoiling tough two-strike pitches (he cuts his stride down with two strikes), and running deeper and deeper counts to grind pitchers into dust. Big lefty power and OBP skills tend to pair well together, and in De Paula’s case, we expect they’ll more than cover up his blemishes (the power playing down a tad, vulnerability to high heaters, poor defense) and allow him to be an impact corner outfielder.

Tolle is an XL southpaw whose fastball had the 2024 draft’s most deceptive secondary traits, enough that he was generating plus-plus miss at TCU even though he was only sitting 91. Now Tolle is pumping 95-96 mph as a starter (and harder than that in relief), and his fastball has developed into one of the most dominant pitches in pro baseball. It put him in the express lane to Boston, where he debuted toward the end of his first pro season; combined, he threw 108 innings with 152 strikeouts against 31 walks.

The miss rate on Tolle’s fastball in 2025 was nearly twice the big league average at just north of 40%, a result of both the added velocity and a refined style of attack, as he now elevates his heater more than he did in college. His size (he’s a long-armed 6-foot-6), his ability to power way down he mound (he generates over seven-and-a half feet of extension), and the violence of his delivery help cloak his fastball, and its uphill angle is incredibly difficult for hitters to match. Though aspects of his mechanics are kind of hideous looking, Tolle’s head is quite still throughout his delivery, he clearly has the size and build of a durable starter, and he’s thrown consistent strikes with his fastball for the better part of the last four years.

Tolle’s secondary pitches are still a work in progress. A mid-80s cutter/slider serves as an in-zone offering to set up his elevated fastballs, though it lacks nasty bite, and Tolle creates fair action on a tailing changeup that tends to finish high. But these may as well be entirely new pitches; he barely threw his changeup in college, and his slider is now about four ticks harder than it was at TCU. Though neither of them is great right now, they’ve trended in a positive direction in a fairly short period of time, and either of them might still have another gear. We still consider Tolle to have some relief risk, but we think that if he does end up in the bullpen, he’ll be an utterly dominant closer simply by leaning on his fastball, good enough that we’d still feel comfortable having this kind of grade on him. If his secondary stuff keeps evolving, then he’s going to be a regular All-Star.

The prep pool is where teams traditionally go to find outlier physicality, but the Cardinals arguably landed the pitcher with the freakiest tools in the 2025 draft by taking Doyle, who offers more late-bloomer traits than the typical reigning SEC Pitcher of the Year, fifth overall for almost $1 million under slot. While his hoppy four-seamer has long missed bats up in the zone out of a low-three-quarters slot, Doyle sat in the low 90s, was bedeviled by the long ball, and spent a lot of time in the bullpen during his stops at Coastal Carolina and Ole Miss. It was as a junior at Tennessee that he enjoyed a three-tick velo jump, touched 100 mph, and wound up leading the nation with 164 strikeouts in 95.2 innings. From his on-mound demeanor to his rotational pelvic force, Doyle is a high-octane lefty who seeks to overpower hitters with a four-seamer that explodes over barrels, and a 3.2-inning draft year cameo that finished in Double-A provided zero discouragement for how his fastball will play in pro ball.

After running a nearly 80% fastball usage rate before SEC play began, Doyle began flashing increasingly more of his four-pitch arsenal during his junior year. He’s no marksman, but he threw a starter’s level of strikes throughout his college career. Still, there’s a lot to his operation that looks more like an elite relief weapon than a consistent starter. Doyle has feel for landing his low-80s, two-plane slider and his slightly harder cutter in the zone, but especially the slower breaker can pop out of his hand and has never generated much chase. He’ll need some sort of grip change or tweak for a breaker to shoulder the load as his most used secondary, but Doyle’s high-80s changeup looks up to that task most of the time as far as right-handers are concerned, showing good depth but limited arm-side action. Doyle’s scant college reps in the rotation are reason for patience when it comes to his breaking ball refinement, and his nutty on-mound athleticism is a reason to wait on his command. Right now, it’s an elite left-handed fastball that is going to drive impact somewhere, and a full-scale Cardinals rebuild should offer Doyle a long runway to start.

Can I interest you in three plus pitches? How about from a good athlete with a traditional, workhorse build? Maybe if I told you he ran a sub-2.00 per nine walk rate across both levels of A-ball as a 19-year-old?

Sloan was an over-slot second-round selection out of an Illinois high school in the 2024 draft and it sure looks like the Mariners nailed the pick. He’s a big, physical kid, and while there’s moderate effort to his delivery, the mechanics are simple and he repeats them well, especially for his age and build. He’ll touch 99 and sits comfortably in the 94-97 mph range with a bit of life up in the zone. Both the slider and split project plus. The former is the less consistent of the two, but it flashes 70 with hard and late two-plane depth when Sloan spins it just right. Both are swing-and-miss pitches and go a long way toward explaining how he struck out 10 per nine while living in the strike zone.

Sloan throws a ton of strikes. He walked just 15 guys in 82 innings — none over a three-start cameo in High-A at the end of the year — and pounds the zone with the fastball in particular. He can hit the box with his secondaries as well, though they also generate a bunch of strikes below deck. The only real nitpick here is that Sloan locates mostly to the glove side. The way he falls off the rubber and takes his arm with him explains why, and while he’ll probably develop more feel for the arm side as he progresses, that tendency could be fairly sticky. The predictability in his locations is the most obvious nitpick in his game, and finding a way to hit other spots should be a primary developmental priority in 2026.

That shouldn’t detract much from all the good things going on here. We want to see Sloan stretched out more before we really go nuts, but this looks like a no. 2 starter, and he’s on the short list of minor leaguers who are even in the conversation for a no. 1 projection. The usual caveats apply: Pitching is volatile, throwing hard is risky, and you’d have more confidence in the long-term quality of his stuff if we’d seen him throw more than 70 pitches a start. But the upside is sky-high here, and it’s not too early to say Sloan is one of the best pitching prospects in baseball.

Benge was a two-way player at Oklahoma State where, in addition to his first-round pedigree in the outfield, he also sat 92-95 mph with a plus change. The Mets selected him 19th overall in the 2024 draft and signed him for just shy of $4 million.

Benge is a good example of the strides a player can make when his focus narrows from two jobs to one. On draft day, he projected as a corner outfielder with hit skill and average power. A year-and-a-half later, he looks like an average center fielder at least, and is already producing above-average raw power. There’s a chance he grows into plus pop as well, as Benge is still on the leaner side and is young enough to have a little physical growth ahead. Alongside, the hitterish tendencies he was showing at Oklahoma State — connected swing, adjustable bat path, very good hand-eye coordination, mature swing decisions — translated into pro production. Across three levels, he posted strong walk and strikeout numbers while hitting .281/.385/.472 with 15 homers.

How much power Benge gets to in games might make the difference between being a solid regular and an All-Star. While his swing is geared for lift on balls down and in, he’s otherwise putting a lot of them on the ground, stemming in part from a blend of a longer bat path and average bat speed. A little extra strength may be the difference between where he is now and a 25-homer guy. He may figure out a way to get to lift as is, but you can also see him as more of a doubles guy than a true power threat if nothing changes.

Regardless, this is a well-rounded prospect who has a lot of ways to help on both sides of the ball. Benge reached Triple-A at the end of last year, and while New York’s outfield is pretty crowded, he might just force his way into it at some point this summer.

After his first two seasons were marred by multiple injuries (elbow and rib), Duno’s absurd physical gifts were on display in 2025, as he slashed .287/.430/.518 with more walks than strikeouts, led the FSL with 18 homers (only one other player had more than 11), and then struggled in the Arizona Fall League until he went nuclear in the postseason. Duno is one of the freakier prospects in baseball, a tool shed 6-foot-2 catcher with enormous power and rare twitch for such a big guy. His titanic size and strength, as well as his remarkable agility, give Duno extraplanetary power potential and allow one to forecast huge growth for him on defense. His ability to explode out of his crouch is incredible, and makes him a threat to turn an errant pitch into an opportunity to hose a runner who underappreciates his quickness. Though he isn’t a great pitch framer right now, catchers with this kind of physicality tend to develop into good ones over time as they get a feel for how to leverage their size. Technical refinement should yield an eventually plus defender.

Though he cut his strikeout rate from 28.8% in 2024 to 18.4% in 2025, Duno is probably going to punch out quite a bit in the big leagues. His swing features a ton of effort, and his underlying contact rate (69%) is in a yellow flag territory, with most of his misses coming against elevated fastballs. But don’t let your fastball leak toward Duno’s hands, or he’s going to rip it into the parking lot. He is still getting a feel for his volcanic bat speed and bodily verve, and his timing at the dish improved throughout 2025; his skill as a hitter should continue to improve, and his hit tool is going to play up a bit because of how hard he puts the ball in play. This is a college-aged catcher with 30-plus homer power, plus plate discipline, and a profile saturated with freak factor thanks to Duno’s size and athleticism. He plays the game with a youthful affability and enthusiasm, which can be a double-edged sword at catcher and result in some bloopers, but that’s common for a prospect this age. There’s a chance that Duno could be a top five overall prospect in 12 to 18 months if his contact rate can just hold around 70% as he climbs the minors.

Rainer pitched and played all over the field with high school Team USA, and he was generally seen as a pitching prospect until things began to shift in the fall and winter of 2023, when he was suddenly hitting for big power against good varsity prep pitching. He solidified himself as an early first round hitter at 2024 NHSI, was drafted 11th overall, and got $5.8 million to sign. His Lakeland debut in 2025 was cut short by a dislocated shoulder suffered diving back to a base just 35 games into the season. Rainer needed surgery and missed the rest of the year, but he hit .288/.383/.448 (with a 52% hard-hit rate to boot) during the window when he was healthy.

How Rainer will end up trending as a hitter is still up in the air. Despite his slash line, his underlying data and spray charts had some warning signs in 2025. He only managed a 71% contact rate (he was sub-70% on the high school circuit), and his long levers make it tough for him to time fastballs, which he tends to pepper down the left field line. Once he gets his hands moving, however, his bat speed is pretty nutty, and while his swing is noisy, it’s possible he’ll be able to tone it down without neutering his power once he gets stronger and can shorten up. If he can do that and get his contact performance closer to average, he’s going to be a star.

Rainer’s arm strength is incredible. He was pumping mid-90s gas off the mound in high school, and he can sizzle the baseball across the diamond with the flick of his wrist. His hands and actions need polish, but that’s fine; this was a pretty serious two-way prospect not long ago. Lefty-hitting shortstops with this kind of size and power projection are rare, and this FV grade reflects a combination of Rainer’s upside as a 30-homer shortstop, as well as the risk that his hit tool is sketchy but yet to be exposed due to a lack of actual playing time.

An $800,000 signee out of the Dominican Republic in 2024, Peña has quickly established himself among the best prospects from that year’s international class. He crushed A-ball as an 18-year-old, and while he found the Midwest League more challenging, 2025 was an unqualified success for him.

At the plate, Peña is a toolsy, if raw, hitter oozing with potential. He has plus bat speed and no trouble covering the plate from top to bottom. The length of his swing would problematic for a less twitchy player, but in this case it looks like a path to unlocking real power. His max exit velocity last season was over 113 mph, plus for a big leaguer and nuts for an 18-year-old infielder with physical projection remaining. His approach is messy, but time is on his side, and very good players and prospects miss (or missed) all pitch types more often than Peña does.

Matters are less clear defensively. Milwaukee’s stockpile of middle infielders, and Jesús Made’s presence specifically, has pushed Peña to other positions. In another context, he’d likely still be mostly playing shortstop, as he’s got the speed and enough arm to at least develop him there. There are weak points in his game that point toward a future at second. He hasn’t found a throwing stroke that works for him yet; he’ll often throw wildly when he drops down, or take an all-too-casual approach that both gets the ball out slowly and without enough mustard to reach its target on a line. He’s also subpar moving to his right at present, an issue exacerbated by fringy present arm strength but also his tendency to slide feet first on grounders in the six-hole. We’d like to see him get more reps at shortstop before throwing in the towel, though. There’s enough speed and a chance for another half grade of arm strength here, and we also want to give someone with this level of athleticism every chance to improve his footwork and throwing consistency before sliding him to second base.

Peña is not a finished product. We’d like to see him calm his tendency to chase elevated fastballs, lift the ball more often, and perform more consistently in all facets defensively. But while he doesn’t have Made’s ceiling, Peña is a great prospect in his own right, a promising blend of present skill and star upside if everything comes together. We try not to get reckless with comps, and he’s not an exact match physically or with his swing, but if this works, it could look a lot like Alfonso Soriano.

There were only five first-round picks in last July’s draft younger than the newly 19-year-old Rodriguez, and none of them torched pro pitching in 2025 like the barrel-chested Dominican catcher. After making waves by having more walks than strikeouts (and as many extra-base hits) in the 2024 DSL, Rodriguez one-upped himself with a three-level stateside debut the following season. He demolished Complex League pitching in legendary fashion (.373/.513/.831, seven home runs in 20 games), before a bump to full-season ball briefly slowed him, only for Rodriguez to hit .277/.395/.554 with just a 16% K-rate from July 1 all the way through a four-game season-ending cameo in High-A. While we’re rattling off the cool things he’s done, the early minor league framing numbers Rodriguez put up are nuts.

Rodriguez was born in the D.R. but spent a lot of his childhood in Philadelphia before moving back when he was already 16, an unusual path that kept him largely under the radar; he signed a year later for $300,000. A high-maintenance frame doesn’t suggest much projection, but that’s countered by his immediately excellent low-minors performance and a precocious skill set. Rodriguez is already average or better in terms of his contact and chase rates, his raw power, and his throwing arm, such that it doesn’t take much squinting to see a regular catcher in a guy who is currently a teenager. In addition to showing good mobility and enough stability in his leg base to quietly load his glove, Rodriguez is lauded for his makeup and work ethic, which have been critical for getting him in shape to handle a workload that has escalated meaningfully in a short period of time.

Thickly built and short-levered, Rodriguez is capable of creating a lot of force in a small space, allowing him to ruggedly defend the inner third of the plate. With his pull and lift inclinations, this is where a lot of his current over-the-fence power comes from. Correspondingly, most of his whiffs come on breaking balls that get to the outer half. There’s a real power-over-hit flavor to his batted ball distribution that currently takes the form of a lot of popups, which is something to watch as he faces more premium velocity. These are hurdles to Rodriguez getting to an average or better hit tool at maturity, but he’s already shown such unique ability to square up fastballs at different heights (and at an incredibly early age) that they hardly read as intractable issues.

Taken in the first round of the 2022 draft, the oft-injured DeLauter has only played 140 professional games. He’s been awesome in that time, though, and after a strong showing in 34 Triple-A appearances, Cleveland called upon him to make his debut in the Wild Card round of last year’s playoffs. It was a huge vote of confidence in his bat and just the latest sign that injuries were the only thing preventing the advanced lefty thumper from debuting much earlier.

DeLauter projects as a middle-of-the-order hitter. He’s a big guy who generates plus power with a short, controlled swing. Massive humans like this sometimes have trouble getting going quickly, but the 24-year-old’s short and direct path keeps him on time, and he’s able to guide the barrel all over the zone. This isn’t one of those pretty left-handed swings you’ll tell the grandkids about: He has a big scissor kick and oftentimes a short, almost truncated follow through that is more bluntly effective than poetic. No matter. DeLauter makes a ton of contact, hits the ball hard, doesn’t chase much, and turns it loose when balls are out over the plate. Nobody’s a guarantee, and the short track record is a bit of a risk, but on paper and visually this is what a bat-first prospect ought to look like.

We wish he had a cleaner bill of health. DeLauter broke his left foot in college, the start of a prolonged injury odyssey that has defined his career. He missed a big chunk of the 2023 season after undergoing surgery on that same foot, then fractured it again in 2024. That, along with a sprained toe and a hamstring strain, limited him to 39 games that season. A sports hernia cost him the early part of the 2025 campaign and just when he was back and raking, he got hit in the hand and broke his hamate bone. It’s a big bummer, and as subscribers to the maxim that healthy guys tend to stay healthy and injured guys tend to keep getting injured, it’s a huge concern for us, one that pushed him down the Top 100.

All of that raises questions about the best path forward defensively. The Guardians ran DeLauter out in center field for his debut in the playoffs and we were surprised. He hadn’t played there all year and he’s not particularly good in right, much less center. They just about got away with it — he dropped a routine fly ball in his first action, though Detroit couldn’t capitalize, and he did have an assist later in the game — but going forward, we see his lack of mobility as an impediment to being anything more than a fringy corner outfielder. More to the point: When your offense isn’t very good and you have a big but brittle bat like this, it seems bonkers to stretch him physically in a demanding and relatively unfamiliar position. You do what you have to do in a do-or-die situation, we guess, but going forward, we hope Cleveland takes the bat in the hand here. The Guardians should do everything they can to keep DeLauter in the lineup, and if that means he’s a DH, so be it.

Painter became one of baseball’s best pitching prospects throughout 2022 and entered 2023 seemingly poised to complete a meteoric rise akin to Josh Beckett’s and aid Philadelphia’s rotation at some point during the season. Instead he tore his UCL during spring training, though he didn’t immediately undergo surgery. Painter received a PRP injection on the off chance that it, along with rest and rehab, would allow him to return by the end of the season, potentially during a pennant race. Unfortunately, he and the Phillies rolled snake eyes; Painter didn’t heal enough to avoid surgery, which he had late enough in 2023 that it cost him basically all of 2024 as well. He returned to action in the fall of 2024, including an Arizona Fall League stint in which Painter’s stuff looked intact. In 2025, after some A-ball tuneup starts in April, the Phillies sent him to Triple-A Lehigh Valley and he struggled badly enough there — a 5.40 ERA and 18 homers allowed across 22 starts and 106.2 innings — that by the middle of the season it was clear that, rather than be justified by his own performance, it would take multiple injuries ahead of him for Painter to debut in Philly.

So, what happened here? Painter’s arm slot lowered throughout the season and changed the direction of his fastball’s movement, which had less vertical life than the dominant 2022 model. The dip in results was staggering: a 29% miss rate and .645 opponent OPS in 2022 versus a 17% miss rate and a 1.006 OPS against it in 2025. Whether Painter’s fastball quality can be reconstituted through mechanical work we just won’t know until the start of 2026. For him to be a dominant, top-of-the-rotation power pitcher, he needs a dominant, power-pitcher’s fastball. If Painter can’t get back to that, his overall projection is still favorable, but no longer very special.

That said, this is still a spindly 6-foot-7 youngster who was sent straight to Triple-A after two years off, and after only 13 combined starts above Low-A. He is built and moves like a durable and consistently effective big league starter. His breaking pitches (and his feel for locating them) are both impressive for an athlete his age and size, and have utility against both left- and right-handed hitters as strike-getting and finishing pitches. Painter’s changeup also improved a lot in 2025, and his usage of it tripled late in the season as it performed like a plus pitch. Whether this improvement will stick might be dependent on whether Painter’s arm slot is back to its original orientation in 2026. Player development doesn’t often take a linear path, and so while Painter took a step back in 2025, it was at least for identifiable reasons that could feasibly be remedied and return him to dominant form in short order. If not, he’s more likely to be a secondary-oriented mid-rotation guy.

Williams was a two-way high school player who was talented enough to be considered a prospect as both a shortstop and a pitcher. The Rays gave him a $2.3 million bonus to keep him from heading to Cal and developed him solely as a hitter. He’s now a career .247/.345/.471 hitter in the minors with at least 20 homers in each of the last three years, and Williams has produced like this despite being very young at each of his assigned levels (he was still just 21 when he broke camp with Triple-A Durham to start 2025) and also playing Gold Glove-caliber defense at shortstop.

Even though he’s hit well on the surface, Williams has always had lurking whiff issues, especially against breaking stuff. The Rays brought him up to get his feet wet starting in late August, and he spent the final five weeks of the season getting worked by big league pitchers, who struck him out at a 41.5% clip. It was a bad enough look to cast doubt on whether Williams can hit enough to be a viable regular. His contact rates — in the 65-68% range throughout most of his career, 61% in 2025 — are scraping the bottom of the big league barrel at his position, and absolutely need to rebound to his career norm if Williams is going to remain a steady big leaguer. Is there justification to anticipate a pathway to improvement that isn’t just Williams’ youth and relative inexperience? Though he is mostly a pull-side mistake hitter right now, when he actually closes his front side enough to cover the outer portion of the plate, he has power to the opposite field, too. It’s possible better plate coverage is in there and Williams just to get a feel for staying closed against major league stuff.

The thing that gives Williams’ profile a high floor is his shortstop defense. He’s an unbelievable athlete and flashy defender who is as creative as he is talented. His range, body control, and plus-plus throwing arm make many tough plays look routine, and make some seemingly impossible plays possible. The bummer version of Williams looks something like Adalberto Mondesi, while the version that polishes his hit tool enough to be a consistent All-Star looks more like Willy Adames.

While he was still an amateur, Susana had a very, very late velocity spike and progressed from throwing in the mid-80s to the mid-90s in a very short period of time. Because he popped up late relative to his peers, most of the pool money when he was first eligible to sign had already been committed, and he opted to wait a year so that more teams could pursue him with a meaningful bonus. The Padres signed him for $1.7 million and pushed him to camp in Arizona during 2022 minor league spring training. Susana had only pitched in eight official games on the complex before the Padres traded him to Washington as part of the Juan Soto deal.

After a walk-prone 2023 and a rough first half of 2024, Susana turned a corner in June and dominated for the rest of the season. He ended up working 103.2 innings (40 more than the prior season), struck out 35.4% of his opponents, and generated groundballs at a whopping 59.9% clip. Just when Susana had nearly demonstrated the stamina and durability of a big league starter, his 2025 was defined by injury and a change to his delivery. He suffered a Grade 1 UCL sprain in early May and was shelved for two months. He came back in July and looked awesome for another month, including two dominant starts in one week against a prospect-laden Erie club (10 innings, 23 strikeouts), before Susana tore his right lat and needed surgery. As of the start of 2026 spring training, his timeline for return is sometime in the middle of the summer.

Healthy Susana has extraplanetary stuff. It’s easy to point to his velocity as an impact attribute (he touched 103 mph several times in 2025, and he’s always had elite velo when healthy), but it’s his slider that’s easily his best pitch. There are times when it has cutter-y movement, but it has eye-crossing downward bend at its best, in the Brad Lidge slider mold, except as hard as 92 mph. It’s a slam dunk 80-grade weapon that generated misses at an incredible 58% clip in 2025. Susana’s arm slot came down throughout 2024, which changed the approach angle of his fastball compared to his time in San Diego, but his lower body is still quite upright throughout his delivery, which has kept his release height a shade above the big league average. Its possible his fastball’s bat-missing performance might keel off a bit as he faces upper-level hitters, but for now it’s missing bats at a nearly plus-plus clip thanks to its overwhelming velocity.

Susana barely used his changeup the last two seasons; it’s currently a glorified two-seamer in the 92-94 mph range. One out of every 10 or so is good, but he often casts it and it sails on him; the ones that flash have enough tailing action to miss bats. His slider has enough utility as a strike-stealer and finisher against lefties that he might not ever need a changeup, but some kind of splinker/splitter thing might emerge down the line, as tends to be the case for a lot of the pitchers today who have lower arm slots like Susana.

The lack of a consistent third pitch, and Susana’s recent injury history, certainly color his forecast with relief risk. But Susana’s size, the lefty-dousing utility of his two elite pitches, and the possibility that his arm speed might eventually yield a good changeup gives him top-of-the-rotation ceiling, which is a designation we reserve for precious few prospects here at FanGraphs. Even if he ends up in the bullpen, we’re probably talking about one of the best couple of relievers in all of baseball. We have Susana at the back of this FV tier for now because it’s our rule of thumb for ranking severely injured players, but he has a chance to end 2026 as the best pitching prospect in the sport.

Walcott has been one of the toolsiest and most projectable players in the game from practically the moment he signed as part of the 2023 international class. Slim, high-waisted, and with huge bat speed, he has developed above-average raw power even as he’s still a teenager with tons of development still in front of him. He was an above-average hitter as a 19-year-old in the Texas League last year, where he hit 13 dingers and posted solid walk and strikeout rates. He’ll miss most or all of the 2026 season recovering from surgery to repair a torn UCL, but even factoring that in, his blend of present production and tantalizing physicality gives him one of the highest ceilings on the list.

At the plate, it doesn’t take long to identify both Walcott’s upside and the work ahead to reach it. He’s the kind of player who even casual fans can watch and go, “whoa, that guy takes a mean cut!” He swings hard, with loft, and has the bat speed to hit pitches wherever they wind up. But that doesn’t mean he always does. The effort in his swing has him behind fastballs sometimes, the way he pulls off the plate limits his ability to drive pitches on the outer half, and he doesn’t track the ball real well, which led to a big whiff rate on spin last year. The approach is also immature, and in particular, he has a frustrating tendency to let too many good pitches pass him by. He has the physical talent to hit, and has shown an ability to lace pitches from his letters to his shoestops, but the range of outcomes on his hit tool is pretty large.

The other big question is where he ultimately fits on defense. So far, Walcott has retained sufficient mobility to at least continue developing at shortstop. But, partially due to his lever length, he’s not the cleanest operator out there. He can do freaky things, like uncork plus throws from all manner of angles and stretch for balls in the hole in a way few fielders can. But he can also get tangled, some of his throws are pretty far off line, and it’s fair to wonder if the future strength gains we’re all anticipating make him a better fit at third anyway. Texas must be thinking along that line, because he started working at third base in Frisco last season.

Even as Walcott has moved quickly through the minors and produced along the way, there are some evaluators who have pushed back on him as an elite talent. There are fair reasons: He swings through a lot of fastballs, he’s not an especially instinctual player, and we’re still waiting on a lot of that immense physical projection. All of this was true before the UCL injury, too. Here, we still love him and see huge upside, but between that feedback and the injury, we’re cooling our forecast a degree or two.

The fifth pick in the 2023 draft, Jenkins’s pro career has been defined by his frequent trips to the IL and excellent performance when healthy, including during a month-long taste of Triple-A at the end of 2025. He’s had hamate, quad, hamstring, and ankle stuff dating back to high school, but Jenkins hasn’t had any one chronic issue, nor has he missed entire seasons. Instead, he’s played just over 80 games each of the last two years while amassing a career .295/.399/.464 line, with most of the slug coming from doubles and triples. Perhaps the most relevant Jenkins development during the last year is that he’s looked better in center field the further removed from those lower body injuries he has gotten. He isn’t a blazing straight-line runner, with measured speed (a 28 ft/sec sprint speed, 4.25 seconds home to first) that’s below average relative to big league center fielders, but his reads, ball skills, and general feel for the position enable him to make tough plays, albeit within a slightly limited range.

Jenkins is among the more stable offensive prospects in baseball thanks to a balanced contact/power blend that is heavily seasoned by excellent selectivity. His swing/take splits by count, pitch type, and location indicate that he is actually diagnosing pitches mid-flight rather than employing a passive approach with pre-determined takes. He doesn’t chase, nor does he expand very much with two strikes, but Jenkins will cut it loose when pitches are in the heart of the plate, which often isn’t the case for prospects who walk a ton.

Whether or not Jenkins truly has big offensive ceiling, though, is another matter. Despite overt physicality (he’s built like a water polo player), he lacks monstrous physical tools. His bat speed is just a tick above average, and his measurable power was generally below the big league mean throughout 2025; a 110 mph max is roughly the major league average, but the bulk of Jenkins’ balls in play were comfortably below, as evidenced by his hard-hit rate (35%). Jenkins’ contact rate has also dipped as he’s climbed the minors, and in 2025, he posted a 76% overall contact rate and 83% rate inside the strike zone. Those aren’t bad numbers, but they are just average compared to the big league population. Jenkins’ visual look as a hitter reinforces the data, as his swing takes a minute to get on plane and he tends to swat fastballs the other way. He destroys mistakes, but opposing pitchers can limit the quality of his contact by locating soft stuff away from him, which he tends to punch into the ground. Even if Jenkins adds strength and hits the ball harder in his mid-20s and beyond, his swing may always cap his over-the-fence power. Here his projection looks less like Roman Anthony (whose swing is similar, just with crazy bat speed) and more like Jesse Winker if he could play center field. That’s a good player on a contending team, but probably not a superstar.

A third-round pick out of Kansas City’s own Park Hill High in 2021, Jensen has dutifully climbed about a level per year since his selection. He crushed the high minors last season and debuted in September, where he posted a 159 wRC+ with three bombs in 20 games. It was a mouth-watering performance, one that makes us think that the transition out of the Salvador Perez era may already be underway.

Narrowly described, a hitter’s job is to hit the ball hard as often as possible, and Jensen does this exceptionally well. He led the Royals organization in hard-hit rate (56%) last year, which doesn’t really do justice to the scale of his ability, as the closest KC farmhand to that figure was Carson Roccaforte, at a distantly-behind 43%. It comes with a good approach, patient but not passive, with aggression on pitches in his wheelhouse in the lower part of the zone.

Could swing-and-miss upstairs pose a problem? There’s a hand loop in Jensen’s load, the kind that has bedeviled a number of promising young hitters who had problems catching up to good velocity, and if anything, his deep load gives him even more ground to make up. He also doesn’t have a manipulable bat path. Plus bat speed and a relatively flat swing plane help compensate, but he’s had trouble getting to pull-side lift throughout his career, and if you’re wondering why the hit tool looks light given his production thus far, this is why.

As is the case with a number of the catchers we’ll get to in the Royals system, Jensen’s framing is just okay. He starts low, but there’s a lot of body movement as he reaches, as well as a jaggedness to his glovework that contrasts with the more supple and subtle hand movement elite framers tend to have. His control of the running game is better. Jensen is capable of sub-1.9 pops, with a quick transfer and strong arm, though you’ll have to live with a fair number of errant throws.

The overall package is that of a power-and-OBP catcher with a chance to grow into an average defender. It’s a promising blend of skills and tools, and while there’s some chance elite velocity substantially cuts into Jensen’s production, he actually feels relatively safe. The combination of power, patience, and fringy contact tends to work, particularly at an impactful defensive position. Jensen projects as a regular, and should have a chance to ease into that role as the Royals manage his playing time alongside Perez.

The White Sox’s devotion to their Area Codes team was taken up a notch when they dropped $3 million on Bonemer, a tightly-wound Michigan high schooler with an atypical swing, in the second round of the 2024 draft. Bonemer’s strideless swing doesn’t start at a dead stop, but it could fool you at first glance, and the gradual hand pump that gets him going is something he’s been steadily adding since joining pro ball. After being limited to bridge league action in his draft year, Bonemer paired excellent strike zone judgment with an above-average in-zone contact rate in a scintillating debut season that saw him hit .281/.401/.473 overall, including popping two of his 12 homers in a late season 11-game cameo at High-A.

At 6-foot-1 and already touting a neck the width of a tree trunk, Bonemer isn’t the most projectable 20-year-old, but his high-end exit velocities are already nearing plus territory, and there’s already an affinity for elevating balls to the pull side here. He can be beaten in the zone by fastballs up and away from him, and his awareness of that leads to some vulnerability to changeups. At the same time, Bonemer’s shift to a more level swing path has made it so that some of his most graceful cuts come when he can extend his hands to stay on soft stuff low and away.

In all, the hit tool, power and approach point to an above-average bat at… some spot on the diamond. Bonemer is a below-average runner, and not only would his glove work not unseat Colson Montgomery at short upon reaching the majors, he already mostly slid over to third base when third-round pick Kyle Lodise arrived at High-A Winston-Salem. Bonemer is expected to play some shortstop this season, but with recent first-round pick Billy Carlson’s vaunted glove looming behind him, a move to third could soon become permanent. His bat and range could play there, but Bonemer’s short arm action was inconsistent throughout the year. Fewer rushed throws at a less demanding spot than short could help remedy that, but the same could be said for a move to second base or left field, the latter of which is already on Chicago’s radar. The quality of Bonemer’s stick lowers the stakes of this question, but could also bring it to the forefront by his anticipated 2027 debut.

Eric had questions about Stewart entering 2025 that the first baseman emphatically answered. He tends to be late on fastballs and is rarely on time to pull them in the air, and we worried his contact ability would dip as he faced better velo, and that this would make his overall production more demure, especially if/when the immobile Stewart moves to first base. Though he still has a stark inside-out batted ball profile, he’s made mechanical tweaks to preempt this potential issue, and he is such an exceptional hitter in basically every other way that he is arguably as sure a thing as a bat-first prospect can be after torching the upper minors (.309/.383/.524) and comporting himself well during an 18-game cup of coffee in the big leagues.

Stewart tracks pitches exceptionally well and can guide his barrel all over the zone to impact them. His deft hands can strike the baseball with power even when Stewart is forced to adjust to breaking stuff mid-flight, and he can drive pitches into the gaps without taking his best swing. He’s an exceptional bad ball hitter, and makes lots of high-quality contact even when he’s chasing soft stuff below the zone. The major league average contact rate on pitches outside the zone is 54%, while Stewart’s in 2025 was an incredible 66%. Pitchers’ best chance of beating Stewart is to try to rip fastballs past him at the top of the zone, as he swings underneath enough of these that his in-zone contact rate was merely average in 2025, even after making a relevant adjustment. Whiffs against pitches like this were the primary reason Eric was apprehensive about stuffing Stewie last year; his front foot was often late getting down in 2024. He now simply doesn’t continue to close his stride when he sees an elevated fastball; he just hauls off and hacks with his front foot landing more toward third base. That Stewart can ID pitches and adjust his footwork accordingly like this is pretty special. He’s still often late on fastballs, but not so late that he misses them altogether. He simply keeps the second baseman and right fielder busy by driving them the other way. His splits against high-velocity heaters were very favorable: In a 225-pitch sample against pitches 94 mph and above in 2025, he had an 1.042 OPS.

Stewart’s third base defense isn’t great. He’s a husky kid with poor range and a mediocre peak-effort throwing arm, but his hands and actions allow him to make some nice plays, and his short-area, wrist-flick throws are crisp. He isn’t unplayable at third but is definitely below average, and he’s pretty likely to end up primarily first base as he ages, especially with Ke’Bryan Hayes (and now Eugenio Suárez) on the roster. It’s going to be important for Stewart to work to stay agile, as it’s possible that things could go sideways for him athletically given the makeup of his build. The contagious competitive fire and intensity Stewart brings to the field every day needs to extend to his conditioning to help preserve his talent as a hitter for as long as possible. So long as that happens, he’s going to be a really good hitter and a corner infield piece the Reds can build around.

Waldschmidt’s college career took off after transferring to Kentucky before his sophomore season. He quickly established himself as a big prospect, was selected late in the first round of the 2024 draft, and has surged past several earlier selections and made himself a no-doubt Top 100 prospect on the strength of his bat. While he lacks a signature plus-plus tool, the 23-year-old does just about everything you want at the plate and he looks the part of a bat-first future regular in the box.

Waldschmidt’s mechanics are low maintenance. He hits with his feet spread very wide apart — this was initially his setup with two strikes, and then he reportedly went to it full-time after noticing his max exit velos didn’t diminish at all — and needs only a small load to generate plus power. His swing is steep and he doesn’t have crazy bat speed, so there is a bit of a hole in the upper and outer part of the zone. He otherwise covers the plate well, though, and the discerning approach that helped him sail through the minor leagues should compensate for the swing and miss.

Waldschmidt started his amateur career on the infield, but has played on the grass exclusively as a pro. His feel for the outfield has matured to the point where he projects above average in a corner. He’s played a handful of games in center, but isn’t really a fit there. No matter. The bat should carry Waldschmidt to a productive career, and he projects as a middle-of-the-order hitter. It’s a power-and-OBP-over-hit skill set, and at the low end of his range of outcomes, he may just strike out too much to be more than a part-time player. But Waldschmidt’s median outcome is as a regular, and there’s 30-homer upside if everything clicks. He should arrive in the desert early in the 2026 season, and the injury to Corbin Carroll could propel him onto the Opening Day roster.

After two years of careful workload management, Schultz was supposed to take on a traditional starter routine in 2025, only for repeated right patellar tendonitis flare ups to limit him to 73 innings. After two years largely defined by high volumes of strike-throwing, Schultz’s delivery stiffened from the ailment, his sinker lost sink and stopped generating grounders, his trademark slider became a tick slower and loopier, and he issued an uncharacteristic 45 free passes between Double-A Birmingham and Triple-A Charlotte. Already a profile built around the absence of a bat-missing fastball, Schultz’s strikeout rate fell from 32.1% in 2024 to 23.2% in 2025. Still, he out-talented the wildness until his promotion to the latter stop, where International League hitters put a 9.32 ERA on his résumé over 16.1 forgettable innings.

Schultz entered 2025 as the best left-handed pitching prospect in the game, and the White Sox had every intention of him debuting Chicago last season. It’s important to remember that even after a very rocky campaign, the 22-year-old still touts a special combination of gifts. He’s 6-foot-10 with a funky low slot from which he’s shown potential plus command in the past, and while his average velo always seems to fall back around 94 mph, he’s repeatedly flashed 98 mph with plenty more room to add to his super long frame. He’s an extreme supinator with a slider that has looked like a 70 for much of his professional existence, but efforts to add a cutter as a bridge pitch or command a seam-effects changeup have yet to take hold, with the instability in his lead leg once again a likely recent culprit.

Unfortunately, injuries and limited innings have been part of Schultz’s story for a while now and always deserved extra consideration due to his outlier size. Any member of the Sox amateur department will tell you that Schultz wouldn’t have fallen to them 26th overall in 2022 if it weren’t for mononucleosis wiping out most of his senior season in nearby Oswego, IL, and he only threw 27 innings the following year between a forearm strain and a shoulder impingement. So while his 2025 struggles have the hallmarks of an outlier, Schultz’s prior track record of looking like a potential no. 2 starter wasn’t that long to begin with.

After selecting Sproat in the third round in 2022 and then failing to sign him, the Mets went back to the well a round earlier the following season. This time they got their man, and the former Florida Gator took to pro ball quickly, posting a 3.40 ERA with 131 strikeouts in 116 professional innings, with solid walk and contact-management metrics alongside. The righty capped the year with seven starts at Triple-A, and while those were mostly forgettable, he entered 2025 as the club’s top farmhand and one of the brightest pitching prospects in baseball.

He then battled through an uneven 2025 campaign. He started slowly, with a new, less deceptive motion, and missed significantly fewer bats in the first half of the season than he had the year prior. Still, the traits that long made Sproat an enticing prospect mostly endured, as he was still sitting in the mid-to-upper 90s and mixing in a plus breaking ball. He righted the ship in July and saved some of his best baseball for the latter part of August, a run of form that culminated in his first big league call-up. He was traded to Milwaukee along with Jett Williams in the Freddy Peralta deal this winter.

Sproat works with six pitches, including both fastballs. He can crest 100 but tends to live in the 95-97 range. His four-seamer doesn’t have bat-missing shape and plays a little below the number. His sinker is more effective. While he doesn’t command it very well — his catchers tend to set up down the middle and hope he finds one side of the plate or the other — plus velocity and above-average tail tend to produce a lot of grounders regardless of where they wind up.

His secondaries flash, but as with his fastball command, inconsistency abounds. He’ll show a plus sweeper with long, hard break, and he actually seems to have better feel for locating this than the heat. His low-90s change flashes plus once in a while too; at other times he’ll either overthrow and flatten it, or pull the string too early and bury it harmlessly in the dirt. The story is similar for his slider (which, for formatting reasons is graded as a cutter here) and especially his curve, pitches that can be part of a balanced arsenal, but that often don’t behave as he wants.

It’s hard to develop feel for so many weapons, and Sproat’s long, deep arm circle doesn’t help. He’s strong and athletic, but particularly with how much his ball moves, small variations in his timing can lead to significant misses, and he wasn’t reliably hitting a region, much less a spot, in his big league outings. Sproat is generally around the plate, but he’s a good example of a guy whose control is well ahead of his command. He projects as a no. 3, with fairly wide error bars depending on how much his command progresses.

A deceptive lefty whose moniker will have a certain musicality to it in the local dialect, Early transferred from Army to UVA for his draft year in 2023, then had a tremendous full-season debut in 2024 during which he K’d 12 per nine across 103.2 innings and reached Double-A. In 2025, the unpredictable lefty completed a meteoric rise to the big leagues, posting a sub-3.00 ERA across 100.1 combined innings at Double- and Triple-A, and ending with four excellent big league starts.

Early will throw any pitch in basically any count and change his overall strategy game by game. For instance, he made back-to-back big league starts against the A’s, and was elevating fastballs like a power pitcher in one, while using a ton of secondary stuff in the other. His ability to mix pitches is seasoned by deception, as Early has a very quick arm stroke that hitters seem to struggle to parse, and he generates about six-and-a-half feet of extension. He throws two kinds of sliders, one more curt and cutter-ish with gyro spin, the other more of a sweeper. These are his two least dynamic offerings, but they give Early a means of attacking laterally, while his fastball and curveball provide a vertical look. His changeup is his best pitch on pure stuff and projects to plus at peak thanks to his arm speed. The rate at which Early has developed is amazing, and speaks to both his coachability and what the Red Sox have done to nurture his growth. He’s a mid-rotation starter prospect who is ready for prime time.

A comp-round pick in 2022, Beavers progressed somewhat slowly through Baltimore’s system for a college bat with a good approach. He needed most of 2003 to get through High-A and barely made it to Triple-A in 2024. But the power that scouts have long projected finally showed up last season, and with it he posted the best numbers of his career. He earned a late-season call up and then notched a 125 wRC+ in 35 games in Baltimore, leaving him barely eligible for our list.

At the plate, Beavers is quick to the ball despite pretty long levers. He has a gorgeous left-handed swing, geared for loft in the low-and-in part of the zone like seemingly all of his brethren from that side of the plate. He doesn’t have an especially manipulable path, but his hands are so fast that he’s able to reach pitches up in the zone anyway. He can be lured out in front of spin, and the way his swing works leaves him vulnerable on the outer edge, which is why he projects as more of a good hitter than a great one.

As hinted at above, Beavers has a great approach, patient without being passive, and his keen eye should help him take plenty of walks at the highest level. They’ll come with a fair number of strikeouts as well, more the product of deep counts than a ton of swing-and-miss: Beavers had a plus contact rate at Triple-A and was still above-average in the big leagues. He hasn’t hit for much power against southpaws throughout his career, but his at-bats are still competitive. He strikes us as a guy who doesn’t need a strict platoon, but there may be some benefit to timing his off days in a way that lets someone else deal with Tarik Skubal. He’s also going to chip in a little on the bases: An above-average runner, he’s swiped at least 25 bags in all three of his full pro seasons, at an 82% clip.

While he played plenty of center in the minors, Beavers looks like a corner outfielder. Just on speed he’d be stretched up the middle, especially since there’s a hesitance to his reads and he can be a little flub-prone; we see him as an average defender in left. He’s on the list because of his bat, and we expect the stick to support an everyday role starting this spring.

Velazquez was an underslot first-round pick in 2023. Selected as a bat-first catcher, the stick has always looked promising, but questions about his body and future position made him a risky proposition. Even though he’s shed the catcher’s gear, it appears Cleveland chose wisely. Velazquez has gotten himself in great shape and is on the fast track to the big leagues. He reached Double-A just a couple months after turning 20, and spent the season’s final month hammering the competition, hitting .330/.405/.589 with 12 walks and only 19 punchouts in 126 plate appearances at Akron.

Velazquez projects as a middle-of-the-order hitter. Everything looks right in the box. He starts with a wide base, his short stride and kick get him in position on time, his trigger looks natural, and he has a fast bat that’s already producing above-average exit velocities. He’s also showing signs of a mature approach, hunting low-and-in pitches early in counts and adjusting with two strikes.

As a professional, Velazquez has mostly played first base, where he projects average, though Cleveland has occasionally deployed him in an outfield corner. He has the motor to make himself playable — Velazquez was a regular and sometimes solo presence at pre-game defensive work in Brendan’s looks — but he’ll need to take to the finer points of the job because his speed will be tested out there. It’s worth a try, even if first base seems like the likely end point. Regardless, Velazquez is a hitter first. His ascension to Double-A capped off a really promising 2025 season, and he enters 2026 as an arrow-up guy with a chance to reach Cleveland as soon as this summer.

Hope’s rise from 11th-round flier to impact prospect has been well chronicled here and elsewhere. Dealt from the Cubs to the Dodgers as part of the Michael Bush trade, Hope missed the first part of 2024 due to a shoulder injury and then exploded onto the scene almost as soon as his cleats left the clubhouse. Particularly notable was the increase in power, which surged from “we can dream on above-average” to “presently plus” practically overnight.

That power breakout facilitates his current projection, which is that of a slugging first-division regular in right field. Hope swings hard and with loft, and will do a ton of damage on contact. His max exits are pushing into plus-plus territory, the area in which you can mishit balls and still do plenty of damage. And while the hit tool is potentially a limiting factor, there are a few positive markers here as well. Hope shows feel for manipulating the bat head, can get his barrel nearly everywhere, and is able to adjust off of the fastball, even against lefties. The shortness of his levers and quickness of his bat are positive indicators that he’ll be able to continue doing all of this against more advanced competition.

The bugaboo here is the swing and miss. Hope’s contact rate in 2025 was just 66%, which is low, particularly given that his in-game power was more good than great. He tends to expand versus spin and changeups down and away, and he isn’t able to drive those pitches at all. Near the letters, Hope has a hole in the up-and-away box of the three-by-three strike zone grid. It’s not fatal by itself, and a number of players with big power and a similarly lofted plane have it, but you can start to see how pitchers are going to be able to attack him. He’s also prone to pulling off the plate and rolling over the odd grounder here and there, all of which contributes to hit tool volatility.

Hope will need to hit because, defensively, his already slim chances of remaining in center have faded further since our last check in. He’s fast enough for the job, but his feel for the position remains underbaked, and this isn’t a frame where you’d expect his speed to last forever anyway. He should be adequate to above average in right, where his plus arm will be an asset.

Don’t let those last two paragraphs distract too much from the upside here. Hope reached Double-A at age 20 and has years to make the kind of modest improvements to his approach that will help him unlock all that power. Remember, this is the kind of guy we (metaphorically, please) like to bet on: A good athlete with strong makeup reviews and not all that much high-level baseball on his CV. It all suggests growth ahead. Hope isn’t a sure thing, but there aren’t many guys who we can project to have plus game power. Hope is one of them, and he’s not so very far from turning potential into production.

Genao (pronounced “hen-now”) is a projectable switch-hitting shortstop with a multi-year track record of plus plate discipline, plus contact hitting, and fair power for his age. He strained his shoulder toward the end of 2025 spring training and played in just 77 games at Double-A Akron, a fairly aggressive assignment for a player who turned 21 near the start of the season. Genao only slashed .259/.323/.359 with the Rubber Ducks, a far cry for his 2024 output (.330/.379/.499), but we don’t necessarily see this as a regression so much as a one-year stagnation. The things that made Genao exciting as a prospect 12 months ago largely remain, he simply didn’t take “The Leap” in 2025 that prospects in this age range are sometimes capable of.

Genao is still a selective switch-hitter with a low-ball, gap-to-gap approach that yields doubles power right now, and who might grow into 20-homer power at peak. The length of his swing creates some risk that his early-career, above-average bat-to-ball performance (an 81% contact rate for a college-aged hitter at Double-A is quite good) will dip as he faces better velocity. Most all of Genao’s balls in play came against pitches in the lower two thirds of the zone in 2025, but he’s capable of spoiling pitches in the top third and can really only be beaten entirely by ones elevated well above it. This helps quell potential concern that he has a huge hole in his swing that’s waiting to be exposed, and hopefully his feel for both of his swings will improve as he matures, allowing him to get on top of high pitches more consistently.

Genao has the range, athleticism and arm strength to be a good big league shortstop, but his hands and throwing accuracy need polish. When he really has a grip on the baseball, his max-effort throws are sensational, but too often he fumbles his exchange in a way that impacts the quality of his throws. These blemishes are fairly common for players this age, though now that Genao is on Cleveland’s 40-man roster, the clock is officially ticking on his ability to buff them out of his game. The key developmental variables for Genao’s 2026 season are whether he can improve on the defensive side of the ball, or develop meaningful power as he matures athletically. He’s tracking like an average everyday shortstop, but his ceiling is a little better than that if both facets improve.

Quintero is a converted catcher who crushed rookie ball throughout his first two pro seasons but struggled during his first two months of full season ball; he hit .196 at Rancho Cucamonga toward the end of 2024 and K’d 31% of the time there in April of 2025. After that Quintero seemed to adjust to the quality of pitching and returned to form, as he slashed .300/.423/.518 the rest of the season and spent his final seven weeks at High-A Great Lakes.

Quintero’s contact ability did take a dip in 2025 as better velocity exposed some of the length in his swing, which has a bit of an arm bar and is driven by his bottom hand. He can be late to the contact point against elevated fastballs and he swings underneath a good number of them, and his contact performance was more average (actually a little bit below within the confines of the strike zone) than exceptional. That’s okay, because he does basically everything well. Even though he has a bit of a hole in his swing, he’s still able to move his hands around and make high-quality contact throughout most of the rest of zone, and he sees pitches well and adjusts his bat path accordingly. He also has a lovely gap-to-gap approach. The way his body unwinds creates doubles power right now, and based on Quintero’s angular build and bodily verve, he should develop something close to average big league power at physical maturity.

An average hit and power combination on a plus-gloved center fielder is an exciting profile. Quintero lacks blazing top-end speed, but his reads, routes, and ball skills are all great, especially for a guy who was an amateur catcher. There’s still some risk that as Quintero climbs and faces better velocity, the issues he has catching high fastballs will worsen and impact his overall output. There’s also a chance that he’ll be able to shorten up as he gets stronger and remedy this particular issue. Here he’s projected as an average everyday center fielder tracking for a debut in the 2028-2029 range depending on the quality of the incumbent when Quintero arrives on the 40-man roster.

Gonzalez is a potential five-tool player who was our top non-Roki Sasaki player in the 2025 international amateur class. He destroyed the DSL, hitting .288/.404/.455 while handling short with aplomb. Scouts loved him, and he emerged from the circuit as the consensus top prospect from the Dominican complexes.

A switch-hitting shortstop, Gonzalez is an explosive rotator with electric bat speed. As a lefty, he unwinds with rare verve, and the bend in his lower body allows for low-ball power. His right-handed swing is less coordinated, but still dangerous. Gonzalez’s medium frame limits his raw power projection somewhat, but there’s enough bat speed to project above-average pop. His front side can drift toward first base, suggesting potential breaking ball vulnerability. Otherwise, he looks like a good hitter with playable power in a lot of the zone.

The twitch, range, actions, and arm for shortstop all are present, and he’s universally acclaimed as a lock to stick at the position by scouts who saw him down there. Others have seen him work out in center field and thought that was a good fit, too. Josuar has a very strong heuristic profile as a switch-hitting up-the-middle player with power, and he has All-Star ceiling if his hit tool is average or better. He’s a high-priority look for us at spring training this year, and he has a shot to skip the ACL entirely.

A sensational athlete with an ideal pitcher’s frame, Hernandez has monster arm strength and potentially huge secondary stuff. His prototypical size, athleticism, arm strength, and occasional secondary pitch quality put him in the top tier of recent high school pitching prospects, and Hernandez signed with the Pirates for $7.25 million as the sixth overall pick rather than head to Vanderbilt. Though he didn’t pitch in an official game after the draft, he did pitch during instructs, including in the Dominican Republic, where he was his usual 95-100 mph with stunning ease.

Hernandez is a premium athlete who could have been a good power-hitting, plus defensive first baseman in college. He has a strapping 6-foot-4 QB frame with room for more strength, and it looked like he had already added some by November when he pitched in the D.R. His fastball can be frustratingly vulnerable to contact due to inconsistent location and poor movement characteristics. The former seems like it will be remedied naturally as Hernandez gets better feel for his body’s explosiveness; the latter needs to be ironed out proactively to avoid some of the pitfalls guys like Roki Sasaki have endured despite elite velocity.

Hernandez’s pronator-style changeup has huge tailing action and plus-plus potential thanks to his incredible arm speed. Hitters can know that pitch is coming and still not make contact with it because of the way it moves. His slider is less consistent and is vulnerable when it isn’t good; it’s mostly 82-85 with two-plane wipe, but the best ones are plus. He has the potential for multiple plus-or-better weapons, with the changeup very likely to be a 70 at maturity, while his fastball effectiveness is going to depend on how its movement develops in pro ball. Hernandez has front end upside but carries with him the risks readers should, by now, know to incorporate into their expectations for his development.

Tait (pronounced with two syllables, Tah-eet) is a prospect of extreme risk and variance, wielding absurd left-handed power for his age, let alone for a catching prospect, and plus-plus raw arm strength. He’s also very chase prone (two standard deviations worse than the big league average), which destabilizes his entire profile. So far, though, Tait’s free-swinging style hasn’t hampered his performance at the plate. He’s a career .283/.341/.462 hitter who was promoted to High-A not long before the Phillies traded him to the Twins as part of the Jhoan Duran blockbuster in 2025. Bulky and strong, Tait has been an extra-base machine despite his relative youth, and swatted 32 doubles and 14 homers in just 112 games last year. He swings with cruel intentions, selling out for power with enormous effort. He already has above-average big league raw power as a teenager, which would be an exciting feature of any prospect, let alone a catcher with favorable handedness.

Tait’s tendency to expand the zone and sometimes swing so hard that he loses sight of the baseball are scary details that warn of excessive future strikeouts. He has lots of big misses at pitches nowhere near the zone, and often looks like his only plan at the plate is to swing hard. In addition to his indulgent approach, Tait can struggle to get on top of fastballs up and away from him. His swing can get long and cause him to accidentally inside-out pitches down the left field line, but many of these bleed into the corner for doubles thanks to Tait’s titanic strength. Sometimes the weak points for talented hitters like Tait aren’t consequential until the player reaches the big leagues; think Jorge Alfaro, whose prospect DNA was very similar to Tait’s, or Francisco Mejía, who is a decent comp on tools but not size.

Tait also has work to do on various aspects of his defense. Some just need polish to be assets, like his arm. He has incredible pure arm strength that plays down a bit due to inconsistent footwork exiting his crouch, which can impact his throw quality and accuracy. When his exchange and footwork are clean, however, Tait will pop in the 1.85-1.88 range, right on the bag, and if he can do that consistently, then his ceiling as a run-stopper is among the best in the league. His receiving and framing are below-average, but not bad for a catcher his age. He’s currently much better at framing low pitches than high ones, but is below average overall. The ball-blocking portion of the job is the one Tait is currently worst at. It appears he would much rather pick balls in the dirt than block them with his body, and his hands aren’t skilled enough for him to do that.

Ordinarily these issues wouldn’t be concerning for such a young catching prospect, but Tait’s 40-man platform year (2027) is rapidly approaching. He signed so young that he was 16 during his first pro season, and he’ll be 21 when he needs to be put on the Twins’ 40-man roster. This compresses his developmental timeline somewhat and adds to the possibility that Tait’s bat may be big league-ready before his glove and force a move to 1B/LF/DH, à la Tyler Soderstrom. That’s two to three years away, but Tait will still be only 21 or 22 at that time, and it’s usually special defenders who are ready to catch big leaguers at that age, not developmental projects. This is a high-upside prospect who could be a 35-homer catcher, but it will probably take the better part of the next half decade for Tait to develop as a defender and more selective hitter.

In a draft light on high-upside position players, Holliday was perhaps the singular exception. He’s been tooled up since his days as an underclassman at Stillwater High, when crosscheckers coming in to see his brother Jackson left almost more impressed with the freshman manning the hot corner. Colorado, understandably desperate for a franchise player, selected Holliday fourth overall and paid him $9 million to sign, the highest bonus in last year’s draft.

Holliday’s physicality stands out immediately. Four inches taller and a few dozen pounds of muscle bigger than his brother, Ethan has the strength and the build of a player in his mid-20s. He’s no stiff either, a fluid mover who should be just fine at third base given time and reps (he has played shortstop thus far but likely won’t stick there). He has a fast bat and there’s loft in the path, which feeds the immense power projection listed above. He even shows a little feel for manipulating the bat head and using the whole field.

But while Holliday hammers the ball when he does connect, it’s the lack of contact that looks most worrisome here. His numbers weren’t particularly good on the showcase circuit, and anybody who hoped that a cameo at Low-A would render that moot will have to keep waiting: Holliday’s .239/.357/.380 line in 18 games at Fresno is more than fine on its own, but 33 strikeouts in 84 plate appearances suggests that there’s a long path ahead. Speaking of long paths: Holliday’s bat travels a considerable distance from the time his hands get going. He has a long and deep load with a hand loop, and then long levers on top of that. Once he starts, there’s real venom in the swing, but right now pitchers are throwing pedestrian velo right past him.

Holliday will likely need to make an adjustment, either to the length of his path or in his load; in his current form, he just looks too vulnerable to velocity. The bet here is that Holliday finds a way to make it work. He’s so strong and talented in other ways in the box that we’re in on him as a potential star, even with red flags lurking. Consider this grade more of a reflection on his upside than our conviction in his likelihood to reach it.

The Jays had the 20th overall pick two drafts in a row and used their 2023 selection on Nimmala, a slick and projectable shortstop from Florida. Even though he was lean and young for his class, the Tampa native’s power potential and ability at short stood out. Heading into his third full professional season, those traits form the backbone of an exciting shortstop prospect.

At the plate, Nimmala’s swing is long but quick, and the loft in it feeds an aggressive projection on his power. It also comes with swing and miss: His 70% contact rate was acceptable in context but low overall, and high fastballs in particular can be a problem. There’s enough barrel feel to make it work, though, and we think that this part of his game will come as he matures physically. His ability to make an adjustment while the ball is in flight, particularly notable on spin, speaks to a projectable hit tool. Defensively, Nimmala isn’t the rangiest shortstop you’ll see, but he’s a smooth mover with lovely hands. We think the overall package is good enough to stick at short, and he has enough arm for third if his mobility declines and he needs to move.

The numbers haven’t fully lined up with the tools yet. Some of that is due to age, as Nimmala has been the third-youngest regular in the circuit at both of his professional stops, while some is environmental: The Northwest League, and Vancouver’s damp (but wonderfully classic) ballpark in particular, is not an easy place to hit. There were positive signs amidst all of that. He posted another double-digit homer season, and a 10% drop in his strikeout rate year-over-year is highly encouraging for a guy with some swing-and-miss issues. Still, there’s no escaping the reality that we’re doing a little more projecting than normal here.

We acknowledge the inherent risk in that and are plowing ahead anyway. Nimmala’s power, developing barrel feel, and defensive work make for a hugely enticing package. For those of you inclined to round up or down based on a player’s specific context, Toronto’s superb strength and conditioning program is an ideal match for a player still growing into his frame. And for what it’s worth, Nimmala is reportedly a tremendously hard worker in the weight room. Agnostic of that, we really like the athlete and tools here, and we’re betting the results will follow in time.

Lombard was the Yankees’ first pick in the 2023 draft, and he’s a departure from New York’s tendency to focus on safe, higher-floored first-round talents. Instead, the Miami native is a projectable athlete with a chance for above-average power and defense at short, albeit with hit risk. All the good and all the scary was on display last year, when he hit .215/.337/.358 in 108 Double-A games, with eight bombs and a bunch of hard contact but also a 26.4% strikeout rate.

Some hitters need to be coaxed into swinging a little harder to tap into their power; Lombard is not one of those cats. He’s up there to do damage, and he has a violent, high-effort upper cut that produces hard contact — 45% hard-hit rate, which is great — as well as swing and miss — 71% contact, 77% in zone, which is on the lower end for a guy in Double-A with 45 present power. He isn’t a hacker: He’ll take his walks, and for someone with an effortful swing, he has pretty good pitch recognition skills, and is able to adjust to spin and lay off it when it’s in the dirt. Like a lot of players with his bat path, he tends to hammer balls in the lower part of the zone and struggle with heat upstairs. For the hit tool to reach our projection, he’s going to have to find a way to handle fastballs above the belt better than he has thus far.

Defensively, Lombard is a powerful, explosive, tightly wound athlete who requires more visible effort to make plays in the hole than most shortstops with his projection, though he’s talented enough to do so. His footwork looks a little better going to his right, and his arm facilitates plays deep in the six hole. Lombard’s arm stroke is frequently longer and sometimes a little messier than most shortstops, and there are a couple of instances where his throws nearly pull the first baseman off of the bag. But for the most part, his throws are strong and accurate from a number of different platforms. We’re split on whether he’s going to be an above-average or a plus defender there, but either way, that’s really good.

It’s important to contextualize Lombard’s season. The batting average and strikeouts are scary, but he was just 19 when he was promoted to Double-A. He’s a good defender at short, and he produced an above-average line at the plate even with a few warts. He’s been promoted quickly thus far in his career, and perhaps it’s time to take him off the fast track and let him really whack the competition around for a few months before the next challenge. We’re confident he has the talent to do so.

Anderson was a 1:1 candidate after a dominant season at LSU, but had to “settle” for the third pick and the second-highest bonus in the 2025 class. He is a spindly, 6-foot-2 lefty who’ll show you four plus pitches. His fastball sits 92-95 mph with vertical ride, and it plays up because his loose arm action hides it until the very last moment. It generated a whopping 35% miss rate in 2025. The way his fastball plays means Anderson’s command of it doesn’t have to be precise; it rides enough to evade barrels in the strike zone. His slider, a mid-80s offering with big two-planed wipe, is often a pitch he goes to when he needs a strike, and he threw it for strikes at a 70% clip last year. His curveball and changeup usage doesn’t exceed that of his slider, even against right-handed hitters. That might change in pro ball, as Anderson’s changeup (which he sells with his whip-cracking arm speed) has enough late action to miss bats, and his curveball has lovely downward trajectory and depth that should make it a platoon neutralizer. He can also dump the curveball in the zone for strikes.

Anderson is definitely a control-over-command type; he doesn’t have great touch and feel for surgical location. He’s a power pitcher, and his stuff plays like a power pitcher’s despite the velocity. He doesn’t have ideal size like Paul Skenes, who looks like he eats 200 innings for breakfast; he’s skinnier and has just the one year of being stretched out like this, though his stuff was crisp late in the season. This is a fast-moving mid-rotation starter who has the toolkit to get just about anyone out. Whether Anderson starts in Double-A or not, he should get there quickly and a 2026 debut isn’t out of the question.

The second of Seattle’s 2023 first round picks, Farmelo signed for a little more than $3 million out of a Virginia high school. He was a tools bet at the time, a plus athlete with big power and blazing speed. He hit the ground running from the time he reached instructs and quickly moved onto our Top 100 list. Injuries have since taken a bite out of Farmelo’s career. A torn ACL ended his 2024 season in mid-June, and then a stress fracture in his ribs put him on the shelf for most of 2025; even counting the Arizona Fall League, he’s played in fewer than 100 professional games.

Farmelo’s physicality facilitates a big power projection and a chance to get to it reliably. He has a fast bat and is already posting major league average exit velocities, with the kind of frame and twitch that suggests another grade of impact is on the way. He has a low-ball swing geared for loft, and while the bat path isn’t perfectly direct, his hands are fast enough to at least be competitive on pitches up. He’s an explosive rotator, and when he gets a pitch in his wheelhouse and turns on it, he looks every bit like a big leaguer.

Farmelo’s feel for contact isn’t great right now. In addition to the vulnerability upstairs, he’s also swinging over a lot of breaking balls. Some days he looks caught in between, and you can see why he posted a contact rate of just 65% last season. The stop and start nature of his 2025 season may have a lot to do with that, and he may well start hitting for more contact when he can just play every day, but it’s a flag regardless.

The injuries also have limited Farmelo’s chance to mature in center field, where his reads and routes remain a work in progress. He was a no-doubt 70 runner prior to the ACL tear and looked darn close to that late last summer, but he’s also a bigger guy with a couple injuries on the ledger now. On tools and athleticism, he projects as a center fielder, but there are things to monitor here. All of this makes him a volatile prospect. With that hit risk comes five-tool upside, however, and perhaps the highest ceiling in the system.

The Angels held the draft’s second overall pick in a year characterized by a lack of consensus at the top. True to form, they passed on the higher-ceiling talents expected to go within the first few picks in order to take the draft’s most big league-ready player in Bremner. Were this the NFL, they likely could have traded down to do this. They did manage to sign the former Gaucho for $2.5 million under slot and were able to spread the savings throughout the rest of their draft. Still, consensus was that this was a bit of an overdraft.

Setting aside your and our opinion on the wisdom of the Angels’ draft strategy — see the System Overview for more on that subject — Bremner is a very good pitching prospect. He’s an above-average athlete with an innings-eater’s frame and a long history of peppering the strike zone. His walk rate across three seasons of college baseball was under 2.5 per nine, and he missed a ton of bats alongside. Most of that is due to his 70-grade changeup, a pitch that stands out immediately for its devastating sink, late depth that works against both lefties and righties. He also misses bats with his sinker, which is a little strange, but it works in part because the separation between it and the change has hitters guessing. Finding a better slider is the big developmental goal here, as Bremner’s flashes, but its shape is inconsistent and, uncharacteristically, so is his feel for it.

The big question here is how much learning on the job the Angels will prescribe for Bremner. Each of L.A.’s last three first-round picks boat raced to the big leagues in less than a year, an aggressive timeline that reflects the organization’s tendency to push talented farmhands quickly. Bremner has been invited to big league camp, and while you wouldn’t think he’s likely to crack the club out of spring training, the Angels did that very thing with last year’s second-round pick, Ryan Johnson, who was even greener. Bremner’s control, command, and out pitch would make him a candidate to move quickly in any organization, but our instinct is that it wouldn’t be the worst thing for him to sharpen his slider in a developmentally-appropriate environment. We’ll see if the Angels think overwise.

Rodríguez is a good example of why it pays to stay on athletes with projectable frames, even when the stuff and arm strength look a little light. He was sitting in the low 90s just a few years ago but now holds 94-96 comfortably and touches 98 mph, and he has seen a corresponding uptick in the crispness of his secondaries. He was able to maintain his stuff while tossing 150 innings last year, his first in the Yankees org after being acquired from Boston for Carlos Narváez, and averaging 5.5 innings per start, which is about as stretched out as you’ll see a minor leaguer get these days.

Rodríguez has both fastballs, but he leans on his sinker, a bowling ball with late drop that has proven incredibly difficult to lift. He pumps strikes with it, and it occasionally misses bats, but the real benefit is that it ran a negative launch angle last year. On the whole, he posted a 54.5% groundball rate and allowed just three homers all season. The rest of the secondaries do their part to keep hitters guessing and the slider can generate swing and miss. There isn’t a monster, plus offspeed pitch, but the deep arsenal, velocity, and movement all help Rodríguez limit damage on contact.

It looks like Rodríguez will be a control-over-command pitcher. Part of that is because his ball moves so darned much, but some of the markers in his delivery — he’s a tall guy with a fairly long path, and while he’s under control, he isn’t especially fluid — hint that he’s going to work regions more than hit spots. Perhaps he’ll grow into a half-grade more command than we’re projecting if he stays healthy and accumulates reps, but even if he doesn’t, he should generate enough contact on the ground to eat up frames and avoid huge innings. He projects as a lower-variance no. 4 starter with late-inning upside if he does need to shift to relief.

A six-sport athlete at Turramurra High School in Australia (about 20 minutes north of the Sydney Opera House), Bazzana ran track (100m dash, long jump and high jump), played soccer, basketball, and rugby, lettered in cricket starting in seventh grade, captained a state championship team, and was on Australia’s U18 Baseball World Cup roster in 2019. He was immediately a good college hitter at Oregon State, where he slashed .360/.497/.660 throughout his career and posted a .407/.568/.911 line as a junior with 28 homers and only 37 strikeouts. The Guardians made him the first overall pick in the 2024 draft and sent Bazzana straight to High-A Lake County, then to Double-A Akron when camp broke in 2025. He slashed .245/.389/.424 on the season (with a six-week midseason absence due to an oblique strain) and reached Triple-A Columbus in August.

Bazzana is a compact athlete cut from the same cloth as Rougned Odor and Brian Dozier; he’s a smaller guy who creates big hip and hand separation, swings really hard (seemingly with more effort than when he was in college), and packs a pretty good wallop for a hitter his size. His swing is geared to generate lots of pull-side launch, so much that we’re inclined to project that Bazzana produces more game power than his raw strength would ordinarily suggest. Aiding this is Bazzana’s plate discipline. He’s hyper-selective and, no matter the count or pitch type, he chases a full two standard deviations less often than the average big leaguer. One could argue some of these look like overly passive, predetermined takes, as Bazzana only swung at 39% of pitches in 2025, which would have placed him among the 10 most patient qualified big leaguers. This tendency to run very deep counts has elevated Bazzana’s strikeout totals (he K’d in a surprisingly high 24.3% of his plate appearances last year) even though his underlying contact data has continued to be good. He’ll probably always strike out a good bit, in Bazzana’s case because of his extreme selectivity and the effort with which he’s swinging. He should balance that by running high OBPs.

It’s enough offense to project Bazzana as a solid everyday player even though he’s landlocked at second base. He has gotten a little better there, and his actions around the bag looked more comfortable and routine later in 2025. He runs well and is willing to dirty his uniform, which allows him to make some tough plays at the very end of his range and perform like an average defender. This is a nice all-around player but not a franchise-altering superstar. Cleveland tends to promote prospects slowly as a means of retaining players’ rights for as long as possible, but it’s likely that at some point in 2026, it’ll be obvious that he is better than the alternatives the Guardians have on their roster, and Bazzana will get an opportunity to make his mark on another close AL Central race.

Rojas had a monster half-season at High-A in 2025, where he walked nearly as often as he struck out while hitting .278/.379/.492. While it was his second spin through the level, his performance was encouraging enough for us to elevate him from the 45+ tier to a lofty spot on our mid-season Top 100 update. With a connected, explosive swing, we saw him as a middle infielder with a chance to grow into average hit- and game-power tools.

But Rojas’ production cratered over 39 games following a promotion to Double-A, badly enough to trigger a re-evaluation. Every number got worse, most starkly his wRC+ (145 to 58) and home run total (11 to zero). We tried to play doctor and didn’t come away especially satisfied. Sure, it’s a lofted swing without a lot of barrel manipulation; there was always going to be some fastball miss here. Yes, he’s an undersized guy with a big swing that could compromise his barrel accuracy. Naturally there’s a little head movement to go with it, which also could exacerbate the issue. And no, we weren’t entirely surprised that his susceptibility to spin off the plate got him into a little more trouble against better arms.

It’s possible that Rojas just needs time to acclimate. We’re only talking about 39 games, the kid is still just 20, and he wasn’t especially productive in his first taste of High-A either. Perhaps he just needs a minute to adjust to a new level of pitching, and maybe a little extra strength will let the power play without so much effort. The trouble is that all of that was part of the package at High-A as well. In retrospect, it’s a little concerning that virtually all of Rojas’s loudest production came on upper-80s fastballs and hanging breakers.

Before we resolve the dilemma, let’s spare a few words for the glove. At shortstop, Rojas is a good fielder with slick hands, an accurate arm, and a quick release. He isn’t a finished product: While he can play fast, he’s also liable to turn routine plays into close calls, and he’ll still clang the odd ball as well. In the long run, though, he projects as an average defender at short.

There’s a lot of speculation and rumination in the paragraphs above. With players who zig and zag as Rojas has, sometimes it’s best to get off the roller coaster and get back to the fundamentals. This is a good athlete with a good swing, average power, and a strong defensive foundation. He’s been challenged throughout his career, and while you can’t completely ignore how hard he’s smacked into some of those speed bumps, the good outweighs the bad. He’s a high-priority look for us this spring, and for now, we’re staying on the tools.

Mack is among the top catching prospects in baseball even though a shaky hit tool likely makes him more of a six- or seven-hole bat than a two-way star. He’s a stellar defender and could grow into plus power at maturity, which is why he projects as an impact player even though there’s a chance he’s a sub-.220 hitter.

There’s an old saw about bat wraps: “If it’s behind the head, you may be okay; if it’s over the helmet, no way.” Mack’s, unfortunately, resembles the latter. Even though his levers aren’t long and the bat is fairly quick once it’s moving, it just takes him so long to get going that it’s really tough for him to cover the upper part of the zone on fastballs. This is exacerbated by a tendency to swing and miss on spin. It all leads to a hit tool that’s well below average, and an offensive profile reliant on the long ball. Fortunately, Mack can do that: His swing is geared to drive low pitches. His power is already above average, and he’s young enough to get another half tick as he fills out.

Mack has excellent hands behind the plate, and they show up in all facets. His wrists are strong, and he effortlessly funnels pitches from beneath the zone and off the corners back toward the center of the plate. He’s a good ball blocker with a knack for keeping his body in front of the ball and then scooping it cleanly with the glove anyway. And the speed with which he’s able to do a high transfer as he climbs out of his crouch helped him run a 33% caught-stealing rate, though a plus arm and accurate throws that consistently end up on the right side of second base helped plenty. He’s also reportedly a good clubhouse presence who works well with the staff. Like a number of first-division backstops these days, it’s a power-and-D skill set, one that looks just about ready for show time.

Drafted as a wild card — emphasis on the wild — with a strong arm, Klassen’s feel for the strike zone improved right away in pro ball. He made just 14 starts in the Phillies system before the Angels acquired him as the headline return in the Carlos Estévez trade (Samuel Aldegheri was the other player) back in 2024. He shaved another two percentage points off his walk rate in 2025, a season in which he had trouble preventing runs but otherwise performed well: He notched a 3.21 FIP and struck out more than 11 batters per nine. After a rough month of June, he shoved down the stretch at Double-A and was promoted to Salt Lake for his final start of the season.

Klassen has some of the best stuff in the system. His fastball sits in the upper 90s, hard enough to play despite less than ideal shape. His cutter and slider are both monsters, plus pitches with nasty late break and miss rates north of 40%. The cutter looks like a tight slider and the slider like a sharp power curve. Regardless of what he calls them, they’re good enough to work against lefties, a necessity for him given his change. He has one, and the arm speed on it is fine, but his feel for it lags, as it doesn’t move a whole lot and isn’t often in enticing locations. On stuff, he’s nearly a finished product, unless you want to put a ton of work into the change. The slower of his breaking balls can spin out on him, but he’s otherwise got weapons that will work reliably right now.

Even as he’s progressed as a strike-thrower, Klassen’s command remains below average. He’s athletic and flexible, with enviable hip and shoulder separation, but there are markers in his delivery that suggest his feel for location will likely remain crude. He has the dreaded inverted W arm action and a long path to go with it, both of which make it difficult for him to time his delivery consistently. He’s also a heel grinder with a high-effort finish. It’s not so violent that he can’t throw strikes, but he is on the starter/reliever line.

A team in the Angels’ situation has every incentive to keep Klassen stretched out and hope for the best, which in our estimation would be a no. 3 with strong production, if without much length. And even though he’s barely averaged four innings per start as a minor leaguer — and threw 108.2 innings in 25 starts last year — there are reasons to think he can get there. The stuff speaks for itself, and the trendline on length is positive: After a rough beginning to the season, Klassen completed at least five frames in 11 of his last 12 outings, including a seven-inning, 109-pitch performance in his final Double-A start. That’s a starter’s workload in modern baseball, and there’s no reason to pull the plug now. Klassen has high-leverage relief as a fall back if it doesn’t work out, with legitimate closer upside in short stints.

Tong ripped through the upper levels with an uncommon level of dominance. After striking out 160 batters and allowing just three home runs across 113 innings in 2024, he then bettered both of those figures across the same number of Double- and Triple-A frames last season. A 1.43 ERA across 22 starts with more than 14 strikeouts per nine looks like something a good high school prospect might do; to dominate seasoned professionals in such a manner is ridiculous.

Both Tong’s stuff and delivery are notable parts of his profile. Let’s touch on the stuff first. He throws very hard, up to 99, and he sat 94-97 mph last year. Even if he winds up dialing the velo back a tick over the course of an arduous big league season, plus carry and extension should let this play like a plus pitch. The jury is out everywhere else. His change flashes above average, but both his slider and curve look fringy. He mostly uses the latter, and while it has a nice 12-6 shape to it, it’s not particularly sharp and has a bit of a hump. It doesn’t project as a big bat-misser.

Tong is easily a plus athlete, and his looseness allows him to do things in his delivery that most humans can’t. The length of his stride, the whippiness in his arm, and his ability to use every ounce of his body all stand out immediately. Still, even with his body control, it’s a tricky delivery to sequence: He starts by coiling into a rock and fire, then scapulates into a long stride down the mound, and releases with big spinal tilt. The effort involved produces a significant heel grind and forces him to spin off the mound and finish with his back nearly facing home plate. There’s a lot of head movement throughout, and his stroke is pretty deep too, so while the arm action is clean, it’s also another tricky element to line up with everything else.

Tong’s athleticism gives him a chance to throw strikes, and potentially good ones, even with all of this going on. For now though, that skill lags, and he has a worrying tendency to miss over the middle of the plate rather than off of it. His stuff was good enough to overwhelm minor league hitters wherever he locates, but big league bats gave him a rougher ride: They socked three dingers in Tong’s 18.2 innings of work, and also walked nine times. There’s every chance that his Mets outings were a learning experience that will prompt an adjustment in how he attacks going forward, but it’s also possible that he doesn’t have the command to pull it off.

There’s also the not-insignificant matter of durability to consider. This is a concern for every pitcher, and to be fair to Tong, he hasn’t had a significant injury. But he’s also a slight guy with a very high-effort delivery; it’s fair to worry about how he’ll hold up. Ultimately, we think the fastball and change are good enough for Tong to belong on this list. There are fallbacks too, because if the command or fringy spin push him to the bullpen, he could be good enough there to justify this grade as a high-leverage reliever. Whatever shape it takes, though, Tong has the look of a pitcher who’ll burn brightly but quickly.

Hopkins is a converted outfielder who spent his first couple of collegiate seasons at the College of Charleston, where he didn’t pitch very much. It wasn’t until he transferred to Winthrop that he began to pitch regularly in a starter role, and he still managed to lead the Eagles in homers during his draft year even though Hopkins was becoming an arrow up prospect on the mound. An incredible on-mound athlete and mover, Hopkins’ stuff took a leap within his first year as a pro, and he quickly became Seattle’s best pitching prospect before he was traded to Tampa Bay as part of the 2024 Randy Arozarena deal.

In 2025, just his third season as a devoted pitcher, Hopkins was able to post a 2.72 ERA across 116 innings at Double-A, and he did it with a totally new delivery. Since the trade, Hopkins’ arm slot has raised from a purely sidearm angle to something closer to three-quarters. The change has made the movement of his fastball more vertically-oriented. It came at the cost of the freaky, uphill angle he was creating with his old arm slot, but Hopkins’ special down-the-mound athleticism still enables him to get to a low enough release point that he can attack at the belt. Hopkins has held 95-98 mph fastball velocity for more than 100 innings two years in a row, and now he’s thrown a starter’s ratio of strikes despite meaningful changes to his delivery. Both are big check points on the road to a big league rotation, and at this point we consider Hopkins to have relief risk but not relief probability.

Hopkins is still getting feel for how to use his breaking stuff, sliders and cutters that span the 86-93 mph range. His release of both is inconsistent, and the two pitches run together in both shape and velocity, but they are very nasty when Hopkins executes them. He looks more comfortable working the top of the zone with both breaking balls than he does spotting them for chase. We think Hopkins’ feel for these pitches will grow, and there’s evidence in his pitch data (via the uptick in his raw spin rates from 2023 to now) that his tactile feel for spinning the baseball is also improving. While Hopkins doesn’t have a good offspeed pitch yet, he’s the sort of mover who we bet will develop one. Even though he’s undercooked as a pitching craftsman at age 24, there’s still a big gap between what he’s capable of right now and what he might be capable of over the course of the next several years. Hopkins has a non-zero shot to debut in late 2026 as he marches toward the 140-inning mark for the first time and tries to make a case for a 2027 rotation spot.

Alcántara returns to our Top 100 for a third time. Alcántara is twitchy and among the more obviously athletic players you’ll see. He has a fast bat and explosive rotational ability, which is the genesis of big raw power. It already grades plus even though he’s very lean, and with his age and frame, he could conceivably get to 70 raw. And for all his trouble making contact (we’ll get to that in a minute), Alcántara has consistently hammered extra base hits throughout his career. It’s a power-over-hit skill set, but the damage could be significant.

The hit tool risk here is large. Alcántara’s long levers and big swing were always going to come with plenty of swing-and-miss, and in his case that tendency is compounded by below-average spin recognition and strike zone judgement. His chase rates, especially with two strikes, are large, and his contact rates in Triple-A were toward the bottom of what’s viable. He’s struck out between 25-30% of the time throughout his minor league career, and that seems like the floor of where it’ll end up in the big leagues. There’s a chance that the hit tool is light enough that he’s just a fourth outfielder.

Everything we said about Alcántara’s defense in last year’s glowing report holds true. ​​He’s a plus runner with plus range and ball skills, and he plays with a delightful lack of inhibition near the wall. He’s gotten very good at the minutiae of the position, like deke’ing baserunners or running to a spot to position himself to throw before he’s collected the baseball. With Pete Crow-Armstrong around, Alcántara is more likely to be a potential Gold Glove corner outfielder in Chicago, but here he’s evaluated as a center fielder because that’s the best spot to deploy him in a vacuum and where he’d likely play if the Cubs wind up trading him.

We’re staying on the upside. This is one of the toolsiest players in the minors, and unlike several of his athletic peers who never really learned how to play the game, Alcántara has conquered Triple-A. He may need a minute to find his footing in Chicago — fortunately for the Cubs, he was granted a fourth option year — and there’s a risk that he doesn’t actualize all this potential at all. But in the long run, it pays to bet on the athletes, and this one in particular could explode if everything clicks.

Morales is one of the highest-variance prospects in the minors. This is a twitchy and explosive kid, a plus athlete with present strength and a frame that suggests more is on the way. Just 18 years old last season, Morales has already hit the ball 111 mph, and there’s a chance he grows into plus-plus raw as he fills out these next couple years. He’s also lean enough to potentially stay up the middle, and while he’s not a wizard, you can dream on a 30-homer guy with average defense at short. If it comes to fruition, that’s a star.

The rub here is that Morales has significant hit tool questions to address. Mechanically, he has an early hip leak that pulls him off the plate and limits his ability to stay on spin and cover the outer half. It also feeds into his aggressive approach: He likes to turn it loose, and while he’s not selling out for power recklessly, he’s also not exactly trying to poke one through the four hole either. There’s some steepness to the path that will let the power play but also foster some swing and miss, and while Morales is quick enough to reach fastballs up, he’s also going to whiff on plenty of high heat. His swing decisions aren’t great, either. They’re not so bad as to think he’s hopeless, but he tends to chase spin, and he expands in all directions with two strikes. Morales has time to sand down some of these rough edges, and the projection here is that he will, at least to the degree necessary to profile as a power-over-hit regular. But for good and for ill, the range of outcomes here is pretty large.

Just 23 years old, Caissie has lived a notable baseball life already. His titanic power has made him a prospect since he was an amateur in Ontario, and his upside was enticing enough for the Cubs to acquire him in exchange for Yu Darvish before he had played a professional game. He then hit the ground running in Chicago’s system, and leapt to Triple-A as a 21-year-old. Despite pretty good production there, he spent more than a year-and-a-half with Iowa before the Cubs finally summoned him to the big leagues late last summer. He played in just 12 games and was then dealt to Miami in the Edward Cabrera deal.

Caissie is likely to be a predominantly Three True Outcomes kind of hitter. He can work a count and will take his share of walks because he has a) elite power, the kind that pitchers are loath to challenge, and also b) a shaky hit tool. Despite electric bat speed and a compact swing, Caissie has consistently run strikeout rates north of 25% throughout his minor league career. He isn’t great at recognizing breaking balls, but perhaps the bigger reason is that he’s a rotational hitter with an early leak that pulls him off the plate and limits his ability to cover the outer half, especially on lefty spin.

Caissie’s contact rates last year (72% overall, 81% in zone) were viable for a guy with his power, though, which is exciting because the ball just jumps off his bat when he does connect. He pounded a ball 114 mph in his brief big league stint and had a 53% hard-hit rate last season. And for all the strikeouts, he still managed to hit .286/.386/.551 at Triple-A last year. There’s some risk that big league pitchers are too good at taking advantage of the holes outside and at the very top of the zone for him to profile as a regular, but Cassie has hit well at every other level. As a bigger guy, he may need a beat to get used to big league pitching, and the Marlins should stay patient with him if he starts slowly. He has clear fallback as a useful platoon player if the strikeouts prove too much for him to hold an everyday role.

Briceño hails from Miguel Cabrera’s hometown of Maracay, Venezuela. Strong as an ox, he’s done nothing but hit since coming stateside, and he shrugged off an injury-plagued 2024 campaign last year to post his best numbers to date. He hit .266/.383/.500 and notched a 153 wRC+ between High- and Double-A, with decent walk and strikeout numbers even after the promotion.

Briceño is a bat-first player. He has plus power, line-to-line in games, and generates it with an easy, manipulable swing. He covers the plate, isn’t especially vulnerable to the soft stuff, and projects to hit for a blend of average and power. His production dipped noticeably following the jump to Double-A, but he was still an above-average hitter there, and may just need a little more time at the level before his next jump.

Briceño is still catching, but he did so less than half the time at each stop in 2025. For us, he’s not a fit there long-term. He has a strong arm, but both his receiving and blocking are substandard. It usually doesn’t make sense to try to shoehorn a bat-first guy into a tricky defensive position, all the more so when it’s behind the plate, where slower development timelines and injury risk augment the toll the job takes on anyone’s offensive game. Briceño projects as a first baseman, and perhaps just a fringy one. It’s all about the bat here, though, and there’s 30-homer upside if everything clicks. We’ll be monitoring Briceño to see if a full-time switch to an easier defensive home brings with it another gear at the plate.

De León has had an uneven season each of the last three years; in all three, he pitched well enough to earn promotions and then struggled to throw strikes afterward. Toward the end of 2024, when De León walked a batter per inning across his final seven outings, it looked like he was trending toward a relief-only development path. While his 2025 featured a similar late-season strike-throwing swoon, it was better overall — 20 games, 87.1 innings, 2.59 FIP, 10.9% walk rate, 28.5% strikeout rate — and was capped by an Arizona Fall League stint in which De León looked like the league’s best pitching prospect.

Though he missed the first month of 2025 with an elbow impingement, De León ended up working 103.2 innings on the year (and probably a little more than that, as he stayed hot between the end of the regular season and the beginning of AFL play) and was still humming in the 95-98 mph range come Fall League. The effortlessness with which De León can access that kind of velocity is remarkable, and now we have some idea that he can hold it for an entire season. At a short-levered 6-foot-3, De León’s quick arm action seems to make hitters uncomfortable and season his repertoire with deception, though the shape of his sinking fastball makes it more of a groundball pitch (he’s posted overall groundball 57-60% range throughout his career) than a bat-misser.

It’s De León’s secondary stuff, and more and more often his splitter, that finishes hitters. He throws both a splitter (it’s nasty, but erratic) and a changeup (it has less sinking movement, but he has better feel for it), which you can see in the linked video. De León will bust out the splitter against hitters of either handedness. His slider has performed like a plus-plus bat-missing pitch, but it projects to play down a bit in the big leagues because of inconsistent feel. Even some of the De León sliders that don’t finish are still nasty enough to freeze hitters or induce whiffs, and he showed feel for pitching backwards off of it in Arizona. De León has relief risk because of his crude command, but the ease with which he operates makes us optimistic he’ll soon work efficiently enough to start, though probably not efficiently enough to go six or seven innings every time out. He could debut late in 2026, though if De León’s history as a player is any indication, it’ll probably take him a minute to adjust and entrench himself in the middle of Baltimore’s rotation, more likely in late 2027 and beyond.

While Chase Burns and Trey Yesavage, fellow college pitchers taken in the 2024 draft’s first round, made ballyhooed major league debuts, Smith went through sort of an odyssey of a first professional season. Listed at a sturdy 6-foot-3 and 235 pounds, with a fully developed lower half, the draft day rationale around Smith was that his strength gains had added stability to his leg drive, lifting him above the reliever-y look of his first two years at Arkansas and allowing his ridiculous fastball-slider combination to play up. But his first season of pro ball showed that wasn’t quite the whole truth of it, as he walked 62 hitters in 89.2 total innings if you include his five Arizona Fall League outings, which were Smith’s best of the year. Prior to that finishing flurry, Smith missed six weeks in the first half for elbow soreness, dovetailing with the White Sox cycling through a number of leg kicks in hopes of finding something that would time up with the southpaw’s short, quick, lower-slot arm stroke.

Smith settled on something with minimal counter rotation and a shorter path to his foot strike, but that’s not a full solution. He’s strong enough to dip into his back leg to an extreme degree and explodes toward the mound, and his resulting high-tempo delivery is difficult to sync up consistently. As a result, most of Smith’s 2025 was spent trying to re-establish his baselines rather than build out a third pitch. But just as was the case on draft night, Smith has two pitches nasty enough that it may not matter. His velocity fluctuated throughout the year; he hit 99 mph, but there were also some nights right before the IL stint when he sat 92, and then he worked 94-96 through the AFL. In any case, Synergy had Smith running a 30% miss rate on his heater in affiliated play, as his short arm action makes him difficult to time. The rise-and-run action on his fastball makes him an uncomfortable at-bat for lefties, and seemingly center-cut offerings can run up and away from righties (and catchers). Smith spins his freak low-80s slider off the skin of the baseball, but it’s where he demonstrates some of his most compelling command. That’s an odd thing to say about a pitch that’s in the strike zone less than half of the time, but he shows the ability to its manipulate shape and speed, throwing hard benders that start at lefties’ shoulders before clipping the outside corner, and dropping in slower versions that resemble backdoor curveballs to right-handers.

Smith’s spin talent speaks to why White Sox pitching dev types have often speculated that his third pitch might just be a slower breaker, and why the split-change he sprinkles in very cautiously and very rarely has limited arm-side action. The Sox have had pockets of success giving extreme supinators (Shane Smith, Davis Martin) changeup variants that don’t require turning over their wrist to execute. But Smith’s first pro season lends a certain logic to focusing on just getting enough strikes out of his two above-average pitches, which offers both the potential for no. 2 starter-level seasons down the road, and a longer and rockier path to getting there than his college success might have suggested.

If Colt Emerson is the captain of the High Floor side of the prospect continuum, Montes is a good avatar for the boom-or-bust prototype. The recipient of $2.5 million bonus in the 2022 international class, Montes was signed for his immense power. He’s a huge guy who has retained his 70 raw projection even as he’s gotten trimmer since signing. He has generated a 116 mph exit velocity, knocked balls over the batter’s eye in consecutive games in Hillsboro’s cavernous yard, and can put on a show in BP. In the words of one scout, “it looks like he’s hitting a Titleist.”

You can probably already guess where the bust risk comes from. While he’s not helpless against spin or totally bereft of plate discipline, Montes is looking to drive the ball with every swing. His contact rates, in zone and overall, are not good, at the bottom of the viability range, and he’s doing that against A-ball and Double-A arms, not big leaguers. He struck out in 30.5% of his Double-A plate appearances in 2025, and it’s hard to imagine his total being all that much lower at the highest level. There’s a chance he just didn’t hit enough to profile.

We’re not quite as high on him as the scouts who think he could be the heir to Yordan Alvarez, but there are reasons for optimism here. Montes is only just 21, and even with all those strikeouts, he was still a pretty good hitter overall at Double-A. His chase rate isn’t low exactly, but it’s low enough, particularly with two strikes, to think there’s some discernment here. Mechanically, there are things to like as well. For his size, Montes isn’t particularly long-levered. He has a big load, but he’s on time, he’s able to get his barrel to pitches up, and he can cover the inner part of the plate. His swings are also big but not reckless; his head is pretty still through contact. We don’t see a plus hitter or anything, but he could well be a 40 and that would play just fine.

He’s never going to win a Gold Glove, but the progress Montes has made defensively deserves praise. In 2023, he looked like a disaster, a surefire DH who didn’t do anything well out in right field. He’s put a ton of work in since and it shows. His ability to track a ball and make plays at the edge of his range have grown tremendously, and he’s turned his strong but wild arm into a playable tool. Just as encouragingly, he’s shown an aptitude for the little things. Imagine a sequence where a single to left produces an overthrow to the plate and the hitter winds up with a big lead after rounding second base. How many right fielders would even think to sneak up on that runner for a possible back pick? Montes did. It’s not a play that’s likely to recreate itself much, but the hustle and foresight speaks to why we’re inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt out there.

Ultimately though, Montes will go as far as his bat takes him. The range of outcomes is pretty wide here, from a Quad-A bat to 40-homer star. You can justify a lot of projections, and while Brendan is higher on him than Eric has been over the last couple of years, he doesn’t think Eric’s forecasts were at all unreasonable. There’s just see so much power, and enough ability to get to it so far, to keep the glass half full. With 70 pop, Montes has passed the crucial threshold where he can mishit balls the other way and still put them in the seats. He projects as a flawed-but-potent middle-of-the-order bat.

Condon put up cartoonish numbers at Georgia, homering 62 times in two seasons, including 37 times in 2024 alone, when he hit .433/.446/1.009 in a Golden Spikes-winning campaign. He was considered by many the top prospect in that year’s draft, and when he fell to the third overall pick, Colorado seemed a perfect match of offensive upside and future park.

It may still prove to be. Eric was (and remains) skeptical of Condon even while he was riding roughshod over the SEC, and his first year-and-a-half of pro at-bats have only validated pre-draft concerns about a grooved bat path and trouble recognizing spin. You can wave away a rough pro debut, as post-draft cameos are kind of awkward, and he was battling through a bone spur in his finger at the time anyway. But even as a wrist fracture last spring complicates the evaluation of his 2025 performance, it’s becoming fair to wonder how much pop Condon will bring into games.

There’s little doubt about his raw impact. Condon is a big guy with plus bat speed and a powerful swing that produces data commensurate with the visual evaluation. His 90th-percentile exit velocity was nearly 106 mph and his max was over 112, both of which are plus. He also had a 44% hard-hit rate and a 13 degree average launch angle that looks, well, like a match for a guy who bashed 60 homers in college. Still, he only homered 14 times in 99 games while running a 131 wRC+ across High- and Double-A, which are both fine in the aggregate but underwhelming for a player with this skill set. This coincided with a move to first base — perhaps just to protect the wrist, perhaps not. We’ll see what Colorado’s new regime decides to do here, because Condon has played elsewhere and looked like a perfectly fine corner outfielder as a pro.

Ultimately, the power potential here is too great to ignore despite everything else. There’s enough noise and hand injuries lurking to think that there’s some small chance of a big breakout coming, but even if there’s not, Condon projects as a 2-3 WAR player with 35-plus homer potential, even if he’s flawed elsewhere.

Ritchie was Atlanta’s first-round pick back in 2022. After a scary arm injury early in 2023 put him on the shelf for more than a year, the right-hander came back showing no ill effects. He finished the 2024 season strongly and then made 26 starts (27 if you want to count the Futures Game), tossing 140 innings across three levels last season. He finished with a 3.02 ERA and more than a strikeout per inning across nearly 60 frames of work in Triple-A, and is poised to become the first player from his high school — and Brendan’s! — to reach the big leagues.

Ritchie touches 97 with both of his fastballs, and after years of sitting 91-93, he added a tick and change in 2025, when his heater averaged 93.9 mph. While not a seismic breakout, it’s a meaningful step forward for a strike-thrower with a change and good feel to spin, one who has been on the 45/50 line in previous evaluation cycles. The extra velo gives him more wiggle room in the zone, and his ability to command the ball to both sides of the plate suggests he’ll fully leverage it.

Ritchie is a sum-of-his-parts pitcher. He’s a good athlete, and his low-effort, mostly-textbook delivery facilitates plenty of strikes. With both fastballs, a 12-6 curve, a slider, and a fading change, the righty is able to make the ball move in a lot of different directions, and can thus mix and match his attack to prey on the weaknesses of his opponents. He’s not going to be dominant, and he could wind up fairly dinger prone if he’s too loose within the zone, but the length and control give him the look of a solid innings-eater, a no. 4 with a shot to post a couple of mid-rotation campaigns at the peak of his arm strength, akin to the similarly-built Jake Odorizzi.

Kilby was a good high school prospect whose evaluation took a post-draft leap, though perhaps not for the reason prospect-hound readers might think. During BP sessions at showcase events in high school, Kilby was able to produce impressive power in a short mechanical distance (especially for such a lanky, long-levered hitter), and his bat-to-ball track record on the prep circuit in 2023 and 2024 was excellent (87% combined contact rate). He participated in fewer events than many of his best peers, which made that data point a little less reliable, but for such a big-framed, projectable hitter to have that kind of bat-to-ball track record in high school is uncommon. Kilby ranked 23rd on our 2025 Draft Board and was picked a bit later than that at 39th overall, where he got a bonus just shy of $2.8 million to eschew a commitment to Clemson. After the draft, Kilby popped off at Low-A Tampa, where he hit .353/.457/.441 with more walks than strikeouts. His Hawkeye contact data during that 18-game post-draft window was amazing (85% overall contact rate, 92% in-zone, 8% chase), but the sample is too small to really care about even before considering the context (late-season Low-A pitching is effectively complex-level pitching) unless you think Kilby is really twice as selective as Juan Soto.

Where Kilby did look different is on defense. In high school, he was a tightly wound athlete, especially in the lower body, and had an awkward throwing stroke unlike that of your typical big league infielder. It’s why, at FanGraphs anyway, pre-draft Kilby was projected to eventually move to the outfield. But late last summer, Kilby looked much more passable at shortstop than we could have expected. His actions take a little longer to unfold than most big league shortstops, but his range, hands, and throwing strength and accuracy all looked like potential fits at the six. There are still things for Kilby to work on — his swing cuts down at the baseball, and he may hit so many grounders that his power plays down across a bigger sample — but those issues are more palatable when we’re talking about a projectable teenage shortstop instead of future corner outfielder. Don’t be alarmed when Kilby’s numbers (especially his OBP) come back to Earth in 2026 — he’s still got a very exciting profile as a big-framed, lefty-hitting potential shortstop with a great bat-to-ball track record.

Castillo is the latest in a long line of young, athletic, ultra-projectable middle-of-the-diamond players who the Rangers have signed out of Latin America. Like so many other such signees down through the years, Castillo is loose and fast with a tapered frame, the kind that effortlessly generates notable power and speed while teasing the possibility he could develop more of both. And as has been the case so many times before, things look good under the lights too, as both his actions in the field and mechanics at the plate check most of the boxes you want to see in a toolsy ballplayer.

Castillo has the bat speed and looseness in his swing to project an above-average hit tool. He’s not there yet, in part because there’s a big gap between his hardest hit balls and how often he squares one up, and also because the way he pulls off the plate now leaves him a little vulnerable on the outer half. But his 81% contact rate is quite good and the aforementioned max exits indicate the kind of bat speed that lets us project 55s on both the future bat and power. The way he rips his wrists through the ball to reach pitches upstairs is special, and the kind of trait that makes us comfortable projecting big on a guy whose production has been just so-so up to this point.

Castillo also projects as a shortstop and could be a pretty good one. He’s an above-average runner with good hands and clean actions. He isn’t a flawless defender, as like many players his age, the internal clock and reliability components are still a work in progress. But he looks like he’ll stay where he is, as he’s likely to remain spry enough for the job even if he grows into a good bit more strength.

There is a clash between the scouting and the narrative here. For as good as Texas is at unearthing these types of players, the club’s track record of molding all that talent into productive big leaguers hasn’t been particularly robust. We’re ignoring that in this projection. We’re here to evaluate Castillo, not Texas’ history of scouting and developing Latin American talent, and it’s not really fair for the shadows of Leody Taveras and Anthony Gutierrez to cloud the picture. But while the Rangers themselves should be excited about their man, it’s fair for Rangers fans to want to see a little less projection and a little more proof in the pudding before fully sharing that enthusiasm. For us, though, Castillo projects as an everyday player with star potential, and that’s enough to crack our Top 100.

Scarborough was one of the more projectable high school pitchers in the 2023 draft at a gangly 6-foot-5, and was signed away from a Dallas Baptist for $515,000. He struggled badly with walks during his very limited 2024 pro debut, but then flipped the script in 2025 as he worked 88 innings (mostly at Low-A, with a late promotion tucked in) and only walked 21 guys. He carried a 2.45 ERA on the season and didn’t allow a single earned run in three starts at High-A Hub City after he was promoted.

Scarborough’s command of his fastball is particularly impressive, and is a necessary component of his success as a starter. He’s bringing nearly six-and-a-half feet of arms and legs down the mound, with enough extension to add a tick of perceived velo to his 93-96 mph fare, and his low arm slot creates upshot angle that facilitates elevated swing and miss. When he’s locating to the upper arm-side quadrant, his fastball has pretty nasty rise/run life; in the rest of the zone, Scarborough’s heater is pretty hittable, but he successfully peppered that optimal area of the zone throughout the 2025 season.

His breaking ball is an 80-84 mph sweeper with plus horizontal action. His command of the pitch is not as crisp, though it’s a very nasty in-zone weapon against righties, who Scarborough’s sweeper often makes flinch and freeze. His slider generated plus-plus miss in 2025 and spins at around 2,800 rpm on average. Though Scarborough only threw a few dozen change ups throughout last season, he has feel for killing spin, and his loose, whippy arm action allows for projection on the pitch. He’s not higher on this list because we want to see how his command and velo play when his workload isn’t as manicured as it was in 2025, when he was working roughly four innings per start. His delivery does have a bit of violence, and at times he looks flat-footed and his arm stroke is late. None of that mattered from a strike-throwing standpoint in 2025, though we don’t consider Scarborough to be totally out of the relief risk woods yet. He’s still a great prospect who was an emphatic arrow up dev success within two years of being drafted.

Wiggins was a lights out reliever as a freshman at Arkansas and looked like a potential future top 15 pick, but he struggled as a sophomore when he was moved into the rotation. Then Wiggins’ elbow barked and he had Tommy John not long before the start of the 2023 season, his draft year. He already had significant relief risk prior to the injury, and this pushed things a little further in that direction. The Cubs took him in the second round and gave him $1.4 million, and Wiggins rehabbed until May of 2024, when he finally got into actual games again. The Cubs quickly shuttled him to High-A and he was dominant at the very end of the season, striking out 17 and allowing just four hits in his final 10 innings. In 2025, he was again shelved, this time for nearly two months, though the Cubs never formally put Wiggins on the IL. He didn’t pitch more than four innings in any outing after mid-June, but still managed 78 total frames on the season, easily a career high.

Wiggins’ delivery and size create a unique, downhill angle on his stuff. He’s built like an NBA wing player at a long-armed 6-foot-6, and he has an extreme vertical arm slot, which means he’s releasing the baseball from the clouds. Wiggins also gets down the mound well, with roughly six feet, nine inches of extension. There are only a couple of big league pitchers with release profiles like this (José Alvarado, Kevin Ginkel, Kenley Jansen), and hitters struggled to deal with the line it creates on Wiggins’ heater, which averages 97 mph and generated an elite miss rate in 2025. It’s a dominant pitch that could spearhead a late-inning relief fit if he continues to have issues staying healthy and throwing strikes. Wiggins’ ability to turn over a side-spinning changeup has improved as he’s gotten pro run as a starter, and his breaking balls (both his slider and curveball) flash the pure downward movement that would give him multiple ways to attack lefties. But for now, Wiggins is still a fastball-heavy starter with below-average command, and his inconsistent breaking ball feel impacts the quality and performance of that pitch.

If you’re looking for candidates to be 2026 Jacob Misiorowski, Wiggins is one of them. If a competitive Cubs team needs a healthy arm, he could come up and just try to survive for five-ish innings at a time by leaning on his fastball, but he’s still pretty raw as a craftsman and would likely have some developmental growing pains as he hones his breaking ball command. He has no. 3 starter ceiling and a realistic floor as a knockout reliever.

Lagrange’s game has all the subtlety of a brick. He’s coming at you with a fastball either side of 100 mph, a tight power slider, a longer, sweeping breaking ball that’s still pretty sharp, and a hard change. The delivery isn’t max effort, but he is trying to throw hard, and it comes with head movement and spinal tilt. That makes him a little wild. Though the in-zone percentages with everything in his arsenal all hover around 50%, which is fine, he walked 4.65 per nine in 2025, which is a little high. It came alongside a 3.53 ERA, and he did generally manage to toss five innings per outing, but he’ll need to limit the free passes or he’s not going to start in the long run.

While Lagrange’s relief risk is high, so is his ceiling in the bullpen. He projects to have multiple plus pitches in the rotation, and in short stints, everything ticks up and the fastball in particular might just be an 80. Moreover, his mix is deep enough that he wouldn’t be a two-trick pony down there; he’d have elite arm strength, a 70 snapper, and unpredictability on top of that. We think it’s worth continuing to develop Lagrange as a starter, and that he has a puncher’s chance of developing into a five-and-dive type. But if nothing else, using those extra reps to further hone his weapons and command in service of a relief career also works just fine. It’s almost needless to say at this point, but he’d have closer upside out of the bullpen.

Ford has been a mainstay atop Mariners lists since we were breaking the ice with “Pfizer or Moderna?” He’s climbed a level per year, producing the same good, not quite sensational, batting line at every stop, while taking small but positive steps defensively, walking a bunch, and hitting for some power, even as he never really threatened to unseat Cal Raleigh. He was called up in September and made the Mariners’ postseason roster, but barely played. In a move that almost felt overdue, Seattle traded Ford to Washington this winter, a perfect match between a player who needs an opportunity and an org desperate for help behind the plate.

Ford’s production has been strikingly consistent, as he’s notched a wRC+ between 125 and 135 at each full-season level. He’s also posted very small deviations in his walk, strikeout, and — aside from 2024, which he spent in a huge, homer-suppressing yard — ISO numbers, all of which were encouraging. If you value consistent minor league production, this is your guy. His approach has been awesome: He has a very good eye, he recognizes soft stuff out of the hand, and while he doesn’t swing a ton, he reliably turns it loose on pitches he can drive. If you put a lot of stock in swing decisions, well, he’s your guy, too. Patience isn’t a carrying tool, but an approach this good helps augment the ones he has.

Scouts and evaluators are not universally sold on Ford’s ability to translate that production to the big leagues, though. His bat speed is average, and he has periodically struggled getting his bat to fastballs up in the zone. In his 2025 prospect write-up, Eric covered an adjustment Ford made with his feet and timing that seems to have helped, but obviously the big leagues will provide a different stress test. We see an average bat with a chance to grow into average game power, but there are scouts who would take the under on both.

Ford’s defensive growth has mirrored his ascent through the minors. His framing has improved but is still fringy, and he may benefit from an ABS assist, though he was pretty bad at challenging pitches last season. He shines more in spots where his athleticism takes center stage. He’s quick on plays where the ball is tapped out in front of the plate, and he’s going to catch his share of baserunners. He has an above-average arm, his throwing accuracy has improved, and he caught nearly 25% of would-be-thieves in 2025. Early-career reports questioned whether he had too much trouble simply catching the ball, but his passed-ball figures have plummeted since 2023. We’re projecting an average defender, though again, there are evaluators who will take the under.

It all adds up to a 50-FV report, albeit one where there isn’t a lot of wiggle room if one of the tools doesn’t reach its projection, or Ford’s approach buckles against better stuff. Still, if he’s average on both sides of the ball, that’s a good player, and he’s the kind of risk Washington should be taking at this stage.

Though not particularly big, Williams is very strong for his size, and his abnormal combination of power and speed helped him play his way into the first round of the 2022 draft. He then dominated A-ball in his first full pro season, and after a down 2024, conquered Double-A last year. He found the sledding a little tougher in Syracuse, but nonetheless projects as a regular with an enticing blend of plus speed, average in-game power, and defensive versatility. He was traded to Milwaukee along with Brandon Sproat in the Freddy Peralta deal this offseason.

Williams swings with amazing verve and power for a 5-foot-7 guy, but compared to big leaguers, he’s still only generating average raw pop. His top hand is incredibly strong through contact, giving him power back through the middle of the field and to the oppo gap. There are a few markers that suggest Williams’s hit tool will mature south of average. He has a steep swing plane and there isn’t much manipulation in the path. He also swings hard — not recklessly so, but with enough effort to think that he’s compromising his barrel feel to squeeze out as much power as his frame will allow. He has a fast bat and short levers, which helps, but doesn’t fully compensate for everything else. We saw some of the consequences during his bumpy stretch at Triple-A, where he often missed well-executed fastballs pretty badly. And like a lot of fast guys accustomed to legging out infield hits, we also saw how better infield defenders can turn some of that soft contact into outs.

We’re still working out where Williams belongs defensively. He’s played plenty in center and at both middle infield spots, and the emerging consensus is that he’s playable, if not special, at both center and shortstop. His hands and throwing accuracy are just fair at short, and his feel for center is a work in progress, but he’s also young and has split his attention between spots. We think there’s runway for improvement with experience, enough to justify a 50 defensive grade even with so much up in the air. We see his ability to move around as a positive, particularly in Milwaukee, a team well-positioned to capitalize on that versatility. That flexibility partially informs the everyday grade: As a gamer who plays hard and steals bases and does a fair number of little things well, there’s a more-than-the-sum-of-his-parts element at work here, enough so to justify his spot on the list even absent a crystal-clear big league role.

After missing nearly a year-and-a-half with labrum and hamstring injuries, Quero returned last summer and reminded us why he was widely considered an impact prospect two years ago. At the plate, he has an intriguing blend of contact skill and game power. There’s plenty to like mechanically, as he stays in well, covers the plate, and has a connected swing that reliably produces solid contact. He swings a little more than you’d like, and can be lured out of the zone on low-and-away spin in particular, but he’s been more of an aggressive hitter than a reckless one so far. We think he’ll be a useful, power-over-OBP kind of bat.

The injuries did take a bite out of the profile here. Pre-injury, Quero’s arm was a weapon, with sub 1.9 pop times and rockets to second the norm. Last year, his arm strength, accuracy, and mechanical consistency regressed, all of which combined to nearly halve his caught-stealing rate. The grade above reflects a blend of strength and accuracy — teams often grade those traits separately, but we’re simplifying here — the latter of which is especially concerning. Perhaps Quero will shake off the rust this season, and we’re projecting on the arm a little just to hedge, but his throwing looked pretty messy in the Venezuelan Winter League. There’s a real chance that he just won’t be the same as he was before he tore his labrum.

Quero does enough to compensate elsewhere. He doesn’t always get himself in front of the ball, but he’s a good blocker when he does, and we’re projecting further improvement with maturity. We’re still figuring out how to weigh framing in an ABS world, but Quero’s at least a capable strike stealer, and does noticeably well lifting spinning breaking balls at and below the knees. While not a star, Quero projects as a solid regular, the kind of catcher who can hit seventh and keep the line moving while contributing defensively.

After crushing the DSL in 2024, Level was a common scout pick as the best position player on the Arizona complex last year. He hit .288/.375/.493 in the desert, with nine homers and a 40-to-33 strikeout-to-walk split in 58 games. He then held his own in a month’s worth of action at Low-A. There’s an it-factor to his game that belies simple explanation. On both sides of the ball, Level has a knack for doing the little things, and he carries himself in a way — and is treated in the similar manner by teammates — that reflects the outward, if quiet, confidence of a player who knows he’s good.

Level is advanced for his age. On the lighter side, he’s strong for his build, and has a mature feel for when he can turn it loose and drive a pitch to the pull side from both sides of the plate. His bat is quick, and while he’ll sometimes expand on spin — particularly with two strikes — he’ll also show you good zone control and pitch recognition on the right day. A lot of guys who chase as youngsters tend to keep chasing as they get older, but in Level’s case, he looks more discerning than the numbers indicate.

Level’s arm stands out at shortstop, a plus hose with a quick release. His glovework needs refinement — he may just need to get away from the pebbly, bright, and yellow grass of the Arizona backfields — and his range is more adequate than special, but he does enough to project as average at the position. He’d be a good defender at either second or short if he needs to move eventually.

The case against Level is that he isn’t especially projectable. He’s near physical maturation and isn’t likely to develop significantly more pop. He also isn’t going to be a rangy shortstop and isn’t a lock to stay there in the long-term. Plenty of scouts loved Level, but some, including ones who saw him in the Cal League, thought he was more of a good prospect than a great one. We understand those reservations and risks. Ultimately though, this looks like a really good offensive profile for a middle infielder, one that should carry Level to an everyday role at maturity.

Signed for $1.37 million in 2022, Arroyo is the best Colombian prospect in the game. The compactly built second baseman is a well-rounded player with good feel to hit, a sound approach, surprising pop for his size, and a chance to stick at the keystone.

Arroyo’s setup and swing are unorthodox, but so far have been effective. He starts in a closed stance and dives out toward the plate. His hands load high and then he immediately drops the barrel head in a scooping bat path. On last year’s list, Eric comped his swing to Nick Castellanos‘, and that’s a good visual. His bat speed is just average or a tick above, but Arroyo’s short levers and pitch recognition skills help him reach pitches throughout the zone, and for a guy who’s closed off, his ability to get to pull-side lift has always stood out. It’s possible that elite velocity will limit his ability to cover the upper part of the zone, and we’re also worried about pitches inside, and not just his ability to hit them: Arroyo’s hands are in a vulnerable position when he strides, and he tends to get drilled a fair amount there. It would not shock us if there’s a broken hamate or wrist in his future.

For all those risks, there’s a lot to like. Statistically, there aren’t many red flags. Arroyo’s contact rate is good, he doesn’t chase much, and his swing rate on balls in the heart of the plate is 91% — one of the highest in the system. Visually, his approach is mature as well. He takes his walks, drives what he can, and tends to be a pesky out.

Defensively, Arroyo is a work in progress. He has the range to cover second, but neither his hands nor his arm are particularly reliable. His stroke is inconsistent, and while we don’t want to use the “y” word here, there are spells when even routine throws can sail on him; a switch to left field is in play if this doesn’t get better. Regardless of where he ends up, he’ll need to hit to profile. And despite some of the concerns we have with his swing, the projection here is for Arroyo to do so, and to be a cog in the lineup and a regular threat to go deep.

Wenninger entered the 2025 season with a backend starter projection on the strength of his control, a plus split, and an average fastball. He picked up a couple ticks of velo at Double-A Binghamton this past year, though, which prompted a re-assessment and ultimately the higher valuation here.

Wenninger works with both a sinker and a four-seamer. He can find both lanes with each of them, and mixes and matches smartly depending on what he’s trying to do. The heat sets up his split, which has big fade and sink. It missed a ton of bats last year, though sometimes it breaks a tick too early to entice hitters.

The development of his breaking balls will be key, and there are layers to unpack here. Wenninger’s curve and slider overlap substantially to the point where we’re not always sure which is which, and the slider in particular can look like a tighter, harder version of his curve. That flavor of slider may be the best version of all his breaking balls, as the mid-80s, 11-5 bender is the one that looks nastiest visually. We don’t mind the inconsistent shapes — it could actually be advantageous for him — but the inconsistent quality is a bigger issue, as he’ll show you anything from a 40 to the occasional 60. Regardless of what they look like, we want to see fewer flat, soft, and backed-up breakers, because those are going to get him in trouble.

Wenninger is a body-control-over-twitch type of athlete. He repeats his relatively slow delivery and stroke well, and again limited free passes at an above-average rate (2.79 BB/9) in 2025. He’s not especially deceptive, though he does get good extension; sometimes you can live with fair deception if it comes with above-average control and an out pitch. One other thing going for him: length. Perhaps in part because he hasn’t had the kind of high-octane stuff that makes coaches and dev folks fret about potential injuries for most of his career, Wenninger is actually pretty stretched out: His 135.2 innings last year were second in the Eastern League and fourth in all of Double-A. He projects as a no. 4 who is just about ready for show time.

Snelling was a multi-sport athlete in high school, earning acclaim as both a quarterback and linebacker, before an outstanding season on the mound earned him a first round selection and a $3 million signing bonus in 2022. He moved through San Diego’s system quickly and reached Double-A as a 19-year-old in 2023, then was traded to Miami as part of the Tanner Scott swap in 2024, a season in which Snelling and the Padres tinkered with his stuff and delivery to mediocre results. During the 2024-25 offseason, Snelling went to an Atlanta facility called Maven and made changes that led to a nearly three-tick velocity spike across his entire repertoire. His fastball averaged 94 mph across the entire 2025 season and he touched 99 in a bullpen-day relief appearance during the Triple-A title game.

Snelling also repositioned himself toward the first base side of the rubber and looked more comfortable and in control of his body and release, which may have been what led to a huge rebound in his strike-throwing. He was able to locate all four of his pitches throughout 2025 and was totally dominant — 14 starts, 81.2 innings, 103 strikeouts, 1.21 ERA, 0.97 WHIP — from mid-June on, including after a promotion to Triple-A Jacksonville. Though his secondary pitches lack dynamic movement, Snelling executes them consistently; he lands his breaking balls in the zone for strikes and keeps his changeup down. His fastball is his best bat-misser (30% miss and chase on a heater is 70-grade performance), and he may end up working less efficiently in the bigs as he elevates fastball after fastball in key moments. Snelling’s competitiveness and drive have been considered round up aspects of his prospect profile since he was in high school, and that continues. He’s a good bet to debut either late in 2026 or early in 2027, and be a steady no. 4 starter.

Jump was a notable high school prospect in California because of his invisiball heater, which had above-average velocity to go with plus riding life and a flat angle. Concerns that he couldn’t throw strikes pushed him to UCLA, where he struggled with walks as an freshman and missed his sophomore year recovering from TJ. After he transferred to LSU for his draft year, Jump’s command improved, and for the last two seasons, he’s thrown a starter’s rate of strikes while increasing his workload to 112.2 innings.

In his 2025 pro debut, Jump paved over High-A hitters throughout the first six weeks of the season and was promoted to Double-A Midland in mid-May. After that, the A’s started to dial down his per-outing workload, and he failed to work into the sixth inning in any start from June on. He struggled at the very end of the year and surrendered more than half the runs (27) he gave up all season (50) during its final month, but he still finished 2025 with a 3.28 ERA.

Jump’s fastball sits 93-96 mph and has plus rise/run life. His super short arm action keeps his release consistent enough for him to locate it to the up and arm-side portion of the zone, where it plays best. Jump’s secondary stuff is more average. He’s more apt to want to land his breaking balls in the zone rather than for chase, though both of them missed bats at a slightly above-average clip in 2025. Where Jump’s profile might take a, um, leap, is via changeup consistency. He creates enough tailing action that this pitch could be a platoon-neutralizing weapon, but many of his cambios sailed on him in 2025. It generated a plus miss rate but was only thrown for a strike 50% of the time. We still consider Jump to be a little undercooked from a stamina and repertoire depth standpoint, at least for a guy who has a shot to debut in 2026. But when pitchers have a fastball like this and throw it for strikes, they tend to pan out. Jump projects as a fastball-heavy fourth starter on a contender.

Messick is among the most stable, higher-floored pitching prospects across all of baseball. He’s worked at least 120 innings every year since 2023 and ranks second in the minors in strikeouts since then. His K% has hovered around an excellent 30% mark at Double- and Triple-A the last two seasons, and he posted a 2.72 ERA in seven big league starts at the end of 2025, not quite enough to graduate from rookie eligibility.

Messick is a remarkably consistent strike-thrower whose fastball has punched above its weight since he was at Florida State. It doesn’t have a ton of carry, but it does run uphill and can garner whiffs via its angle. This held true during Messick’s big league debut, as it generated a 29% miss rate despite sitting just 93 mph. His changeup is still his best offering, and as Eric noted last cycle, the loose, whippy nature of Messick’s arm action helps sell it to hitters like a podcaster hawking dietary supplements. It has sharp, late dive and at times moves to Messick’s glove side like a slider. His two breaking balls — a mid-70s curveball and mid-80s slider — are both a shade below average and are mostly used to garner strike one. The curveball is more of a weapon against righties, while well-located sliders become Messick’s most-used secondary versus lefties (he also mixes in more two-seamers against them). Pitchers with plus command and plus changeups tend to overachieve, and the ultra-competitive, sneaky athletic Messick (who’s husky but super loose, like a pitching version of Alejandro Kirk) is in that vein. He’s tracking like a contender’s fourth starter.

Gibson’s fastball has added four ticks of velocity since he was at Liberty, and it took him just two years to go from an undrafted free agent to a Top 100 Prospect on the doorstep of the big leagues. In 2024, he threw starter-quality strikes, got an above-average rate of groundballs (58.8%), and sustained his stuff across just shy of 100 innings. In 2025, he reached Triple-A and tied for the third-most strikeouts in the minors, with 166 tickets punched in 120.1 innings. He was homer-prone down the stretch after Baltimore promoted him to Triple-A Norfolk, but he managed a 2.72 xFIP combined across three levels.

Gibson is a chiseled 6-foot-5 and powers way down the mound throughout his delivery, generating nearly seven feet of extension. He has successfully added or augmented multiple breaking balls since college, including a new cutter. Like his fastball, all of Gibson’s breaking balls are much harder now than they were at Liberty, and this has made his knuckle curveball one of the nastier, old school, 12-to-6 curves in the minors. It has powerful finish and depth, and when mixed with his sweeper, it’s such an asset against lefty batters that Gibson actually had reverse splits in 2025. His breaking balls have great pure movement, but he struggles to get them to the glove-side edge of the plate; they finish in the heart of the zone, which is a big reason why righties clubbed him (.879 OPS) in 2025. Though he’s used his two-seamer with increasing frequency against righties, his groundball rate took a dive from nearly 59% in 2024 to 47.4% in 2025. Perhaps even more sinkers and the reintroduction of his changeup are in store to limit opponents’ contact quality in 2026.

Gibson has improved rapidly and been able to make multiple adjustments already, and we have a favorable projection on his ability to keep doing so. He has a shot to debut in mid-to-late 2026, and should establish himself as a good team’s fourth starter during the next several years.

Ballesteros has an advanced bat. He’s got plus bat speed, above-average raw power, and a knack for hard contact all over the zone. The numbers under the hood reinforce the visual look: Last year, he had an 80% contact rate and 43% hard-hit rate, which make for a middle-of-the-lineup kind of combination. He’s produced at every level, including in a September cameo with the Cubs last year where he hit .298/.394/.474 (143 wRC+) with good peripherals against a who’s who of big league arms. There isn’t much physical projection — only 22, Ballesteros is a thick and developed 5-foot-8 — but he’s plenty good as is.

Ballesteros can catch, but you probably don’t want him doing so every day. Partly that’s to protect the bat, but he’s also a comfortably below-average receiver and doesn’t release the ball quickly or cleanly enough to reliably control the running game. He’s manned first base periodically as well, and can do it in a pinch, but Ballesteros is one of those guys whose best position is “hitter,” and he’s likely to DH quite a bit.

Ballesteros’ value and the shape of what we think his production will look like do not map cleanly onto the way we organize our value grades. To phrase it differently: When we grade a guy as a 50 FV, we’re essentially projecting for him to accrue 2 WAR or so a year through his six years of team control. With Ballesteros, it may look a little different. There’s a chance he’s just a 135 wRC+ DH and clears that threshold the old fashioned way. But he may be more of a productive-but-flawed hitter who provides value in hidden ways as a second- or third-string catcher, playing first once in a while or pinch-hitting here and there, a rich man’s Victor Caratini or a peak Mitch Garver type. Ultimately, Ballesteros is big league-ready, and his bat gives him a cleaner path to contributing meaningfully than a lot of the 50 FVs on our list; taken together, it’s enough to get him onto the Top 100.

Reimer was a priority fourth rounder out of a high school on the eastern edge of the greater Los Angeles metro area and signed for $775,000 rather than head to Washington for college. After missing a huge chunk of the 2024 season due to a hamstring injury, he had an outstanding 2025 and hit .282/.379/.491 across two levels, including two-and-a-half months at Double-A Binghamton to close the year.

This is a bat-first prospect with a well-rounded hit/power blend that is average or better in every regard, except for Reimer’s performance against sliders. He has great rhythm, balance, and timing in the batter’s box, and his hands are capable of doing doubles damage to all fields, with home run power coming to his pull side. Because he’s often geared to pull, he swings inside of a fair number of sliders, including the occasional whiff inside the strike zone. We have some internal disagreement about how safe and stable Reimer’s hit tool is because of this slider bugaboo and the stiff, tight nature of his lower body, which can make it tough for him to dip and scoop lower pitches. But overall, Reimer makes hitting look easy, and he should have the hit/power combination to profile at third base in an everyday capacity.

Reimer isn’t a great third base defender — his range leaves something to be desired, and his hands are just okay — but his body control and arm strength allow him to make some tough off-platform throws, including ones from deep in the corner. He can play third base but has also seen some reps at first base, and will likely see time at both spots when he’s a big leaguer. Reimer shares some similarities with Isaac Paredes (he’s not quiet as excellent a contact hitter) and Jordan Westburg, and is on track to debut late in 2027.

Seattle’s top signee from the 2023 international class, Celesten shook off the injury bug long enough to suit up more than 100 times combined across both A-ball levels in 2025. At times, there was understandable rust on both sides of the ball, but he also flashed the ability of an elite shortstop prospect, and continued to play well amidst inconsistent playing time in the Dominican Winter League.

Celestin is an above-average athlete and a switch-hitter with a fast bat from both sides. It’s a power-over-hit cut — he swings hard, pulls off the plate, and has a steep path conducive to damage but also swing and miss — and he should grow into at least above-average pop. Perhaps the most impressive thing is how he’s performed almost identically as a righty and lefty— all the more notable given that there are measurable differences in how his respective swings work. His contact rates aren’t great, but they’re fine for someone his age, particularly factoring in the lost reps.

Celestin’s defensive instincts are good. He has a keen sense for when he can get in front of the ball and when he has to move a little quicker, he knows when he has to hurry a throw and when he has an extra beat, and he’s shown an adaptability to the moment. In one LIDOM sequence this winter, he picked up a high chopper in front of second and a little to the first base side of the bag, took two steps to his left to tag a sliding runner, and then spun and fired a strike for the double play. That’s really good feel, especially for someone playing with and against guys many years his senior. That buoys an otherwise unremarkable defensive projection. At short, Celestin’s range is adequate but not outstanding, while his glovework and throwing accuracy should be fine in the end but remain a work in progress.

Celestin is rawer at the plate than most players on our Top 100, but the physicality, offensive tools, and defensive instincts justify a lofty projection. He’s a potential five-tool player, and while he may have a longer developmental timeline than most guys with his upside, the payoff could be significant. He’ll return to Everett to start the 2026 season.

Taken seventh overall by Miami after a monster season (.354/.461/.654, 19 bombs in 65 games) as a junior year transfer at Oregon State, Arquette established himself as a viable shortstop prospect despite mostly playing second base as a sophomore at Washington and being a generally massive dude. He entered the spring of 2025 as an anticipatory fit at short thanks to crafty actions and impressive body control for his size, and that turned out to be true. Arquette does play with a high center of gravity, and it’s rare for athletes his size to be viable long-term shortstops, but his lightning-quick exchange and plus arm help make up for mediocre range and bend. His struggles with grounders to his backhand, which the Marlins could try to hide by positioning Arquette more toward third base.

Arquette has exciting offensive upside for a shortstop because of his present power and long-term power projection. At 6-foot-5, 220 pounds, he’s comfortably larger than Corey Seager and Carlos Correa, more in Colson Montgomery territory. Arquette’s forearms are still pretty skinny, and there are probably ways he can get even stronger in pro ball. This is a key area of development, especially after he stopped pulling the ball in a 27-game post-draft stint at High-A (.242/.350/.323), as added strength might enable Arquette to shorten up and be a more complete hitter. His lever length and size can sometimes lead to awkward swings, and he has some vulnerability to elevated fastballs.

Despite the whiffs against velocity, Arquette made a roughly average amount of contact against college pitching in 2025 and in his pro debut, which would lead one to believe he’ll post a below-average rate versus big league-quality stuff unless there are adjustments made as he climbs. He only swung at 41% of pitches in his junior season, but he became even more passive at the plate in pro ball and only swung at 58% of pitches over the heart of the plate in his debut. On top of staring at too many early-count heaters, his exit velocities were also more in the 50-grade raw power range at Beloit. But weird post-draft look aside, Arquette had one of the top hard-hit rates in all of college baseball (58%, three standard deviations above the mean), and his frame offers the potential to reach 70-grade pop at physical maturity. It’s going to be okay if he strikes out, so long as he stays at shortstop.

Henderson was a dominant junior college pitcher who punched 169 tickets in just 97 innings during his draft year. He’s been injured fairly often in pro ball; elbow issues kept him off the field for most of 2022, with elbow inflammation ending his season in 2025. But when he’s been able to pitch, Henderson has struck out roughly 30-35% of opponents and kept his walk rate in the single digits at every minor league stop, and he posted a sub-2.00 ERA in his 25.1 big league debut prior to hitting the IL last August.

Henderson has an excellent two-pitch foundation headlined by a mid-90s rise/run fastball and a nasty high-spin changeup, both of which he commands to effective locations. He so often relies on his changeup to get strikes that its chase and miss rates don’t properly illustrate its quality, while the inverse is true of Henderson’s fastball, which has inflated miss and chase because it’s usually used as a strikeout pitch above the zone.

Henderson definitely has starter-quality command, but he hasn’t developed a plus third pitch or proven that he has a starter’s durability. He’s never exceeded 100 innings in a single season, which bothers us, but in part because of the way big league starters are deployed nowadays, he isn’t far off from having what one could consider starter-quality stamina. Henderson has two different breaking balls — an upper-80s cutter that he uses against lefties and a low-80s curveball for righties — that have come and gone from his repertoire at different points in his development. Neither of them is particularly nasty, but he commands both of them to the edges of the zone. This should allow them to play well enough for Henderson to continue projecting as a team’s fourth starter. If not for injury, he’d have graduated in 2025 and might have been part of Milwaukee’s playoff rotation.

Davalillo wasn’t all that highly regarded in the international market and didn’t sign until he was 19. He had a $30,000 deal in place with the Mets that was voided late and pushed him to Texas for an even lower bonus. The Rangers appear to have found a bargain, as Davalillo’s blend of control and quality secondaries have propelled him through the system quickly. He had success at Double-A last season — 2.73 ERA, 3.43 FIP, and gorgeous peripherals in 56 innings spread across 12 appearances — and is in position to contend for starts this summer.

Davalillo is a good athlete. He’s loose and able to repeat a somewhat busy delivery, a rock-and-fire with a high leg kick and powerful stride down the mound, but without the big head whack and heel grind that often accompanies this level of effort. His arm stroke is loose and he’s able to maintain arm speed on everything, which helps an already great split play like a plus-plus out pitch.

Davalillo has a deep mix and needs to, because the fastballs play best in a complementary role. He’ll touch 96 with both but sits in the low 90s, and the shape isn’t anything special. He’s reliably in the zone with them, which helps set up all the secondaries that do miss bats. In addition to the aforementioned split, he’ll flash an above-average slider, steal strikes with a sharp curve, and he’ll also mix in an occasional cutter. Unpredictability is his friend. Cutter aside, his usage of the rest of the mix was balanced, between 14-26% per Trackman. Perhaps there’s room to use the split a little more — his whiff and chase rates were top of the scale — at the expense of the sinker, but by and large, the varied attack seems to suit him.

There are a couple of elements in Davalillo’s game that keep us from really going nuts. He’s a control-over-command guy, and his slightly open stride limits his deception. Between that and about average arm strength, there’s a ceiling here. The floor is pretty high, though. Davalillo is relatively stretched out, has been mostly healthy as a pro, and has a deep mix that should let him turn over lineups a couple times. He has the look of a good no. 4 starter.

Fuentes entered 2025 with just 145.2 professional innings on his ledger, all in A-ball or on the complex. The 20-year-old made a meteoric rise through the system, starting three times at High-A, five at Double-A, and just once at Triple-A before the Braves summoned him to the majors for four starts. Big leaguers took him for a rough ride: He posted a 13.85 ERA, 9.14 FIP, and allowed six dingers in 13 innings. Still, last season was unambiguously positive for him, and we’re far less concerned about those major league outings than we are impressed with Fuentes’ trajectory.

Fuentes is advanced beyond his years. His delivery is simple and repeatable, with a quick and clean arm stroke and moderate effort throughout his delivery. He’s primarily a fastball/sweeper guy, and will sprinkle in a curve and splitter. He’s adept at spotting the fastball to the glove-side corner and the top rail of the zone, where mid-90s velo, plus extension, and a low release height all help it play as an above-average weapon. His low-80s sweeper projects similarly, and the interplay between that and a slurvier curve gives his breakers a couple of different shapes. As with the fastball, he can move his breaking balls around the plate. His splitter isn’t as advanced. He hasn’t thrown it much, and it’s often firm with limited sink. Improving this and his fastball command to the glove side seem like developmental priorities in 2026.

The quality of Fuentes’ best pitches and his aptitude for deploying them are both promising in the long run, and we’re comfortable projecting on both the change and command in a way that facilitates a no. 3/4 starter outcome. There’s an obvious comparison to Julio Teheran here, another advanced, 20-year-old Colombian righty whom the Braves promoted to The Show ahead of schedule. It would not surprise us if, like his countryman, Fuentes needs a couple years to find his bearings, nor would we be shocked if, like Teheran, he puts together a dozen-year career once he does.

Traded to Cleveland in the Shane Bieber deal, Stephen had a sensational first professional season. Over 103 innings across 22 appearances, he struck out 110 hitters while walking just 20 and allowing only five home runs. He wasn’t promoted quite as aggressively as fellow 2024 Blue Jays draftee Trey Yesavage, but Stephen aced both levels of A-ball and made a handful of Double-A starts down the stretch. He projects as a mid-rotation starter and could be ready as early as this summer.

If an innings-eating no. 3 or 4 type who throws strikes with solid but unspectacular stuff qualifies as a throwback these days, well, then Stephen is a throwback. Tall and broad-shouldered with very good body control for his size, Stephen attacks with five pitches and reliably gets ahead in the count. Nothing is regularly plus — his curve and slider flash — but everything projects average or better, and the complementary movement in his arsenal makes the stuff a bit more than the sum of its parts. The carry on his fastball is instrumental, helping it play ahead of the number and giving him a reliable out-generator within the strike zone.

Anyone who walks as few hitters as Stephen does is inevitably throwing strikes pretty frequently, and he has a combination of tendencies worth exploring. So far, he’s thrived by hitting the box with his fastball and racking up swinging strikes on secondaries that dart out of the zone. Early in counts, he’s trying to coax hitters to chase those pitches off the plate; when he gets to three balls, his zone percentage increases significantly and he’s almost always at least in the shadow zone. It’s a smart way to pitch, but there’s a risk it gets a little predictable, and the approach will be stress tested by better bats. How will he adjust to hitters who can take close pitches and work more favorable counts? And can he get away with so many strikes when he falls behind?

The guess here is that Stephen makes it work. He’ll likely either sport a fluffier walk rate or be fairly dinger-prone, but the stuff is good enough to miss bats, and his plus command gives him the luxury of choosing how to manage the walks-and-hard-contact tradeoff. Bryce Miller has to navigate the same dilemma, and while he and Stephen go about their craft a little differently, a successful version of the latter could resemble the former’s first couple of seasons.

Forret (pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, as in Leonard Fournette) is a strike-throwing developmental success who was drafted out of a Florida junior college and trained at Tread Athletics. He had a 1.58 ERA across 74 innings in 2025 and finished his season at Double-A Chesapeake, then was traded to the Rays during the offseason as part of the Shane Baz deal.

Forret is entering his 40-man platform year and has a chance to make his big league debut with the Rays toward the end of the season. He has really terrific feel for location, which helps his otherwise fairly pedestrian stuff play up. He can manipulate his fastball and breaking ball shapes to suit his needs depending on the handedness of the hitter, and he learned a kick change at Tread that quickly became his best bat-missing pitch. Forret can operate east/west with sinkers, sliders, and cambios when he wants, or elevate his fastball with upwards of 18 inches of vertical break on his best four-seamers. His fastball generated a plus miss rate in 2025 despite sitting 92 mph because of its lift and his command of it.

Forret is of relatively slender build, but his delivery is effortless and he has sensational feel for location, with each of his pitches generating strikes at better than a 65% clip. Forret tends to operate in the 91-95 mph range and his breaking balls lack huge power, but if there’s a class of player who Eric’s “How’s My Driving” series has indicated tends to be under-ranked, it’s guys with premium command, and Forret is exactly that. He’s been a steady arrow up guy for a couple of years now, and it wouldn’t surprise us if his stuff has yet another gear. He’s a mid-rotation fit.

In Moby Dick, Herman Melville’s description of the titular whale as “impossibly white” is meant to impart a description of its alien appearance, but also its unsettling and amoral blankness. Similarly, describing Crooks as “impossibly wide” when he splays out in his one-knee stance is not only a testament to his pitch-blocking, but also a nod to his general ease moving his glove laterally across his dominion. Crooks’ arm is stronger than it is precise, with a longer arm action often generating tail, and his career 30% caught stealing rate reflects great bursts of cannon fire more than it is the result of consistent location. But there’s nothing behind the plate that Crooks doesn’t do at an average level or above, and he also has a reputation as a revered, straight-talking handler of his pitching staff.

Crooks got a cup of coffee at the end of his 40-man platform year after having slashed .274/.337/.441 with a 26.5% K-rate at Triple-A Memphis, where he made contact at a 71% clip. It didn’t exactly go well, as he went 6-for-45 with a homer, no walks and 17 strikeouts in 15 games with the big club. Crooks loads a long swing with an elaborate counter-rotation, and rushing the operation to cover pitches on his hands can result in him chasing. But his small-sample big league failure wasn’t as much of a disaster under the hood, or at least wasn’t so profound as to change his projection as a glove-first regular. Now, buying Crooks as a regular involves believing his glove will be good enough to weather a sub-80 wRC+ season or two, not unlike the way the Giants have made peace with Patrick Bailey’s offensive contributions. But assuming he doesn’t blossom into the best defensive catcher in the league — and it’s less of a given that he’ll provide superlative framing — his profile will be more reliant on his brute strength to produce 10-15 homer seasons.

Cijntje was traded to the Cardinals as part of the three-team Brendan Donovan deal. He is a switch-pitcher with a gorgeous delivery from both sides of the rubber. Naturally left-handed, the Curaçao native has been switch-pitching since he was a kid, and is now far better as a righty. He was also a solid prospect as a hitter, and was drafted by Milwaukee as a shortstop out of high school. It’s a stunning collection of abilities, and Cijntje is in the running for the best athlete, with the best body control, in all of the minor leagues.

Right-handed Cijntje is a Dude. He’s touched 99 mph and sits in the mid-to-high 90s with bat-missing carry. The slider and change both flash plus, and when he’s in a groove, he can pump strikes and move the ball around the plate. Catch him on the right day and you might put a no. 2 grade on him. But he’s inconsistent, perhaps not unexpectedly given how many reps he’s lost. His velo can dip mid-outing, and (and this is true from both sides of the rubber) he’ll lose his release point and start spraying the ball everywhere but the target. The movement on his slider and change can also vary wildly within outings, and he can sometimes get frustrated to the point of exacerbating both problems. By and large, he’s out-stuffing guys so far — some of the homers on his ledger were puny Everett specials, where the wall in right center is 315 feet from the plate — but there’s work ahead.

Were he a lefty only, Cijntje would be a prospect, if not an especially interesting one. He’s touched 95 from that side, but tends to work either side of 90, without bat-missing shape or sharp command. He hasn’t had nearly the same number of reps to polish his secondaries, so while there’s a slider that flashes average, it’s inconsistent. His control is also subpar presently. It’s up-down stuff now and projects a little better than that given the athleticism at play and lack of reps from that side, but there’d be a long road ahead.

The Mariners tried a few things in their quest to best develop and deploy Cijntje. They had him start a game as a righty and then work out of the bullpen as a lefty a few days later. They also had him start games (or innings) left-handed before switching it up for the remainder of the day (or inning). In Brendan’s looks, those were scripted appearances, but he’s also switched arms to play matchups in the past.

The ideal path forward is a fascinating dilemma. How do you best develop the two arms without putting too many miles on Cijntje’s legs? Do you try to build two starters here? Do you maximize flexibility with him in a relief role? Could you feasibly use him as a starting pitcher once a week, and let him eat innings with the other arm and add precious depth to the bullpen without needing a roster spot to do so? There are so many ways this can go, and this may prove to be a case where “optimal” and “most fun” are at odds. For better or (for non-Cardinals fans) worse, the smart answer is probably to prioritize the dominant side, and if that slows Cijntje’s progress with the left hand to the point of it not being viable, so be it. The Red Birds seem to be hinting at that path in the long run with their recent comments that they’ll have him exclusively throw righty in games, and work on the left side in side sessions. Cijntje projects as a no. 3 starter with wiggle room on both sides, and may need more seasoning to reach it than most college pitchers in his draft orbit. It’s closer stuff if the control continues to lag and he winds up in relief.

It’s been a longer wait for Oppor to become a relevant prospect than was anticipated after the A’s used an 11th round pick on the Wisconsin prep lefty back in 2022. He didn’t sign and pitched a year of JUCO ball before the White Sox’s love of their Area Codes players won the day and he was plucked in the fifth round for nearly $150,000 over his slot value. Still, it wouldn’t be until 2025 that Oppor escaped the complex, and he made up for lost time, with the 21-year-old earning a promotion to High-A after the first month and finishing with a combined 116 strikeouts against 42 walks in 87.2 innings of 3.08 ERA ball.

Walks spiked on Oppor during the second half, but so did his stuff, hitting 100 mph on his two-seamer repeatedly down the stretch and finding a sweeper that worked with both his lower arm slot and his pronation inclinations. Oppor gets less arm-side action on his changeup than his heater, which is typically problematic at upper levels, but he has shown the arm speed, velo separation and feel for location to carve with it (47% miss rate) thus far. Still slenderly built after some strength gains, Oppor’s delivery is both fluid and easy-looking, and also kinda weird. He lands with his front foot still closed off to the plate, pinning it to the ground so he can crossfire around it with a uniquely short stride. Along with a fastball that gets over a foot of arm-side run, it’s not the most typical look for commanding the glove side to right-handers.

There’s a threadbare history of strike-throwing here, especially with any spin, but the emergence of above-average left-handed velocity, his dynamic on-mound athleticism, and Oppor’s changeup performance has us buying this as an arrow-up profile.

Witherspoon spent his freshman season at Northwest Florida State before transferring to Oklahoma, where he was walk-prone in 80 innings during his sophomore year. His delivery while with Team USA during the summer of 2024 was much more controlled and starter-like than it was during his underclass seasons, and that carried over into 2025, as Witherspoon walked just 5.9% of opponents. He was drafted 15th overall and signed for $5 million.

This is a tightly wound athlete with a short, deceptive, vertical arm stroke that appears out of nowhere from behind Witherspoon’s head on release; he bears some mechanical similarities to Dylan Cease or a shorter-levered Mark Melancon. Kyson has a downhill mid-90s fastball with enough carry to play at the top of the zone when located, though it’s more vulnerable the lower it lands because of its angle. He works a cutter and slider off of that to different levels of his glove side; both have roughly the same shape, but the cutter is 88-91 mph while the slider is 84-88 and has a little more time to break. Witherspoon locates both of those pitches consistently to his glove side, and his feel for landing them is the lynchpin of his starter projection here.

His changeup and curveball aren’t as consistent, but they’re arguably the nastiest of his pitches when they’re executed properly. Witherspoon’s power upper-70s vertical curveball has identifiable pop out of his hand when he tries to dump it into the zone, but huge, hitter-pantsing finish when it’s buried in the dirt. A power upper-80s changeup has bat-missing ability when located, though it’s often too far from the zone to garner swings. Both the cambio and curveball were thrown for strikes at a 55% rate in 2025, which is pretty bad. These are chief among the things Witherspoon has to polish, but he looks like a good team’s no. 4 starter, with a powerful brand of athleticism helping drive his anticipated durability, and his initial small school dalliance giving us reason to believe there’s more pitchability growth left in the tank.

There is no question that Culpepper is a Top 100-caliber athlete, but there are enough unchecked boxes to his game to make an everyday regular projection more of a coin flip. He is a dynamic on-field athlete, who combines explosive rotational force in his hips with a 60-grade throwing arm. His tools are such that he can drop the bat head and launch an inner-half breaker to the seats in one half of an inning and effortlessly pull off a Derek Jeter jump throw from short in the other. While he’s compactly built and lacks projection, Culpepper already flashes 55-grade raw power and accessed it enough to lift 20 homers in 113 games in his first full pro season, hitting .289/.375/.469 even with a midseason bump to Double-A.

It’s impressive that Culpepper squeezed out so much production, makes an average amount of contact, and kept his strikeout rate under 20% throughout given that he chases excessively – especially with two strikes – and generally presents poor breaking ball recognition. A lot of that comes in the form of fishing for breakers below his knees — an exuberance borne out of his ability to scoop and lift pitches at that height — but it’s impossible to expect average hit tool performance in 2026 for someone chasing sliders nearly 40% of the time. His defense is often highlight-reel worthy, but Culpepper isn’t guaranteed to stick at shortstop given how much he struggles with hotshots, and his bat is a riskier fit at third. A generous read is that his pre-pitch setup is lax enough to offer some low-hanging fruit for how he can improve. There are a fair number of warts still present for a college star who is nevertheless performing well at Double-A, but there’s also so much athleticism present that we’re betting on Culpepper’s ability to address them.

Troy shrugged off a disappointing and injury-plagued 2024 season, and re-established himself as one of Arizona’s top farmhands. He has a well-rounded collection of tools and skills that should help him contribute in some capacity, though there are enough other things going on here that we thought long and hard before projecting him as an average regular.

As usual, we’ll start with the good. An early-season hiccup in 2024 aside, Troy has hit all throughout his career, and posted an above-average line on the season. As the hit and power grades suggest, he’s providing in-game damage without selling out. Under the hood, his swing, chase, and whiff rates are all acceptable to good. Even the bad stuff is trending positively, as he’s still vulnerable against spin, but whiffed significantly less often than a year ago, and against better competition to boot. He’s doing this with an explosive and high-effort swing, which speaks to his ability to find the barrel. His 90th-percentile exit velocities are a shade under the big league average, but his maxes are in line, and while he’s not particularly projectable, we’re rounding up.

Defensively, Troy looks significantly more comfortable at second base than he did at shortstop in 2024, and he stands a chance of being above average at the keystone. Should the bat fall short, he’s already seen time in center field, and while that’s a work in progress, he should have little trouble getting to at least fringy there if he winds up in a utility role. With plus wheels, he’s an asset on the bases as well, where he’s stolen bags at a highly successful clip and shown generally good, if not perfect, instincts.

There are a couple points of concern, however. For a plus runner with a strong, compact frame, Troy isn’t the most graceful player. That shows up in a couple of spots, from some stiffness in his bat path to the way spin can lure him off balance fairly easily. It’s a quick bat with short levers, which is great, but there’s still real hit tool risk here. Troy is a competitor and gets rave reviews for his work ethic, but he can be very hard on himself (he isn’t shy about being visibly frustrated with his own performance on the field) and hasn’t always channeled that perfectly. We suspect there’s more good than bad in that, and that applies to the profile as a whole. We see a 50 at his peak, and while there isn’t huge upside beyond that, Troy’s proximity and floor help us feel comfortable with him in this FV tier.

Something to admit at the outset: Brito is Brendan’s favorite player in the minors, a talented, versatile, and projectable spark plug on both sides of the ball. Every generation has a super utility player or two who produce enough to warrant a 50 FV grade (or higher) even absent a consistent defensive home: Chone Figgins, Ben Zobrist, Tommy Edman, etc. It’s early in his career, but if you had to pick a single minor leaguer to follow in those footsteps, you might choose Brito. He’s a switch-hitter with projectable power, 70 speed, and already a nuanced feel for two middle-of-the-diamond positions. He crushed the complex last summer and then hit .375/.442/.463 in 33 games following a promotion to Low-A Fresno.

Brito is a medium-framed plus athlete, twitchy with deceptive strength. At the plate, he has a lovely trigger on both sides and is a line drive shooter to all fields. He’s a threat to do everything. He’ll flash the short game, he’ll fake bunt and swing, he can take a walk, he’ll shorten up with two strikes, he can drive a ball to the gap — if variety is your thing, this is your guy. There is some risk in his approach, and not just with respect to his swing decisions, which are aggressive. On his best swings, Brito incorporates his lower half well and is direct to the ball. His swing can get pushy, though, and particularly from the left side, he’ll pull off the plate, almost like a softball player already thinking of beating out a groundball. There’s some swing-and-miss to his game, and he hasn’t yet translated his raw power into over-the-fence damage. For better and worse, he’s a very aggressive hitter, and he’ll need to dial it back a little, particularly with two strikes.

Defensively, Brito projects above average in center and at second base. His jumps in center are good, and while he’s still learning the finer points of the job, he looks like he’ll have the speed and tracking skills to be good out there. He’s also shown solid instincts and range at the keystone: In one standout sequence, he raced far to his right on a chopper up the middle, backhanded a short hop, and flipped accurately behind his back to second. He’s also got a very quick transfer and enough arm strength to at least think about whether he could play short as well.

This is an aggressive valuation. There are markers in the data — a 74% contact rate, 47% chase with two strikes, an unsustainable BABIP that is obviously floating his topline production in a way that won’t translate like this to the higher levels — that justify skepticism, and we wouldn’t argue with evaluators inclined to pump the brakes a little bit. But while every 18-year-old has warts, few can do as many things as well as Brito can. This is an absurdly well-rounded collection of tools, and he already has a few skills to go with them. Brito projects as an everyday guy in some capacity and has several ways to be useful in a reserve role if the bat falls a little short of projection.

A right ankle he fractured on a slide at Texas A&M knocked Montgomery out of 1-1 discussions in the 2024 draft, and a break in the same foot from a hit by pitch last September knocked him out for about six weeks and half of the Arizona Fall League. But if you splice in Montgomery’s nutty 12 games in the desert, the 22-year-old switch-hitting outfielder slashed .278/.376/.460 in 133 games across four different affiliates in his pro debut, showing no ill-effects from the injury, as well as greatly improved performance from his right-handed swing. Oft-cited for being a voracious consumer of machine reps, Montgomery’s above-average plate discipline carried over to pro ball, with an especially commendable amount of in-zone aggression.

Despite Montgomery’s bountiful accomplishments against upper-level competition, his refined approach, and his likely 2026 big league ETA, the case for him as an impact player is rooted more in seeing a superlative athlete with the potential for later blooming skills than a safe, finished project. Montgomery crept up toward a 30% strikeout rate in 34 games at Birmingham and ran a sub-70% contact rate on the season. For context, there were 10 qualified big league regulars with a sub-70% contact in 2025, all of whom had 25-homer juice. Montgomery definitely fits that bill, with a super-developed lower half. He pins his lead foot in the dirt and fires his hips to create explosive rotational force, hard contact (106.8 mph 90th-percentile exit velo), and elite bat speed that can catch up to any fastball. But timing it up is a different matter, as he had a 30% miss rate on heaters in 2025, and in some video of Montgomery against 92-93 mph, you could swear he’s missing out in front. Overall, he’s vulnerable to velocity up and away from him as a right-handed hitter, and he struggles with changeups from both sides; his barrel looking like it was fired out of a cannon often results in swings that move in and out of the strike zone fairly quickly, and a lot of Montgomery’s work in pro ball has been focused on direction.

Montgomery’s defense is in a similar place. He doesn’t have the best acceleration, but he’s still a springy, average runner who can mix in at center based on his present physical ability, and the White Sox wide open outfield situation since trading Luis Robert Jr. means there’s no one left to push Montgomery to a corner other than himself. His right field projection is driven by reads that are still raw and the bazooka that’s welded onto his right shoulder; a reminder that he touched 97 mph off the mound in his two-way player days. Between that, the switch-hitting, the missed time, and the lauded work ethic, Montgomery offers a lot of reasons to be patient about the potential development of greater feel-to-hit unlocking his star-level tools, even as he currently resides at the border of too many whiffs.

After mauling both complexes, Florentino kept raking after a promotion to Low-A Bradenton. With the Marauders, he hit .262/.380/.503 while maintaining an 83% contact rate across the two levels. Even more encouragingly, he’s doing a ton of damage on contact and has consistently gotten to pull-side lift throughout his career. He’ll play all of the 2026 season as a 19-year-old and is one of the most projectable power hitters in the low minors.

Florentino is a tricky one to evaluate, a case where nearly unassailable data runs into a less rosy visual evaluation. His feel for contact and ability to adjust the barrel stands out to the eye as well, but some of the “how” gives us pause. Florentino is an early leaker who tends to do most of his damage on balls in. He doesn’t hit balls on the outer third with much authority, particularly against lefties, who he seems to bail out on even a tick earlier. He’s also a long-levered kid, and while his bat isn’t slow by any means, it also isn’t super quick. Better velocity looms as a real challenge, as do pitchers who can more reliably command the ball away and, to a lesser extent, up. Still, it’s important not to get lost in the negative: The kid was 18 last year and raked against older competition. He projects to get stronger, and we’re a long way from thinking about platoon risk.

He will have to hit, though. Florentino primarily played center in Bradenton last summer, where he looked like he was in over his head. His reads and actions were very raw, and while he’s still a decent runner underway, he’d be stretched on speed even before we consider that he’s likely to slow down as he physically matures. He should be fine in a corner, however. Hitting is valued at such a premium that it behooves us to stick a big grade on the bat here, though the risks discussed above make him a pretty risky one.

Lowder’s performance steadily improved throughout his college career, which ended with a bang. He went 15-0 in 17 starts for Wake Forest prior to the 2023 College World Series and posted a sub-1.00 WHIP and sub-2.00 ERA during his draft spring. He was drafted seventh overall as a quick-moving, strike-throwing, three-pitch starter, and in his first full pro season, Lowder was exactly that. He ascended all the way to Cincinnati, where he made six starts at the end of the year, not enough to lose rookie eligibility. His 2025 season was derailed by injuries. A preseason forearm strain kept him shelved until May, and after a few starts back, Lowder strained his oblique and was out until late August. He was only able to work 9.1 regular season innings and then nine more in four Arizona Fall League starts.

A gangly, unspectacular athlete with a theatrical, cross-bodied delivery, Lowder clearly works hard to keep his somewhat awkward frame in great shape. His bow-legged front side, as well as the stiffness in his hips and lower back, contribute to a funky operation that aids in deception, albeit via an atypical look for a starter. Lowder’s stuff isn’t overwhelming, but the pieces of his repertoire fit together nicely, and while imprecise, he fills the zone with them. His best pitch is his mid-80s slider, which has considerable length for a breaking ball that hard and spins at roughly 2,800 rpm. The sink/tail action of his fastball limits its bat-missing ability in the strike zone, but its movement pairs nicely with his slider, and it’s hard for hitters to cover both sides of the plate when those two pitches are located well in sequence. Lowder’s changeup has enough tail and sink to miss the occasional bat, but it more frequently induces groundballs, which is true of his entire repertoire. This is the stuff of a low-variance fourth starter whose profile now has a little bit more volatility because of the injuries.

Despite good size and plus athleticism, Santos was just a $10,000 signee in the 2019 international class. Even with plus arm strength, he’s risen unevenly through Texas’ system, amidst the pandemic and an extended search for a viable breaking ball. He’d found one by the spring of 2024, and with a much-improved slider in tow, he dominated High-A that summer. He then looked like a potential mid-rotation guy at times in the spring of 2025, but missed most of last year with a stress reaction in his back. He returned in time for the Fall League, where his velo was intact and he struck out more than a batter per inning.

Santos has an enviable blend of velocity, changeup quality, and athleticism. He comfortably sits in the mid-90s with a little tail and can bump the heater up to 99 without much obvious exertion. It doesn’t have great shape, and perhaps he should throw it a little less. He has alternatives, as his slider has taken big strides since his days as a raw-but-projectable righty, and it now projects as an above-average offering, as does his change.

Last year, hitters whiffed a bunch but tended to hit Santos hard when they did make contact. He can be loose within the zone — his delivery is smooth, easy, and clean with the exception of a moderate head whack — and he doesn’t consistently execute his secondaries. I’m optimistic those things will get better. Santos is a good athlete after all, and he’s shown an aptitude for improvement throughout his minor league career. And even if he does prove a little too hittable in the rotation, the arm strength and power arsenal should play toward the back of a big league bullpen. He was a late cut on our Top 100 — I liked him a bit more than Eric if y’all want to make fun of one of us later on — and it wasn’t any one thing that kept him off: The back injury is a little scary, the slider consistency gives us pause, we wish he had better fastball shape, and his usage could use a tweak. He projects as a no. 4/5 type and has upside for more if his execution takes a big step forward with continued reps.

McDougal finished the 2024 season in Low-A, having been demoted that July due to pronounced control issues that persisted through the second year out from rehab for a draft year TJ. The 22-year-old then finished the 2025 campaign as a no-brainer addition to Chicago’s 40-man roster, wrapping up a season that saw him compile a career-high 113.1 innings with a pair of late-September outings where he pumped triple-digits while leading Double-A Birmingham to a Southern League title.

The son of minor league reliever Mike McDougal, Tanner didn’t get cheated in the genetic lottery in terms of size (he’s 6-foot-5, 240 pounds), arm speed (he sat 96-99 mph and touched 101 for the season), or spin talent (his curveball averages 3,000 rpm). He’s big, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, but he’s also a deceptively loose and whippy athlete who creates freaky separation. While his heater plays under its elite velocity due to its downhill plane from a six-foot release height, he also throws his sharp and short high-80s slider pretty hard too, which played to a 49% miss rate. McDougal has a high-maintenance physique, and increased investment in his offseason training is regularly cited as a reason for the career-best 7.5% walk rate he recorded in 55.2 innings after his promotion to Double-A, though his stuff’s overwhelming in-zone performance is doing more of the lifting there than his still below-average command.

For much of McDougal’s amateur career, his changeup was the only secondary he threw, so there’s greater comfort for executing it than his declining usage or supination bias might suggest. But its absence, along with his curveball command being a step behind that of his slider, helped open a notable platoon split in 2025 that will become more relevant soon, as he’s expected to debut in Chicago this season. McDougal still poses substantial relief risk — it hasn’t even been a year since the White Sox were seriously considering a move to the ‘pen at High-A Winston-Salem — but he’ll have monster arm speed and impact breaking balls wherever he lands.

Liranzo entered 2025 as a Top 100 Prospect thanks to his size and rare switch-hitting power for a catcher, though his profile featured hit tool risk and he had a substantial amount of developing to do on defense. He then had a bizarre 2025 season. He got off to a rough start in Double-A, which is normal enough, particularly given Erie’s weather. But after a few months where he looked like one of the better hitters in the league, Liranzo’s bat cratered down the stretch, a period that coincided with the end of his season behind the plate and a shift to exclusively pinch-hitting and DH’ing. On the whole, he hit .206/.308/.351, with 125 punch outs in 394 plate appearances, a big step back after emerging as one of Detroit’s top farmhands in 2024.

There was always hit tool risk here. Liranzo swings hard and indiscriminately from both sides of the plate. His path is grooved, and he’s mostly been a mistake hitter. All of that was true a year ago as well, but the degree to which he got beat by all manner of pitches was startling, even factoring in the jump in competition. We learned yesterday from a report on MLive that Liranzo dealt with family issues (including the loss of his longtime trainer, whom he considered a father figure) and a shoulder injury, which helps explain why he stopped catching. He also totally changed his diet and conditioning during the offseason and lost 35 pounds. It was a tumultuous year that we’re inclined to flush. It’s common for catchers to deal with bumps and bruises that impact their output on offense, though of course in Liranzo’s case we’re talking about a myriad of issues and circumstances that impacted his 2025.

On defense, Liranzo’s developmental imperatives remain his ball-blocking and throwing accuracy. When he has a clean exchange, his arm is lethal. He has uncommon athleticism for a guy his size and is capable of firing rockets from his knees or from funky arm angles, à la Patrick Bailey, with some pop times hovering around 1.80 seconds late in the 2024 season. But he too often fumbles his exchange and can’t even get a throw off, or has the carry on his throw impacted by having a poor grip on the baseball. His stone-handed issues are evident when he tries to pick short hops, too, though Liranzo began receiving on one knee in 2024 and is learning how to use his size as a ball-blocking barrier from this body position. We’ll see how Liranzo’s new physique impacts his ability to handle the burden of catching and whether his power output has taken a hit from the lost weight, if only temporarily. But at this stage, we’re just encouraged that Liranzo is willing to make changes and adjust in an attempt to succeed, and think it bodes well for his continued ability to do so as he attempts to play a power-hitting catching role starting some time in the next three years now that his option clock is ticking.

Kansas City selected Mitchell eighth overall in the 2023 draft, which was widely seen as a controversial choice at the time. Some of that had less to do with Mitchell, whom evaluators generally liked as a toolsy, if high-variance, backstop, than the risk inherent in taking a high school catcher that high in the draft. The Royals were aware of the heuristics but fell in love with the player, and felt they just couldn’t pass up the chance to get a guy who projected to impact the game from both sides.

Mitchell entered pro ball with plus power projection, but questions about how much he’d hit and whether developing him as a catcher would be worth the squeeze given the risk/reward in his bat. Nearly three years on, we aren’t any closer to resolving these questions. Part of that stems from the broken hamate bone he suffered last spring. The injury limited him to 49 regular season games, and while it explains away some of Mitchell’s diminished measurable power output, it gave his season a lost-year sort of flavor.

That’s unfortunate because we’re still trying to determine how much stick is coming. Mitchell is a patient hitter who works the count and takes long at-bats, but his 64% contact rate is scary even for someone who projects to grow into plus power and walk a fair amount alongside. We want to stay on him, as the way he hits — a connected swing, some manipulation in the path, above-average bat speed, can use the whole field, tends to put the ball in the air, a decent approach, a strong hard-hit rate when he connects — is encouraging. Catchers often develop slowly, but even amidst the injury and a 30% career whiff rate, Mitchell has been a productive bat and could be one at the highest level even if he’s a .215 hitter.

Mitchell has also taken strides defensively. He entered pro ball needing a ton of work on that side of the ball, but he’s grown as a receiver and found a way to double his caught stealing percentage in 2025. He’s still not quick out of the crouch, but the operation looks a lot more fluid now, and even a modest time improvement from catch to release has helped his plus arm play back there.

While we wish Mitchell was a little further along, a little perspective is in order. He’s going to be 21 for most of the 2026 season, and unless he takes a big step back at the plate, he’ll probably get to Double-A before his birthday. He has big league power, and the aptitude he’s shown behind the plate gives us confidence that he’s going to be at least an adequate defender. If anything, the adoption of ABS should only help, as the tech should allow him to get in a better position to throw.

Ryan has hung around these lists for long enough now that his story is probably familiar, so let’s recap it quickly. After playing middle infield and working as a closer at Division II UNC Pembroke, the Padres plucked Ryan in the 11th round of the 2021 draft. He DH’d a few times on the complex that summer, but it was his work in an offseason bullpen that impressed Padres pitching instructor Steve Lyons — right before Lyons left the org and became a scout for the Dodgers. Not coincidentally, Los Angeles soon acquired Ryan in exchange for Matt Beaty, put him on the bump full-time, and saw him blossom into a Top 100 prospect.

Ryan’s blend of athleticism, arm strength, and stuff helped him hit the ground running. By 2024, he had touched triple digits and developed three breaking balls that flashed plus. His change wasn’t quite in that tier but was improving, and it flashed above average when Brendan caught Ryan in his last Triple-A start in 2024. He looked like every bit of a mid-rotation starter that day and after one more tuneup on the complex, the Dodgers called him up. He pitched well, running a 1.33 ERA and 3.36 FIP in four starts before tearing his UCL in an August start against Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, injuries and missed time have become a significant part of the story here, as Ryan will turn 28 this summer and has all of 196 professional innings under his belt. The Dodgers understandably managed his transition from college closer to pro starter carefully, working him three innings a pop in 2022 and four per outing in 2023. He then missed time in 2024 with a shoulder problem before blowing out 12 starts into the 2024 campaign. That isn’t a lot of reps, and it’s a little concerning that the big injury here came right as he started stretching out.

All of this makes Ryan’s future a lot murkier than when last we saw him. In the long run, we have no idea if he can hold up under a starter’s workload, and in the short run, he’ll be shaking off rust while trying to crack a very deep rotation. Ryan was throwing again in the fall, had a normal offseason, and is expected to be used as a starter in 2026.

Another Jays pitcher, another elbow injury. After a brief big league debut with Houston in 2024, Bloss entered 2025 on the cusp of making the Blue Jays rotation, but tore his UCL six starts into the minor league season. He will be available at some point in 2026, but not for Opening Day.

Prior to the injury, Bloss looked like a relatively safe mid-rotation starter. His mid-90s fastball projected plus, aided further by above-average carry and the seven feet of extension he generates with his long, powerful stride. His upper-80s slider is the big bat-misser, but don’t overlook his 12-6 hammer of a curve, which knee-buckled hitters tend to take for a strike. His change is hampered a bit by a slower arm path, though he reliably keeps it to the arm side and lefties mostly aren’t able to drive it.

In the long run, Bloss still projects as a starter. He has the right frame and build, and while there’s some effort at release, he’s a good enough strike-thrower to stick in a length role. His delivery can get out of sync, and there was probably always going to be an element of learning on the job for a quick-moving prospect who mostly pitched against small-school competition in college. But Bloss is a good athlete with a mid-rotation arm’s package of stuff, and even with elbow surgery on the résumé, we’re holding the line on him as a prospect. The timing of the injury conceivably affords Toronto the runway to use 2026 as a season for him to ramp back up and compete for a spot in the rotation in 2027. For now, we’re keeping him in the clipped wing section of the Top 100.

Sykora had offseason hip surgery in 2024 to address discomfort that he had been feeling for a couple of years, and he missed the first month of 2025 rehabbing. He hit the IL again in the middle of the season with a triceps injury, and then developed a UCL tear that required Tommy John in August, which means he’ll miss most of 2026.

The fact that Sykora pitched as well as he did during his 2024 pro debut despite being physically compromised is incredible. He made 20 excellent Low-A starts and posted a 2.33 ERA, 1.87 FIP, 39.2% strikeout rate (yow), and 8.2% walk rate in 85 innings. During his narrow window of health in 2025, Sykora again looked awesome, with his average fastball velo up a tick to 96 mph before he blew out. Sykora has a three-quarters arm slot, but his front side stays tall throughout his delivery. It’s a funky operation that gives him the option of running a two-seamer down toward his arm side or elevating his fastball at the belt. Sykora did much more of the latter in 2024 while holding mid-90s velo all year despite his hip discomfort. Even as a high schooler, his fastball command was fairly advanced for a pitcher his size and age, but a 8.2% walk rate in a 6-foot-6 guy’s debut season is even better than one could have hoped for, and Sykora did that through injury.

Sykora’s slider, which doesn’t spin very much but is aided by its natural downhill trajectory, is often used as a strike-garnering pitch bending in at the top of the zone, especially against lefties. It has enough depth to act as a finishing pitch in the dirt, too, though it’s more often deployed in the zone. His splitter combines with the elevated version of his heater to attack north and south. The direction of the splitter’s movement has been all over the place since Sykora was in high school, and he’s working on making it more consistent. Both of his secondary pitches generated miss rates north of 50% in 2024 and 2025.

This is a young fella who can articulate the “what” and “why” of his repertoire and mechanics beyond what is typical of a prospect his age. His pitch mix and command are relatively complete, so he’s not necessarily going to be behind the developmental eight ball when he returns from TJ. He’s still tracking like an impact mid-rotation starter, but rather than coming in late 2026, his debut will likely be sequenced more in a way that maximizes the amount of time a rebuilding Nats franchise can control his rights.

Can you believe that he’s still only 19? Three years after bursting out of the blocks as a prospect, hitting .267/.350/.487 as a 17-year-old in the Cal League, Salas has since endured the equivalent of two lost seasons. He didn’t hit a lick in 2024, sparking concerns about the viability of his hit tool, and then he missed almost all of 2025 with a back injury. He enters 2026 as the youngest patient to ever come down with a case of prospect fatigue.

While Salas struggled immensely in 2024, there were a few reasons to remain bullish on his offensive development. His underlying contact data was better than his top line production (77% contact rate, 83% in-zone, both fine given the context), and he has the frame and physicality to develop at least above-average raw power. His bat looked quicker last spring, and he has some manipulation to his path. He is late and underneath a lot of fastballs, though, particularly away from him, and he rolls over softer stuff. He can snatch fastballs up around his hands, but he otherwise hasn’t been a dangerous hitter for a couple years now. Still, even with the back injury, we like the power, and if he becomes as good of a defender as he’s projected here, he can have a one-note offensive skill set and still be a really good player.

About that. Salas is one of the best defensive catchers in minor league baseball. He’s a remarkably supple receiver with elite catch and throw skills, and he draws rave reviews from Padres folks for his work with the pitching staff. He isn’t a great ball blocker, and has had phases where this aspect of his game has looked quite raw, but he’s otherwise the total package behind the plate.

Whether or not things fall into place for Salas is a fascinating story to follow in 2026. Fairly or not, the aggressive pace at which he was promoted looms over his career, and another down year will raise serious questions for San Diego’s player dev staff about whether “too much, too fast” has in some way harmed their top farmhand. Ultimately, Salas still projects as a solid regular behind the plate, but we’re a long way from the “Kyle Tucker, but a Gold Glove catcher” projection that once looked possible.