I’ve now spent nearly a quarter of a century working with baseball projections, and in that time, I’ve always been struck by the certainty with which so many people view them. People are far more certain than they should be that great teams will be great, star players will be stars, and so on. However, one of the things that comes from working with projections for a big chunk of your life is that you develop a painful awareness of how much of the future cannot be known until it actually happens.

As in most seasons, we enter without a general conception of which teams will be the best. We may pretend everyone starts off with a clean slate, but absolutely nobody expects the Rockies to be better than the Dodgers. But even if that particular scenario is extremely unlikely, every one of the top teams has a scenario in which things fall apart. These clubs have a vested interest in protecting against that potential downside, as much as possible, so I thought it would be interesting to look at the doomsday scenario for some of the best teams in baseball.

To get an idea, I did a full seasonal simulation of the ZiPS projected standings, and instead of looking at the standings overall, I looked at the bottom 20% of outcomes to see what we could glean from the results. According to ZiPS, every team except the Dodgers misses the playoffs when it performs no better than its 20th-percentile win total.

Philadelphia Phillies: Rotation Depth

This almost seems counterintuitive given just how good the rotation projections are for the Phillies, but the projections are not enthusiastic about their depth here. And what makes that especially worrisome is that with so much uncertainty around the health of Zack Wheeler and the performance of Aaron Nola, Philadelphia is probably going to need that depth more than it did last year. This time around, the Phillies are missing Ranger Suarez, who signed with the Red Sox during the offseason. Andrew Painter was healthy in 2025, but one cannot ignore that he was rather middling against Triple-A hitting. The outfield looks like a problem, as well, but it generally has been, and ZiPS is a fan of Justin Crawford.

If Philadelphia adds one of the innings-eaters still available in free agency, ZiPS sees the team’s outlook improve, much more than I expected. Just having someone like Lucas Giolito, Tyler Anderson, or even Patrick Corbin around did a lot to alleviate the rotational downside. It may come down to which of these pitchers is open to a swing role or a minor league deal with an opt-out date. And yes, I do think it feels weird to suggest Corbin as an upgrade for a team in 2026.

New York Mets: Right Field

The Mets certainly don’t dominate in either the rotation or bullpen projections, but ZiPS is fairly confident that both of these units will hold up over the course of the season. Despite a solid projection for Carson Benge in right field, the range of outcomes is quite high, and in the simulations where Benge struggles, ZiPS has trouble competently filling in right field. Tyrone Taylor is an underwhelming option, and ZiPS thinks Brett Baty would have a tough time defensively in the outfield. With no particularly interesting outfielders available in free agency, the best solution might simply be making sure Jacob Reimer gets some time in the outfield. New York’s roster just isn’t really set up to get him time at third base, where he probably is most valuable. But he also represents the most tantalizing 2026 upside of any player the Mets have in the minors, so they ought to try and be open to promoting him aggressively, and getting a little weird with it, if need be.

New York Yankees: Injuries

The Yankees’ outcomes are weird, in that their bad seasons were mostly ones in which Aaron Judge, for whatever reason, ended up with fewer than 300 plate appearances, and only occasionally something else. Getting limited innings from Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodón was already baked into the cake, and ZiPS thinks there are enough fourth-starter types to patch up any rotation holes that might pop up. The problem is, just how do you replace Judge? I’m not sure there’s a scenario where the Yankees can do much to mitigate any risk there, for the simple reality that in a tightly projected division, suddenly losing six wins is likely to drop them out of the AL East divisional race. At the very least, the Yankees should hold off on shopping Spencer Jones for help elsewhere, but it wouldn’t fix a Judge loss.

Baltimore Orioles: Rotation Quality

Baltimore has potential aces in both Trevor Rogers and Kyle Bradish, but that word potential is an unpleasant adjective. Adding Pete Alonso and Taylor Ward really stabilizes the offense, which was a concern last year, but the rotation is an issue. The Orioles finished with a bottom five rotation in the ZiPS simulations more often than all other AL East teams combined. There’s nothing on the farm that helps this, and I think that with the Orioles increasingly pushing their chips in, they ought to be aggressive at taking the opportunity to loot struggling teams of their top pitching, even if the prospect hit would be tremendous. I think there are even scenarios, though not many, in which it might make sense for the O’s to trade either Adley Rutschman, assuming he has a bounce-back season, or Samuel Basallo.

Boston Red Sox: First Base

The good news is that ZiPS sees the Red Sox as the most stable of AL contenders, with the lowest percentage of sub-.500 seasons of any AL team. The rotation isn’t the best in baseball, but it may be the most bulletproof one, and that isn’t even counting on getting lots of innings from pitchers like Payton Tolle and Connelly Early, who would be Plan As in most rotations in baseball. In fact, when the Red Sox had their worst performance, it was almost entirely the offense that fell short, and not necessarily from the position you might expect.

Most people have focused on third base because of the loss of Alex Bregman, but Caleb Durbin is actually a decent option. Plus, if Durbin struggles, Marcelo Mayer could very likely provide what the former isn’t. Where there is real downside risk is at first base. I liked the Willson Contreras acquisition, too, and he’s probably going to be at least solidly average in 2026, but he’s also going to be 34 in May. It’s an age where you look at the long left tails of the outcome distribution for non-elite first basemen, and there’s always a real risk of a very sudden plummet off a cliff. Triston Casas hasn’t played in a game since last May — and won’t even play in any spring training games this year — and he has a real mixed history.

What to do? That’s a lot trickier. Boston obviously isn’t going to replace Contreras before he has that downside year. But this team should be ready for that possibility, and if the surplus of pitching turns out to be real, the Sox will have a position of depth from which to trade.

Chicago Cubs: Rotation Quality

The outlook improved with the addition of Edward Cabrera, but ZiPS still has the Cubs with the weakest rotation of the 10 teams listed here. In the ZiPS simulations, the rotation was largely the source of the Cubs’ worst seasons. There aren’t really any exciting starters left out there in free agency, but I think I’d do what I suspect the Cubs are already thinking of doing: giving Ben Brown’s upside as a starting pitcher more serious consideration. He allowed too many home runs and had a high BABIP on a really good defensive team, but it’s guys like that who tend to come out of nowhere quickly (see Corbin Burnes in 2019). Brown has swing-and-miss stuff, and I think given the potential, I’d rather see him starting at Triple-A than pitching in relief in the majors.

Houston Astros: Outfield Corners

Not counting 2020, for obvious reasons, the 686 runs the Astros scored in 2025 represented their fewest since 2014. A full, healthy season of Yordan Alvarez would be incredibly helpful, but the team’s also not likely to wring another 135 wRC+ out of Jeremy Peña. Not helping matters is that Joey Loperfido and Cam Smith project as one of the weakest corner outfield tandems in the majors in 2026. Smith surprised many, including me, in the early months last year, but an OPS that fell shy of .500 in the second half is highly concerning. There’s a chance that the Astros get little from their outfield corners, which is a problem for a team with a middling offense that just lost ace Framber Valdez in free agency. In some 30% of simulations, the Astros got a sub-90 wRC+ out of their corner outfielders, and in those runs, they had a .475 winning percentage. If there’s a team that should aggressively go after either Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu, it’s Houston.

Toronto Blue Jays: Rotation Depth

Even with the loss of Anthony Santander to shoulder surgery, ZiPS still sees the Blue Jays’ rotation as their biggest pain point. There are simply a lot of question marks once you get past Dylan Cease and Kevin Gausman, something I mentioned a bit in Toronto’s ZiPS rundown in January. In a lot of the sims, the team got next to nothing out of any of Cody Ponce, José Berríos, Shane Bieber, and Max Scherzer, whether because of injury, decline, or general performance issues. If Sandy Alcantara looks anywhere near his old self with the Marlins in the early months, I think the Jays ought to be one of his suitors. At the very least, Alcantara would do well with an infield that has Andrés Giménez and Ernie Clement.

Seattle Mariners: Outfield Corners

As with the Astros, ZiPS sees Seattle’s corner outfield spots as having the most downside. Unlike the Astros, ZiPS doesn’t view it as truly a doomsday scenario. After the Red Sox and Dodgers, ZiPS considers the Mariners to be the contender with the least downside. Randy Arozarena’s projection distribution is pretty interesting, with the bottom falling out of him once you get under the 15th-percentile projection or so; while his 20th-percentile OPS+ is a non-disastrous 94, it drops to 70 for the 10th-percentile level. As for Victor Robles, he’s been all over the place in his career, and the Plan Bs in the organization are unimpressive. I think Seattle’s strong enough that it doesn’t necessarily have the same need to be aggressive as Houston does, but this is still a potential point of weakness that could pose an issue.

Los Angeles Dodgers: Black Swans

It’s really hard to kill the Dodgers. I argued after the 2024-2025 offseason, a very busy one, that the Dodgers weren’t really improving their average outcome so much as drastically raising their floor. I stand by it; they’ve added Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz while losing nobody who was crucial to the 2025 team. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be projected to win 105 games or anything, but it does mean that in most of their worst projected outcomes, they’re still a playoff contender. Their 10th-percentile projection, for example, is 86 wins. Their 2% chance of finishing below .500 is the smallest percentage I’ve ever projected, a record that now goes back more than 20 years. Doomsday for the Dodgers may require an actual doomsday scenario like societal collapse, nuclear war, or a vacuum metastability event. Since I do not know how to prevent any of those, there’s nothing more I can add.

12:00

Dan Szymborski: A rarity! Dan is on time and not distracted by arguing something with someone elsewhere

12:01

Dan Szymborski: Most strongly (since it’s most recent), but it’s also treated like a league between AA and AAA

12:01

Dan Szymborski: That doesn’t mean the best players aren’t as good as MLBers, but the depth of talent isn’t the same, and a pitcher/hitter will face mostly non-MLB talents’

12:02

Dan Szymborski: ZiPS sees NPB as between AAA and MLB

Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s something even more satisfying than spending your hard-earned money, it’s spending someone else’s money that you didn’t earn. When we’re talking baseball, unless you’re an extremely high-net-worth individual who can casually spend hundreds of millions of dollars — if this describes you, call me and we can totally hang out or something — you only have the option to spend other people’s cash. I mean, I haven’t technically asked American Express to up my credit limit to $300 million, but I’m guessing the answer would be no. Every year around this time, I make a whole piece out of it, naming seven players I think teams should attempt to sign to long-term contracts now, rather than waiting until later. There are some additional complications, of course, with a lockout likely coming after this season, but teams and players could be willing to act with more urgency to sign contracts now before all the uncertainty ahead of them.

I’ve (hopefully) chosen seven players whose possible extensions would benefit both the player and the team, as all good contracts ought to do. I’ve included the up-to-date ZiPS projections for each player, as well as the contract that ZiPS thinks each player should get, though that doesn’t necessarily mean I think the player will end up with that figure or even sign an extension. Read the rest of this entry »

After the signing of Framber Valdez served as an exclamation point on what had been a fairly quiet offseason, the Detroit Tigers have established themselves as the preseason favorites in the AL Central. With a generally deep lineup and a solid rotation further buttressed by what is likely Justin Verlander’s swan song, you have to like Detroit’s chances, even if you think that the Royals or Guardians could prove to be a bigger threat than Vegas currently does.

But as someone who has now spent decades feeding data into a cold, impersonal machine and watching it spit out projections, I know about as well as anyone that the future is horribly uncertain. Predictions are not destiny, and a team with a 75% chance of making the playoffs still has a one-in-four shot of watching them on TV. Over the next few weeks, the Tigers need to answer as many questions about their team as possible, and one of the biggest is whether their top prospect, Kevin McGonigle, will start the season in Detroit or Toledo. And if the Tigers are truly in win-now mode, McGonigle being in the Opening Day lineup is the absolutely correct move to make.

That the Tigers have made “now” into their most important timeframe isn’t an assertion that I’m just pulling out of nothingness. With the negotiating gap between Tarik Skubal and Detroit on an extension reportedly in the range of $250 million, retaining Skubal’s services for 2026 only makes sense if you’re going for it. If their goal is simply to try to quietly cruise into the playoffs with 86 wins, then they might as well have traded Skubal to a team that is willing to go all-in, and hoped that they’ll do fine with the impressive players they’re likely to get in return. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a big believer in the value of WAR as a statistic. Like any summary stat, WAR is notably imperfect, with its nods to pragmatism, compromises made on philosophical grounds, and the necessary inclusion of many components that are just damn difficult to quantify even if we have a basis to think they’re important. Still, like all good models, even if WAR isn’t right, it can be useful. It gives us a broad estimate of a player’s overall contribution to winning baseball games, and almost certainly provides a far better conception of which individual actions lead to wins than generally existed, say, 50 years ago. But when we’re talking about whether a player is a Hall of Famer, a more malleable concept than what wins the most games, is WAR the right measure to look at? When I think about this question, four people instantly come to mind: Jacob deGrom, Miguel Cabrera, Jack Morris, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Since FanGraphs is a website dedicated to baseball, we’ll start by talking about Mozart. Even people who don’t really listen to classical music, and thus couldn’t tell Gustav Mahler from Rick Mahler, would almost certainly count Mozart among the greatest composers of all time. Why? Well, the first part is obvious: because of his body of work as a whole. But what aspects of that work make him great? I’d submit that it’s the quality of his best compositions, rather than the massive volume of work he produced, that pushes him ahead of his peers.

Mozart is a legend because of his greatest works, such as his last three symphonies, his late 1780s/early 1790s run of operas, and the latter half of his piano concertos — and I could go on! But he also wrote a lot of stuff that just isn’t that good. He was a musical prodigy, but almost all of his early work is interesting because he was very young when he wrote it, not because of its own merits. Composers have always had to pay the bills, and Mozart wrote a huge amount of what was more or less intended to be pleasant background music, no more compelling than the peppy ukulele and xylophone music that seemed to be in every Kickstarter video in 2017. If the hundreds of examples of such work were to simply blink out of existence because someone got a hold of the Infinity Gauntlet, it would change nothing about Mozart’s greatness. Those compositions had value to Mozart in that they enabled him to write the good stuff that is worth remembering, but he’s great because of his peak. Read the rest of this entry »

For the second time since the opening of spring training, the Baltimore Orioles lost one of their starting infielders to injury. On Friday, Baltimore announced that third baseman Jordan Westburg would miss significant time due to a partially torn UCL in his throwing elbow. Westburg received a platelet-rich plasma injection, commonly used for soft tissue and joint injuries, and will be out at least until the end of April, according to team president Mike Elias.

Jordan Westburg has a partial UCL tear in his right elbow and will be getting a PRP injection today, per Orioles POBO/GM Mike Elias.

Westburg will be out for all of April. Timeline TBD after that.

— Jake Rill (@JakeDRill) February 20, 2026

While there’s never an ideal time for an injury, the Orioles were already without second baseman Jackson Holliday, out with a broken hamate bone in his right hand. That puts half of their infield out of commission for Opening Day. Before Holliday and Westburg went down, there had been some turnover among the role players in Baltimore’s infield, adding to the uncertainty of what these injuries will mean for the team this spring and beyond. Read the rest of this entry »

The Atlanta Braves opened spring training with the hopes of getting a healthier season out of their starting rotation this year. While it took a lot of things going wrong to drop the Braves to a 76-86 record in 2025, their worst record since 2017, the myriad injuries suffered by the starting pitching played an outsized role in their misfortune. Unfortunately, the Braves didn’t even get to the first exhibition game before the news broke that two of their starting pitchers, Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep, would have to undergo elbow surgery, with no estimated timeline for their returns.

If there’s a silver lining to manager Walt Weiss’s uncertainty about whether either Schwellenbach or Waldrep would pitch this year, it’s that neither surgery is of the Tommy John flavor, which would pretty much guarantee that both would miss the entire season. Instead, both surgeries are to remove loose bodies from their throwing elbows; Schwellenbach had his procedure on Wednesday, while Waldrep’s is scheduled for Monday. Yes, removing loose bodies sounds like the job description of a bouncer at a hot nightclub, but in this case it refers to the removal of small fragments of bone and cartilage present in the joint.

Regardless, both pitchers are bound to be out for an extended period of time, and their absences will surely be felt in Atlanta. Waldrep was solid for the Braves in 2025, putting up a 3.21 FIP in nine starts, and Schwellenbach looked well on target for a 4-WAR season before an elbow fracture ended his season in late June. Read the rest of this entry »

2:08	Dan Szymborski: Sorry, technical diffculties

2:08	Dan Szymborski: I just tested it and it was slightly helpful!

2:09	Dan Szymborski: I mean it wasn’t going to be a game-changer since it’s not enough games

2:09	Dan Szymborski: But isn’t it weird that we don’t “count” the most important games against the best quality opposition?

2:09	Dan Szymborski: So, naturally, I tested for it

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that the coal has been shoveled into the steam engine and the gears are moving, the ZiPS projection system is back for the 11th year with its take on the top prospects in baseball. Just in case this is your first time with ZiPS, it’s a computer projection system that uses a whole bunch of algorithms, and more data than you can shake a stick at, to generate a forecast of how baseball players might perform in the future. There’s no truth to the rumors that it also utilizes my obvious disdain for your favorite team; it only harnesses some of that!

ZiPS prospect projections are not designed to replace traditional scouting, but rather to be a supplemental look, one that estimates where things stand if we only had data to work with. ZiPS has a strong history of projecting prospects — it liked players such as Mookie Betts and Pete Alonso far more than the prospecteers who aren’t in my computer — but all models are wrong; it’s just that some are useful. There is a great deal of uncertainty attendant with lower-level minor league stats that isn’t present at the higher levels, so ZiPS tends to be more confident about prospects with more time under their belts. As a result, non-statistical information about players, things ZiPS can’t and doesn’t know, is very relevant to how they’ll progress! This is not the one-prospect-list-to-bring-them-all-and-in-the-darkness-bind-them.

As is tradition, I dialed back a decade to look at the ZiPS Top 100 from 2016 to review its hits and misses:

As expected, there are some good hits and some huge misses. ZiPS was a very early adopter on Trea Turner, Ozzie Albies, and Ryan McMahon, and had more than its share of back-end top 100 prospects who rated more positively than consensus (Brandon Nimmo, Reynaldo López, Jack Flaherty, Matt Olson, Matt Chapman). But naturally there are some splats, most notably AJ Reed, but also José Peraza, Austin Barnes, Brian Johnson, and Renato Nuñez. All but two of the top 100 did in fact play in the majors, with the exceptions being Jomar Reyes and Kevin Ziomek, whose professional career only lasted one more start due to thoracic outlet syndrome.

But let’s get to why you’re here. Presenting the ZiPS 2026 Top 100:

There are a few important things to remember here. First, ZiPS has absolutely no way to consider high school prospects with little or no professional experience. Eli Willits absence from this list isn’t due to anything wrong with his statistics, but simply the fact that ZiPS doesn’t have anything useful to say about a player with 15 professional games and no college experience. ZiPS is a good tool, but I see little point in using it for something it can’t possibly be good at. There are some college-only players on this list, but they do take a hit if the projections are based mostly or exclusively on college data, similar to Nick Kurtz last year.

ZiPS tends to be higher on high-floor/low-ceiling prospects than scouts are, but I’ve minimized that tendency in recent years by using the average of the 80th- and 20th-percentile projections, resulting in Triple-A players who are projected to be safe, middling role players, but who don’t have big upside, ranking lower on the list.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of agreement between the ZiPS and FanGraphs Top 100 lists, with 62 players appearing on both (compared to 63 last year). To keep things apples to apples, I’m not including players from foreign leagues on this list, but you can see their projections in the normal spots.

From a team standpoint, here’s how many prospects each club has among the top 50, 100, 200, and 500 prospects. I’ve highlighted the leaders in each category:

The Pirates and Brewers have moved up considerably since last year, as have the Cardinals. This is probably the best showing for the Angels in years, though they are still only middle of the pack. The Yankees and Padres are really hurting, and while the Orioles still do very well in terms of the ZiPS Top 500 prospects, the computer thinks that aside from Samuel Basallo, their flow of top prospects has slowed considerably.

Looking at a big list of 100 players is a daunting task, so let’s break it down by position, and dig into some of the players who ZiPS does or doesn’t like. We’ll start with the first basemen:

There being five first baseman in the ZiPS Top 100 is actually an unusually large number these days! Bryce Eldridge wasn’t impressive in 2025, and there are some holes in his game, but he was still a very young player in the high minors with serious power upside. Edward Florentino’s A-ball performance was quite impressive for the level, and ZiPS thinks he has huge power upside. ZiPS doesn’t see Ryan Clifford becoming a star, but thinks he’s one of the safer home run bets among prospects today, albeit with low batting average and on-base figures. He does project as well as Pete Alonso at a similar point in their careers, though he probably isn’t going to be that good. Luke Adams and Eric Bitonti give the Brewers interesting options at a position they’ve struggled at lately, and Adams is already fairly high in the minors. ZiPS is a bit lower than our rankings on Ralphy Velazquez, who the system sees as having a good bit of bust potential. Turning to the second basemen:

ZiPS thinks that Kevin McGonigle should be in the majors right now, and would be a strong contender for the Rookie of the Year award in the American League. (As an aging Gen X’er, I also will enjoy years of making McGonigle/McGarnable jokes that 80% of people won’t get.) Yes, Michael Arroyo is a Walks Guy, but he also has really good power at a young age, and isn’t so atrocious defensively that he’s already been exiled to first base or anything. JJ Wetherholt only ranks third on this list because of how highly ZiPS ranks McGonigle and Arroyo, and like the former, he deserves to be a starter in 2026. Travis Bazzana is interesting in that ZiPS is unsure if his batting averages will be enough to make him a big plus in the majors, but the computer also likes his defense more than the general consensus. Jadher Areinamo is the arguable reach on this list, but ZiPS thinks he has reasonable power upside, and that he can stick at second base. To the shortstops:

Shortstop is the position where there is the most agreement between ZiPS and our prospect team. Nine of the top 10 shortstop prospects in ZiPS rank in the FanGraphs top 50. You don’t find a real significant disagreement until Cooper Pratt; ZiPS is giving him a lot of rope for his 2025 because of how young he was.

ZiPS has a weird tendency to flip the prospect team’s top two guys, but this time it’s absolutely convinced on Konnor Griffin. ZiPS thinks that Griffin would be a serious All-Star contender if he starts from Opening Day, and my projections very rarely say that about any prospect. Colt Emerson and Leo De Vries both get bumps up from very good 2025 rankings, and Jesús Made has nearly unlimited upside if his power develops as expected — and maybe even if it doesn’t! ZiPS remains relatively unfazed by Carson Williams’ unimpressive debut. He didn’t make the top 10, but ZiPS is really big on Kaelen Culpepper, enough that it sort of forgives the Twins for sending Carlos Correa back to Houston. Next, to the hot corner:

Third base has really fallen off in the ZiPS projections. Last year, the 10th-ranked third baseman, Cam Smith, was 129th overall; this year, the fifth-ranked third baseman would have been 129th! The top third base prospect, Sal Stewart, is probably a first baseman in the majors — that’s likely where he will play in 2026 — but wherever he ends up long-term, ZiPS is pretty confident that he’ll hit. Jacob Reimer is a big mover this year, and if you read my article from last week, you’ll know he has one of the most improved year-to-year projections, though he may need to be in the outfield to get a shot with the Mets. Mikey Romero isn’t a finished product, but ZiPS thinks he’ll at least hit some homers, albeit without a terribly good batting average. Ethan Holliday didn’t have enough professional time for ZiPS to consider, and the projections are far from sold on Charlie Condon, though he ought to at least be a good role player. ZiPS want to see more progress from Caleb Bonemer beyond walks before it places him as highly as our rankings do. Let’s turn to the catchers:

It remains to be seen if Samuel Basallo actually ends up a catcher, but wherever he plays, ZiPS at least thinks he’ll hit. The same goes for Carter Jensen, who ZiPS thinks ought to be Kansas City’s catcher right now; I suspect he has a better chance at sticking behind the plate than Basallo does. Teenage catchers are dangerous, but Alfredo Duno absolutely torched the minors in 2025, and doesn’t appear to be plagued with any defensive questions. Somehow, the St. Louis Cardinals have three catchers in the ZiPS Top 100, so it’s going to be interesting to see how they give everyone a chance in the minors. It’s no wonder they don’t seem to be in any particular hurry to get Iván Herrera back behind the plate. Most likely someone will end up being traded. Moisés Ballesteros would rank higher purely as a bat, but ZiPS isn’t bullish about his defense staying in the acceptable-ish range in the majors. He could explode very quickly offensively as a DH, however. Lastly for the position players, the outfielders:

Max Clark, who ranked 12th overall last year, jumps into the top 10, remaining quite on target for Detroit. Like McGonigle, he could contribute right now in the majors, though the path isn’t quite as easy for him; the Tigers have a lot of platoon combos that squeeze out value in the outfield. A healthy season keeps Jett Williams ranked highly, and ZiPS likes Emmanuel Rodriguez’s upside so much that he doesn’t take all that much of a hit due to injury. Theo Gillen is a rather unorthodox pick, as ZiPS knows to be skeptical of walk-heavy guys, but the computer thinks his defense is better than most do, and his speed will play especially nicely in Tampa. Owen Caissie isn’t a well-rounded player, but he can hit a giant boatload of home runs, something the Marlins need, and he’s been a fave of ZiPS for a while now. ZiPS sees Yeremy Cabrera as a sneaky-good pickup in the MacKenzie Gore trade.

ZiPS remains more unsure of Walker Jenkins than the scouts, and won’t be on the Zyhir Hope bandwagon until his power either develops further or his contact improves. ZiPS has thought that Joshua Baez is more interesting than Jordan Walker for a while now, and the downside of his contact rate is what has ZiPS relatively low on Spencer Jones, at least compared to his decent overall projection. ZiPS still loves Jace LaViolette’s 2024 minor league performance, which is why it has him so high for a college-only guy; I swear it’s not that I’ve programmed ZiPS to have extra love for a player whose name sounds like that of a the protagonist in a Southern Gothic detective mystery set in a creepy Louisiana mansion, though I should probably consider it. Justin Crawford is probably more interesting than his ranking is; his 20th-percentile projection is quite low, but he does have a high chance, relative to his ranking, of being a real contributor in the majors. Finally, the pitchers:

Thirteen pitchers make the ZiPS top 50, one of the largest groups ever. The system is aware of postseason performance, and Trey Yesavage just barely edges out Nolan McLean among the late-season pitching prospects who showed a lot in the majors, yet still retain rookie status for 2026. You can add another holdover, Bubba Chandler, to that list. Some may roll their eyes about Ryan Sloan ranking so high, especially nudging out Liam Doyle, but excelling at all as a professional is a hurdle Sloan’s already cleared. It’s not like ZiPS doesn’t like Doyle; that’s about as good a projection as I’ve ever seen from ZiPS for a pitcher based mainly on college performance.

ZiPS always seems to like some unexpected pitcher right around 30, with Braylon Doughty being the first pitcher on the ZiPS board to not make the FanGraphs Top 100. ZiPS liked his command in the low minors, and he missed plenty of bats along the way. Like Jacob Reimer, Mitch Bratt made the most-improved projection list, and ZiPS sees him as the rare highly interesting control-heavy prospect. Jonah Tong is a ZiPS favorite, and both Connelly Early and Payton Tolle had some real highlights for Boston; that they are basically depth guys at the moment is one reason ZiPS likes the Red Sox rotation so much. Alex Clemmey still has to lose a walk or two before he’ll make an impact, but young, hard-throwing lefties who get lots of swings and misses are worth watching.

If you’re enjoying the ZiPS Top 100 and the rest of our Prospect Week coverage, why not become a FanGraphs Member, and banish those obnoxious ads to the land of wind and ghosts? Your continued support over the years has been absolutely key to me being able to focus a large percentage of my time to this and related baseball nerdery. While I’d be happy to be paid in tacos, my car insurance company has been frustratingly insistent about being paid in actual currency.

12:03

Dan Szymborski: Greetings all!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: I’m OK with it!

12:05

Dan Szymborski: I mean, I would have preferred Valdez

12:05

Dan Szymborski: but given no Valdez, I’d rather have additional starter depth than not

Read the rest of this entry »