I’m not telling our readers anything they don’t already know, but defense is a very important part of baseball, especially at the up-the-middle positions. You probably watch enough baseball to list the best and worst couple of defenders at each position with a fair amount of accuracy; I bet you’d nail most of them off the top of your head (aside from Trea Turner, I think the 2025 FRV list is damn good), and that you have a proper appreciation for the importance of defense at the premium positions, even if it comes with some amount of sacrifice on offense.

In the prospect realm, though, things are trickier. Prospect hit data from TrackMan and Hawkeye has become common in public-facing analysis and discourse, but defense remains something of a black box. There aren’t many publicly available minor league defensive stats, and so much of evaluating defense is still best done visually, at least in my opinion. I wrote a version of today’s piece a few years ago, wherein I performed the same sort of video deep dive that I use to evaluate top shortstop prospects’ defense, and ripped and edited together key plays from that deep dive to share with you.

This year, I’m turning that exercise into a series. I’m going to batch together a few players at a time until I’ve gone through all of the 50 FV shortstops, as well as a few key prospects with lesser grades. That will include all of the players linked here, plus a few more. Read the rest of this entry »

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Beginning last Thursday and continuing through the weekend, several key rehabbers made appearances in the upper levels of the minor leagues. A few might have a meaningful impact on playoff races, while others are scuffling. I dish on eight pitchers below. Read the rest of this entry »

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We’re in the phase of the minor league calendar where the domestic complex league seasons have ended, in order to accommodate the incoming draft classes, while the rest of the minor leagues continue with their regular seasons for a few more weeks. There are some recent draftees who have already been sent out to affiliates, but the majority have gotten going at their respective facilities during unofficial “Bridge League” or “Continuation Camp” activity with loose, flexible schedules and start times. There’s a big group chat in which scouts and development personnel (plus a handful of media folks, and probably a clandestine autograph hound or two) exchange lineups and pitching probables to keep everyone abreast of the goings on. Ceasing official play in Arizona and Florida allows teams to onboard their draft classes in an unofficial setting and avoids the traffic jam of minor roster spots, which would exceed the allowed amount if the draft classes were just assigned to affiliates right away.

This is also a fruitful place for rehabbers to see their first real game action since injury because teams can just “roll” innings whenever they feel like it. If you’re on a 25-pitch limit and you’ve hit your count without getting three outs, the inning will just turn over regardless of how many guys are on base. This setting is about development and is not an actual game, so it’s a safe place to shake off rust and work up a sweat. On Tuesday, when the Padres officially caught the Dodgers in the NL West race, I saw their Bridge League teams square off with two rehabbing members of their 40-man rosters getting an inning of work at the start of the game. In this piece, I’ll pass along how Kyle Hurt (Dodgers) and Bradgley Rodriguez (Padres) looked and examine whether either team has a postseason pitching weapon lurking in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Ranked and briefly analyzed below are the prospects who have been traded during the loosely defined “2025 deadline season,” which for simplicity’s sake I consider all of July. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of have been analyzed at length on this site. An index of those pieces can be found here; you can also click the hyperlink in the “Trade” column below, which will take you to the relevant article. I’ve moved all of the 35+ FV and above players listed here to their new orgs over on The Board, so you can click through to see where they rank among their new teammates and read their full scouting reports, which have been updated where applicable. The Farm System Rankings, which update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up following the draft and the deadline. Read the rest of this entry »

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Last night, after Zack Littell had started for the Rays in what would turn out to be a dramatic extra-inning loss at Yankee Stadium, he was traded to the Reds as part of a three-team deal with the Dodgers. The names of the players involved slowly trickled out into the ether, and after an hour or so, the entire transaction came into focus:

• The Reds acquired Littell
• The Rays acquired right-handed pitcher Brian Van Belle from the Reds and catcher Hunter Feduccia from the Dodgers
• The Dodgers acquired left-handed pitcher Adam Serwinowski from the Reds, and catcher Ben Rortvedt and right-handed pitcher Paul Gervase from the Rays

Littell, who turns 30 in October, is in his final arbitration season and will be a free agent this winter. After spending the first half decade of his big league career in the bullpen, he made a successful transition to the rotation starting in the middle of 2023. He has the third-lowest walk rate among all qualified pitchers since then, at a microscopic 4%. This season, Littell has a 3.58 ERA (his FIPs and xERA are in the 4.20 to 4.90 range) across 22 starts. He’s a quintessential soft-tossing pitchability guy whose fit in the Rays rotation the last few years was largely driven by his addition of a sinker and a shift away from using his fastballs so much. Littell’s splitter has been his most reliable bat-missing weapon and played like a plus pitch in 2023 and 2024 before losing some of its sink in 2025; it has backed up into more of an average area in terms of garnering whiffs. He’s posting the lowest full-season strikeout rate of his career and one of the lowest across qualified big league pitchers this year. He’s also surrendered 26 home runs, the most in the majors and a potential concern in the bandbox that is Great American Ballpark. Read the rest of this entry »

With the draft behind us and the trade deadline looming, I’ve made a number of updates to The Board. The signing deadline for drafted players has passed, and the 2025 class has now been ported over to the pro side of The Board. You can now see where your favorite team’s new draftees line up in their farm system, and I may yet add a few more of the very late round and/or undrafted players who signed for way over slot (looking at you, Brewers). I’ve also peeled away from the lists those players who have exceeded the rookie eligibility threshold; they’ve been moved onto the Graduates tab on The Board. This means that the farm system values have shifted, and will continue to in real time as trades are made this week.

Most importantly, however, I’ve made a sweeping update to the Top 100 Prospects list. As I noted in the spring with our last Top 100 update, there are a couple of things to keep in mind as you read, especially if you’re new to FanGraphs prospect stuff. First, the “Top 100” title is arbitrary SEO nonsense; I rank players as deep as I have them graded as 50 FV prospects or better, and as of this update, that’s 99 guys. Second, remember that Future Value is a value grade. The tools and ultimate potential upside of a player matter a lot, as does the length and consistency of a player’s performance track record and their proximity to the majors. There are players who have talent upside better than their FV grade, but if they’re risky for whatever reason, or if they’re in the low minors, I want to reflect that risk/time element in their grade. Read the rest of this entry »

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