We’re about a month and a half into the minor league season, a reasonable time for a Top 100 update, albeit one with a relatively light touch. The purpose of this update is to pluck the low-hanging fruit, to polish and reshape the list rather than tear down the one from February. Much of the country is chilly or rainy in April and early May, and it can take time for players (hitters especially) to get going. Young players are also changing all the time, which often includes adjustments to their first taste of failure.

You can see the updated list in its entirety here. Below, I’ve highlighted some individual players. I touch on how everyone who is a 60 FV prospect or better has performed so far this year, as well as which players have moved up the list in a meaningful way. There are many cases in which the order of the list changed but the player’s overall grade and evaluation did not. If a pitcher is hurt and slid to the back of their FV tier (as with River Ryan, Ricky Tiedemann, Kyle Hurt and Chase Hampton), or if guys are stacked differently due to syllogistic reasoning (such as former back-of-the-list starter Christian Scott racing past similar talents who are in, say, Double-A), then I don’t address that individual move. Read the rest of this entry »

The best pitching prospect in baseball, 21-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates righty Paul Skenes, is slated to be called up tomorrow to make his major league debut against the Cubs. The 6-foot-6 leviathan has a 0.99 ERA in seven Triple-A starts this year and has struck out 42.9% of the hitters he’s faced across 27 1/3 innings. He’s a ready-made front-of-the-rotation starter, a Herculean physical presence with even bigger stuff, and perhaps the most important part of an increasingly promising situation in Pittsburgh, a city with three baseball playoff appearances over the last 30 years. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Oakland Athletics. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Colorado Rockies. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a few notes on topical prospects without a big piece to put them in, so I’m including them here in an appetizer-sampler article.

How Is Jackson Merrill Taking to Center Field?

Well, let’s observe. Here’s every fly ball hit Merrill’s way in April, minus the mind-numbingly routine plays and liners he had no chance to catch:

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cincinnati Reds. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Cleveland Guardians. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier today, Dan Szymborski kicked off our reliever rankings. Now we’ll take a look at the bullpens projected to be baseball’s best.

There are some positions for which a cleaner, wider WAR gap exists between the top teams and the bottom, where we can more definitively say that some teams are better than others. For instance, the combination of talent and depth that the Yankees and Braves have in right field separates them from the rest of baseball in a substantial way: There’s a projected 4-5 WAR gap between those clubs and the teams projected/ranked as high as sixth in right field. The projected WAR gap between the Phillies’ bullpen and that of the White Sox, ranked all the way down at 30, is only about that much, at 4.5 WAR. Relief pitching is not one of those positions with clear, WAR-driven demarcation from team to team, and bullpens on clubs with better rotations (and starters who eat up innings) are going to be punished for throwing fewer innings than those on teams that frequently deploy long relievers since WAR is a counting stat influenced by playing time. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Milwaukee Brewers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »