It is not without some injury-related terror and self-skepticism that I have Rodriguez atop this deep, messy, and surgery-scarred system, a conclusion I came to while working on the overall 100 and after comparing the totality of his profile across the entire baseball landscape, against which it stacks up quite favorably. Rodriguez checks all but two significant boxes. One is the “totally healthy” box, as he was shut down with an elbow issue in July. The other is the thoroughly modern “vertical slot/backspin” box typical of starters whose fastballs I’m more confident in. But this is not a vanilla, three-quarters slot. Rodriguez is well below that, and his upright, short-armed, slingy arm action presents almost a side arm look. It’s unique, and creates an awful lot of tail on his fastball. Sitting 92-95, up to 98, and weaponized by Rodriguez’s advanced east/west command, it’s a potential plus pitch. A split-action changeup is currently his best secondary, while his slow curveball lacks sharp-looking movement but has plus raw spin.

I think a fully-formed Rodriguez has a different breaking ball than this one, so in this instance I’m making an abstract projection based on Yerry’s talent for spinning the baseball. He needs something he can work inside on lefties, either a cutter or a more traditional breaking ball with better back foot angle. From a performance standpoint, Rodriguez has 167 K and 29 BB over the 136.2 innings he’s thrown the last two years. He has the best combination of stuff and pitchability in the system.

It’ll be interesting to see where in the field the Rangers end up deploying Solak given that they’re already rostering a few DH-types like Willie Calhoun and Shin-Soo Choo. Solak is a high-effort player but effort alone won’t solve his defensive issues, which have been apparent wherever he’s played. That’s mostly been second base with some left and center field, the last of which Texas revisited this spring. He can really hit, though, and the lowest single-season batting average he has posted since his freshman season at Louisville is .282. He’ll likely hit for pretty average power, but if Texas can hide him day-to-day wherever opponents are least likely to put balls in play, he’ll essentially be a multi-positional player with a plus stick.

Yes, future rule changes would make it more likely that Hernandez could one day catch in a part-time capacity, but he doesn’t have a great arm, either, and he has a chance to race to the big leagues if the Rangers just let him go hit while learning first base or an outfield corner. The on-paper stats, underlying TrackMan data, and my visual evaluation of Hernandez all indicate that this might be a very special hitter whose hit and power combination will clear the high offensive bar at those positions. His little T-Rex arms enable Heriberto to be short to the baseball, but he’s so strong and rotates with such ferocity that he still hits for power. I’ve seen him make mid-at-bat adjustments to quality offspeed stuff, swinging over a particularly good splitter only to recognize the next one, located in the same spot, and rope it into the corner for a double. He covers the whole plate (something that’s gotten better since my first looks in 2018) but is tough to beat on the inner half, and after watching him rake all last summer and fall, I’m all in on him despite not generally favoring corner guys several levels beneath the big leagues.

If he’s going to get to all of his considerable raw power, then Jung (pronounced ‘young’) is probably going to need a swing change that enables him to pull the ball more consistently. He inside-outs an awful lot of pitches and doesn’t even really get around the ball during batting practice, though his strength and feel to hit enables a high quality of contact despite this atypical style. He was a .346/.452/.562 career hitter at Tech and had more walks than strikeouts during his last two years with the Red Raiders. Originally thought to be a risk to move to first base, Jung not only allayed those concerns but also played a passable college shortstop last season. He comfortably projects to third base in pro ball and is a potential everyday player, but I need to see him pull pitches with power before I 50 FV him.

There are no changes to Tejeda’s report as he missed most of last year with a sublexed shoulder. He is rangy and athletic, and has good defensive footwork and plenty of arm for the infield’s left side. His hands are not as consistent and some scouts have wanted to see him tried in center field, which he has the speed to play, though Texas has largely kept him at short and he’s now one of two and a half shortstops (I’m counting Isiah Kiner-Falefa as a half) on the Rangers 40-man.

Tejeda has plus-plus bat speed and his hands work in a tight, lift-friendly circle, but he’s so explosive that at times he’s out of control (this is where the strikeouts come from). He managed to get to the power at Hi-A in 2018, when he homered 19 times, and if he can stay at shortstop and continue to mash like that in games, he’ll be a good everyday player. He’s in the same FV tier as high-variance shortstops with power, such as Greg Jones and Bryson Stott.

After a few years of mediocre statistical performance, the Rangers finally asked the 20-year-old Taveras to repeat a level, in this case Hi-A. He responded by posting a contact- and walk-driven 117 wRC+ in the first half, earning a promotion to Double-A Frisco for the second, where he proceeded to produce an unremarkable line that (here’s a familiar phrase) is reasonable to forgive considering his age. 2019 was Taveras’ best BABIP season in some time, notable because during the last few years scouts had sometimes described him as aloof or bored. His speed and center field defense are both excellent, which creates a floor of sorts, but scout opinions regarding how much Taveras will hit have varied and, more and more, are diverging from stat-based analysis when they’re favorable. I think Leody has above-average feel for contact as a left-handed hitter and that his right-handed swing is almost unusable. I also think the power display he put on at the 2018 Futures Game was a caricature created by the event’s baseballs, an opinion his TrackMan data supports. He’s a glove-first, second division regular based on how he’s tracking, but there’s a subset of the industry who still thinks the bat is coming and hasn’t shown up in the statline yet because of Leody’s age.

Because he had advanced command and application of a four-pitch mix, Winn was viewed as a polished cut above his high school pitching peers in the 2018 draft, arguably a prospect teams could run to for safety as if he were a college arm because of how advanced he was. He didn’t pitch the summer after he was drafted as a workload precaution, threw a little in the fall, then was uncharacteristically wild the following year, walking 39 hitters in 69 innings. Feel for his release point had evaporated and Winn spiked an awful lot of non-competitive secondary pitches in the dirt. His stuff is still good, and his repertoire is still quite robust and visually good-looking, but Winn’s stock is down due to this unexpected speed bump.

From a pitch data perspective — only spin and velo in this case — I actually have Palumbo’s stuff as down half a tick from the year before, but the way he missed bats at Double- and Triple-A (he struck out 33% of hitters) is an indication that it doesn’t really matter. He utilizes a power-pitcher’s approach, working at the letters with his fastball while mixing in lots of overhand curveballs, both of which are quite effective. Palumbo’s changeup also has nasty-looking sink and tail but he doesn’t really locate his fastball anywhere other than the top of the zone, which I think he’d have to be able to do to set up the change, so that pitch plays closer to average right now. Palumbo lacks traditional starter command and pitch utility, but he could work in a Lance McCullers Jr. sort of role or, because of repertoire depth, in effective, multi-inning relief.

Apostel was pilfered from Pittsburgh as the PTBNL in the 2018 Keone Kela trade. I had been hopeful that, despite his size, Apostel would be able to stay at third base for a good chunk of his big league career, but while I still think his arm will help him stay there for a little while, he’ll move to first base by his mid-20s, though there’s still enough going on offensively that I have him projected as a second division regular there. His feel for the strike zone and his timing are both impressive for his age, and he is adept at attacking early-count pitches he can drive, while taking tough strikes. It helps him run deep counts (part of where the strikeouts come from), and walk as well as hit for power. He’s performed on paper since first appearing on FanGraphs prospect lists in 2017 and at this point he’s a low-variance corner role player who should put up 2 WAR seasons for as long as he can play third base.

The mercurial Crouse pitched through a bone spur last year and still sat 92-95, about a tick below where he sat for me coming off biceps tendinitis in the spring (92-96, touch 99). It’s the recent injury history paired with the industry’s mechanical xenophobia that fuels the relief projection here, not Crouse’s command or repertoire depth. His changeup now comfortably projects to average, while his fastball/breaking ball combination has been excellent since he was a high school underclassman. And even amid his injuries Crouse has attacked hitters in games. He incorporates all kinds of crafty veteran wrinkles into his delivery’s cadence on occasion. An extra shoulder wiggle, a Travoltaian gyration of the hips, the occasional quick-pitch — all sorts of things designed to take hitters by surprise. Lefties get a good look at his fastball because of Crouse’s low slot, and the velo he would theoretically gain out of the bullpen (he was up to 102 out of the bullpen in a 2017 All-Star Game) would give him the margin for error he needs to not be crushed by them. I think he’s a late-inning bullpen arm, for which his personality seems well-suited.

Especially now that he’s part of the one-knee’d receivers fad, and that rule changes de-emphasizing framing seem imminent, the likelihood that Huff can catch is growing. Instead, the questions now surround his ability to make contact. Even during his torrid, 30-game stretch to start 2019, Huff was striking out about 30% of the time, his career rate. It’s a problem caused by the combination of his aggressiveness and middling barrel accuracy, and he looked overmatched against big league arms this spring, striking out in half his at-bats. But Huff has superlative power that plays when he does make contact and he can play not only a premium position, but the most barren offensive position in the game right now. I think his offensive production will look similar to Jorge Alfaro’s.

Acosta had an impressive instructs from a bat-to-ball standpoint and generated stronger reports among pro scouts who saw him there than the lukewarm ones amateur scouts filed from their workout looks. Acosta’s tools aren’t showcase-friendly. He has uncommon barrel control and his swing is not only suited for him to make contact at the top of the strike zone, it’s also where he does most of his damage. He’s vulnerable down and away, where he ends up cutting at balls on a decline and driving them into the ground, but lower-level pitching won’t be able to exploit that consistently. For a someone still shy of age 18, Acosta is pretty stocky and strong. If his build stays this way, it improves his chances of staying on the middle infield but also caps his raw power close to average. Regardless of which marginal side of average his power ends up settling on, the contact is what’s going to drive Acosta’s prospectdom, and based on fall looks that aspect could be special.

Lora is a traditional corner outfield power bat with big present raw power and a somewhat mature build. There are some long-term questions about that build because Lora is so huge for a prospect his age and reports about his conditioning while he was an amateur were mixed, but he looked svelte last fall and his relative physical maturity also gives him a better chance of moving quickly through the minors. He often has clumsy in-the-box footwork but deft hitting hands. Last fall, he took several ugly-looking, unbalanced swings but still found a way to get the barrel there, and even when he miss-hits balls they’re still put in play hard because of how strong Lora is. His future depends entirely on his hit tool as it’s pretty clear the power to hit in the middle of an order is going to develop.

There are always a few little toy cannon hurlers with light speed arm actions floating around, and Henriquez, who spent 2018 in the DSL and then skipped several levels and performed at Hickory, is the latest. Despite measuring maybe — maybe — 5-foot-10 (maybe), his arm generates mid-90s velocity he has relatively advanced command of. He’s not a touch and feel strike-thrower; he comes right after hitters at the letters. He also has great feel for locating a breaking ball (though it lacks impact movement), his split/change has natural tumble, and he’s so athletic and well-balanced throughout his delivery that you can kind of go nuts projecting on his command. If the breaking ball improves, he’ll be on next year’s top 100. If not, he’s likely a power reliever.

The Rangers have wasted no time in beginning to move Ornelas all over the field — shortstop, second base, third base, left field — cementing the notion that his future rests in a valuable super utility role. He hit pretty well despite skipping the Northwest League and heading right to full season ball as an 18-year-old, slashing .257/.333/.373 with a bunch of doubles. I’m still not entirely keen on Johnny O’s bat path, which I think will make it hard for him to hit for everyday power if left unaltered, but he’s an excellent rotational athlete who I think will find ways to hit the ball hard all over the field, while he plays several different positions.

Basabe is a fiery little shortstop who takes full-body swings, leading to surprisingly hard contact from someone so small and young. He’s not a discerning hitter yet, and he isn’t a viable shortstop defender right now. Most aspects of the profile are still hazy, but there’s feel for contact and some pop here, as well as a shot for this 60 runner to stay up the middle and play center field if he doesn’t improve as an infielder. The twitch and feel for contact are exciting, but you have to project on lots of technical components (defensive actions and hands, any amount of selectivity) to see a regular.

It’s odd for a player’s profile to do a 180 before he turns 20, but Moss has gone from a speedy, up-the-middle amateur with a Lilliputian build to a positionless, switch-hitting thumper in just two years. The gap power Moss currently generates from both sides of the plate is surprising considering how physically overmatched he was when he first came stateside for 2018 instructs. Perhaps more impressive is how deft his bat control is as a teenage switch-hitter. He pairs an athletic leg kick with very simple hitting hands that he simply guides toward the ball, turning his wrists over through contact and whacking low-lying contact to all fields. Moss can still run, but his infield hands are not good. Optimistic scouts have him eventually passing at second base, while I have him projected to the outfield.

Wendzel was a draft-eligible sophomore in 2018 and had a strong offensive season, but he wasn’t drafted high enough to sign (there were body and defense-related concerns he has since worked to remedy) and had to swim upstream against draft models as a junior as he was over 22 on draft day. He also dealt with a thumb injury late during his college career that shelved him for some of last summer. By the late summer and during instructs, Wendzel was not only fully healthy but clearly in peak physical condition, and he and his tawny Amish beard and mullet were instrumental in the Rangers AZL title run. Though he has a high maintenance build, Wendzel’s hands and actions might enable him to a play a passable shift-aided middle infield spot if he remains as agile as he looked late last year, which again is much different than just a few years ago when he was built more softly and playing some first base and left field. He doesn’t have the huge power typical of a corner spot but he has a chance to play some kind of everyday role as a well-rounded tryhard.

Evans has elite, late-inning stuff (a power curveball and a mid-90s fastball with bat-missing carry and angle) and one of the more imposing on-mound presences in pro baseball, almost as terrifying as his walk rates. He’s on the Texas 40-man now and could seize the closer role at some point, though chances are this guy is going to have Rangers fans clutching their chests and biting their nails frequently if he does.

Acquired from the White Sox for Nomar Mazara during Winter Meetings, Walker spent 2019 in A-ball as a 22- and 23-year-old and slashed .284/.361/.451 in his first full pro season against pitching that was a little bit better than what he saw in the Big 12. He’s a muscular, 5-foot-11 stick of dynamite with plus raw power he likely won’t get to fully in games (from a home run production standpoint, anyway) because of how the swing works. He can turn on balls in, but anything away from the short-levered Walker he tends to either punch somewhere or roll over the top of. He does hit the ball hard (43% of his balls in play last year were hit over 95 mph according to a source) but he can be pitched to in a way that limits the damage he does.

In many ways, Walker projects to be a player quite similar to the one Mazara has become. His platoon splits have been rather significant to this point and his in-game power production is likely to end up beneath his raw (albeit for reasons different than Mazara’s, which have to do with pitch selection more than swing plane issues), though Walker is a superior defender. He can play a passable center field, though whatever big league roster he ends up on will probably have a superior option who pushes him to a corner.

Phillips fills the zone with four pitches and projects as a groundball-getting fifth starter. He has a chance to outproduce this FV grade by eating whole sleeves of innings and generating WAR that way (he’s thrown 130 innings each of the last two years), but other than his changeup, Phillips doesn’t have a weapon that misses bats.

White still hasn’t thrown a pitch in an affiliated game because the Rangers shelved him after his draft (he threw during 2018 instructs and looked fantastic, sitting 93-95, locating a consistently above-average curveball, and displaying nascent feel for a mid-80s changeup). Somehow, he still needed Tommy John in May of last year, though. He has a big, projectable frame, is an above-average on-mound athlete, and his arm action is loose and mechanically efficient. He likely would not have begun to get into games until the middle of the summer anyway, so while the shutdown has impacted Texas’ oversight of his rehab, White’s big league timeline is less affected by the shutdown than most minor leaguers’. When healthy, he had several significant components already in place (velocity, fastball movement, breaking ball quality) and White’s other traits (changeup proclivity, athleticism, and feel for location) indicate he’s poised to grow and develop into a well-rounded arm. He’s a mid-rotation pitching prospect who is likely several years from the majors.

A lat strain (the right-hander had a PRP injection) limited Alexy to just 19.1 regular season innings before he picked up some reps in the fall, during which his stuff looked fine. He was sitting 94-98 in my looks with an above-average curveball and usable changeup. Alexy’s high-effort style of pitching fits in the bullpen, but repertoire depth might enable him to pitch multiple innings.

Vanasco was 90-92 during the 2018 fall instructional league, then leapt into the 92-96 range in 2019. His delivery is ultra-violent, but his fastball/curveball combo give him high-leverage bullpen potential. He’s very similar to Alexy, just several rungs below him on the ladder.

Hernandez has not, as of yet, corralled the velocity he suddenly found a few years ago. When he first arrived in the U.S., he was an interesting pitchability sleeper but, as if the baseball gods had made some kind of continuity error with his career, became a rough-around-the-edges flamethrower, and remains so as he enters his final option year. Some of the two-seamers he throws are unhittable because of their combination of velocity and tailing action, and Hernandez’s arm strength lets him get away with imprecise location in the zone, but the rest of his stuff is closer to average and I think he’s a fastball-heavy bullpen fit long-term.

Garcia went to the Northwest League as a teenager and hit .277/.351/.435 while only catching 38 games as the Rangers continue to handle the physically immature catcher with care. He was so frail early on that he struggled to handle pro-quality stuff on the backfields when he first arrived in the States, but Garcia has now thickened to the point that he appears better able to deal with the physical grind of catching. I’m not sure he’ll retain the viable power on contact he showed last year once he’s subject to a full-season beating behind the plate, and until that’s proven, I’m inclined to project Garcia as a backup who has a puncher’s chance to play everyday.

Cody had a rocky career at Kentucky, always tantalizing scouts with stuff but struggling with health and control. The Twins made him their 2015 second rounder, but he didn’t sign and fell to the sixth round as a 2016 senior. Texas simplified his delivery in 2017, which probably contributed to a breakout year. He seemed likely to spend most of 2018 at Double-A and perhaps reach the majors in 2019, but he had elbow issues during the spring and didn’t break camp with an affiliate. His Arizona rehab was successful enough for Cody to get on a mound in games for a bit, but he felt continued discomfort and needed Tommy John. The mid-summer timing of the surgery means he missed all of 2019 aside from some autumn bullpen sessions that weren’t widely known about, probably just in case Texas decided not to 40-man him and expose him to the Rule 5. He was 94-97 in the bullpen and added to the Rangers roster. If healthy, he’ll grab hold of a middle relief job.

Skilled and versatile, Hernandez is a likely big league role player whose abilities can impact a game in many situations. He’s tough to strike out and has reached base at a career .390 clip because he walks a lot and has an effective slash-and-dash offensive approach. He’s also an acrobatic multi-positional infielder. Hernandez will give a big league team a good at-bat off the bench and an upgrade on the bases, and he can competently spell or sub for any of your bat-first infielders later in games.

Slaten signed for about $200,000 under slot in the third round, then proceeded to light up radar guns in the Northwest League and look like a steal. He was sitting 92-97 there and flashed a plus, two-plane, sweeping breaking ball and tailing changeup. Like many other arms in this system, Slaten has a violent delivery that creates injury concern and relief risk.

Acuña is a small-framed infielder who takes big, whole-body swings that generate more power than you’d expect for someone his size. His size doesn’t allow for a lot of raw power projection but his style of swinging — which includes a bold move forward and a gorgeous hand path similar to his brother’s, though without that kind of explosion — might enable him to hit for some. Unless Acuña outgrows my raw power projection, it puts pressure on him to have a premium hit tool in order to be an impact regular. I think that’s possible but not something we’ll know until Acuña proves it.

Garcia has below average velocity that his TrackMan data indicates might play up because of spin axis. His secondary pitches are all average and Garcia has advanced command. He projects as a fifth starter.

Florentino is a sinewy, athletic, and arguably undersized catcher and first baseman who is likely to stay behind the plate. He has a keen eye for the strike zone and some bat control, but there’s some risk that his offensive tools won’t withstand a full-season grind due to a lack of physicality.

I came away from Thompson’s Fall League jaunt very skeptical about his bat. It’s possible the reps he’s lost due to injury are at least partially to blame for his struggles (Thompson lost chunks of time to a fractured hamate and recovering from a wall collision), but the gap between the average pitcher in the Fall League’s pitching and what Bubba seemed capable of handling was pretty vast. His ceiling is the same, I just think it’s less likely he gets there and sustains it because of the hit tool issues.

Gonzalez continues to have swing-and-miss issues related to his lever length, which the industry sees as enough of a problem that it passed him over during last year’s Rule 5 draft. He hit 23 homers and stole 14 bases while repeating Low-A in 2019, and I’m still betting on his tools and frame to some degree. Gonzalez’s talent might enable him to have a few years where he produces like an everyday player, but for most of the six-year window I consider at FanGraphs I think he’ll strike out a lot and be limited to a platoon and extra outfield role, à la Jake Marisnick but without the elite defense.

The hope that injuries had slowed Hearn’s development and that he’d develop starter traits late has now evaporated as he approaches age 26 without a swing-and-miss secondary. He now profiles as a fastball-heavy reliever.

It’s rare for a 40th rounder to have seemingly imminent big league relevance at all, let alone just about a year after they were drafted, but here’s Uvila, whose funky, three-pitch mix, headlined by a curveball with elite spin, should at least enable him to be a valuable reliever.

While he had a down 2019 with the bat, I still have White projected as a multi-positional bench piece. Where the Rangers end up sticking him is up in the air. Before they traded him to Texas, the Athletics had started to play White at second and third base, while the Rangers kept him at shortstop and center field in 2019, both of which I think are stretches for his ability.

Herget’s fastball averaged close to 90 mph as a college starter but it spiked into the mid-90s out of the pro bullpen, giving him uncommon velocity for a side-armer. He commands his cuttery slider to his glove side and has enough of a changeup to be viable against lefty batters and avoid any role issues caused by three batter minimums.

Gonzalez was acquired from Kansas City for international pool space. He’s a power bullpen arm with a mid-90s fastball and two quality secondaries that both have similar downward movement. He’s a likely winter Rule 5 add and long-term bullpen piece.

Speas is one of many prospects for whom the 2020 season was to be the fulcrum of their pro career. He’s Rule 5 eligible this winter, and Speas’ stuff was so good when he returned from Tommy John rehab last summer (he was 95-99 in his first outing back, then was up to 102 in the next one before being shut down because the Rangers thought he was throwing too hard) that it seemed plausible he’d mow through several levels of the minors this season and earn a 40-man spot. A short season, or perhaps no minor league season at all, makes it unlikely that Speas has the multi-month opportunity to do that, and teams would likely be hesitant to pop him in the Rule 5 considering how little he has pitched the last couple of years. He has late-inning relief potential because of the stuff, but I’m not sure Texas bridges the developmental gap caused by his misfortune and gets him there.

2020 was going to be a big year for Arias, who likely would have gone to Double-A and either earned a 40-man spot or not based on his offensive performance, which to this point in his career has been strong. I like him as a contact-oriented infield bench piece who plays all four spots.

Bannister is a sushi raw athletic marvel who needs as many reps as the Rangers can give him to polish his feel to hit. His route to pro ball was unique. Bannister was born in the Bahamas and grew up there, then moved to Maryland and played at West Nottingham High School until 2017 when he moved to the Dominican Republic to train, before going back to the Bahamas during the summer of 2018. I’ve only ever seen him swing right-handed, including against righty pitchers, so I think his roster status as a switch-hitter is now obsolete. He’s a physically gifted developmental project.

Burke had an odd 26-inning big league stint last year as he barely struck anyone out and worked primarily off his two- and four-seamers, which he commanded to his glove and arm side, respectively. He struggled to finish his breaking ball during his time in the majors; the pitch lacked relevant movement and just hung near the top of the zone. Then Burke had shoulder surgery this spring. His ultimate role will depend on what his stuff looks like coming out of rehab, but based on how it looked when he was last throwing, it’s much more likely that he’s a reliever than starter.

Seise remains interesting from a size and power projection standpoint, but his last two seasons have ended due to shoulder surgeries (right rotator cuff in ’18, left labrum in ’19) and he struck out 30% of the time before each injury. He needs to prove he’s healthy and will stop swinging at balls before he reclaims significant prospect value.

Ragans was 14 months removed from Tommy John when his elbow barked at him again and he needed a second. His surgery came at a time that threatened most of his 2020 season, too. When healthy, he looked like a No. 4 starter with a plus changeup.

Pozo has some off-field baggage because of a hazing incident he participated in early in his career, but on talent, he’s a backup catching prospect with a compact swing. His peripherals are Astudillo-esque.

Ovalles is a smaller-framed first base and corner outfield prospect whose build and limited raw power are the sorts normally found in the honorable mention section of this list. But I’ve seen him do some precocious defensive stuff at first base and I think he has a chance to be plus there while also making enough contact to offset his limited raw juice. He’s a long-shot, but I value him more than is typical because of the bat-to-ball and projected defense.

Barlow has a fastball/curveball combination worthy of a big league middle relief spot, but he’s had strike-throwing issues throughout his career. They briefly abated early in 2019 before returning in the second half, when Barlow walked more hitters than he pitched Triple-A innings. He was laboring again this spring while competing for a bullpen job. I have him as an up and down reliever.

A high-effort, switch-hitting grinder who puts balls in play, runs well, and can play all over the infield, Chavez projects to play a role off a big league bench.

The Rangers moved Mendez to the bullpen when he returned from his spring 2019 UCL sprain, one of several injuries that have kept him prospect eligible despite pitching in parts of four big league seasons so far. He projects as a fastball/changeup reliever.

Bueno (an 80-grade pitching name) was slated to be ASU’s Friday night starter as a junior when the injury bug bit; he’d eventually need TJ. His velo is way up since returning but a bird’s eye view of the profile is a wild, injury-riddled, 24-year-old reliever in A-ball.

Bradford has three average to slightly above pitches and good command but missed almost all of his draft spring at Baylor due to thoracic outlet syndrome.

The blisters that disrupted Gore’s first full season in pro ball were not an issue in 2019, and he reached Double-A after 15 dominant starts in the hitter-friendly Cal League, during which he surrendered just nine measly runs. Gore pitches the same way a great horror movie villain lurks and ambushes from the shadows. The strange, balletic way he hoists his leading leg and hands as high as he can before he peddles home builds fear of the unknown, and dread anticipation the same way eerie music portends someone’s cinematic demise. Then Gore lunges home with a huge stride, one that takes him slightly down the first base line, and gets right on top of hitters, creating more discomfort. Then, suddenly, the jump scare. The ball explodes out from behind Gore’s head and blows past flailing hitters at the letters, banishing them to the dugout until their sequel at-bat a few innings later.

Gore generated a 16% swinging strike rate overall last year and a 15% swinging strike rate on his fastball, which is amazing for a heater that only averaged 93 mph. Several other traits — Gore generates nearly perfect backspin and seam uniformity on his fastballs, which you can see in the video that corresponds to this player capsule, and the flat approach angle of his stuff contributes, too — help the fastball play up, including Gore’s command which projects, at least, to plus. Spin efficiency also enables his curveball to be good even though it lacks big raw spin, he has glove-side command of his slider, and his changeups, though they’re of mixed quality, are typically well-located. You can go wild projecting on Gore’s secondary stuff, especially the changeup, and his command because he is such an exceptional athlete, and the fact that he can repeat and maintain such an odd and explosive delivery is clear evidence of that.

The 2018 blister problems created some short-term workload issues that San Diego’s dev group tried to solve by shutting Gore down for most of August. He threw side sessions for most of the month before returning for one last in-game outing before the Texas League playoffs, which he didn’t pitch in. He had a 40-inning increase from 2018 to 2019, when he threw 100 frames. It puts him on pace to throw 120-140 innings this year, though it only makes sense for San Diego to push him if they’re contending for the playoffs. Based on how they handled Paddack and Tatis last year, such an approach seems possible.

If not for Sam Huff‘s game-tying two-run shot in the bottom of the seventh inning, we would not have gotten to see Patiño chuck heaters past Royce Lewis and Jo Adell at the 2019 Futures Game. It was a coronation of sorts, an indication that the then-teenager would be ready for the bright lights of Petco Park when the Padres call on him, which might happen in 2020, even if it’s out of the bullpen at first. (There are some executives who think that will be Patiño’s ultimate role.) He’s smaller, and his changeup and command are not very good yet. But this is one of the best on-mound athletes in the minors, one who hasn’t been pitching all that long, and has had premium velocity for an even shorter span of time. It’d be unreasonable to expect a 20-year-old to be fully realized when he’s only been pitching for about four years. Patiño’s velocity came on in a huge way as he got on a pro strength program and he’s added 40 pounds of good weight and about 10 ticks of velo since he signed. He’s a charismatic autodidact who has taken a similarly proactive approach to learning a new language (he became fluent in English very quickly, totally of his own volition) as he has to incorporating little tricks and twists into his delivery (he’s borrowed from Mac Gore) to mess with hitters.

Were this a college prospect, he’d be in the conversation for the draft’s top pick, and I’m very comfortable projecting on the command and changeup because of the athleticism/makeup combination. I expect Patiño will reach the big leagues this year in a bullpen capacity and compete for a rotation spot in 2021.

The .401/.442/.662 line Abrams posted after signing isn’t sustainable, buoyed as it was by the interaction that players as fast as he is have with defenses at the lowest levels of the minors (he had a .425 BABIP), but Abrams can absolutely rake. He had no trouble with the leap from amateur to pro velocity, though some of the top high school pitching he saw the summer before his draft year was probably better than what he faced in the 2019 AZL. He has a knack for impacting the baseball in a way that creates hard contact even though his swing is currently pretty flat, and he can do this all over the strike zone. Of the trio of elite AZL prospects (Abrams, Bobby Witt, and Marco Luciano), Abrams has the most polished hit tool and the most room left on his frame. Even without a swing change, he’s going to grow into more power just through maturity, which is pretty scary considering his exit velos are already above big league average (though, again, AZL pitching wasn’t good last year).

I don’t think he’s a shortstop. When he has time to step and throw, Abrams has enough arm for the left side of the infield, but ask him to contort his body and make tough throws on balls he has to go get and the results are mixed. Most players with this issue end up in center field, where Abrams could be a plus defender because of his speed, assuming his instincts there aren’t terrible. He has top-of-the-order traits right now and is a virtual lock to play somewhere up the middle, even if it isn’t at short.

Campusano was a bad-bodied catcher on the summer showcase circuit, but then he completely remade his body for his senior spring. He showed above-average power, some bat control, and improved agility behind the plate, boosting his stock to the late first/early second round of the draft. He didn’t catch much velocity in high school and struggled receiving pro arms at first, but that has improved to a place of acceptability. More importantly, he’s continued to hit. Though his Hi-A statline was aided by the Cal League’s hitting environment, Campusano’s 11% strikeout rate was the second best rate among qualified, full-season backstops in 2019 (Yohel Pozo was first) and his exit velos (89 mph on average) are great for a 20-year-old. He is rumored to have been the centerpiece of San Digeo’s Mookie Betts negotiations with Boston and while young catching has a tendency to take a beating and fall short of expectations on offense because of it, right now Campusano looks like a potential star offensive catcher.

Trammell sees a lot of pitches, he has gap power, and he can really run, which helps him run down more balls than a lot of left fielders. He’s very competitive, and is similar in many ways to Brett Gardner. He was utilizing a narrower stance during the spring, which forced him to take more of a stride than he had been during his days with the Reds. This was probably done to see if Trammell would end up hitting for more power but there’s no way of knowing if it worked yet.

You can frame arguments such that Morejon compares favorably to most of the college pitchers available in the 2020 draft. He’s parked at 94-97, his changeup is heavy enough to get groundballs when it’s not missing bats, and Morejon has a shapely, low-80s breaking ball that he can throw for strikes. 21-year-olds rarely have this sort of stuff or such a good idea of how to deploy it, let alone both, but for me, Morejon still exists in the Jonathan Loaisiga FV bucket.

He’s been shut down an awful lot. Last year, after just three starts, a shoulder issue sent him to the 60-day IL. It was Morejon’s fourth IL stint in the last two years, and he was later scratched from a Fall League start for back tightness. He pitched in relief upon return, which changes the context for the velo. A few other nits. Morejon babies his breaking ball into the zone, and his arm speed changes in a way I think is noticeable. From a spin axis/efficiency standpoint, his fastball is the sinking type that tends not to miss bats, which is part of why I think he’s been hittable in a small big league sample, including a nuclear spring outing in Peoria that he followed (and rectified) with a bat-breaking clinic in Tempe against the Angels’ varsity squad. Some of this seems imminently correctable, especially considering Morejon’s age, but the way the injury history interacts with his relief risk and the fastball traits put him in the 45+ FV bucket with a bunch of other guys with mid-rotation ceilings who I’m scared to really bet on.

The Padres have been unafraid to stick their necks out and use high picks on high school players who weren’t fixtures on the summer showcase circuit for one reason or another (injury, participation in football, etc.), players who may be under-scouted (and perhaps undervalued) by clubs who are more comfortable with prep hitters who’ve performed against curated competition. The results have been mixed. Mason House and Sam Keating are not on this prospect list, while Blake Hunt has climbed it, and Mason Thompson has yo-yo’d. Now 2019 draftees Hudson Head and Josh Mears enter the fray, with Head doing so after receiving a $3 million bonus, a record for a third-rounder.

The pitching he saw in the AZL was the best he’s seen in his entire life, and Head not only allayed concerns about that competition-quality chasm by hitting .283/.383/.417, he also occasionally did some freaky, elite stuff that got me very excited about his prospectdom. Head is ambidextrous, and swings and throws a baseball with his left hand but quarterbacked primarily with his right, occasionally using his left when he rolled out that way. For someone with so little high-level experience, his bat control is remarkable. A pronounced arm bar caused him to be late on some of the good velo I’ve seen him face but Head’s feel for opposite field contact enabled him to strike those pitches with authority anyway. I think he needs polish from a mechanical standpoint, but there’s rare natural bat-to-ball proclivity happening here. There’s also much more measurable power than I would have guessed — Head’s exit velos last summer were more akin to those of heavy-hitting corner guys his age than someone who looks like a wiry leadoff sort. Still a high-variance prospect because of his short track record of hitting, Head has a shot to be a leadoff-hitting center fielder, an above-average regular.

Aside from Gabriel Arias, Santana is the cleanest defensive fit at shortstop in this org and projects to be an above-average defender there at peak. He also has good feel for contact and rarely swings through pitches in the zone. Couple that with a frame that really looked like it was starting to fill out last summer and fall (especially in the shoulders), and Santana’s ability to rotate with uncommon looseness and explosion, and we have a potential above-average regular here. Because the feel for contact is already seemingly in place, Santana stands a good chance to hit for whatever power he grows into, while also staying at short.

Some combination of randomness and the excitable Triple-A baseball played a role in Cronenworth’s unsustainable 2019 power output at Durham, but the other aspects of the offensive profile are real. He doesn’t give away at-bats, he makes a ton of contact, and he plays a serviceable shortstop with experience at several other positions. He’s a super utility sort who might have also played a more significant bullpen role had MLB not instituted rules that put a damper on some of the creative uses teams were considering for players like this. Instead, Cronenworth may throw an inning or two per week in low-leverage situations as a way to save someone else in the bullpen. The thing to focus on is the bat and defensive versatility, which will allow the Padres flexibility on other parts of the roster while Cronenworth performs like a 1.5 to 2 WAR sort of role player.

A combination of injury (back and shoulder) and the lack of an impact breaking ball were the primary drivers for Baez’s 2019 move to the the bullpen, and while the Padres planned on revisiting him as a starter this year, my long-term projection has him in relief. After he rehabbed from shoulder soreness in Extended, Baez went to Double-A and dominated for two months, working two innings at a time every fourth or fifth day. He was promoted to San Diego in late-July and fell just a few days shy of graduating from this list based on his non-September days on the roster. Though Baez now operates with two different breaking balls, neither projects to be an impact pitch. It’s possible he can still start anyway; Chris Paddack is close-at-hand evidence of this. But Baez doesn’t go at hitters with the same sort of efficiency as Paddack does, and his back and shoulder issues add to the relief likelihood, which is basked into his FV. The upshot here is still a league-average No. 4 starter but I think late-inning relief is more probable.

Similar to how they’ve experimented with Ty France at second base as a way of shoehorning his bat into the big league lineup, the Padres gave Potts a few reps at the keystone in 2019, and it’s one of a few reasons I’m not inclined to move off of him despite his whiff-prone campaign. The other is that we’re still talking about a college-aged player who was pushed through the system quickly, and whose 2019 struggles came at Double-A Amarillo, where Potts was just 20 years old, nearly four year younger than the average Texas League player. His low-end outcome is still in the Juan Francisco/Matt Davidson realm, while a middle-of-the-road projection is that of a big power/low on-base four corners role player, and the high end is now a shift-aided, multi-positional infielder with more power than is typical for that type of role.

Because he shares mechanical similarities with many pitchers whose fastballs overachieve relative to their velocity, I’m fairly confident that Cantillo can succeed even if his heater continues to live in the 87-91 mph range, though because he’s a big-framed 20-year-old, he may yet throw harder. If that’s the case, he could have a dominant fastball. He also has a changeup that is plus right now. Not only does it have bat-missing movement but Cantillo’s arm speed really sells hitters on the notion that they’re getting a fastball; A-ball bats flailed at it in 2019. The carry on his fastball enables Cantillo to compete for swinging strikes in the zone, and that, plus his ability to throw lots of competitively-located changeups mean he can work back into any count. His breaking ball usage is ahead of its quality, something that might change if Cantillo does start throwing harder and adds power to his curve. The breaking ball and development of velo are now the two variables driving Cantillo’s potential future FV movement, but for now I think he has the tools to go right at hitters and be a No. 4/5 starter.

After two consecutive years of above-average offensive performance relative to his league and continued resolve that he is a viable defensive catcher, Hunt now looks like he has a real chance to be an everyday backstop. I’ve seen him pop as low as 1.88 on throws to second and, despite his size, he’s agile enough and has sufficient hands to receive and frame big league stuff. Hunt also has a contact-oriented approach at the plate, one that’s quite conservative (zero leg kick) and doesn’t take full advantage of his movement skills. It relies entirely on Hunt’s hands to generate power, and that will likely result is 12-ish homers and a bunch of doubles. It’s a second-division look to me, but I think there’s more ceiling on the game power if Hunt’s lower half gets more involved in his swing.

Weathers continues to present the industry with a tougher-than-usual evaluation. As an amateur, perceptions about what his husky build would do to his athletic longevity fought with his underlying athleticism and stuff, both of which were very strong. After a dominant beginning to his first full pro season, Weathers’ stuff seeped away and he was eventually shut down with a dead arm and missed most of May. When he returned, the mid-90s heat from early in the year did not, and Weathers’ strikeout rate fell during the dog days. When I saw him later during instructs, he sat 86-90 for much of his outing, albeit with excellent command. This spring, before the shutdown, Weathers was once again living in the mid-90s. The hard-throwing version of Weathers has mid-rotation upside, while the soft-tossing version would be a secondary pitch and command-oriented backend starter. This evaluation splits the difference.

This is what the upper crust of international free agents look like, those for whom a Goldilocks Zone of development exists. Preciado is a strapping 6-foot-4 and has infield hands, feet, and actions, which means he may grow into huge power as that frame fills out but remain agile enough to stay at short, which would make him a superstar. Though that outcome is not the likeliest (based on how Preciado is built, I have him projected to third and think he’ll end up there before he reaches the bigs), the several that exists below that optimal scenario are still very good. Preciado has precocious barrel feel for a 16-year-old hitter his size, let alone one who switch-hits. He’s not very balanced, especially from the right side, comfort that hopefully comes with reps.

Arias looks like a stud at 5 o’clock when he’s taking batting practice and infield, but his in-game swing decisions have been a problem, and were even during a statistically impressive 2019. The Padres threw every developmental trick in the book at him during the offseason, including virtual reality training, to try to get him to better identify balls from strikes and chase less often. In a small spring sample, it appeared to be working — Arias played some spring games in the place of Fernando Tatis Jr., who was one of several Padres to miss time with flu-like symptoms during the spring (tugs collar) before baseball shut down. The importance of Arias’ approach extends beyond his on base ability to his power production. His swing is grooved, making the parts of the zone where he can do real damage limited, so for Arias to get to his power in games he’s not only going to have to recognize balls and strikes, but also learn what he can actually hit. It’s possible this will occur, and Arias will be a star if it does, but I think an Orlando Arcia trajectory, where there are growing pains and frustration amid flashes of spectacle, is more likely.

Acquired from Boston for Drew Pomeranz in July 2016, Espinoza has only thrown 32 innings of affiliated ball for the Padres since the deal. Espinoza was 94-97 and flashed a plus changeup and curveball during his final spring training start of 2017. Between that outing and his first regular season start for Hi-A Lake Elsinore, he felt discomfort in his elbow and was shut down. After several weeks of rest and rehab, it was decided that he needed Tommy John surgery, which he had early in August. The timing wasn’t great, and Espinoza missed all of 2018 working back from surgery, then re-tore his elbow during the spring of 2019 and needed a second TJ. He has front-end stuff but even if it returns, he’ll have missed three years of reps he desperately needed to polish his below-average control, increasing the likelihood that he’s a reliever or backend starter.

Munoz’s arm action evokes Joel Zumaya, Billy Wagner, and Craig Kimbrel‘s. His limb whips around at such speed and with such flexibility that it almost skips past enthralling and strikes one as grotesque, but the heat that emanates from his right arm is among the best in pro baseball. He’ll routinely sit 97-99 and has touched as high as 103 (the slo-mo pitch in the linked video was 100 mph). It’s a blistering, elite pitch that had upper-level hitters taking flaccid, defeated swings this spring, and helped Munoz strike out two hitters per inning early on in 2019.

He has yet to harness the fastball and throw consistent strikes (he’s walking a batter per inning, too) and his breaking ball quality is also inconsistent. If both of those issues improve, Munoz will be an elite relief option. If one of them does, he’s probably still a high-leverage arm, just one who makes you sweat after surrendering a couple of walks. If neither do, then Munoz will go the way of some other recent fastball-only prospects like this, such as Thyago Vieira and Mauricio Cabrera. Tommy John in late March of 2020 means Munoz likely returns to action late during the 2021 season.

Ornelas underwent a swing overhaul in 2019 in an effort to get him to lift the ball more, and things came undone. Pre-change Ornelas cut down at the ball, had a big leg kick, and a deep, high spot where his hands loaded. New-swing Ornelas had less of a kick, and his hands loaded out away from him a little bit, but were still high, and he was still cutting down at the ball. It’s possible that Ornelas can’t hit for sufficient power to profile at first base without a swing change and that there are more woes to come, but he is a reputable worker, and he has plenty of juice and a pretty advanced feel for balls and strikes. I think the band of potential outcomes is narrower because premium game power seems less likely now that relevant adjustments are not manifesting in games, but there’s still a big league hitter here somewhere.

Even in center field, there really aren’t any impact regulars who don’t hit for at least some power, and barring something unforeseen, I think the lack of thump will keep Rosario from being a true everyday player despite his very interesting, and in some ways very special, skillset. This guy walked in nearly 17% of his Hi-A plate appearances last year as just a teenager, and he has a chance to be a special defender in center field. Rosario is also very tough to get to swing-and-miss in the zone, but some of that is because he’s very conservatively poking, slapping, and slashing soft contact all over the infield and not really trying to hit for power. I think he’s one of the minor league’s more entertaining players because he’s often at the center of plays that have the very specific baseball aesthetic I enjoy, and I hope he gets a chance to be someone’s 8-hole hitter in the NL so he can take advantage of being pitched around and walk a ridiculous amount. Realistically, he’s a low-end regular in center field, or some sort of weird meta-game role player if the plus defense finally materializes.

Marcano is tracking a lot like Rosario, except as a middle infielder. He too has nearly elite feel for contact but lacks power, and in Marcano’s case, he’s just such a rail that I don’t think much will ever come. This high-contact, up-the-middle sort is traditionally undervalued, but I think I’ve blindly overcorrected for that in recent years. That’s why I’ve folded more of the visual physical components back into evals like this and now have separation between short but muscular players like Vidal Brujan and Brayan Rocchio, and the more slender Jose Devers and Marcano types.

Perez is a physical teenage outfielder with a more mature frame and an athletic swing that reminds me of Spencer Torkelson’s (visually, not in terms of the raw power). Perez can tag fastballs at the top of the zone but has a tendency to be very upright in his legs and swing over top of curveballs he might be able to go down and lift if he were more flexible. Even though he doesn’t have significant, frame-based power projection, I think he has a chance to hit enough to be a regular in a corner.

Some teams moved off of Lawson when he had some injury issues as a high school senior, but the Padres found themselves flush with pool money after taking underslot prospects (Hudson Potts and Eric Lauer) late in the first round, which enabled them to give Lawson $1.9 million in the second, $1 million above slot. Lawson filled out, began throwing harder, added power to a curveball that has ticked up nearly 10 mph since he was an amateur, and stayed healthy until May of 2019 when he was shut down and given a PRP injection in his elbow. He made a few Fall League appearances during which he looked fine, sitting 93-96 with the usual above-average curveball and sinking, mid-80s changeup. Then this spring, after a big league outing against the Cubs, Lawson was shut down again and eventually opted for Tommy John surgery in late-March. He had No. 4/5 starter projection before the surgery, which now increases the odds that he eventually works out of the bullpen.

As Guerra struck out more and more during his final few seasons as a shortstop — he K’ed in at least 30% of his at-bats each year since the Padres acquired him from Boston as part of the Craig Kimbrel deal — he frequently appeared despondent, sullen, and visibly affected by his struggles in ways that were often obvious and concerning. While his defensive actions remained enticing — especially around the bag, they were some of the smoothest and quickest some scouts had ever seen — Guerra also became error-prone. He seemed a mess, a potential DFA candidate.

Last spring, Guerra moved to the mound. His first bullpen session, which took place in front of a very small contingent of Padres front office folks, was electric. The first fastball was clocked by Rapsodo at 97 mph, and a few fastballs later, Guerra touched 100.4 mph. I saw an early iteration of Guerra when he was 95-98 with natural cut and had pretty impressive slider feel for someone who has only been pitching for a few weeks. The Padres reconfigured his fastball and it’s now a two-seamer with huge armside movement, enough that in 2020 spring games it was making lefty hitters flinch and stare at pitches that ran back across the inside corner. When conversion projects like this work out in a big way it typically happens quickly, and Guerra’s had rapid success.

The wave of teenage talent currently at Hi-A drove San Diego to push Miller straight to Double-A to start his first full season, and he rose to the occasion, hitting .290/.355/.430 with more power than the industry anticipated. A minimalistic swing enables him to make high rates of contact, while the strength in Miller’s hands generates doubles power. It’s not an exciting, athletic style of hitting but on an inoffensive, fundamentally sound defensive shortstop, it’s a pretty interesting skillset. Barring a significant swing change, Miller’s offensive output will likely cap his ceiling in the 40/45 FV range, but for a third round pick who moves quickly, that’s a great outcome.

Mena was bullied by some older instructional league pitchers, especially ones with ugly, deceptive deliveries, but he’s clearly a plus runner with a great chance to stay in center field and has some promising bat-to-ball qualities. Chief among them is plate coverage. Mena will reach out and spoil pitches on the corner away from him, and he’ll hit the ball hard the other way if it catches too much of the plate. He was billed as a leadoff type center fielder by his proponents on the amateur side.

About a year ago, Ruiz was a Pick to Click who I anticipated would be on this year’s top 100. Instead, his offseason included him being passed over in the Rule 5 Draft. I didn’t make a Ruiz-to-Alfonso Soriano comp casually last year: he swing looks similar and I’ve seen pole-to-pole power from Ruiz in the past, as well as the speed to steal a bunch of bags. Some of his issues are approach-related, but there are other components affecting the bat-to-ball issues that became worse last year, and Ruiz also has defensive questions that might force him to the outfield (another Soriano parallel).

The barrel-chested Bednar has developed a good split in pro ball, making him an excellent three-pitch option out of the bullpen, probably one who will be rostered all year rather than being constantly optioned. He throws in the mid-90s (he was 89-92 as a starter in college) and has a snappy, 12-6 curveball. The curveball is probably what got him drafted, while the fastball/split development are driving a modern relief profile.

Despite his fantasy-relevant stats — he has averaged 15 homers and 25 steals the last three years — I’ve been skeptical about Olivares truly having everyday tools. But now he’s performed up through Double-A and the 40-man center field picture is suddenly very different for this team. I’m still not buying the power production — I don’t see 15-20 homer bat speed here — but rather a contact/defense fourth outfielder.

Shoulder surgery derailed what might have been a breakout year for Oña, who averaged 93 mph off the bat during his torrid 25-game, pre-surgery sprint. We don’t know a lot about the hitting environment in Amarillo but it seems favorable based on Oña, Olivares, and Miller’s lines. There’s an interesting power/speed blend here but it’s still a corner outfield fit with some swing-and-miss issues. Oña homered in his only big league spring start before the shutdown.

It’s not often that “hard-throwing” and “kitchen sink” end up in the same player report but here is Bolaños, who will touch 99 (sit 94) and work with both four and two-seamers, plus a slider, curveball, changeup, and even a mythic, rare eephus curveball in the upper-60s. Among them is no clear out pitch, a problem if Bolaños ends up in the bullpen. His walk rates had been toward the high-end of what’s typically acceptable for starters. There’s a puncher’s chance he’ll find something new — a split maybe? I think Bolaños’ delivery has a Jose Contreras look to it and he ends up as a set-up type. Otherwise he’s a fifth starter.

Avila has No. 4/5 starter stuff when healthy, but he had Tommy John in August and we won’t see him again until 2021.

It’s pronounced “Eggy,” and Rosario is nearly as versatile, occupying all four infield spots at points last year. The Padres had assigned Rosario to play several levels above what is typical at his age, but finally asked him to repeat a level in 2019 when he was again in Lake Elsinore. There he had a career offensive season and won’t turn 21 until August. He profiles as a utility infielder.

He’s been held behind his fellow 2016 class members because Barley’s on-field decision-making and consistency are taking longer to cook. He still makes the occasional highlight reel defensive play, runs 4.10, or hits a 420-foot bomb, and as long as he’s doing that stuff, he’ll have a home on these lists. For now, that Barley both went to an affiliate and performed there was a big step.

One of many strong $300,000 signees from the Padres’ two IFA periods following their 2016 spending spree, Aquino is now where Yeison Santana was a year ago — a wiry frame who will likely stay at shortstop and has a chance to grow into meaningful offensive ability. Aquino has a good first step and plus defensive hands and actions, but he was clearly one of the more physically immature players on the complex last fall and would have needed to be stronger just to have competed in the AZL.

Mears was uncommitted when he arrived at Area Codes, then proceeded to have one of the best weeks of any of the players at the showcase and left knowing he had earned much more than a scholarship. Mears has huge power, and many teams did have second round grades on him (he was picked at 48, paid like it was 66, and Kiley and I had him close to 150), but I think there’s a big gap between where his feel to hit is right now, and where it needs to be for him to profile. It’s so much power that Mears could conceivably profile even if he strikes out a lot but walks, but I don’t think the barrel feel to support a Franmil Reyes-ish, swing-happy profile exists.

A source told me Dwanya averaged 101 off the bat as a junior at East Carolina, strong evidence of both physical prowess and that small conference pitching can help create caricature. Dwanya does have big raw power (his 2019 output was likely hampered by a wrist injury that necessitated an IL stint) and runs well, but has a high-risk hit tool.

Among the many $300k-ish pitchers San Diego signed in 2017, Guarate has the most projectable frame. His breaking ball has depth and power and could be plus at maturity, especially if he continues to add mass and throw harder. Guarate is also somewhat advanced, enough that the Padres gave him a cookie Low-A start late last summer.

Texas-Brownsville shuttered their baseball program before Reyes was able to take the field for them, and he ended up transferring to Galveston College. He spent his sophomore year at Galveston injured, then went undrafted as a junior. He was discovered by the Rays at a workout near the U.S./Mexico border and later signed, then was traded to San Diego as part of the Wil Myers blockbuster. He’s a low-slot bullpen slinger with a tailing, upper-90s fastball, and his arm slot creates issues for righties. He needs to refine command of the breaking ball to better deal with lefties, but just on arm strength and fastball movement, he’ll likely continue to see big league time.

Wilson has rapidly emerged as a potential bullpen piece thanks largely to his fastball, which tops out at 97 and benefits from big extension, spin rate, and a favorable axis. The Padres accelerated his track last year by skipping him over Double-A. He profiles as a middle reliever.

It’s rare for a pro team to have an opportunity to develop a two-way player from the ground up, and consider how the developmental freedom of pro baseball might allow the club to improve on the college models. A “backwards” prospect who hits righty and throws lefty, Salinas has fairly polished feel to pitch off what is presently 40/45 stuff, is built like a typecast prom king, and has a contact and instincts skillset as a hitter. The two-way curiosities to go through San Diego now include Salinas, Christian Bethancourt, Cronenworth, with it perhaps discussed regarding Javier Guerra.

No velo bump yet for Feliz, a super-athletic converted shortstop with a delivery that look’s like a toy version of Aroldis Chapman’s. The Padres acquired him on 40-man crunch day from Cleveland for depth starter Walker Lockett. Feliz’s fastball has natural cut, which might be something the Padres will look to change. Regardless of that and his other skills (mostly the quality breaking ball), Feliz needs to throw harder. I think he will, in this case because of the level of athleticism rather than the frame. He’s Rule 5 eligible this winter.

Another small-school, Day Three reliever who looks like a real bullpen piece, Fox hides the ball well, throws hard, and has a power, 12-to-6 curveball.

It’s not as if he’s without physical ability, but Solarte is an instincts-first player. He has feel for contact and center field, where I think he could be an impact defender. Whether he ends up with enough power to play every day is very much TBD, as Solarte is a smaller-framed player.

Throwing just 81-86 when he signed, Gonzalez enjoyed a velocity spike and is now topping out at 94, and the fastball has enough carry to play in the zone because of its spin rate and axis. He was flashing above-average curveballs and changeups in the fall. I’m not optimistic that much more velo is coming because Gonzalez is already pretty rocked up and muscular for someone his age, but the carry on the heater makes that matter less.

Heredia grew up playing soccer in Spain before he moved to the Dominican Republic during adolescence, at which point he was introduced to baseball. He presents kind of an old school look: no batting gloves, proactively choking up on the bat, an all-fields approach to contact. And he’s grown into some power as his frame has filled out, mostly in the lower half. The feel for contact is impressive considering the limited baseball background, and is what will likely need to carry the profile forward.

You’re going to read about a lot of small-framed teenage pitchability sorts who occupy rotation spots at the bottom of this system. Among those, Martinez has the best secondary pitch duo in his low-80s slider and power mid-80s change, both of which flash bat-missing movement. Unlikely to ever develop more velo, Martinez could end up a rotation stalwart based on his command and offspeed stuff.

Up to 94 as a high school underclassman, Thompson was tracking like a traditional first round Texas high school arm until he had Tommy John and missed all but one game during his senior year. He was a wild card on draft day, but ended up going in the third round, signing for early second round money ($1.7 million). During his first pro summer, Thompson’s fastball velocity climbed from the 88-91 range up to the 92-94 area. Then shoulder and biceps issues plagued his first two full pro seasons and his stuff was down in 2018. Last spring, he was throwing harder than ever, sitting 94-97 at times, and showing better breaking stuff than he had previously. He struggled to harness that stuff and had two more injury stints in 2019, limiting Thompson to just shy of 30 innings. He’s a prospect of extreme risk and variance who has shown 40+ FV stuff in short spurts.

Miller traversed three levels last year and was invited to big league camp in 2020. He profiles as a sinker/slider middle reliever whose option years are used to keep the ‘pen fresh.

Vosler is a lefty corner power bat with limited defensive mobility. He could be a power bat off someone’s bench if given the opportunity.

Built like a muscle car, Guilbe has electric bat speed and exciting pull-side power for a player his age. Already very muscular and strong, he needs to develop on defense (he played the middle infield when I saw him as an amateur, played third and left field last year, and some scouts want to see him catch) and probably needs a swing overhaul (both the bat path and lower half usage were pretty rough in high school), but there’s a chance he’s a power-hitting multi-positional player.

Miliano remains well-built, throws in the mid-90s, has a good-looking curveball, and has mechanical fluidity that makes it look like he should eventually repeat his delivery (though he does not right now and struggles with walks). He’s a relief prospect at this point.

Medina’s velo popped late during the amateur process and he was touching the mid-90s before he signed, though his heater was sitting a little below that, mostly 91-92, when he threw in Arizona during the fall. His delivery is somewhat violent but it’s coming from a vertical slot that also creates depth on his curveball.

He swung and missed a lot during his showcase summer but Witt’s subsequent fall and spring were strong enough to make him second overall pick of the 2019 draft class. His skillset compares quite closely to Trevor Story‘s. There are going to be some strikeouts but Witt is a big, athletic specimen who is very likely to not only stay at shortstop but be quite good there. He also has a swing geared for pull side lift (he can bend at the waist to go down and yank balls away from him, too) and the power to hit balls out even when he swings a little flat-footed. He is the son of a former big leaguer and carries himself like one, which has endeared him to scouts and coaches during the course of a high-profile amateur career laden with very high expectations. His debut statline lacked power on the surface, but the batted ball data suggests we shouldn’t worry.

On the Cape and in the first half of his junior spring, Lynch looked like a solid third round prospect, a pitchability lefty sitting 88-92 mph with mostly average stuff, and above-average feel and command. In the month or so leading up to the draft, Lynch’s velo ticked up, and down the stretch he sat 92-94, touching 95 mph deep into starts, with an assortment of offspeed pitches that all flashed above-average. The track record of Virginia arms is concerning, but Lynch seemed less beholden to the issues traditionally associated with their prospects, with some scouts considering him endearingly rebellious.

He throws a cutter, slider, curveball, and changeup that all flash above-average, with the slider occasionally flashing plus. He was 93-95 last year, and while Lynch missed a month and a half with an arm injury last summer, all of that velo and more was back in the fall, so the velo uptick has held for nearly a year now. He’s a No. 4 starter.

A dominant junior year would have had Bubic in the late first round mix, but his control backed up, especially late in the year. He ended up being a great buy-low value pick for Kansas City as not only did the strikes return, but Bubic was throwing a little harder, too.

He’s far more likely to hang around the 50/45 FV membrane during the rest of his time in the minors than he is to move way up the list, because even though my notes have Bubic up to 95 last year, he still lives in the low-90s and succeeds because of deception and his terrific secondary stuff. I prefer his changeup and curveball to the bat-missing weapons of other arms in Kansas City’s system (Jackson Kowar has a great change and throws a heavy sinker that doesn’t miss bats, while Brady Singer is a sinker/command guy) and think Bubic will be a No. 4.

Well-regarded in high school in part because of his very loose and athletic (if somewhat unusual) delivery, the Blue Jays drafted Singer in the 2015 second round. Negotiations broke down, one of several times a high school pitcher has been at odds with an org run by current Braves GM Alex Anthopolous, and Singer went to Florida. After an uneven but promising freshman year in the bullpen, Singer’s command improved and he carved up SEC lineups for the next two years.

His stuff and delivery don’t have the look of a dominant, whiff-getting major league starter, at least not at the moment. He has a lower, three-quarters delivery that helps create long tail on his two-seamer, but the pitch only resides in the 91-94 mph area, a 45 raw velocity that I think plays a bit better because of the movement. His low-80s slurve/slider (when it’s down below hitters’ knees it has more length) gets buffed by Singer’s command and also plays up above its raw quality. Singer is a spiky competitor who goes right at hitters and at times has demonstrative body language when he’s frustrated with umpires, which are generally traits the industry likes. On talent, he’s a No. 4/5 type of starter for me, and any change to that will be determined by how Singer’s changeup, which he barely used in college, develops in pro ball. The (+) designation on Singer’s FV comes from his track record of durability, and his potential to eat a ton of innings and have a higher WAR output than you’d think given his stuff alone.

As an amateur, Peña was billed as a well-rounded, instinctive player with a frame that portended a fair amount of additional mass. Though not as overtly projectable as the Kristian Robinson/Alexander Ramirez sorts, Peña was clearly going to grow into some power and, based on how he hit in games and played center field, was thought to have a strong chance to become a well-rounded player, perhaps a five-tool sort, with all the tools close to average. It was surprising then that Peña arrived for his first fall instructional league looking like an NFL cornerback, with one source going so far as to tell me they think Peña has a big league body right now.

Even though his swing is a bit clunky, and his footwork is perhaps unnecessarily conservative, Peña looked pretty comfortable against pro pitching in the fall, the best pitching he’s ever faced in his life to this point; his performance included him roping a single off of Michael Kopech, who was sitting 97 that day. The surprising physicality has already brought about more power and bat speed, and Peña already has the helicopter overhead finish to his swing à la Miguel Andújar and Wander Franco. Once the industry becomes more confident in grading his defense and bat, which will come once he’s faced pro pitching for an extended period of time, he could be a global top 50 prospect based on his place on the defensive spectrum and the hit/power combination.

“What’s the difference between this guy and Chris Paddack?” That was the question put to me about Kowar by a source for this list. On some level, they’re right. Like Paddack, Kowar has a prototypical frame, he throws in the mid-90s, and has a dominant changeup. What we now know about how and why fastballs play, however, creates some separation between the two. Though Kowar has premium starter fastball velocity, the pitch has tailing/sinking action rather than Paddack-style carry and ride, which means it’s going to generate groundballs more than it will miss bats.

Kowar’s breaking ball was comfortably below average in college but the Royals have found a way to add raw spin since acquiring him (his rates are up from 2150 rpm to 2400, still shy of big league average but an encouraging development), and it’s closer to average now. He’ll likely rely on the element of surprise and his ability to locate it in order to be effective. This is all very similar to how Luke Weaver’s reports read coming out of Florida State, and I expect Kowar to have a similar career. He’s a 23-year-old who’s thrown half a season above A-ball, so while I think he’ll be a 50 FV eventually, there needs to be a little gap between him and someone like him who’s ready for the big leagues right now.

You should feel free to toss out Isbel’s 2019 regular season statistical performance. After a red hot first few weeks of the season — .348/.423/.630 — he pulled a hamstring, and shortly after he returned to game action in Extended, he broke his hamate and was shelved again until mid-July. As is typical for hitters coming back from that injury, Isbel’s numbers were poor — .216/.282/.361 overall at Wilmington — and improved the further away from surgery he got, culminating in a strong back half of August and Fall League; his Fall League look especially assuaged concerns.

Isbel has a compact swing (he’s a shorter-levered guy) with line drive plane. It’s geared to do most of its big damage to his pull side, but he can slice extra-base contact down the left field line and into the left-center field gap. Isbel is still relatively new to playing the outfield full-time, which gives him some late projection on the defensive end. I think he’ll be easily supplanted by a superior defensive center fielder but will be a plus corner defender long-term, and I’m intrigued by the idea of him playing a situational second base since he has some experience there, too. He projects as an average everyday corner outfielder.

Lee had yet another fairly strong year — .264/.363/.372 with a 12% walk rate and a whopping 53 steals (fantasy folks: I’m not betting on that continuing) — spending 2019 at Double-A Northwest Arkansas as a young 21-year-old. He has the tools of a three-true-outcomes right fielder, potentially one who plays above-average defense, but the quality of his at-bats against elite competition has been mixed, at best. It’s likely going to take a swing adjustment to get Lee hitting for relevant power in games. His swing is long, and on pitches he impacts toward the top of the zone, it cuts downward. This causes Lee to be late on good velocity and drive a lot of pitches into the ground. He’s still young enough to make these and other adjustments, but I have Lee projected as the larger half of a right field platoon rather than a true everyday player.

Cox is a black sheep pitching prospect in an org that has more per capita sinker ballers than perhaps any in the sport. This is a lefty with power relief stuff, at least, and a chance to start based on the depth of his pitch mix and the rate of strikes he’s thrown so far. I think Cox’s fastball would tick up into the mid-90s if he were ever put in the bullpen, which at this rate only seems likely to happen if his breaking balls end up running together, something Cox has worked to mitigate as a pro. He held his velocity last year despite a 20-inning workload increase, his results were not diluted even after he was moved to Hi-A for the back half of last year, and in just two years, he’s gone from a Day Three pick to someone who has the FV of a typical second rounder. Whether Cox ends up pitching toward the back of a rotation or as some kind of fire-breathing, multi-inning reliever (that’s where I’ve got him, and his future value grade reflects that), he’s a huge coup for Kansas City’s amateur department and player dev program.

There are Ed Wood movies that seem to have gone according to plan more than 2019 did for Royals hitters at Hi-A Wilmington. Chief among them was Melendez, who was on initial drafts of our top 100 last year before Kiley and my team sources squashed that with their feedback, citing Melendez’s red flag contact issues. They were right. Melendez struck out a damning 40% of the time last year. His swing is geared for low ball contact at a point in time when pitchers are attacking hitters at the top of the zone more than ever, and Melendez gets heat blown past him at the letters constantly.

Everything else that scouts loved about him as an amateur is still extant. He has plus raw power, great long-term body projection, a plus arm, and projects to have a 55 glove, which is beneath the 60 or 70 grades he was garnering in high school but is still a relevant positive. We’re now looking at a likely backup catcher based on how scary the contact issues are, but if the swing issues are fixed, Melendez could really break out because the physical tools that the swing compromises are rare for the position. There are teams/scouts for which Melendez, Pratto, and Matias are just a “no” based on the way they’ve performed with the bat. I’m holding out varying degrees of hope for them, still preferring Melendez because his defense gives him a fallback big league role even if the hit tool never develops enough for him to be a regular.

Only six teams played traditional instructional league games in Arizona last fall, and perhaps no pitcher who threw in the desert created as much buzz as Hernandez, who was filling the zone with 94-98 mph fastballs over shorter, three-ish inning outings. Hernandez has had premium velocity since he signed, but has averaged just five innings per start and 67 innings per season since 2017. Two of the three times Hernandez has missed time have been due to issues unrelated to his arm, so injuries themselves are not a concern for me so much as I’m skeptical that he can live in the mid-90s over a full season starter’s workload.

He doesn’t have a cut, athletic physique, and his delivery is reliever-y and somewhat stiff, but Hernandez does repeat, and throws a lot of strikes. His breaking ball has vertical action that enables it to outperform its raw spin rate but it is reliant on his command, which again, during the fall Hernandez had. I’ve seen backfield outings during which I thought his changeup was his best secondary but that’s not typically the case. It’s possible he can start, but I don’t consider it likely, and Hernandez certainly hasn’t proven it yet. If that’s the case, then one of the secondary pitches needs to develop still, which all the missed time has made harder.

With few exceptions (Joey Gallo is one) even the most whiff-prone big leaguers struck out less than Matias (35% career K%, a comical 44% last year before a broken hand ended his season) when they were in the minors. But Matias’ physicality and bat speed are so supreme, the gap between his talent and that of most players so obvious, that there’s a chance he can be one of the exceptions, even if it’s in a streaky, inconsistent manner.

As a teen, Seuly was already posting exit velocities on par with burly, Quad-A type hitters. Most of the issues he has are mental; his swing decisions and defensive instincts are both poor. My sources tend to be pessimistic about improvements/corrections to approach and aptitude, though perhaps that’s because they can’t see those things with their eyes, the tool they use most often and confidently to do the majority of their job. Many of the players ranked beneath Seuly here have a better chance than he does of playing some kind of big league role, but none of them have his ceiling, and based on his age, frame, and athleticism, I’m holding out some hope that he shows us what it is for a few years.