Below is my list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. The scouting summaries were compiled with information provided by available data and industry sources, as well as from my own observations.

As I’ve noted while publishing my team lists, because there was no minor league season in 2020, there are some instances where no new information was learned about a player. Players whose write-ups have not been meaningfully altered begin by telling you so. Each blurb ends with an indication of where the player played in 2020, which in turn likely informed the changes to their report if there were any. As always, I’ve leaned more heavily on sources from outside of a given org than those within for reasons of objectivity. Because outside scouts were not allowed at the alternate sites, I’ve primarily focused on data from there, and the context of that data, in my opinion, reduces how meaningful it is. Lastly, in an effort to more clearly indicate relievers’ anticipated roles, you’ll see two reliever designations, both on my lists and on The Board: MIRP, or multi-inning relief pitcher, and SIRP, or single-inning relief pitcher.

And now, a few important things to keep in mind as you’re perusing the Top 100. You’ll note that prospects are ranked by number but also lie within tiers demarcated by their Future Value grades. The FV grade is more important than the ordinal ranking. For example, the gap between prospect No. 3 on this list, Adley Rutschman, and prospect No. 29, Josiah Gray, is 26 spots, and there’s a substantial difference in talent between them. The gap between Heliot Ramos (No. 61) and Luis Matos (No. 87), meanwhile, is also 26 numerical places, but the difference in talent is relatively small. You may have noticed that there are more than 100 prospects in the table below, and more than 100 scouting summaries. That’s because I have also included 50 FV prospects whose ranking fell outside the 100; their reports appear below, under the “Other 50 FV Prospects” header. The same comparative principle applies to them.

You’ll also notice that there is a Future Value outcome distribution graph for each prospect on the list. This is an attempt to graphically represent how likely each FV outcome is for each prospect. Before his departure for ESPN, Kiley McDaniel used the great work of our former colleague Craig Edwards to find the base rates for each FV tier of prospect (separately for hitters and pitchers), and the likelihood of each FV outcome. For example, based on Craig’s research, the average 60 FV hitter on a list becomes a perennial 5-plus WAR player over his six controlled years 26% of the time, and has a 27% chance of accumulating, at most, a couple of WAR during his six controlled years. I started with those base rates for every player on this year’s list and then, with the help of Kevin Goldstein (who assisted with other elements of this list as well), manually tweaked them depending on our more specific opinions about the player. For instance, Jose Garcia and Trevor Larnach are both 55 FV prospects, but Garcia’s approach makes him very volatile, while Larnach is a surer bet to hit. At the same time, if Garcia ever develops a better approach, his power and ability to play a premium position give him a ceiling that Larnach can’t reasonably attain. My hope is that the distribution graphs reflect these kinds of differences.

For a further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, please read this. If you would like to read a book-length treatment on the subject, you can purchase the book I co-wrote with Kiley, Future Value.

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Typically, we roll out most of our international amateur free agent reports during Prospect Week, which falls just five months ahead of those players’ usual signing day on July 2, with a few more trickling in as the signing date approaches. The lingering effects of the pandemic mean the next signing period likely won’t begin until January 2022, but there are still fresh scouting reports on The Board for your perusal. You’re going to want to open that up in a new tab as you read this article, because I’m going to reference some names to illustrate how players who aren’t eligible to sign for another 10 months are still impacting how teams are behaving right now.

The pandemic and its financial fallout caused MLB to push the start of the 2020 signing period from July 2 to January 15, 2021, allowing owners to avoid having to spend a collective $150-plus million on signing bonuses in the middle of a summer without big league ticket revenue. Of course, there were other long-term financial incentives for owners to do this as well. Pushing the signing period also likely delayed the free agency of whichever star players emerge from that international class by a year. Instead of signing in July and coming to the US for 2020 Fall Instructional League — where they’d be seen by the front office and perhaps put themselves in a position to receive an aggressive assignment the following year — players who signed in January might not arrive in the States until instructs this year, if they do at all. So rather than be on the Juan Soto fast track and make their big league debuts as teenagers, whichever young phenoms might emerge from this most recent group will likely reach the big leagues, and therefore free agency, at least a year later because of how the COVID dominos fell. The altered signing timeline and delayed pro development could end up costing someone tens of millions of dollars.

Those financial incentives extend to the upcoming signing class. Further delays weren’t set in stone when the Players Association gave the league the right to change the start of the next few signing periods, but because of these incentives and the desire to have a full, 11-month window for 2021 signings rather than condense it into six months, the class that was supposed to sign in July of 2021 is now very likely to start signing in January of 2022. And if that next signing period is also going to be 11 months long, it will extend into December of 2022, just as this year’s is set to stretch to December (there’s always a couple weeks gap between the end of one signing period and the beginning of another). Stash that in your brain for a few paragraphs from now. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Prospects Week 2021, the latest installment in FanGraphs’ annual pre-season spotlight on our sport’s future, and my annual opportunity to experience a dissociative fugue state.

While the NCAA baseball season starts this weekend, 2021 draft looks have already been going on for a few weeks as junior college ball began a couple weekends ago, and Division-I teams have been playing intrasquads to gear up for the season. As with last year, this year’s draft is going to be affected by COVID-19, though it’s likely going to be affected in different ways. Later this week, Kevin Goldstein and I will publish a conversational piece about how we think this year’s draft will be impacted by our current societal circumstances, and how it will be scouted.

But today is about the updated player rankings for the next three drafts, which are now available on The Board, both as individual classes and in one summary view, along with full player scouting summaries. There’s rarely a big, sweeping update of prospect rankings at this site. Like a sourdough starter, The Board is a living, breathing thing, and I often update it with notes in real-time while I’m at the field. For draft coverage, that water wheel of info begins this weekend. (For pro notes, the process will begin again after all of the org lists have been published.) Read the rest of this entry »

0:00 Introduction
0:45 How To Access The Board
1:20 Three Ways To View The Board

We have a great many data and research tools on FanGraphs. Some people are well-suited to clicking around the site, exploring on their own, and learning how to navigate FanGraphs that way, but others might benefit from a written, audio, or video tutorial. It is my aim to provide a version of that in this post. This first tutorial covers The Board, and gives an overview of some of the prospect evaluation methodology that has been used at the site. The transcript you’re reading now has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity. Due to the size of the text, this tutorial is best viewed in YouTube’s “Theater Mode,” or in full screen. In the header of each section below, you’ll find a link to the relevant section of the tutorial so that you can easily click around to specific topics.

You can find a link to The Board on the site’s Prospects menu header, or from the Prospects home page. There are three main ways to view The Board. There is a “Scouting Only” section, a “Stats Only” section, and a chocolate/vanilla swirl version (“Scouting + Stats!”) that features a mix of both old school scouting tool grades and a collection of telling statistics (K%, BB%, OBP, SLG, etc.). Read the rest of this entry »

Jonathan Schoop slashed .169/.217/.273 last year in counts that included two strikes, and over his career that line is an equally-squeamish .162/.208/.276. The Detroit Tigers infielder — recently re-signed to a one-year deal worth a reported $4.5M — isn’t alone in scuffling when a possible punch-out looms. Across the two leagues, batters slashed .167/.248/.275 in those situations in 2020

Schoop typically doesn’t get into two-strike counts by taking pitcher’s pitches and patiently waiting for mistakes. Restraint has never been his forte. Since debuting with the Baltimore Orioles in September 2013, Schoop’s walk rate is a lowly 3.8%, while his Swing% and O-Swing% both rank toward the top of our Plate Discipline leaderboard. And while toning down that level of aggression is a goal, it’s not as though a Tiger can simply change his stripes. Schoop isn’t about to morph into Joey Votto — not at age 29 — which means a different two-strike approach might be in order.

I asked Schoop about that during a Zoom call earlier this week.

“I’ve got to do better with two strikes,” admitted Schoop, whose 22% K-rate last year was a shade under his career mark of 22.9%. “I need to put the ball more in play and see what happens. I’m going to change that. I’m going to be better at everything. The things I need to be better in, I’m going to be better in. The things I’m good in, I’m trying to be a tick better on them, too.”

Following up, I asked Schoop if he’s considered shortening his swing with two strikes, maybe even choking up on the bat. While that might mean giving up some power, it would likely help him boost his contact rate. Read the rest of this entry »

This story starts, as all good stories do, with me recounting the time one of my coworkers and I discussed something. Okay, fine, very few good stories start that way — almost none, in fact — but bear with me. This (non-baseball) coworker, someone who I consider very bright and very interested in baseball, told me he didn’t really believe in wRC+, even after I’d shown him some articles describing it.

Why, I wondered, didn’t he believe in it? It’s so elegant! The math is right there! How can you not like something that wraps up performance at the plate in a single number? No need to compare apples to oranges — you can juice everything to a pulp and simply count calories. His answer was simple: it doesn’t consider batting order.

“You’re telling me,” he said, “that you’d rather have Mitch Moreland as a leadoff hitter than Xander Bogaerts?” It was 2017, and we were working in the Northeast, which explains why both players were Red Sox and why this question was even close. “His wRC+ is higher, but he’d be worse at leadoff. He doesn’t get on base enough.”

To be honest, it’s a compelling argument. I didn’t really have the intellectual tools or the time to counter it. I went with the old tried and true method: I vaguely mentioned something about context-neutrality in the long run, said I had some bonds to arbitrage or whatnot, and went back to work, ending the conversation without conceding defeat.

Fast forward to today, and I still don’t have a wonderful answer to my former co-worker’s point. I do have a computer program that simulates games, though, so I decided to come up with a quick and dirty check. What if we plugged real hitters with similar one-number batting statistics but who get there in wildly different ways into the lineup? Would we learn anything? Would I be able to write 1,500 words about it and entertain the masses? I guess we’ll find out! Read the rest of this entry »

The Kansas City Royals acquired outfielder Andrew Benintendi from the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday night as part of a three-way trade that also saw the New York Mets get involved. Heading to the Mets is outfield prospect Khalil Lee, while going back to Fenway is outfielder Franchy Cordero and pitcher Josh Winckowski. Also going to the Red Sox are three players to be named later, two from the Royals and one from the Mets.

It’s easy to see why the Royals would be highly interested in Benintendi. Most of the team’s additions this winter have been veterans in smaller deals, seemingly for the purpose of prioritizing short-term wins in 2021 and perhaps snag a Wild Card spot. While I’m unconvinced that the strategy will actually bear fruit this year, this is another move consistent with that plan. Adding Benintendi to Mike Minor, Carlos Santana, Michael A. Taylor, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland makes the Royals more entertaining than they were last season. Of course, Benintendi was a much hotter property back in 2018, hitting .290/.366/.465, enough for 4.4 WAR, before slumping to a .266/.343/.431, 2.0 WAR line in 2019. 2020 was an entirely forgettable four-for-52 campaign that lasted just 14 games due to a rib cage strain. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, as is tradition, FanGraphs founder David Appelman went into his garage, turned off all the lights except for some candles, and performed a dark and arcane ritual. Then he went back inside, pushed a few buttons on his computer, and now we have playoff odds for 2021!

Okay, fine, that isn’t exactly how it went down, but it’s close. Our playoff odds incorporate little pieces of a lot of features you’ve already seen on the website. We start with a blended projection that incorporates ZiPS and Steamer’s rate statistic projections. We add in playing time projections from RosterResource, which incorporate health, skill, and team situation to create a unified guess for how each team will distribute their plate appearances and innings pitched.

With playing time in hand, we use BaseRuns to estimate how many runs each team will score and allow per game based on our earlier blended rate statistic projections. That gives us a schedule-neutral win percentage for each team, because you can turn runs scored and runs allowed into a projection via the Pythagorean approximation. From there, we simulate the season 10,000 times, with an odds ratio and a random number generator determining the outcome of each matchup. Voila! Our playoff odds.

Why am I telling you all of this? First, so you can look at them. They’re accessible from the main page, but you can also click here to dive in. Second, because I’m going to walk through some projections I found interesting, as well as a few places where the gap between common perception and our odds merit an explanation. Let’s get started! Read the rest of this entry »

I was exposed to many aspects of front office operations during my eight years with the Astros, but one thing I never touched was arbitration.

I consider it one of my greatest career achievements.

With hearings and rulings in the news, I’m reminded of how much everyone hates the damn thing. Teams hate it, players hate it, agents hate it, and maybe that’s actually proof it works in its own way, but the most frustrating aspect is that nobody really understands the logic behind the rulings themselves. In private conversations, some executives have suggested to me that one “might as well flip a coin.” An agent called the entire process “archaic.” Another team executive called it a “colossal waste of time.” Contacts from both sides relayed stories of being quite sure that they had won or lost after the hearing, only to end up with the opposite ruling from the three-person panel. Both sides have stories of waiting for results, dreading them when the last two cases have been in their side’s favor because they fear the next result being a simple make-up call.

The whole thing seems rather, well, arbitrary.

Adding to the frustration is the cost of the hearing itself, in terms of time, money, or both. Many teams utilize outside counsel to handle the hearing process, while others keep it in-house, assigning a group of people within baseball operations to spend weeks of manpower on the process. They travel to Arizona or Florida, staying up until all hours of the night preparing their PowerPoint deck and going on several late-night runs to Kinko’s. They do it because they have to, but does all that work have any effect on one’s chances of winning or losing the hearing? I never saw any direct evidence that it did. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as the baseball industry was catching its breath following the news of Trevor Bauer signing with the Dodgers, the free agent market’s top hitter, Marcell Ozuna, agreed to a deal as well. After a monster season in which he helped the Braves come within one win of their first trip to the World Series this millennium, he’ll stay in Atlanta on a four-year, $65 million deal. If that contract — which includes a club option for 2025 that can take the total package to $80 million — seems light compared to what the free market’s other top players have received, your eyes aren’t deceiving you.

Consider for a moment that Bauer, a 30-year-old righty who won the NL Cy Young award during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, has yet to put together a 30-start season with an ERA or FIP below 4.00 in parts of nine major league seasons, during which he’s been about nine or 10 percent better than average according to FIP- and ERA-. Via the structure of his three-year, $102 million deal with the Dodgers, he’ll set single-season records for salary in the first two years ($40 million and $45 million), with an average annual value of $34 million if he doesn’t opt out after years one or two.

The 30-year-old Ozuna is coming off the best season of an eight-year major league career during which he’s been 17 percent better than average according to wRC+. In 2020, he set across-the-board career highs in his slash stats, hitting .338/.431/.636, all of which ranked third in the NL, as did his 179 wRC+. Additionally, his 18 homers, 56 RBI, 145 total bases and 267 plate appearances all led the league, while his 2.5 WAR — which matched that of Bauer, interestingly enough — ranked seventh. Yet the $16.25 million AAV of his contract isn’t half that of Bauer, and it’s well below those of two of the four other position player free agents who have landed deals of at least four years:

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