When Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin blurbed Ben Brown in last month’s Names To Know: 100 More Relevant Prospects feature, they noted his “monster mid-90s fastball/breaking ball combo.” Power is the defining characteristic of Brown’s arsenal. The 24-year-old righty ranks among the top pitching prospects in the Chicago Cubs organization, and following an impressive in spring training, he is expected to make his big league debut in the forthcoming campaign.

Brown began coming into his own in 2022 — the year he was acquired by the Cubs from the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for David Robertson — and he made further strides last year. Across 92.2 innings between Double-A Tennessee and Triple-A Iowa, the 6-foot-6 righty logged a 12.6 strikeout rate while holding opposing hitters to a .215 batting average. His command faltered at times — a health-related speed bump was a contributing factor — but the power remained a constant.

Brown discussed his repertoire and approach at the Cubs’ spring training facility in Mesa, Arizona last week.

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David Laurila: You consider yourself a pitching nerd. How did that come about?

Ben Brown: “I’ve been one my entire life. I was coached really well growing up, but I also loved to watch YouTube videos of guys throwing. Roy Halladay. Josh Beckett. I was a big Red Sox fan, so I watched Beckett, Jon Lester, Daniel Bard, [Jonathan] Papelbon. I picked up a lot from that.

“I also spent some time at Driveline after I had Tommy John surgery [in 2019], and got introduced to that whole community in Seattle. I can be the hardest critic on myself, because I know what looks good, as well as the numbers you aspire for analytically. I feel like I’m pretty well versed on all that. And I’ve definitely had a lot of really good discussions with pitching coordinators and whatnot about analytics since getting traded over to the Cubs.”

Laurila: Have you found yourself chasing certain metrics on any of your pitches? Read the rest of this entry »

Below is an evaluation of the prospects in the Chicago Cubs farm system who readers should consider “imminent big leaguers,” players who might reasonably be expected to play in the majors at some point this year. This includes all prospects on the 40-man roster as well as those who have already established themselves in the upper levels of the minors but aren’t yet rostered. We tend to be more inclusive with pitchers and players at premium defensive positions since their timelines are usually the ones accelerated by injuries and scarcity. Any Top 100 prospects, regardless of their ETA, are also included on this list. Reports, tool grades, and scouting information for all of the prospects below can also be found on The Board.

You may be able to infer that is not a top-to-bottom evaluation of the Cubs farm system. We like to include what’s happening in minor league and extended spring training in our reports as much as possible, since scouting high concentrations of players in Arizona and Florida allows us to incorporate real-time, first-person information into the org lists. However, this approach has led to some situations where outdated analysis (or no analysis at all) was all that existed for players who had already debuted in the majors. Skimming the imminent big leaguers off the top of a farm system in the meantime allows time-sensitive information to make its way onto the site more quickly, better preparing readers for the upcoming season, helping fantasy players as they draft, and building site literature on relevant prospects to facilitate transaction analysis in the event that trades or injuries foist these players into major league roles. There will still be a full Cubs prospect list that includes Fernando Cruz (whose current grade and report you can already access here), Jefferson Rojas (an offseason Pick to Click), Pablo Aliendo and all of the other prospects in the system who aren’t Top 100 guys and also appear to be at least another whole season away. As such, today’s list includes no ordinal rankings. Readers are instead encouraged to focus on the players’ Future Value (FV) grades. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, I introduced an ongoing series aimed at clearing up the confusion that sometimes accompanies the scouting-specific language that pops up in our (and others’) scouting reports. While the first installment was an introduction to pitching terminology, this one will be focused on hitting. And while the previous entry was part of Prospect Week, and accordingly featured almost entirely videos of prospects, this one will focus more on current big leaguers.

There are a number of reasons for the departure from prospects for this installment. For one thing, I believe it’s easier to understand these terms when they’re exemplified by players with whom you, the dear reader, are more familiar. Additionally, most of the terms I’ll dig into that are used to describe swings are more easily illustrated using a side view of a player’s swing and, unlike major league broadcasts, minor league broadcasts tend not to include these angles. But even aside from that practicality, I think it’s important to place these terms in a broader context than just prospect evaluation. While some of these terms are sometimes used to describe a possible hinderance to a prospect’s development, I want to emphasize that they aren’t inherently good or bad. Players can excel at the major league level while still embodying these traits, even the ones that, in a vacuum, seem to carry negative connotations.

Just like in the last installment, many of these terms will be familiar to you as baseball-savvy folks, but I hope that the accompanying visuals will serve as a useful supplement to your consumption of scouting reports, both past and present. And because I can’t help myself, I’ve sprinkled a few prospects in throughout the piece for those of you who may be jonesing for more prospect coverage. Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

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

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

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

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

To understand why Baltimore Orioles shortstop Jackson Holliday is the no. 1 prospect on our Top 100 list, look no further than Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin’s writeup of the 20-year-old phenom. They describe Holliday, the first overall pick in the 2022 draft, as “a sweet-swinging shortstop with above-average feel for contact and burgeoning power,” and close their evaluation by predicting that he “is very likely to become a 5-WAR shortstop who does everything well.” He has been spending time at second base this spring, because the O’s already have last year’s no. 1 overall prospect Gunnar Henderson at shortstop, but either way, stardom is seemingly in Holliday’s future.

That the promising youngster is the son of former big league slugger Matt Holliday is well known. It is also a primary factor in his advanced approach to hitting, as well as his overall understanding of his craft. Last season, which he began in Low-A and ended in Triple-A, the lefty-hitting Holliday produced a .323/.442/.499 slash line and 159 wRC+ across four levels of the minor leagues.

Holliday sat down to talk hitting over the weekend prior to a Grapefruit League game in Sarasota.

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David Laurila: How do you approach hitting?

Jackson Holliday: “As far as guessing pitches… that’s not something I’m great at. But I really enjoy learning about swings — different guys’ swings — how they work, and little things that can help, like cues. My dad has been around baseball for so long, and is such a hitting guy, and I got that from him. But yeah, my approach is pretty simple. I try to stay in the middle of field, stay on my backside, and hit the heater.”

Laurila: Are you basically hunting fastballs and adjusting from there?

Holliday: “Yeah. I sit fastball. I don’t sit offspeed unless there is a real outlier. That’s something I learned from my dad. He would sit heater and try to hit it to the middle of the field. If you’re in a good spot to hit a fastball to the middle of the field you can adjust to the offspeed pitch a lot better than you can sitting offspeed and trying to hit a heater.”

Laurila: How hard is it to be diligent with that? There are going to be times where your subconscious brain tells you, “He’s not going to throw a fastball here.” Read the rest of this entry »

Below we’ve compiled scouting snippets for 100 interesting prospects to monitor in 2024. Readers should think of this piece as dessert for the Top 100 Prospects list. Similar to the structure of the Other Prospects of Note section of the team lists, we have grouped players into buckets by prospect type. We tried to touch on players who we thought readers might be curious about for one reason or another, often guys who could have a meaningful 2024 impact, or whose development this season could be key for their careers. We tried to focus on players from orgs whose lists haven’t run yet this cycle. For those whose lists have been published, there is a link to their full scouting report next to their name in lieu of us taking up more space in this post. In some cases, we end up going into the reasons why a player was excluded from the Top 100, which is an attempt to anticipate your questions, not us trying to knock the player. After all, everyone here is considered a prospect. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey there, and welcome to the last edition of my data-driven look at some mid-tier hitting prospects I like more than the industry consensus. It feels weird, almost funereal, to start this article by mentioning that the series is ending, but that’s just how it is. This will be the fourth installment of my variably named Prospect Week contribution. In it, I use data and a big pinch of intuition to point out some hitters who I think have a good chance of sticking in the majors, even if they’re not your average Top 100 type.

In the past, I’ve done acceptably well at this; I don’t think it’d be fair to say that I’m great at it, but I’ve come up with my fair share of interesting players using this process. In looking through my past lists, I feel good about the process that led me to some guys you’ve heard of (Miguel Vargas and Ezequiel Tovar are probably my biggest hits so far, but I’ve also gotten some role players, and both Gabriel Moreno and Alejandro Kirk performed incredibly well by my model, though I didn’t end up including them in a list thanks to their pedigree) and plenty you haven’t.

What’s so hard about this project? The obvious thing is that my methods are archaic. I’m using some sorting techniques that are still reasonably current. K-nearest neighbors and multiple binary logistic regressions are still my two favorite techniques, and I think they both still do what I want them to. These approaches aren’t state of the art in statistical analysis, but they’re not particularly far from it, especially when you take into account that I’m a baseball writer instead of a data scientist. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s common for our readers to ask which of the players who aren’t on this year’s Top 100 might grace next year’s edition. Who has a chance to really break out? This is the piece for those readers, our “Picks to Click,” the gut-feel guys we think can make the 2025 Top 100.

This is the seventh year we’ve conducted this exercise at FanGraphs, and there are some rules. First, none of the players you see below will have ever been graded as a 50 FV or better prospect in any of our write-ups or rankings. Second, we can’t pick players who we’ve picked in prior years, but the other writers can. For instance, Eric picked Cristhian Vaquero last year, but he didn’t make the Top 100. Eric can’t select him again, but Tess could if she wanted (she didn’t). Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Kubota is the longest tenured scouting director in MLB, having been promoted to his current position by the Oakland Athletics in 2002. The University of California, Berkeley alum has been with the organization even longer than that; Kubota began working with the A’s in 1984 while still a student. He went on to join the baseball operations department in 1989, serving as assistant scouting director, Pacific Rim coordinator, and then supervisor of international scouting prior to taking the lead role in draft decisions.

His first draft is his most famous — perhaps you’ve heard of Moneyball — but it is by no means Kubota’s only memorable draft, nor his most impactful. Moreover, he has seen a lot change over his time in the industry. That comes with the territory when your scouting experience runs over three decades deep.

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David Laurila: Looking back, something that stands out from the interview we did in 2009 was you saying, “The more you know about scouting, the more you know about the draft, and the more you know about prospects, the more you find out that there is more to learn.” All these years later, is there still more to learn?

Eric Kubota: “There is, and I feel even stronger about that now. The more I’ve gone through this, the more I realize how hard it is to try to predict the future on these kids, and the more I realize the need for as much information we can get to make informed decisions.” Read the rest of this entry »