Los Angeles Dodgers Top 51 Prospects

Sasaki hasn’t looked quite like peak Roki so far in 2025. He has struggled, sometimes pretty badly, to adjust to the MLB baseball. His fastball has lost vertical movement compared to how it looked in Japan, and Sasaki has had problematic rashes of wildness in his first couple of outings. His slider, however, looks better than it did last season, and his splitter has been every bit the all-world pitch described here and elsewhere for the last couple of years. It’s important that at least one of Sasaki’s command and/or fastball ride improve in order for this grade to have been appropriate. Better ride will help enable him to miss bats without pinpoint command, while pinpoint command would allow his fastball to play despite a lack of movement. It’s far too early to worry that Sasaki will go the way of Daisuke Matsuzaka and fail to adjust to the baseball such that his command is always bad. For a 23-year-old thrust right into the fire while enduring arguably the most intense team and individual expectations in the league, he’s doing fine.

Here is his preseason report: Sasaki cemented a legacy while he was still in high school. There was a stretch when he was asked to throw nearly 500 pitches in an eight-day span, including a 12-inning complete game during which he also hit the game-winning two-run homer. He became the LeBron James of Japanese baseball in the process and was the first pick in the 2019 NPB draft, wielding much more arm strength than the typical top-of-the-class arm there, touching 101 mph and sitting around 97.

In 2021, Sasaki amassed a 1.98 ERA in 77 total innings across 15 starts split between the Eastern League (NPB’s minor league) and the Pacific League (their top league). The 2022 season was his first full slate in Japan’s big league and Sasaki was great, making 20 starts and pitching 129.1 innings, while posting a 2.02 ERA and making international headlines by throwing 17 consecutive perfect innings in April. At one point, Sasaki retired 52 consecutive batters (the MLB record is Yusmeiro Petit’s 47) during that stretch. Sasaki was having an even better 2023 — 85 IP, 39% K%, 5% BB%, 62% GB%, 1.88 ERA, 0.92 FIP — before he was shut down with an oblique tear in July, which cost him most of the rest of the season. He made three appearances at the very end of the year and his stuff was crisp as usual, but it backed up pretty substantially in 2024, as did Sasaki’s overall performance. He hasn’t been healthy for an entire season yet and most of his relevant stats (his ability to generate whiffs with his fastball, avoid walks, and get groundballs) took a nosedive in 2024.

Sasaki’s plus-plus, upper-80s splitter (which often has slider shape to his glove side and can easily be mistaken for it) is still easily his best pitch, and might be the nastiest splitter on the planet. When he’s operating at his apex, Sasaki looks like a slam dunk, top-of-the-rotation talent and one of the best handful of pitchers in baseball. He’s young and seems likely to return to peak form at some point, though his injury history and general volatility keep him from being a 70 FV player. After buzz late in 2023 and early in 2024 that he was poised to be posted after the 2024 season, Sasaki signed with the Dodgers as part of the 2025 international class and enters camp primed to slot into their big league rotation.

Hidden under the Henry Davis bushel at Louisville, Rushing finally got regular reps in 2022 and played himself into the draft’s first day. He was a bat-first prospect whose defensive issues (ball blocking, throwing accuracy, a general lack of polish as a receiver) seem to have been due to a lack of playing time rather than a lack of talent, as Rushing has improved fairly quickly in a lot of these areas whilst raking his way to Triple-A. He entered 2025 as a career .273/.410/.520 hitter as a pro, and is approaching the big leagues so quickly that it might force the Dodgers to roster him and Will Smith simultaneously, a possibility that has led to experimentation with Rushing at first base (2023) and in left field (2024). Rushing’s plus arm would be kind of a waste at either position. He absolutely launches out of his crouch (and sometimes throws from his knees) and routinely pops below 1.95 seconds. Rushing’s throwing accuracy can still be a tad wayward, but he continues to improve as a receiver (he was below-average in 2024 and looks better at the start of 2025), he’s gotten much better at picking balls in the dirt, and he’s started to backpick runners at first when he has the opportunity. There’s still work to be done here, but his rate of progress to this point is very exciting.

On offense, Rushing’s muscular physique generates above-average raw power, and his swing is tailored to get to it. In fact, he’s so geared to launch (17 degrees on average) that Rushing might outproduce his raw power in games. He’ll pull stuff on the inner third and flash oppo power on pitches middle-away, with minor vulnerability to fastballs elevated away from him. Combine that with plus plate discipline, and Rushing projects to generate enough offense to profile at basically any position, and if he keeps improving as a catcher, he’ll be a multi-time All-Star.

Hope was traded to the Dodgers as part of the Michael Busch deal during the 2023-24 offseason, just six months after he was selected as the Cubs’ 2023 11th-round pick. He then missed most of the first half of the season with a shoulder injury and was limited to just 61 regular season games before he picked up reps in the Arizona Fall League. He slashed .287/.415/.490 in 248 PA at Rancho Cucamonga and then .228/.301/.446 in 103 PA in Arizona.

Hope was a speed-oriented high school prospect, but he has become tremendously strong since turning pro. He was listed at 5-foot-10 and 193 pounds when he was drafted, but as of the spring of 2025, he weighs 230 pounds, and the rate at which he has gotten that big is somewhat alarming. He turned 20 in January and has gained nearly 40 pounds in less than two years, though perhaps even crazier is the fact that basically all of that weight is muscle; Hope is still just about 10% body fat. The added strength has effectively turned Zyhir into a short-levered hitter. It takes him very little mechanical distance to generate huge all-fields pop, and his swing is geared for lift. His 2024 peak exit velocities were comfortably plus on the big league scale; during Fall League, I watched him hit a 470-foot homer one day and then fight off a 97 mph fastball for an oppo bomb the next.

There’s some hit tool risk here. Hope’s head often flies all over the place when he swings, and he is very vulnerable to softer stuff near the bottom of the zone. Though his underlying regular season contact data in 2024 was quite positive, it was generated in less than half a season of Low-A plate appearances, and against the Cal League pitchers who weren’t promoted to High-A for the second half. I’m not inclined to take it at face value, and instead want to lean on my eyes, which are telling me that there’s strikeout volatility here. But Hope is still going to get to real power even with an elevated strikeout rate, and there are several power-hitting prospects with a similar degree of contact risk.

Hope’s feel for defense is also not good right now, though it’s possible this is simply due to a lack of pro reps. He has remained quite fast for a guy his size and he has a plus arm, so the potential for him to become a plus corner defender exists so long as his size doesn’t eventually impact his mobility and his feel improves with actual playing time. He had a fantastic 2025 spring on the backfields and is off to such a good start at High-A that it’s likely he’ll be promoted to Tulsa a some point this year.

Signed for just over $3 million as a second rounder in 2022, Ferris didn’t pitch at an affiliate after the draft and was handled pretty conservatively during his pro debut, as he made 18 starts but only pitched 56 strikeout- and walk-heavy innings. He was traded to Los Angeles during the 2023-24 offseason as part of the Michael Busch swap with the Cubs, and he had a more stable 2024, as Ferris worked 126.2 innings, posted a 3.20 ERA, and reached Double-A toward the end of the year (where his strikeouts and walks regressed). He looked good during the spring of 2025 and broke camp back in Tulsa.

Ferris has a powerful lower half, bending deep into his blocking leg. The Dodgers seem to have altered the direction of his stride a little bit, and he now appears more closed off. Ferris touched 96 mph in 2024 but sat more 92-94. His fastball still generated an average rate of chase and miss last year thanks to its uphill line and his deceptive delivery, which even made big league hitters uncomfortable during his Cactus League and Freeway Series appearances. In the spring of 2025, he’s had a velo spike and is now sitting 95. A slider in the 83-86 mph range is Ferris’ most-used secondary pitch. He can also lob in a slow, mid-70s curveball, and at times his changeup has bat-missing action, but that pitch has come along more slowly than was hoped when he was drafted and is still below average. Ferris is a stout lad and lacks the long-term physical projection of most 21-year-old starters, but he has two plus pitches and is throwing strikes even as his velocity soars. He has no. 3 starter upside if he can keep improving his offspeed stuff.

Last year, Freeland climbed three levels to Triple-A while slashing .260/.387/.442. He showed a shocking improvement in his contact rate, from a fringy 67% in 2023 to an above-average 78% in 2024. This delta was most pronounced from the left side, as Freeland’s contact rate as a lefty was 70% in 2023 and a miraculous 80% in 2024. His left-handed swing appeared toned down (he went from a leg kick to a toe tap), so there was something visual to reinforce the statistical evidence of improvement, but in the early going of 2025, Freeland’s strikeouts have returned to career norms. His offensive output is going to be power-oriented; he swings quite hard and is capable of leaving the yard to all fields as a left-handed hitter. His righty swing is much less dynamic and only geared for low-ball contact, and there’s a big enough gap between his two swings that it wouldn’t be surprising if Freeland eventually hits solely left-handed. While he’s back to whiffing a lot, Freeland’s hard-hit rate has exploded and he’s already hit a ball harder than he did all of last year, rounding to a 110 mph max exit velo.

It’s good power for not only a viable shortstop, but a damn good one. Freeland’s excellent arm strength helps him make some spectacular defensive plays in spite of average range. He can be a little slow to approach the baseball, but the quality of his hands, actions, and arm tend to enable him to make all the plays one expects a shortstop to make, along with the occasional Web Gem. He’s arguably the best shortstop defender in the org and is a pretty good bet to debut a some point in 2025, as the Dodgers have older (and semi-miscast) shortstops ahead of him on the big league roster. Danny Espinosa is a good proxy for what to expect from Freeland’s career.

De Paula is a big, physical, loose-in-the-hips outfielder with enormous raw power projection and an early-career track record of plus plate discipline and roughly average contact. For his age, De Paula’s at-bat quality is remarkable. He works deep counts, spoils tough pitches, and can let pitches travel deep before he flicks his wrists to send them to the opposite field with impressive force. He entered 2025 with a career .291/.411/.420 career line, and his underlying exit velocities are remarkable for a teenager, as they’re nearly plus on the big league scale. There are some funky elements to De Paula’s swing that have prevented him from tapping into that raw power in games (he had just eight homers in 129 career Cal League games) and that created some hit tool risk that perhaps hasn’t yet been exposed. De Paula tends to lose his base as he swings, his mechanics can get handsy (sometimes he still crushes the ball anyway), and he’ll spin out even when he isn’t swinging all that hard. De Paula is also very vulnerable to righty fastballs running up and away from him. He swings underneath a ton of them, which could become more detrimental to his production as he climbs the minors and faces better heaters.

Aside from the plate discipline piece of De Paula’s profile, this is a prospect who is still more about projection than present ability on both sides of the ball. De Paula is a tentative-looking corner defender; he almost looks more comfortable when he’s forced to make a tough play on the run rather than camp out under a routine fly ball for five seconds. He has a great arm, but he can be a bit overzealous busting it out. These are reasonable issues for a 19-year-old prospect to have, though De Paula’s defensive future puts more pressure on him to more consistently get to power in games as he matures. He’s a high-variance prospect with a 30-homer ceiling akin to a lefty-hitting Wil Myers.

If you’re looking for a Mason Miller character in this year’s prospect crop, Henriquez might be your guy. He’s an ideally built 22-year-old who throws 100, it’s just that Henriquez’s body and arm are too explosive for him to control right now. He missed 2023 recovering from TJ and was put in the bullpen after just five Low-A starts early in 2024, then raced through the minors as a reliever and debuted in LA in late September. He struggled with walks (just shy of 13% on the year) and was again relatively out of control during 2025 spring training before Henriquez injured his foot during rec room activity and had to be put on the IL to start the season. He’s on track to start throwing some time in May, and because he’s a relief-only prospect at this point, he should get up to speed in relatively short order and be back some time in June.

At some point things are going to click for Henriquez and he’s going to be a dominant closer. He touched 102 last season and sat 98-99 in his first year back from TJ. Automatic pitch tagging thinks Henriquez’s slider is a cutter, in part because it’s so hard (it’ll touch 94) and in part because he doesn’t locate it to his glove side consistently enough for it to have long, slider-y movement. When he does snap off a good one, it has incredible two-plane movement and depth for a pitch traveling nearly 90 mph most of the time. He has two plus-plus pitches in the tank, but Henriquez needs to learn how to hone them. To expect that a guy this age coming off surgery would have pinpoint command right away would be foolish; it’s probably going to take a minute for things to really click. Days after the Dodgers’ World Series parade, Henriquez was bundled up at an Arizona Fall League game, just to hang out and watch baseball. I dig that. He’s immensely talented, he’s been to The Show already, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s the Dodgers’ best reliever at some point in the next year or two, and then beyond.

Ryan was a two-way player at UNC Pembroke and one of the more exciting pitchers on the Padres backfields during their 2021 instructs period, when he hadn’t yet pitched in an affiliated game. A plus on-mound athlete with a great arm action and a carrying fastball that was in the 93-95 mph range, he was an exciting, tip-of-the-iceberg dev project for a Padres org that had had recent success with two-way and conversion arms, most prominently Luis Patiño. Then the Dodgers plucked him away in a trade for corner role player Matt Beaty in late March of 2022, and we started to see parts of the iceberg that lay beneath the surface during Ryan’s first full season as a pro pitcher. He was more in the 95-97 mph range throughout 2022 and was dominant (if a little wild) across just shy of 50 total innings. In 2023, Ryan held mid-to-upper-90s fastball velo under the stress of twice as many innings. He posted a 3.33 ERA in 97.1 innings with Double-A Tulsa. Shoulder fatigue shelved him for most of the first half of 2024, and though he looked totally fine upon his initial return and made his big league debut at the end of July, he blew out at the end of the season and had Tommy John in August. It will keep him out for the entire 2025 season.

In addition to the plus velocity, healthy Ryan has three plus-flashing breaking balls in a mid-90s cutter, an upper-80s slider, and a mid-80s curveball with late vertical bite. Ideally Ryan will be able to refine his changeup over time; he was using it less than 10% of the time when he blew out, often in even counts. Its results weren’t great, but he’s a great athlete who is relatively new to pitching, so you can project on that offering. His curveball has enough depth to act as his go-to bat-missing weapon against lefties until his changeup improves.

The visual report here is pretty ironclad. Ryan’s build is a little bit more slight than the prototypical big league starter, but at 6-foot-2, he isn’t small. He has sustained premium velocity over 100 innings of work, his breaking balls are plus to the eye and grade out as plus on paper, and while his command isn’t great, it’s sufficient for Ryan to start and might continue to improve as he gets experience pitching. Ryan was a 55 FV pitcher and looked like one of the better all-around pitcher prospects in baseball before his unfortunately timed TJ added volatility and a prolonged waiting period to his profile.

Morales has some of the most exciting raw power projection of any shortstop in the minor leagues. In his 2024 pro debut, he won DSL MVP and led the league in homers (14), as well as several other statistical categories. At an angular, broad-shouldered 6-foot-3 (and growing), Morales has the look of an early-career Fernando Tatis Jr. in his uniform. While many position player prospects his size tend to be outfielders, Morales bends well and has a better than 50/50 shot to remain at shortstop. Morales also has explosive power to all fields and was putting balls out to dead center at age 17. He has a shot to grow into plus-plus raw juice at peak, which is rare for a shortstop. But Morales’ profile is threatened by a scary hit tool. His hands load late and he’s often long into the zone, which might become more and more of a problem against pro velocity. Even as he paved over the DSL, Morales’ contact rate (68%) was not good for a hitter at that level, and it’s important that it doesn’t worsen as he climbs. If it can hold in that 68% area while Morales remains at shortstop and develops huge power, he can still be an impact big leaguer despite elevated strikeouts. If it slips into the low 60s as he’s promoted, then Morales will be in a tough spot; there’s not a lot of precedent for sustained success when a guy is whiffing that much. Here Morales is FV’d like a volatile top 10-15 high school draftee. He has huge upside for a potential shortstop, but there are definitely hit tool red flags lurking.

After two years on the Yankees’ DSL roster, Zazueta was acquired in the Caleb Ferguson trade just before the 2024 season and spent most of last season at Low-A Rancho Cucamonga, where he broke camp again in 2025. He has arguably the best command projection in the entire Dodgers system, with feel for locating his tailing, flat-angled fastball at the top of the zone. Zazueta was at times peaking around 97 mph during spring training, but he tends to live in the 93-95 mph range throughout his starts. That might tick up as the athletic, 6-foot-3 20-year-old continues to fill out. He tends to land his slider in the strike zone, pitching off of those high fastballs, and is more apt to generate whiffs over the top of well-located mid-80s changeups. Ideally, Zazueta will be able to hone his ability to locate his slider for chase rather than just inside the zone. It’s a curious hole in an otherwise pretty advanced profile. Zazueta’s present command gives him a pretty high floor for a 20-year-old pitcher, while his physical projection gives him exciting long-term ceiling. He’s similar to college pitchers who get picked toward the back of a draft’s first round.

Quintero is a converted catcher who slashed a ridiculous .359/.472/.618 in the 2023 DSL and looked good playing center field. He followed that up with a fairly similar 2024 (from a contact standpoint) split between the Arizona complex and Low-A, slashing a combined .285/.419/.394 at age 18. Early in 2025, Quintero’s contact feel has regressed. His swing’s length into the hitting zone is leaving him very late on lots of stuff on the outer half, and he’s whiffing as often as he’s making contact. I tend to be skeptical of hitters with extreme inside-out styles of hitting, and Quintero has very suddenly entered that space even though he isn’t facing anything close to big league velocity every night in the Cal League. Now the question becomes whether or not this will regress back to Quintero’s rookie-level norms. If it does, there are outcomes where Quintero can still become an everyday center fielder. If it’s a more permanent problem, then Quintero’s contact and power are both tracking more like below-average components. While his feel for center field is impressive considering he’s only been playing that position for a couple of years, and it gives him some margin for error on the offensive side of things. There’s suddenly a surprising amount of volatility here, but Quintero is still a good prospect.

Vargas was the fourth-ranked prospect in his international class because he had a shot to mature in the Goldilocks Zone, in which he’d add meaningful strength to his 6-foot-3 frame but not so much that he’s forced to move off of shortstop. At the start of his third pro season, he seems poised to do that. What is becoming an increasing issue is Vargas’ lack of contact ability. Hitters with builds like his almost always have some measure of hit tool risk created by their lever length. That applies to Vargas, who ran a sub-70% contact rate in 2024 and has had a K% explosion in the early going of 2025. Vargas is also a bucket strider and doesn’t track pitches especially well. His size and the natural thunder in his hands is still very exciting, and might even be more explosive as Vargas continues to mature. He is going to have enough power to generate meaningful offense even with a hefty dose of strikeouts, though the K issues put more pressure on Vargas to remain at short. So far, he looks pretty good there. He has the range, athleticism, hands, and arm for it, and at peak should be average at shortstop and plus at third base. There aren’t a ton of them, but there are big leaguers with upper-60% contact rates who get to enough power to have big league relevance. Elly De La Cruz, Oneil Cruz and Javier Báez exemplify the kind of high-end tools you need to be an impact player despite whiffing that much. Vargas is more comparable to Tim Beckham and Niko Goodrum 구드럼.

Swan was a 6-foot-4 high school shortstop whose fastball velocity exploded after he started pitching full-time in college. He was drafted as a small school dev project who carried a career ERA over 6.00 at Middle Tennessee, and he is still essentially that, in large part because separate oblique and arm injuries limited Swan to just to 37 innings combined between the 2024 regular season and the Fall League. His 2025 season began on a slight delay and he was kept in Arizona for extended spring reps until the middle of April, when Swan was sent to High-A Great Lakes.

His fastball will sit 95-99 for the three to four innings Swan tends to work in any given outing, but its downhill plane limits its ability to miss bats. He has stretches where he’ll work primarily off of his 87-89 mph cutter and use his fastball more as a chase pitch. Swan’s secondary stuff is promising but raw. He has the cutter, which can tend to play more like a slider because, again, Swan’s size creates downhill plane that imparts a slider look to his cutters even though their vertical movement is measured as positive. He also has an 83-86 mph sweeper-style slider that will flash plus. Swan’s changeup is a firm, 87-90 mph cambio with what looks like a modified split grip. It’s currently well below average, but Swan is so loose and athletic, and has pitched so little, that this pitch might have considerable long-term ceiling. If it can become a viable weapon for him, he’ll have pitches that finish in all four quadrants of the zone.

Swan has two to three years to polish his secondary stuff and build his innings count before we’ll be forced to start talking about him as a reliever. It wouldn’t be shocking if he spent his first season on the 40-man roster (on track to be 2027) in an entirely developmental capacity. His size, mechanical fluidity, arm strength, and raw breaking ball quality give him one of the higher ceilings among pitchers in the Dodgers org. He’s a prospect of extreme variance who has a shot to be a mid-rotation starter.

Frasso was an atypical college draftee, with his prospectdom more about projection than present stuff. He started throwing harder pretty quickly, sitting 95 mph early in 2021 when he had merely topped out there at Loyola Marymount, but in June of that year, Frasso blew out and required Tommy John. Not even 11 months clear of the surgery, Frasso looked fantastic on the Blue Jays’ backfields, sitting 94-96 and touching 97-98 early in outings, and he was traded to Los Angeles for Mitch White not long after that. Frasso then had a fantastic 2023 minor league season. He held mid-90s velo all year, throwing 93 innings in his first full season removed from Tommy John. His breaking ball added more power for the second straight year, as Frasso went from a low-80s slurve to an 85-87 mph slider. Frasso hurt his shoulder at the very end of the 2023 season and needed labrum surgery. It was his second major injury in a relatively short span of time and kept him out for all of 2024.

Healthy to start 2025, Frasso’s peak velocity is back, but his ability to sustain it is not. He’s thrown a handful of fastballs in the 97-99 mph range, but has tended to be in the 92-95 mph range throughout his first several starts. His size and funkadelic cross-bodied delivery create some deception, but not so much as to help Frasso’s stuff play as plus. His fastball’s nearly equal combination of vertical and horizontal movement creates fairly hittable shape, and in the past only his changeup has generated an average or better rate of miss. Frasso’s changeup finds the strike zone quite often, but he scatters its location all over the imaginary rectangle and not in a consistently chaseable location. His slider has big lateral wipe, so much that it’s tough for Frasso to control it. His stuff right now looks like that of a fifth starter, with some amount of rebound potential created by his freaky size and delivery.

Lindsey was maybe the fastest player in the 2024 draft. He ran the fastest 30-yard dash at the Combine at a blazing 3.53 seconds and often runs close to 4.00 from home to first. He drew some early North Carolina State-era Trea Turner comps before the draft thanks to his wheels, slight build, oppo-oriented swing, and shaky shortstop defense. Those have held through Lindsey’s first pro spring. Though he’s been sent out as a shortstop, Lindsey’s below-average hands and lack of arm strength make a long-term fit there unlikely. It’s fine to give him at least one full season of run at there just to see how things develop, but I’m speculatively projecting Lindsey to center here based on the way he’s looked at short so far in 2025.

Though he already looks a good bit stronger than before the draft, Lindsey’s swing remains long and bottom-hand dominant. He was getting worked by elevated fastballs during spring training and that has continued at Rancho. This is a dip in Lindsey’s pre-draft FV grade. He’s much more of a project on both sides of the ball than most first round picks, and that’s become more evident as Lindsey has gotten his feet wet in pro ball. He was injured for much of the showcase portion of his pre-draft process, which created volatility in hit tool assessment, and things looks like they’re going to be dicey in that regard.

Auger began his college career at Hinds Community College and then transferred to Mississippi State, where he pitched out of the bullpen as a sophomore in 2022. He blew out in mid-April, had TJ, and missed 2023 recovering. In 2024, he was back in the Bulldogs bullpen until the end of the season, when he made some starts down the stretch. The best of those was an eye-opening, eight-inning, 13-strikeout start against Ole Miss in the SEC tournament. It gave teams a glimpse of what Auger might be able to do in a pro rotation, and that’s exactly where the Dodgers have deployed him as he’s debuted in 2025.

Auger’s fastball has plus velocity and riding life, with a little bit of natural cut at times. His heater really holds its line on its way to the plate and makes hitters uncomfortable when located to the glove side of the plate, where it’s unhittable if it nips the corner. He’s been working in the 94-96 mph range and topping out at 98 so far this spring. Because of his relative inexperience, we don’t know how Auger’s velocity will trend across an entire season of innings as a starter, but his fastball’s ride gives it some margin for error in this regard. Off of his fastball he’ll work with a cutter (88-91), a slurve (83-86), and a true curveball (77-80). The cutter and slurve tend to live in the upper-glove-side quadrant and play off the location of Auger’s fastball, while the curveball has vertical depth and at times some arm-side bend, making it his best present weapon against lefties (his changeup isn’t great right now). The tools to be a starter, long-term, are here and potentially a no. 4 if the velocity Auger has shown at peak can continue to be part of his skill set for 140 innings. His secondary pitch command also needs to improve, but even at his age that feels plausible considering Auger’s developmental background (JUCO, injury, relief role).

Wagner was drafted out of P27 Academy in South Carolina, an athletics training facility in which the student athletes take online charter school classes. He signed for $600,000 rather than go to Louisville and was brought along pretty slowly in his first full season, which he spent on the complex in 2023. He broke out in 2024 at Rancho Cucamonga, when Wagner hit .246/.405/.484 and was among the organizational leaders in hard-hit rate at 45%. He’s got switch-hitting mistake power and is especially adept at pulling fastballs around his hands, especially from the left side. Wagner’s swing is relatively grooved and he’ll likely be a below-average contact hitter at peak, but he has tremendous feel for the strike zone and tends to target pitches he can handle. He already has above-average raw power at age 21 and might grow into another half grade as he matures. Wagner has played both corner infield positions and second base, and while he’s not great at those priority positions, he’s good enough to play both and should be a versatile, heavily-used multi-positional role-player.

Jack’s dad, Steve, got to the big leagues with the Rangers in the mid-90s. After his freshman season, Jack barely pitched at Iowa due to a shoulder injury, the pandemic, and then a Tommy John. He was a 2021 undrafted free agent, threw a dozen innings as a 23-year-old on the complex in 2022, was walk-prone but otherwise pretty good at High-A in 2023, and then was dominant in 2024, which he spent mostly at Triple-A Oklahoma City. The Pacific Coast League is not easy to pitch in, but Dreyer still posted a 1.13 WHIP and 2.95 ERA in 42.2 innings there and was added to the Dodgers’ 40-man roster after the season. He broke camp with the big club coming out of 2025 spring training.

His stuff isn’t crazy, but Dreyer is incredibly deceptive. He has the “invisiball” fastball. He hides it forever, his whippy arm action suddenly appears from behind his head, and then it has 20 inches of due north vertical break as it explodes toward the plate. Dreyer’s fastball generated a crazy amount of chase and miss for a 93 mph pitch last year, and he’s going to be able to rip it past big league hitters. His two breaking balls (a vertical low-80s curve and a 84-89 mph slider) have distinct movement, and the change of pace they create with one another seems to make hitters uncomfortable. Counter to norms, Dreyer’s slider actually plays better against righties than his curveball and is generating an elite swinging strike rate in a small big league sample prior to list publication. He has the tools to work against hitters of either handedness, mostly because of his fastball. It should allow Dreyer to be a consistent part of a bullpen, and he might end up in the occasional higher-leverage situation.

Hurt was a SoCal high school arm of some repute, a projectable 6-foot-3 guy with low-90s heat who went to school and didn’t get much better as an underclassman. Just before the COVID shutdown, Hurt shoved against TCU at a heavily attended tournament in LA, touching 95 mph several times. It was the best he ever looked at Southern Cal and he might have dramatically improved his draft stock had he pitched the whole spring. The Marlins selected him in the fifth round, then later traded him and Alex Vesia to the Dodgers for Dylan Floro. Hurt spent most of 2021 on the shelf and only pitched 21 innings during the regular season before he looked really nasty — 94-97 mph with natural cut and a plus changeup — in the Arizona Fall League. Over the next two seasons, Hurt built his innings count to 100 frames while retaining the velo spike. His tailing changeup continued to improve to the point where it became one of the best in the minors, and for a narrow window, he was able to land both of his breaking balls for strikes. Hurt’s 19.7% swinging strike rate was the highest in the 2023 minor leagues among pitchers who threw at least 80 innings, and he entered 2024 as a Top 100 prospect, but he blew out and had TJ late enough that his rehab will likely extend through just about all of 2025.

Hurt is a heavier guy with a high-effort delivery, definitely a look you see in the bullpen more often than in the rotation, and aside from 2023, his fastball command has not been good. Even when he was starting, he only tended to work between 3-5 innings at a time and he never worked more than 100 innings in a single season; he appeared to have been relegated to the ‘pen just before he blew out. That limits Hurt’s FV grade, as it’s highly unlikely he’ll be given an opportunity to start when he returns, but his fastball/changeup combo gives him a shot to work in high-leverage relief. Hurt threw a bullpen the week of list publication and is a couple weeks out from his first live batting practice.

Rodriguez is an exciting, potentially near-term contributor in the Dodgers bullpen. Two of his secondary pitches played like elite offerings in 2024, and if upper-level hitters once again struggle to deal with them in 2025, Rodriguez will likely be added to LA’s 40-man roster after the season. He’s a well-built 6-foot-6 guy whose fastball sits comfortably in the mid-90s, but ultimately a lack of fastball playability and command keep Rodriguez’s projection in the bullpen. His repertoire depth, however, should allow him to play an impact multi-inning role.

Rodriguez’s mid-80s slider and changeup each generated miss rates north of 50% last year, as he K’d 32.9% of opposing batters across 90.2 A-ball innings, most of them as a reliever. He is once again mostly playing a long relief role at Double-A Tulsa in 2025, with the occasional start mixed in. His bullet-style mid-80s slider is his best offering, and it can act as a way for Rodriguez to either get ahead of hitters or as a means of finishing them. A changeup with plus tailing action gives Rodriguez a second way to miss a bat against hitters of either handedness thanks to its heavy sink below the zone. A huge hip turn at the start of his delivery disorients hitters, and Rodriguez’s size helps him generates well over seven feet of extension, which adds to his deception. This doesn’t really help his fastball, however, and even though he’ll occasionally creep into the upper-90s, Rodriguez’s heater struggles to miss bats. Part of this is due to his unkempt fastball command, which is also why Rodriguez tends to lean on his commandable slider more than any of his other pitches. He needs to throw more strikes to be comfortably rostered, but he’s tracking for a 2026 debut in a low-leverage relief capacity, with a shot to carve out a bigger role over time by exhibiting better control.

Copen has upper-90s arm strength and a couple of 3,000 rpm breaking balls. His heater peaked in the 96-99 mph range a handful of times during his junior year at Marshall, but after one full pro season, it’s now sitting in that area for large chunks of his outings, often with natural cut. This spring, he’s sitting 96-99 during the early innings, with his velo slipping closer to 94 the deeper he works in games.

But Copen should eventually be sitting in the mid-to-upper 90s consistently because even though he broke camp as a starter at Great Lakes, he projects into the bullpen due to his strike-throwing issues. Copen is an ultra-long 6-foot-6 and has an inconsistent release point; his walk rates have been in the 13-16% range since he entered pro ball. His size and small school background justify development as a starter just in case things click for him later than is usual, but realistically, he’ll be limited to the bullpen by his command. Copen’s stuff is nasty enough that he might be able to work in a late-inning role upon conversion, and it might tick up if he’s deployed an inning at a time. He can mix a sinker variant of his fastball in with the cutting version, and he has a distinct cutter that sits 90-92 mph, as well as a mid-80s curveball of mixed quality. Copen’s breaking balls have enormous potential because of his ability to spin them up around 3,000 rpm, but right now their movement is erratic. This is a big arrow up guy compared to when he was drafted and a potential impact reliever.

Smith was a favorite of mine from the 2023 Draft Combine, an athletic but somewhat undersized righty with plus fastball ride and advanced secondary pitches. The Dodgers got a deal done with him for just over $700,000, and Smith had Tommy John during the 2023-24 offseason. He returned this spring to some single-inning fanfare. Smith was working an inning or two at a time during spring training, an indication that he wasn’t quite ready to go to an affiliate, but in those outings, he looked great and his velocity was comfortably into the mid-90s. During extended spring training, he developed some forearm tightness and was shut back down. He’s an ACL and Instructional League prospect to monitor because if the velo spike proves to be sustainable, Smith is a breakout candidate, as many other aspects of a mid-rotation starter profile were already in place.

Smith creates plus depth on his curveball and fair tailing action on his changeup, the latter of which has big projection because of his arm speed. He might add a second breaking ball in short order, probably a slider or cutter, and whatever it is, it could be good immediately because of his ability to spin the ball. Though undersized, Smith is a plus on-mound athlete with a gorgeous delivery and precocious secondary stuff. He entered 2025 as a Pick to Click in anticipation of the velo spike that he indeed showed prior to his forearm soreness popping up. Now Smith is pretty unlikely to “click” because it’s almost impossible for him to prove he can sustain that velocity across a decent chunk of innings. He’s still a high-upside prospect in this system and a high priority for teams to see again before the trade deadline.

Gonzalez worked 23.1 innings in a DSL piggyback role with the Cardinals before he was included in the the multi-team trade that also netted the Dodgers Tommy Edman. He made just two starts in his new uniform before the season ended. Gonzalez is a very projectable 6-foot-4 or so, and last year, his fastball sat 89-93 with around 20 inches of induced vertical break and just over seven feet of extension. His frame and delivery are both out of workhorse starter central casting, his mechanics are gorgeous and repeatable, and he throws quality strikes with his fastball. Gonzalez’s curveball has a nice foundation of depth and shape, and it’s really nasty when he finishes it, which he didn’t do consistently last year. As Dodgers players get underway in the Dominican Republic, Gonzalez has been maxing out at 96 in the bullpen and sitting 94. He’s an excellent teenage pitching prospect who’d be in the early second round mix were he a domestic draft prospect.

“Low Leverage Ben” was a two-way player as an underclassman at North Carolina, then transferred to UConn for the 2021 season and began to focus on pitching. The 2025 season is just his fifth on the mound full-time. He was developed as a starter until 2024, when he was moved to the bullpen at the very end of the season and quickly promoted to the big leagues. He made just three regular season appearances, but still made the Dodgers’ postseason roster and ate relief innings en route to a ring. He broke 2025 camp with the big club, again in a multi-inning relief capacity, working as many as three frames at a time.

Casparius has been throwing about a tick harder as a reliever than he was as a starter, averaging just shy of 96 mph and topping out at 99. He has parlayed his talent for spinning a breaking ball into three different pitch types, as Casparius works with many cutters and curveballs against lefties, and sliders (his best pitch from a pure stuff standpoint) against righties. It gives him the tools to attack hitters of either handedness and allows him to work multiple innings, and perhaps will enable Casparius to be stretched back out as a starter again if the Dodgers need him to be. If that’s the case, then he could have a home at the back of the rotation. In either case, he’s an effective lower-leverage member of a pitching staff.

Wrobleski’s nomadic amateur career path wound through Clemson, State College of Florida, and finally Stillwater, Oklahoma in his draft year. He had TJ close to the 2021 draft and didn’t get on an affiliate’s mound until the very end of 2022, when he was sitting 93-95 mph, up above his usual pre-TJ 88-91 mph range. Wrobleski has been able to sustain that across the past two seasons, throwing about 100 innings in each. He made his big league debut in 2024 and is a handful of innings away from rookie graduation as of list publication.

Wrobo lacks a pitch with arm-side action, as all of his non-fastball pitches are breaking balls of various stripes. You’d think this would be more of a problem when Wrobleski faces righties, but he’s actually performed better against them than opposing lefties. None of his secondaries have played like a plus offering, though the best version of Wrobleski’s fastball, which touches 97 mph early in outings, is plus. His well-located sliders and cutters play great as back-foot weapons against righties, but they don’t seem like enticing chase pitches for lefties. He looks like a fit at the very back of the rotation, or perhaps (with the Dodgers, at least) a long reliever.

When Miller was the 36th overall pick in 2021, there was hope he’d develop enough strength to be an everyday shortstop; the defense and contact components were already in place. That hasn’t happened, and the 22-year-old has had a below-average overall offense performance at every minor league level because he has roughly 30-grade power. He’s still likely to play a big league role as a glove-first utilityman. Miller is an amazing shortstop defender with terrific bend and actions. His ability to navigate the ground and hose runners from the hole is pretty special, and he makes crisp, accurate feeds to the other bases from awkward throwing platforms. As of list publication, Miller is in Arizona rehabbing from a September meniscus surgery. He played just over a month of games at Double-A Tulsa in 2024 and is likely headed back there when he’s ready. Miller is currently on the 40-man fringe and, similar to Nasim Nuñez a couple of years ago, he’ll make for a fascinating Rule 5 Draft case because his defense would absolutely play in the big leagues right away, but he does little else.

George is a speedy, compact-framed outfielder with above-average plate discipline. The Dodgers seemed to pivot toward him when Jonny Farmelo was drafted ahead of them by Seattle, and George signed for an under-slot $1.8 million. George has worked hard to get stronger since entering pro ball and his contact quality has taken a bit of a leap at the onset of the 2025 season, but his contact rate remains in the below-average 72% area, the same as in 2024. George can really run and has the potential to be a very good defensive center fielder, but he isn’t one right now. His routes and reads aren’t crisp, and he allows too many catchable balls to fall in front of him. He’s basically too fast to fail completely as a center field defender, but it’s fair to wonder whether he’ll be so special out there as to pull his overall profile into an impact area without a plus offensive trait. He looks like a good part-time outfielder.

Sirota entered his draft spring as a potential first round pick, then had a down (though still good) junior year compared to his 2023 output and fell to the third round. The Reds traded him to the Dodgers as part of the January Gavin Lux deal before Sirota even played an official game in one of their affiliates’ uniforms, and Sirota broke camp in 2025 with the Low-A roster. He’s a speedy, power-over-hit center field prospect with plus plate discipline. A tightly wound athlete with a narrow build, Sirota is wiry and strong. His hands are especially lively with power on the inner third of the plate, but he makes some plate coverage concessions in order to pull pitches in there and is likely going to swing inside a lot of stuff on the outer third. The Dodgers have already altered his swing somewhat, eliminating Sirota’s deep crouch and incorporating more of a leg kick, which used to disappear with two strikes. Sirota’s reads and routes in center field need polish but the footspeed is there. The projected issues with the hit tool and Sirota’s flavor of build/athleticism look more like that of a part-timer. His on-base ability buoys his profile and gives Sirota a shot to be a Tyrone Taylor type of complementary outfielder.

Eric Karros has two boys in pro ball (Jared and Kyle), both of whom are pretty likely to play in the big leagues. Jared is the oldest, a potential back-of-the-rotation starter with a rapidly improving changeup. The pandemic knocked out just about all of Jared’s freshman season at UCLA, while a nagging back injury limited him to seven appearances as a sophomore and wiped out his junior season. In pro ball, Karros has climbed to Double-A Tulsa and been relatively healthy, save for a flexor tendon injury that cost him about 10 weeks of 2024.

Karros is 6-foot-7 and has a high arm slot, giving him a release height of about 6-foot-9. It creates huge downhill plane on all of his pitches, aiding the effectiveness of his breaking balls, which have a little extra depth as a result. Karros commands his mid-80s slider to the glove side of the plate, and at the start of 2025, he’s been more consistently creating sink and tailing action on his changeup, which has been his best pitch so far this year. Those two pitches are average and above on pure stuff, and play a little better thanks to Karros’ command. Karros will pepper the top of the zone with his fastball to get ahead in the count, and then work his secondaries to the corners, with the occasional dirt-bound curveball rounding out his repertoire. His heater has played like a below-average pitch to this point, which might be more of an issue against big leaguers, especially if it means Karros needs to more frequently pitch backwards early in outings. Aside from his injury history, he’s a stable backend starter prospect on track to debut at some point next year.

Linan is a changeup monster who throws enough strikes to start, though to this point he has mostly been deployed in relief. He spent 2024 split between the Arizona Complex League (where he was also assigned in 2023) and Low-A Rancho (where he broke camp in 2025) and K’d 93 in just 70 innings. So far in 2025, Linan’s changeup has been utterly dominant against Cal League hitters. It’s a high-spin variety, with nearly 2,700 rpm. Linan commands it down and to his arm side with regularity, keeping it out of harm’s way and beneath barrels. His low-three-quarters release and stocky build combine to create shallow angle on an otherwise average heater that sits about 93 with equal parts rise and run. Linan’s mid-80s cutter/slider is similarly pedestrian. Linan’s advanced command and changeup quality are probably too much for Low-A hitters, and he might force a quick promotion to Great Lakes, where his relative lack of arm strength and breaking ball quality can be tested. He looks like a future backend starter.

Feduccia is a fairly well-rounded defensive catcher with above-average bat-to-ball skills and plate discipline. He made his big league debut last year but only played in five games, and again entered 2025 as the club’s third catcher on the 40-man behind Will Smith and Austin Barnes. He would be a suitable backup on most rosters.

On offense, Feduccia is adept at getting on top of high fastballs and covers most of the hitting zone, only really struggling against well-located soft stuff down and away from him. He was a 122 wRC+ hitter at Oklahoma City last year and is off to an even better start there in 2025. On defense, Feduccia has allowed over 100 stolen bases each of the past two seasons at an 80-85% success rate. His exchange takes a little too long to execute and a lot of his throws are too high above the bag for a tag to be applied quickly. His is otherwise a very good defender, as his pitch framing and ball-blocking are both plus. There is something to be said for the comfort pitchers on the big league staff have with Barnes, but Feduccia is probably the more potent offensive player right now and could supplant him at basically any time.

It took a little over $1.2 million to sign Heubeck away from a Wake Forest commitment when he was a rail thin 6-foot-3 and had lovely natural breaking ball depth. He was seemingly poised to break out whenever he could add weight, velo, and shore up his strike-throwing. In the four years since he was drafted, Heubeck has added some arm strength and has been able to sustain it across 90 innings, but the command piece of his profile hasn’t improved and he’s had double-digit walk rates at every minor league level. Heubeck’s delivery is similar to that of former Dodgers prospect Clayton Beeter. He has a drop-and-drive style, hides the ball for a long time, and has a nearly perfect vertical arm slot on release. It creates huge ride on Heubeck’s fastball, which averages just over 20 inches of vertical break, but he doesn’t command it. Both of Heubeck’s breaking pitches — a gorgeous 12-to-6 curveball and a mid-80s gyro slider — generated plus or better rates of swing and miss in 2024. Heubeck’s feel for landing his slider is the best of his three pitches, and it might suit him to use it more often early in counts. The ship is close to sailing on Heubeck as a starter, as he’s in his 40-man platform year and is once again struggling to throw strikes. His stuff is good enough to play in relief, even if Heubeck’s velocity stays the same with the role change.

Wright had the internal brace style of UCL surgery as a freshman at Cal Poly and pitched just 18.2 innings as a redshirt freshman, and then 88 as a soph in 2024. He was drafted as a small school dev project with feel for spin and a good looking delivery. In 2024, Wright sat just 91-92 mph and walked a batter every other inning, but he has an athletic three-quarters delivery and a deceptive arm stroke, and his rise/run fastball spun at around 2,600 rpm despite 40-grade velo. This spring, Wright was pumping 95-97 early during camp. We haven’t been able to see whether that’s sustainable deep into starts because Wright was shut down after his first regular season outing with Rancho due to a blister. He looks like a good lefty reliever at the very least. Both of his breakers (a curveball averaging about 78 mph and a slider averaging about 82 mph) have plus bite and depth, though their shapes tend to run together. Wright’s arm action is loose enough that he might be able to develop a good changeup, too. His freshman TJ and limited sophomore role means that he hasn’t pitched all that much, so his cambio and command have some late projection. The same applies to a cutter, which could be conjured from thin air thanks to Wright’s talent for spin. The median outcome for Wright is that of a good lefty reliever, with the velo spike an early potential profile-changer if it’s permanent.

Foeller spent three years at a Mississippi JUCO before transferring to Southern Illinois, and after one year there, he had offers from SEC schools hoping he’d transfer again. Instead, Foeller was motivated to play pro ball and signed for just under $150,000 in the 11th round. He has been something of a revelation early in 2025, as his stuff has taken a leap at Low-A Rancho. Foeller will sit 93-96 for as many as five innings at a time and reach back for the occasional 97. Even though his somewhat cross-bodied stride takes his line away from the plate a little bit, Foeller is still routinely generating seven feet of extension. He’s also generating 19 inches of induced vertical break from a slightly lower-than-average release point, creating huge ride and uphill angle on his fastballs. This is already an impact pitch for Foeller and should spearhead a big league relief role in the event that his control and secondary pitches fail to develop very much. His uphill 89 mph cutter is new this spring and looks promising, while his low-80s slider is blunt and not especially nasty. There’s time for Foeller to develop; he’s 23 but has through the 2028 season to polish these things up before he even sniffs the 40-man. He’s a nice project with a shot to pitch in a rotation and a realistic relief fallback.

It took a little less than $350,000 to sign the broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted Patick away from a UC Santa Barbara commitment, and in his second full season, he’s out the gate throwing much harder than in 2024. Patick will show you 94-96 mph in long relief and bend in the occasionally great two-planed slider. These often spin around 2,700 rpm, and some of them have enough lateral wipe that you could justifiably classify them as sweepers. He also has a cutter in the 88-92 mph range. Patick’s arm stroke tends to be late, and his command can waver, which has been especially true so far in 2025. He’s a risky young lefty, but he has burgeoning arm strength and good natural breaking ball quality, giving him an eventual lefty relief projection.

Jang signed for $900,000 late in the summer of 2023 after the Dodgers traded a couple of pitching prospects to the White Sox for international pool space in order to get a deal done. His first year in the system was exciting but messy. Jang has prototypical size and a whammer of an arm action, sitting 94-97 at peak and flashing plus breaking stuff. He also walked 16.3% of opponents combined between the complex level and Low-A in 2024.

Early in 2025, Jang has not only struggled even more with walks, but his stuff has also backed up a bit; he was more in the 92-94 mph range during spring training and sat 94 in his first few starts at Rancho. Jang is really struggling to land his breaking balls for strikes and it appears hitters are sitting on his fastball as a result. He still checks a lot of the visual scouting boxes one is looking for in a high-upside pitching prospect. His size, the athletic explosion of his delivery, and the raw quality of his breaking pitches are all exciting, but Jang’s delivery is relatively violent and there’s a good chance he’ll always be too wild to pitch in a rotation. We’ve gone from him being 19 and raw when he signed, to him being 21 and raw. The good news is that he still has through 2027 before the Dodgers even have to consider adding him to their 40-man roster, so their backs aren’t up against any sort of developmental wall and there’s no pressure to move him to the bullpen proactively. Still, instead of Jang enjoying a meteoric rise, which seemed feasible a year ago, it looks like he’s going to be a slow burn.

Carias sat 92-94 and would occasionally touch 95-96 during last year’s DSL, his second year on the circuit. This spring, he has more consistently been in the 94-96 mph range on the Camelback Ranch backfields and is touching 98. Carias has an easy, fluid, repeatable delivery and a prototypical starter’s frame at a long-levered 6-foot-4. He is relatively new to baseball, as he grew up in Venezuela mostly playing other sports. He hasn’t had especially good on-field results just yet, but his size and rapidly improving stuff (his gyro slider is about average and getting better) make him an exciting developmental prospect with a shot to pitch in a rotation one day.

Nieves is a pop-up name from the Dodgers group in Arizona for extended spring training. The rail thin righty is throwing harder than the 93-94 he averaged in the 2024 DSL. He’s been up to 99 this spring and sat 96 in his outing prior to list publication. Nieves also has a firm, mid-to-upper-80s slider that spins around 2,900 rpm and features huge lateral movement. He is still super projectable, but for him, making good on that projection will simply be him retaining this velocity across more than the 32 innings he threw in last year’s DSL. This is an exciting dev project who is already — and rather emphatically — checking the fastball velocity box on the scout card.

Ko was one of a couple prospects who the Dodgers were at one point slated to sign during the 2025 international amateur period, but moved up to the back half of 2024 when it became probable that Roki Sasaki would be posted and courted in the 2025 window. He is half South African and half Amis, an indigenous Taiwanese ethnic group that constitutes a very small minority in Taiwan, where 95-plus percent of the population is now of Han Chinese descent.

Ko played well on Taiwan’s U-18 World Cup teams in 2023 and 2024 (1.150 OPS combined) and has a prototypical corner outfielder’s frame at a strapping 6-foot-3. He is very strong for a high school-aged prospect, and his swing has a classic lefty low-ball power look to it. Ko signed early enough in 2024 to get some DSL reps last year, though he was shelved for a little while with shoulder tightness. He also dealt with a shoulder tweak (the other shoulder) during 2025 spring training, which he suffered sliding back into first base. In the little bit that Ko has been seen in between the injuries, he’s struggled some with elevated velocity. He has significant hit tool risk but is an exciting power-oriented flier getting his feet wet at the bottom of the system.

Harlan entered his draft spring with hit tool question marks that he wasn’t necessarily able to put to rest playing varsity ball in Eastern PA. He was one of the 2024 Draft Combine’s most impressive performers and hit several balls 108 mph or harder during BP, one of the loudest sessions of any player there, let alone the high schoolers. He ranked 85th on the 2024 Draft Board and signed for just over $1.7 million in the third round to eschew a commitment to Clemson. As of list publication, he has been limited to backfield activity in Arizona and has yet to play an affiliated game.

Harlan has a loose, fluid right-handed stroke with big present power and room on his frame for more. He can really rotate and has natural feel for elevating contact and creating backspin. He timing in the box and feel for contact are very crude, and it wasn’t shocking for him to begin his pro career in extended spring training. Harlan is also not a lock to stay at third base. He’s a raw and relatively heavy-footed defender, and is probably only going to get bigger and slower as he matures. He has the power projection of a first baseman or left fielder, but it’s much less certain that he’ll make enough contact to profile at either spot.

Martin is an athletic, undersized five-pitch righty with a vertical low-90s fastball and a panoply of breaking balls. He’ll sit 94-95 early in outings, then settle into the 92-95 mph range throughout the bulk of his starts. Though this pitch has nearly perfect vertical shape, it lacks explosive movement and has been vulnerable to contact throughout Martin’s career. He can vary the shape of his breaking balls across a roughly 15-mph range, with an upper-70s curveball, mid-80s slider, and upper-80s cutter all playing a role in his mix. None of them are plus, but they’re all distinct in both shape and velo. The cutter and curveball induce weak contact, while the slider is Martin’s best bat-misser. He’s just about to turn 21 and looks like a spot starter.

A very athletic two-way player at St. Mary’s, Campos was a capable defensive shortstop with pretty decent contact skills, but his uncommon on-mound athleticism, lovely delivery, and arm strength made him a better prospect as a pitcher. He was up to 95 mph on the mound for the Gaels but only worked 34.2 innings during his entire college career, and he entered pro ball as a from-scratch dev project. Across the last couple of years, Campos has climbed to Tulsa as a strike-throwing starter with below-average stuff, though his slider has played like a plus pitch because of his precise command of it. He can throw strikes with a changeup and a curveball, but neither is especially nasty. In his 40-man platform year, he’s on the fringe of a contending Dodgers roster, but he’s a high-floored spot starter type of prospect.

Sanchez was the Dodgers’ most polished complex-level arm from 2024, as he posted a 5-to-1 K-to-BB ratio across 34.1 innings, second most on the team. He’s an undersized Venezuelan righty with a good changeup who sits about 93. His due north arm slot creates pure backspinning axis on his fastball, which he also commands to the top of the strike zone. His changeup generated plus miss in 2024, and his curveball’s movement mirrors that of his heater. Sanchez’s lack of size perhaps caps his ceiling because he lacks overt projection, and it could reasonably cause one to be skeptical of his durability across a starter’s load of innings, but he can really pitch and should at least be a spot or backend starter.

Yean is among the hardest throwers in pro baseball. His fastball sits 98-100 mph and will routinely touch 102. As you can imagine, that has overwhelmed hitters in the lowest levels of the minors for the past couple of years; as Yean has pitched through Low-A, he’s struck out about 40% of opponents. The 44% miss rate his fastball generated in 2024 is more than twice the big league average (21%), but Yean’s complete lack of control has caused him to walk a batter per inning for each of the past two seasons. It also leaves his heater vulnerable in the middle of the zone a little too often, and when hitters do make contact against it, they tend to do damage. Yean also has a plus-flashing slider that hovers around 90 mph, but its effectiveness is harmed by its inconsistency. There’s a high-upside relief arm lurking here, but the command component of Yean’s profile needs to develop if he’s going to be trusted in late-game situations.

Makarewich experienced a velo spike pretty soon after turning pro. Synergy had him averaging 93 mph during his junior year at Northwestern State, but he was 96-98 during instructs the following fall and has been in that range and touching 100 ever since. Mak’s breaking ball also added nearly five ticks of velocity and was suddenly a plus curveball in the 84-88 mph range. Makarewich struggled with walks in college and continues to do so today. He’s as much a threat to airmail one to the backstop as he is to paint the black with either of his pitches. He walked more than a batter per inning in 2024 and isn’t doing much better to start in 2025. His stuff will likely allow him to pitch in the big leagues, but Makarewich’s control needs to progress if he’s going to be relied upon in a regular role. Until then, he has an up/down look.

Vasquez signed with Minnesota at the tail end of the 2022 signing period (December 13) for $120,000, and he spent both 2023 and 2024 in the DSL. After walking more than a batter per inning in his debut season, Vasquez had a much better second campaign, as he worked two to four innings at a time as both a starter and reliever, amassing 30.2 innings, 45 strikeouts and a much more tenable 15 walks. Despite his strike-throwing improvement, Vasquez is still most likely going to be a reliever. He’s a physical, 220-ish pound 20-year-old who has had trouble harnessing his 94-97 mph fastball, which sometimes has very heavy late sink. His 84-88 mph slider is curt and cuttery at times, but it flashes bat-missing two-plane shape and above-average length. Vasquez’s realistic ceiling is better than a generic middle reliever, but he’s maybe a half decade away from the bigs. He’s currently working out as a starter in extended spring training and was working in the mid-90s in his outing earlier this week.

Munoz has pretty exciting barrel feel and can move the bat all over the strike zone, but he didn’t hit for much power (.342 SLG in 2024) at Rancho last year and is back there to start 2025. The good news is that Munoz is only 20 and is still a projectable 6-foot-2. He probably won’t grow into impact power, but he should develop enough to be an above-replacement hitter. Experimentation with Munoz in center field appears to be over, and he has only played left field so far in 2025. Ideally he’d be able to incorporate first base into his portfolio, as versatility would make him easier to roster. He’s tracking like a fringe 40-man candidate whose ceiling will be dictated by how much stronger Munoz can become.

The quality of Kopp’s stuff and control is wildly inconsistent from outing to outing, and he’s walked at least 14% of opposing hitters since entering full season ball in 2022. It’s very difficult to envision him ever being trusted in high-leverage spots, but Kopp’s stuff has always been able to miss bats, even when he isn’t operating at peak velocities. His size and vertical attack give his fastball tough-to-square angle. He rips it past hitters in the upper half of the zone, while Kopp’s 87 mph slider plays best beneath it. It’s a pretty typical middle-inning pitch mix hindered by Kopp’s stagnant feel for location.

Crowell blew out during his draft year at Florida State in 2023 and seemed like a candidate for a post-rehab velo spike. The Dodgers took him in the fourth round and he made his pro debut in 2024 as a starter, working his way from the complex to High-A across 17 outings during the back half of the season. He’s a low-slot lefty with a 92-94 mph fastball and a big-wiping slider, but his feel for location is well below average. He’s a potential lefty specialist type of reliever.

A Toronto-area high schooler, Wepf spent two years at a community college in Kansas prior to the pandemic season, after which he pitched for the Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks until he was an undrafted senior sign in 2022. In his first two pro seasons, Wepf climbed to Double-A striking out a little more than a batter per inning. He’s back in Tulsa at the beginning of his 40-man platform year. Wepf’s command will likely dictate whether or not he earns a roster spot throughout the season. His size and the elaborate nature of his delivery make it difficult for him to repeat his release, but it also makes Wepf deceptive and tough for hitters to time. His downhill mid-90s fastball will touch 99 and generated a miss rate north of 30% last year. Wepf’s cutter/slider is pretty average. His splitter will flash better than that, but it’s still a tertiary option in his repertoire. It at least gives him something else to show lefties in a low-leverage, up/down role.

Tabeling began his college career at Wright State and ended it at Illinois. He was an undrafted senior sign who was sitting 92-93 at instructs last fall, paired with an 82-83 mph slider. This spring, he’s touching 100 and his four-seamer is averaging 96 at Rancho, while his slider is sitting 88. He’ll flash the occasional plus curveball and slider, but as you can imagine, Tabeling doesn’t yet have great feel for locating his newfound stuff. He’s a sleeper relief prospect.