For the third consecutive offseason, Justin Turner has signed to play for a new team. This time, he is heading to the north side of Chicago, after he and the Cubs agreed to a one-year deal worth $6 million earlier this week. Turner, who turned 40 in November, will likely split time at DH and 1B. The reason to add Turner at this stage in his career is straight forward: He can still hit at an above league average clip.

Considering Turner is entering his 17th major league season, you likely already know a lot about his game. His whiff and strikeout rates have stayed in the upper quartile even as he has aged, he doesn’t chase much, and has a great feel for spraying the ball to all fields. It’s the exact group of traits that a hitter without much explosiveness needs to survive this many years. Here is a quick reminder of his performance over the last handful of years to put into perspective where he is at right now:

There is no doubt his contact quality has dipped. That’s likely a function of his bottom decile bat speed. But along with that has come improved whiff rates. This compensation represents a new version of how Turner has been successful with his current physical attributes. It’s a benefit to any team to plug in this type of hitter, especially because he is productive and essentially platoon neutral.

To be frank, though, I don’t think a full on, comprehensive analysis of Turner’s offensive game is completely needed at this point. We’ve seen what he can do and have a good idea what type of hitter he is now. Instead, I want to use this time to highlight what I think is the most impressive part of Turner’s game, the part that makes me enthusiastic to watch him in the twilight of his career: His ability to hit sinkers. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s common for 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, my “Picks to Click,” the gut-feel guys I think can make the 2026 Top 100.

This is the eighth 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, I can’t pick players who I’ve picked in prior years, though I can take players who other writers selected and I didn’t. For instance, I picked Jackson Baumeister last year, but he didn’t make the Top 100. I can’t select him again, but I would if I could. Brailer Guerrero made the Top 100 in the middle of last season, and then hurt his shoulder for the second time in two years and fell off. I can’t put him on here, no matter how much I like him. Read the rest of this entry »

The first deadline of the 2025 season has come and gone: February 17, the last day Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was open to signing an extension with the Blue Jays before he hits free agency this coming winter. While both Guerrero and Toronto GM Ross Atkins remain interested in continuing their partnership, it does not appear that the two sides were close to a deal. Guerrero has his price, and the Jays didn’t meet it. No hard feelings; we’ll talk again in November.

It seems like just last week that Guerrero brought his bonkers power and elite hit tool up to the majors, but time flies. Should Guerrero choose to play elsewhere next season, losing him would be a definitive moment in Blue Jays history. Not just because of his star power and the hype that accompanied him since he first signed with the team as an amateur free agent, but because he’s Toronto’s best player by far. Read the rest of this entry »

As we’ve seen with the FanGraphs Depth Charts and ATC, averaging projections from multiple systems is a common approach for improved accuracy when forecasting performance for the current season. This article applies the same “wisdom of the experts” aggregation logic to combine peak projections from various systems — in this case, ZiPS, Clay Davenport’s projections, and OOPSY — to build a consensus top hitting prospects list.

Overview

Earlier this offseason, I published OOPSY’s top hitting prospects by peak projected major league wRC+. You can check out the article for a detailed explanation of the methodology, but the short version is that peak projected wRC+ is essentially a 2025 projection, except with extra aging added to it in order to forecast how good each prospect will be at their (late-20s) peak. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a player who signed an extension (Geraldo Perdomo), a player who didn’t sign an extension (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), a player who’s switching positions (Mike Trout), and a player who’s not switching positions, at least for now (Rafael Devers), plus an update on Meg’s updated beliefs about Shohei Ohtani’s dog. Then (48:42) they talk to Eric Longenhagen about FanGraphs’ top 100 (well, 102) prospects list and much more.

Audio intro: Daniel Leckie, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively Wild Theme (Horny)”
Audio outro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to FG post on Perdomo
Link to MLBTR on Vladito
Link to MLBTR on Trout
Link to MLBTR on Devers
Link to MLBTR on Stroman
Link to Ohtani/Decoy photo
Link to Eric’s top 100 list
Link to Dan’s top 100 list
Link to Alfaro story
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Geraldo Perdomo is not leaving Arizona any time soon. On Monday night, Mike Rodriguez reported that the Diamondbacks and their switch-hitting shortstop had agreed to a contract extension, which is for four years and $45 million, includes a club option for a fifth season, and starts in 2026, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. The 25-year-old Perdomo has just over three years of big league service time, so the deal will buy out his final two arbitration seasons and at least the first two years after he would’ve reached free agency. Perdomo was an All-Star in 2023, and he put up 2.0 WAR in 2024 despite an April knee injury that limited him to 98 games. He’s now set to spend the entirety of his 20s providing the Diamondbacks with a throwback blend of solid shortstop defense and an absolute refusal to swing the bat.

Perdomo got a cup of coffee in 2021 and played his first full season in 2022, running a 59 wRC+ that limited him to just 0.3 WAR. In 2023, he earned an All-Star nod on the back of a torrid, BABIP-fueled start that saw him with a 200 wRC+ on May 3. He quickly came back to earth, but ended up running a 117 wRC+ in the first half and a 74 wRC+ in the second half, for an overall mark of 98 and 2.3 WAR. Perdomo missed just over two months due to a torn meniscus in 2024, but he put up a 101 wRC+ and his second straight two-win season. Essentially, he’s been a bit better than league average for two seasons now, and that was enough to convince Arizona to lock him down for the entirety of his prime. Perdomo and the Diamondbacks had already avoided arbitration by agreeing on a $2.55 million salary for 2025, and the new deal will add a $5 million signing bonus to that. He’ll receive a $5 million salary in 2026, then $8 million in 2027, $11 million in 2028, and $13 million in 2029. The Diamondbacks also have a $15 million club option for 2030, with a $3 million buyout should they choose not to exercise it. There are also incentives for a top-10 finish in the MVP voting.

That’s a pretty big commitment, even bigger when you consider the fact that the Diamondbacks have shortstop Jordan Lawlar, whom Eric Longenhagen just ranked our 14th overall prospect. Let’s talk about why the Diamondbacks feel Perdomo is worth extending, even if it means blocking the best prospect in their system.

Personally, I think Perdomo is one of the most fascinating players in the game. He came up as a glove-first shortstop prospect, and he certainly looks the part, but the advanced defensive metrics have been split on his performance for his entire career.

For his first two seasons, DRS thought he was costing the Diamondbacks runs. Then in 2024, the season when he missed time due to a major leg injury, it thought he was one of the best shortstops in baseball. Statcast has pretty much seen him as neutral throughout his three-year career, while DRP thinks he’s been great with the exception of 2023. Clearly, though, the Diamondbacks believe in his defense.

On offense, Perdomo is just plain weird. I know I summarized his overall offensive performance earlier, and those numbers are pretty standard – he’s been right around league average for two straight seasons – but it’s important to understand how he got to those numbers. For starters, Perdomo cannot stop bunting. Over the past three seasons, Perdomo has laid down 66 bunts, the most in baseball. His 33 sac bunts are also the most in the game; only three other players have even reached 20. His 15 bunt hits rank eighth, but among the 61 players with at least six bunt hits over that period, his 23.8% bunt hit rate ranks dead last. Even more damning, he leads baseball with 52 foul bunts. According to Baseball Savant, those fouls have cost the Diamondbacks four runs. That’s the worst number in baseball.

The bunting is genuinely a problem, but it fits perfectly with Perdomo’s overall approach at the plate, because that approach could be best summed up as “Try with all your might to avoid swinging.” Perdomo is one of the most passive players in all of baseball. Our database goes back to 2002, and since then, Perdomo’s 39.2% swing rate ranks 48th out of the 1,129 batters with at least 1,000 plate appearances. That puts him in the fifth percentile. Over the past three seasons, it’s the sixth-lowest mark in the game. Perdomo is the exact kind of player whom Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric was built to expose. In 2024, SEAGER had him in the 77th percentile in terms of selectivity, but it put him in the second percentile in terms of taking hittable pitches. In other words, Perdomo’s unwillingness to swing at strikes is way more extreme than his ability to lay off balls.

Keep in mind that SEAGER was meant to assess a player’s ability to do damage, and, well, that’s just not Perdomo’s game. He runs some of the lowest contact quality numbers in baseball. However, he makes tons of contact. Not only that, but over the past two seasons, he’s run a foul rate of nearly 43%, one of the higher marks in the game. It’s nearly impossible to get him to swing and miss, even when he swings and doesn’t put the ball in play. So even though pitchers attack the zone like crazy, he runs excellent walk and strikeout rates. If I’m making it sound like every single part of Perdomo’s game is at one extreme or another, well, yeah, that’s pretty much how it is. His Baseball Savant sliders are either bright red or bright blue. He’s all patience, no power. He’s the rare player who runs an incredible squared-up rate but an unimpressive line drive rate. Because Perdomo puts tons of balls in play, he’ll always have the chance at posting a great BABIP and putting up a three- or four-win season, but unless he decides to try attacking the ball, there’s not much ceiling here.

I am so, so curious to see what it would look like if Perdomo were to start attacking the ball. He’s still young, and I really do think it’s possible that he has the capacity to be more than an average hitter. I’m sure the Diamondbacks remember clearly how well it worked out when he was pulling everything in sight at the beginning of the 2023 season, and maybe they’ll try to help him become that player again. Still, I don’t think we should expect that going forward. I think the Diamondbacks are paying for floor rather than ceiling. However he gets there, if Perdomo keeps performing like a two-win player, the contract will work out well for both sides. If he can remain a solid defender and a league-average bat, he’s a really useful player, even if he pushes Lawlar to third base. In the meantime, we all get to enjoy watching Perdomo live at the extremes in order to perform right at the mean.

There’s one thing that unites almost all great center fielders: They end their careers somewhere else. Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, and Ken Griffey Jr. combined for zero defensive innings in center field in their last major league seasons. Even Willie Mays, the greatest of all time, who played 25% more innings at the position than anyone else, made 11 of his last 12 regular-season starts at first base. Maybe that’s how he knew it was time to retire.

So anyone with an iota of sense knew this was coming someday for Mike Trout. It’s been obvious since he arrived in the majors as a callow but wide teenager, looking more like Mike Alstott than Mike Cameron. And anyone who didn’t see the signs then surely got the hint as the injuries started to pile up. Trout last played more than 140 games in a season in 2016, last qualified for the batting title in 2020, and has missed an average of 96 games a season since 2021.

The Millville Meteor told reporters Monday that he’d recently met with GM Perry Minasian and manager Ron Washington to discuss — to borrow an idiom from basketball — load management. It would’ve been irresponsible not to. Read the rest of this entry »

The first baseball cap I remember buying was a gorgeous Orioles throwback. I’m not sure what exactly drew me to it. Maybe it was my mom’s lifelong Orioles fandom. Maybe it had to do with the crisp colors. Maybe I’d just listened to noted ornithological transporter Jay-Z on the drive to West Town Mall. “Before Mitchel and Ness did it/I was moving birds like an Oriole fitted/I’m Cal Ripken Jr., let’s get it” always got me excited to watch some baseball. Whatever the reason was, though, that hat called out to me, so I paid an exorbitant price for something I ended up not wearing very frequently.

I’m telling you this story for a few reasons. First, I want to establish my bona fides as someone who has always had a soft spot for the O’s. Second, I get to show my age a bit — I was in high school when The Blueprint 2 came out. Third, who doesn’t like telling stories? But the main reason is that ledes are hard to write, and I want to talk about the O’s today. To quote Jay-Z: Let’s get it.

A recent Ken Rosenthal article had me double-checking payroll lists and salary tables. The Orioles – the Orioles!! – were listed as the team who increased its payroll by the most from 2024 to 2025. I looked at that for a little bit, looked at the data to confirm that the never-errant Rosenthal had, in fact, not erred, and then I let out a long puzzled sigh. It’s true! The O’s have opened the purse strings this winter. There are a few ways to calculate payroll, but based on the yearly expenditures listed in RosterResource, here are the top five payroll increases across the majors:

Read the rest of this entry »

The team that lost 121 games last season has a strong farm system. Revitalized by a major trade, an especially-promising 2024 fifth-overall draft pick, and the emergence of a 6-foot-9 southpaw, the Chicago White Sox boast one of baseball’s best prospect pipelines. Six of the organization’s young hopefuls are ranked among our new Top 100 list: left-handed pitchers Noah Schultz (18th) and Hagen Smith (22nd), catcher Kyle Teel (49th), shortstop Colson Montgomery (58th), catcher Edgar Quero (90th), and right-handed pitcher Grant Taylor (94th).

As White Sox director of player development, Paul Janish plays a key role in the club’s efforts to produce big league talent. Hired into his current position in November 2023, the 42-year-old Janish spent nine seasons as a major league infielder, from 2008-2017.

Janish discussed some of the organization’s philosophies and several of its top prospects earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: How has player development changed since your playing days?

Paul Janis: “I think the best way to synopsize that is resources. There are more hands on deck. There is also more technology involved versus the kind of old-school eye test, if you will. At the end of the day, you’re still trying to help make players better, it’s just that player development systems are more robust now than they’ve ever been. When I was playing — even though, relatively speaking, it wasn’t all that long ago — there weren’t as many resources as our guys have.

“Ancillary to the actual player development system, there is what the guys have access to in terms of private facilities during the offseason. That’s a benefit to them, as well.”

Laurila: What are some of the things you’ve learned since moving into your role? Read the rest of this entry »

For the 10th time in 11 years (there was no 2019 list), we’ve reached the point in the winter where I oil up the gears, fill the tank with kerosene, and fire up the computer to run the ZiPS Top 100 Prospects list. In case this is the first time you’ve ever encountered ZiPS, it’s a computer projection system that uses a whole lot of algorithms (and a depressing amount of linear algebra) to arrive at a forecast of how players will perform in the future and, according to some, to express my personal disdain for your favorite team — and, sometimes, my favorite team!

ZiPS prospect projections are not designed to replace traditional scouting. These should be thought of as a supplement to scouting lists, my best attempt to harness all the data that is available to get a numbers-based understanding of how good a prospect is. There’s a lot of uncertainty in lower-level minor league stats that isn’t present at the upper levels. As such, non-statistical information about players takes on added value. ZiPS doesn’t seek to be the one-ring-to-bind-them-all-unified-field-theory-giant-Katamari-Damacy-ball of prognostication; it aims to give the very best data-generated predictions possible, for people to use, ignore, mock, or worship according to their personal tastes.

How does it work? Let’s dial back a decade and see how the 2015 list fared:

Ninety-five of the 100 players here made the majors, and all told, 71 currently have a positive career WAR total. Comparing ZiPS to the other major prospect lists, the system gave the best rank to Francisco Lindor, Aaron Judge, Trea Turner, J.T. Realmuto, Rafael Devers, Brandon Nimmo, and Trevor Story, among others. But it also gave the best rank to Franklin Barreto, Aaron Blair, José Rondón, Rosell Herrera, Alen Hanson, and Andrew Susac, a considerably less impressive group! The top 100 have combined for 959.7 WAR in the majors, with the top 50 responsible for 656.7 WAR.

OK, that’s enough of an intro — let’s get into this year’s Top 100:

ZiPS tends to be higher on high-floor/low-ceiling prospects than scouts are, but I’ve minimized that tendency in recent years by using the average of the 80th and 20th percentile projections, resulting in Triple-A players who are projected to be safe, middling role players, but who don’t have big upside, ranking lower on the list. Michael McGreevy is an example of how this change affects the rankings; by projected career WAR, he ranks 59th, but the 80th/20th percentile methodology drops him to 108th.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of agreement between the ZiPS and the FanGraphs Top 100 lists, with 63 players appearing on both lists (this includes River Ryan and Ricky Tiedemann, who ranked 101st and 102nd on Eric’s list, but were both 50 FV prospects). That’s a little below the historical average of 65, but doesn’t constitute a drastic divergence. There are always going to be a handful of players who ZiPS doesn’t consider at all, such as Jesus Made, who has only played in the Dominican Summer League. And while ZiPS will use college stats when it has to, as it did with Chase Burns, college pitchers take a pretty big hit due to the lousiness of college translations; it was enough to knock Burns out of the ZiPS Top 100 when he’s obviously a top prospect.

From a team standpoint, here’s how many prospects each club has among the top 50, 100, 200, and 500 prospects. I’ve highlighted the leaders in each category:

Like last year, the Cubs are once again tied for the most Top 100 prospects, joined this time by the Guardians and the White Sox. ZiPS is a fan of the Garrett Crochet haul, with both Kyle Teel and Chase Meidroth ranking in the top 50, and that’s before considering Braden Montgomery, who has yet to make his professional debut.

Looking at a big list of 100 players is a daunting task, so let’s break it down by position, and dig into the players ZiPS does or doesn’t like. We’ll start with the first basemen.

Bryce Eldridge is the highest ranked first base prospect seen in ZiPS in some time. Last year, the top-ranked first base prospect was Nolan Schanuel, all the way down at no. 57! Eldridge burst through the Giants’ system in 2024, combining for a 137 wRC+ across four levels, and he doesn’t turn 21 until this year’s playoffs. He already has a 97 wRC+ projection right now at age 20, and while ZiPS doesn’t actually assess things this way, he certainly looks like a first baseman! Not all of his comps ended up working out, but two of the top ones are Boog Powell and David Ortiz — I’m sure the Giants would be very happy with either!

ZiPS had Xavier Isaac 155th last year, which was a bit of a wait-and-see as he moved up the minor league ladder. A 143 wRC+ age-20 season that saw him reach Double-A bounced him all the way up to being just outside the top 10. Ryan Clifford and Tyler Locklear return from last year’s list, with Clifford jumping 200 places, though with the return of Pete Alonso, I suspect he’ll most likely end up playing first base for another team in the next year or two. A lot of fans are excited about Deyvison De Los Santos, but ZiPS is pumping the brakes a bit; his 26 Triple-A homers (he hit 40 on the year) came in some mighty fine hitters’ environments, leaving him with an untranslated Triple-A wRC+ just over 100.

If his power develops further, Tre’ Morgan is another player who could progress quickly, though ZiPS thinks Isaac has the more interesting upside, at least at first. Jac Caglianone is another player who could advance quickly once he has more than a month of regular season pro baseball under his belt. I also really like saying his name, though that’s not part of the rankings. Now on to second base.

The top 100 is usually short on second basemen, typically because a large percentage of the guys who end up playing second base in the majors are still shortstops at this point in their careers. After all, it doesn’t make sense to move a guy off of short until you’re really sure he’s not going to be a solution there.

A 2023 fourth-rounder out of Georgia Tech, Kristian Campbell blew up in a good way in 2024, crushing it in the minors and already projecting as a good starter. ZiPS doesn’t think his ceiling is as high as some of the guys who rank ahead of him on the Top 100, but he’s a pretty low-risk prospect. I’m kind of curious where the position shift leaves Campbell. He’s definitely a player I’d bring up in trade talks with the Red Sox, but he’s not an under-the-radar guy, so they’re not going to give him away.

Travis Bazzana ranks high here on the strength of a decent debut and a .911 slugging percentage his last year at Oregon State. Termarr Johnson and Orelvis Martinez basically hold their ranks from last year, with performing about as expected in 2024. Of course, Martinez was suspended 80 games for PEDs, but I haven’t found PED suspensions to be useful in making projections more accurate, so ZiPS isn’t concerned about that. ZiPS thinks Michael Arroyo’s combination of power and speed could make him a decent role player right now, though it has him as a slightly below-average defensive player at second. As you’ll see when you scroll down to the shortstops, he’s not the only Mariners infielder who ZiPS likes much better than the consensus this year.

Will Wagner cracked the Top 100, though he is unlikely to be used at second this season. He got Edgar Martinez as a top comp at a similar stage of his career, but as I said in the ZiPS projections for the Blue Jays, don’t get too excited; Edgar Martinez was a Ken Phelps All-Star and projected to be a solid hitter, but he didn’t become ALL CAPS EDGAR until later. To the shortstops!

ZiPS uses a probability-based coordinate method for estimating minor league defensive performance, and it thought Carson Williams was absolute dynamite in 2024. Given that ZiPS also thinks that Williams can contribute offensively right now (104 wRC+ projection) and is a candidate to steal 20 bases (and he’s just 21), it isn’t surprising to see him rank ahead of every prospect on the list who hasn’t honed his craft in NPB. If Jackson Holliday were still considered a prospect, Williams would still have ranked higher.

ZiPS already liked Cole Young a lot last year, ranking him 17th overall, and him hitting .271/.369/.390 at Double-A in his age-20 season did nothing to lessen its affection. He’s not projected in the same realm as Williams or Jordan Lawlar on defense, but he projects to at least be somewhere near average, and the computer doesn’t think he needs to be moved off shortstop. Lawlar returns to this list, though he drops in the rankings due to the time he missed with a hamstring injury. Still, if you liked him before 2024, you should still like him now.

Leodalis De Vries was one of the players ZiPS couldn’t really consider last year, but he played about as well as you can expect a 17-year-old to manage, and the Padres think he’s advanced enough to spend time in major league camp this spring. ZiPS isn’t enthused by Aidan Miller’s defense, but it is excited by his power/speed potential, so he debuts on this list. Cooper Pratt is likely the biggest surprise on this list, with ZiPS thinking he has significant offensive upside. The computer also views him as an above-average defender at shortstop, though I’m not sure scouts would share that opinion.

The projections see Chase Meidroth as a below-average shortstop defender, but he’s already hit at Triple-A, which raises his floor considerably, and he’ll get plenty of opportunities in Chicago unless the White Sox do something bone-headed, which is always a possibility one has to consider. Colson Montgomery is far more likely to stick at the position, and I’m actually a little surprised that ZiPS didn’t really ding him for his rather meh 2024. Trey Sweeney just missed the Top 100, but Kevin McGonigle made it, though there’s some risk here in that he gets a lot of his offensive value from drawing walks, which isn’t necessarily what you want to see from a prospect. Every time I hear his name, I think of this clip. Next, let’s pivot to the hot corner.

Coby Mayo keeps hitting — though not in his very limited cup of coffee — and ZiPS still doesn’t share the worries about him as a third base defender that everyone else in the baseball world appears to have, so he maintains a very high ranking here. Matt Shaw is a big gainer from last year’s list (when he was still ranked as a shortstop); ZiPS likes him enough that it though that the Cubs were one of the teams with the least to gain by signing Alex Bregman. Jace Jung’s path to playing time got a whole lot clearer this week after the Tigers failed to land Bregman, and though Brady House doesn’t have a very good 2025 projection, ZiPS sees him as having big power upside and an above-average glove.

ZiPS is less keen on Brayden Taylor’s offense, but saw him as one of the best defensive third basemen in the minors, along with Ben Williamson, Kyle Karros, and Gage Workman. The glove is also what gets Williamson up to no. 120 in the rankings. Bryan Ramos makes this list for the umpteenth straight season, but ZiPS gets a little less enthusiastic about him each time. Eric Bitonti might be the most “out there” candidate on this list, mainly because “out there” is where he might hit a lot of baseballs. ZiPS also thinks he’s a pretty awful third baseman, which dampens the excitement a bit. He could very well show up on this list as a top first base prospect in the next few years. Now, the catchers!

If Samuel Basallo is ready for the majors and forces the Orioles to figure out what to do with him and Adley Rutschman on the roster, well, that’s a pretty nice headache to have. He’d nudge out Carson Williams in the overall rankings if not for the fact that young catchers tend to have strange development patterns, and some of them just go splat out of nowhere, even the elite prospects. The White Sox have other options at catcher, but it’s in their best interest to give Kyle Teel as much of an opportunity to shove aside the competition as they can.

Ethan Salas is a terrific prospect, and along with De Vries, he’s someone the Padres really need to work out when they’re paying Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts $64 million a year for not a lot of WAR four years from now. He projects very well defensively, but the biggest risk here is age: There’s a lot that can happen to an 18-year-old catcher between the low minors and the majors. ZiPS doesn’t worry at all about his rather mediocre offensive performance at High-A, simply because he was an 18-year-old.

The Tigers traded Jack Flaherty for Trey Sweeney and Thayron Liranzo, made the playoffs without Flaherty, and then got Flaherty back, making that trade the Platonic ideal of eating your cake and having it, too. It’s an open question whether Liranzo will stick at catcher — 92 stolen bases allowed in 57 games last year is quite a lot — but he may not need to if his bat continues to develop. He could end up being Victor Martinez, which I’m sure the Tigers would be satisfied with. Last but not least among the position players, the outfielders.

I like to look at the outfielders as a group, simply because the lines between center fielder and corner outfielder aren’t quite as rigid at this point in their careers. Whether a player can at least fake center field is one of the key factors that determines how they’re used in the majors, after all.

The top chunk of outfield prospects all graduated to the majors last year, several spectacularly, so this year’s list is headed by Roman Anthony, who likely has a clearer path to immediate playing time in Boston than either Campbell or Mayer. He raked at Triple-A last year while still a 20-year-old, and frankly, even though I think Ceddanne Rafaela is an adequate option in center and the better defensive player, I think Anthony just being the starter gives the Red Sox the best chance at making the playoffs in 2025. ZiPS wanted to see more of Dylan Crews at this time last year, and it saw enough him in 2024 to move him near the front of the outfielder pack.

Which prospect does ZiPS give the highest OPS+ projection to at any point in their career? As you probably guessed, since you can read the order on the chart, the answer is Emmanuel Rodriguez. And he can play center field! Once the Twins are satisfied that his thumb is fully healed, it would be in their best interest to get him back out there on defense as quickly as possible. If you had both Byron Buxton and Rodriguez in the outfield at the same time, the Twins’ fly ball pitchers might name their firstborn children Emmanuron. Or, maybe not.

Max Clark remains on target to fill a real need for the Tigers in the outfield, and continuing its theme of falling in love with all the Cubs hitters this offseason, ZiPS ranks Owen Caissie as the best prospect to not make the FanGraphs list. Jasson Domínguez did nothing to hurt his rank in 2024, and ZiPS does not share the Yankees’ angst over whether he was a better player than Alex Verdugo. Kevin Alcántara ranked as one of the best defensive center fielders in the minors in 2024, though ZiPS isn’t as bullish about his bat — yet. Finally, we close with the pitchers.

Roki Sasaki doesn’t have his official ZiPS projection in the system yet — hopefully I’ve changed that by the time you’re reading this — but I can assure you, it’s real and it’s spectacular. He’s already succeeded at a higher level of play than any other pitching prospect, and though he’s not quite as “finished” a pitcher as Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Shota Imanaga were at this time last year, there’s no particular reason to worry about him. That is, except for health, but what pitcher doesn’t have that question mark lurking in the shadows?

Noah Schultz may still have some setbacks against Triple-A hitters, but so far is so good for the White Sox prospect, and if he doesn’t push his way into that rotation quickly, something’s gone horribly wrong. Something did go horribly wrong for Andrew Painter, but he was so excellent before missing two years with injury that ZiPS is giving him quite a lot of leeway, ranking him as the third-best pitching prospect even with big projection hits from the lost seasons.

Caden Dana gets a rather ho-hum 2025 projection, but ZiPS likes him a lot long-term, and if his walk rate this year looks more like it did in the minors in 2024, and hitters continue to have a hard time driving the ball against him, his projection ought to shoot up very quickly. ZiPS didn’t give Bubba Chandler an aggressive projection, but as I noted when responding to outraged Yinzers, Chandler has good long-term projections and upside, as evidenced by his ranking here. Jackson Jobe moved up as expected compared to last year, and Carson Whisenhunt is one less walk per game from being an elite prospect, at least as ZiPS sees it; it already likes him better long-term than last year’s San Francisco graduate, Kyle Harrison.

Tink Hence and Quinn Mathews both make the list as well, and as advanced prospects, they carry somewhat less risk than most pitchers. Interestingly enough, ZiPS actually slightly prefers McGreevy when talking just about 2025. Tekeah Roby, like McGreevy, didn’t miss the list by much (no. 119), so hopefully in what looks like a rather unambitious season for the Cardinals, they can at least answer a few questions about their future rotation.

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