Philadelphia Phillies Top 30 Prospects

Painter ended 2022 as one of the best two or three pitching prospects in baseball. He overpowered hitters with his fastball at the lower levels of the minors, but by the end of the year, he was carving up Double-A and looked like a fully-formed, four-pitch monster. He entered the spring of 2023 with a legitimate shot to break camp in the Phillies rotation, like a pitching version of Fernando Tatis Jr. from a few years earlier. Instead, Painter’s elbow barked and he was shut down with a partial UCL tear after his first Grapefruit League outing. Painter and the Phillies, who rightly believed they’d be contenders, opted for a plasma-rich platelet injection rather than immediate surgery, in the hopes that the right-hander would be able to pitch at the end of the season and possibly into October. But Painter’s elbow didn’t heal completely from the PRP and rest, and he needed Tommy John toward the end of July. The timing of the surgery meant his rehab lasted through the entire 2024 regular season, in essence costing Painter two whole years. He was sent to the Arizona Fall League, where he again looked excellent. In six outings, Painter pitched 15.2 innings, struck out 18, and allowed 14 baserunners, usually sitting 94-98 while touching 100 and flashing the same plus slider and curveball combo that made him lethal in 2022.

Good luck getting on top of Painter’s fastball when he locates it at the top of the zone. Even though he’s so big and his pitches travel downhill toward the imaginary rectangle, it has still been hard for hitters to snatch his high fastballs, similar to the way Justin Verlander’s fastball plays despite his size and release height. Both of Painter’s breaking balls have huge movement but are still a bit of a work-in-progress in terms of their usage. Painter is much more comfortable locating his breaking balls in the zone rather than as chase pitches. His slider has two-plane sweep and tended to be in the 86-90 mph range in Arizona, while his curveball is more north/south and sits 82-85 mph. Perfecting his slider locations is one key to Painter maxing out; the other is finding a weapon to thwart lefties. He can pitch backwards off his curveball and finish them with high fastballs, but Painter would do well to either find more consistent curveball finish below the zone, or a better changeup, to do so. He began incorporating more changeups into his mix later in his AFL run. The pitch was 7% of Painter’s usage late in 2022 after he had been promoted to Reading, and he will show you a really good one every fourth try or so. He’s loose enough to project this pitch as being a fourth above-average weapon down the line.

Phillies POBO Dave Dombrowski told reporters in December that Painter’s 2025 season will start on a delay. In order to backload his innings for the middle and end of the season, he’s on track to pitch in competitive games “July-ish.” Independent of his initial innings cap, Painter is one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. He extends the shelf life of an already stacked Phillies rotation deep into the future.

Miller had a monster first full season, as he slashed .261/.366/.446 across both A-ball levels and got a shot of espresso at Reading to cap the year. Pre-draft fretting over Miller’s age relative to his high school peers has evaporated with the pace of his promotion. His explosive hands have lovely lift out in front of the plate, and he adjusts them nicely to breaking stuff. Miller can still roast ’em even when his weight shifts early and his hands are responsible for doing all the damage. Because his hands fire late and take a path that creates scoop and lift, Miller will probably always be vulnerable to fastballs running up around his hands. But he’s so dangerous throughout the rest of the zone that his production isn’t likely to bottom out because of this issue.

Defensively, the Phillies have only ever deployed Miller at shortstop. His exchange is a little slow when operating around the bag, and Miller lacks the prototypical, from-the-hole arm strength of a good shortstop, but that’s also true of Trea Turner. Miller tends to start deeper toward the hole so he can make the lion’s share of his plays moving right to left as a way of masking this issue. It isn’t ideal, and I had Miller projected to third base both when he was an amateur and last list cycle, but based on how the Phillies have operated, I have him projected as a below-average shortstop now. Be he a passable shortstop or an average third baseman, Miller’s bat is going to enable him to be a damn good everyday player and maybe make a couple All-Star teams. He has a shot to kick down the door and debut in mid-to-late 2025.

Chace has a high-octane arm and checks a bunch of different data and scouting boxes. He has a very athletic drop-and-drive delivery, his arm action breaks the sound barrier, and his heater has exploding life to the eye to go with mid-90s velocity. The data corroborates this: plus extension, low release height, plus vertical movement on his fastball. When Chace is locating his fastball to the belt, hitters have no chance against him. He looks like Bryce Miller did at roughly the same stage, a fastball-heavy 21-year-old of medium build. There is going to be a dominant fastball here, and there are flashes of good secondary stuff that ideally can be polished so Chace can max out, but like Joe Ryan and Miller, when guys have fastballs this good, they tend to pan out.

Chace’s slider flashes late, hitter-freezing, two-plane bend, but it doesn’t do so consistently. His changeup has, at times, ridiculous tailing action and can steal strikes running back over the glove-side corner of the plate, but again this is rare. His release is pretty inconsistent generally, which is totally normal for a 21-year-old with this kind of arm speed, but also creates some relief risk. The Phillies could pull the ripcord with this guy whenever they want and put him in the big league bullpen, and he’d probably be really good right away. Building his innings count by 20 frames or so (he threw 80.1 innings in 2024) in his first option year would tee up Chace to work something closer to a viable starter’s workload in 2026. Either way, unless his command regresses to 2022-23 levels, Chace’s fastball is going to carry him to an important big league role of some kind within the next two to three years.

Cabrera took a huge step forward as a strike-thrower in 2023 and cut his walk rate in half compared to the year before. In 2024, he reinforced the notion that these improvements were real with a 7.4% walk rate and 3.39 FIP across 106.2 innings, culminating in a month at Reading. A lanky and athletic young righty with mid-90s arm strength and burgeoning changeup feel, Cabrera works in an even mix of his four pitches. He has distinct four- and two-seam fastballs (the way his sinker’s movement interacts with his vertical arm slot seems to flummox hitters), and throws a ton of his firm, upper-80s one-seam sinker-style changeups in basically any count. He is definitely a control-over-command type of pitcher whose direct line to the plate allows him to throw plenty of strikes, though often without precision. This caps the effectiveness of Cabrera’s slider, which tends to live on the plate rather than just off of it. There still isn’t a plus pitch here, but the changeup is tracking like it will be one soon. After Cabrera was written up as a frame- and delivery-based sleeper on lists past, it’s very exciting that he’s made significant improvements in a couple of key areas and earned a 40-man spot. He now looks like a sinker-oriented no. 4/5 starter.

Tait (pronounced with two syllables, Tah-eet) was part of Panama’s U18 World Cup team in the fall of 2022, only about six weeks after he turned 16. He signed with the Phillies the following January and was the youngest player in the organization throughout the 2023 season, during which he hit an amazing .333/.400/.517 in the DSL. Tait followed that up with a .302/.356/.486 line in 2024, split between the complex and Clearwater, and turned 18 near the end of the season.

Tait swings with bad intentions, selling out for pull power with enormous effort. He already has average big league raw power, which is very exciting for a hitter his age, even more so when you consider he’s a lefty-hitting catcher. He’s performed well in spite of a semi-concerning lack of plate discipline. In addition to his indulgent, expansive approach, Tait can struggle to get on top of fastballs up and away from him. He’s likely to have a flawed offensive skill set exposed as he climbs the minors, but so long as Tait keeps getting to power and developing behind the dish, that’s going to be okay. His leap from his first pro season to his second was encouraging in this regard. Tait is still not a good defender, but he’s much better than the year before. He has good raw arm strength but takes too long to exit his crouch, and his ball-blocking needs to take better advantage of his size instead of relying on his hands all the time. It’s not a bad spot for a teenage catcher to be. Tait’s talent and FV grade are on par with a mid-to-late first round high school draft prospect. Like all teenage catchers, he’s risky and likely to take a while to develop.

Escobar is a burly, versatile infield prospect with a contact-driven profile and (in a small sample) measurable power that suggests he has a shot to break out in profound way in 2025.

Escobar has been brought along a little more slowly than is typical for someone as physically mature as he is. He’s listed at 180 pounds, but is probably closer to 215 and would be at home in an SEC football team’s locker room. He probably would have been promoted to Clearwater at some point in 2024 had he not been shut down with shin splints in early-June. Escobar slashed a BABIP-aided .338/.495/.481 during that span, but his underlying data is eye-popping; he had an 80% contact rate and 48% hard-hit rate. Those are the contact stats of an everyday player, but 104 plate appearances isn’t enough to be confident that Escobar’s true talent is on that level. He has a multi-year track record when it comes to the contact component, but the power aspect is new. That said, Escobar has lively hitting hands that are short and direct to the ball, making him very difficult to beat in the strike zone. He lacks anything close to typical projection for a 20-year-old hitter because he’s already so muscular, but unlike a lot of bulky athletes, he’s a loose and explosive rotator in his hips.

After Aidan Miller and Eduardo Tait, it’s Escobar who has the best chance to develop an everyday player’s offensive skill set. It’s harder to nail down his defensive forecast. Escobar’s mobility may have been altered by his injury, and the presence of Starlyn Caba on the complex relegated him to second and third base. Getting a better feel for Escobar’s defensive ability and long-term fit will be a big part of his 2025 season, which hopefully begins in full-season ball and will include a mid-season promotion to Lakewood if he keeps hitting like this.

Mercado entered pro ball as a high-profile high schooler with a good curveball, coaxed away from Stanford with a $2 million bonus. He developed a meaningfully good cutter in 2022 and was largely deployed as a starter until 2023, when the Rays tried him in the bullpen and Mercado’s bat-missing ability took off. Crowded out by Tampa’s depth, Mercado was then traded to the Phillies ahead of the 2023 roster deadline and was added to their 40-man.

Philly used Mercado as a swingman last year. He was in and out of the Iron Pigs rotation early, made a couple big league spot starts, and then was deployed in short relief at the very end of the year. Late in the season, Mercado’s seldom-used changeup took an enormous step forward. Once the calendar turned to August, it quickly became Mercado’s most-used secondary pitch, and it performed like a plus-plus offering during the last month of play. One in every three or four of Mercado’s changeups is really nasty, while the others aren’t in enticing locations. But he’s barely used it, so his command of it should improve, and I think it’ll be a consistently plus pitch soon. Given that his cutter and curveball are also pretty good, it’s plausible Mercado could revisit a starter role in the future now that he more clearly has the repertoire depth. But he was also routinely reaching back for 97 at the end of the year in single-inning bursts, has the tools to deal with hitters of either handedness, and seems likely to be a very successful reliever from the jump. There’s more upside here than that of just a generic middle reliever, be it via Mercado working four or more outs at a time or eventually stretching out as a starter again. He’s a sneaky candidate to be the Phils’ third or fourth best reliever this year.

Crawford has exciting physical ability, he’s a great surface-level performer who owns a career .316/.371/.442 line, and he reached and had success at Double-A during the final two months of the 2024 season. His underlying contact and power metrics are also excellent for Crawford’s age (a 87% in-zone contact and a 42% hard-hit rate, for instance). Why then is he merely a 40+ FV prospect, essentially the grade of a premium fifth outfielder? I don’t trust that Crawford’s swing will translate to big league success as it is currently constituted. His lever length, the height and depth where his hands load, and Crawford’s bat path all cause him to be late to the contact point an overwhelming majority of the time. He peppers the left field line with low-lying contact and is really only capable of pulling slower breaking balls that finish middle-in. Crawford’s groundball rate was 70% in 2023 and 61% in 2024. This century, there are only a handful of players with 900 career PA or more who hit the ball on the ground that often. Several of them were good big leaguers — Marlins great Luis Castillo was the best among them, while guys like Ben Revere and Nori Aoki were solid regulars during their peaks — but each of them was also an elite contact hitter with K rates hovering around 10%, and this is where they differ from Crawford. Not only will Crawford’s ability to slug against big league stuff (and defenses) be limited by his swing’s tendency to drive the ball into the ground, but he may have serious issues against high fastballs that simply haven’t been exposed yet by mid-minors velocity. Crawford also isn’t an especially skilled center fielder; his reads and routes aren’t great. His speed should allow him to be okay there in time, but it isn’t a value-adding aspect of his profile.

I don’t want this blurb to be an onslaught of negativity. Crawford won the Paul Owens Award last year, he has unbelievable lower body athleticism that you can see in his best swings, and his speed is exciting, as is his power, especially given his age and long-term physical projection. I’m just skeptical any of that power will actualize if this is still his swing when the cement dries. I can also see how it might be hard for Crawford and the Phillies to change things proactively when the player has had nothing but success. If additional strength arrives in Crawford’s mid-20s, and enables him to shorten up and be on time to pull the baseball more, then Crawford has the underlying strength and bat control combo to immediately break out; that’s what the “+” in 40+ is there for. Until then, there are things about Crawford’s profile that give me pause or feel suspect, both visually and statistically. He reads as the sort of player who has a comfortably sub-.100 ISO even though he hits the ball pretty hard, a speedy nine-hole hitter type without impact defense.

I considered McFarlane to be a pure relief prospect when he was at Miami, but the Phillies decided to try to develop him as a starter, and for the first two months of 2023, it looked as though they really had something. He punched out 50 hitters in his first 37 innings and worked efficiently enough to pitch into the fifth and sixth inning during several starts, a rarity for him at Miami. About halfway through the season however, the Phillies began to drastically limit the length of McFarlane’s outings, his stuff waned, and he was ultimately shut down at the end of August 2023. He had Tommy John that September, which put him out for all of 2024.

Healthy 2025 McFarlane could enjoy a Kerkering-like rise through the minors, especially if the Phillies decide to ‘pen him. When he was totally healthy early in 2023, McFarlane was sitting 98-100 mph, then backed into the 94-97 range closer to when he was shut down. His monster arm strength helps make up for his fastball’s tailing shape, created by his nearly side-arm delivery. His gyro slider induced a plus-plus 21% swinging strike rate against A-ball hitters (an important caveat) in 2023, and McFarlane also has a rare changeup that he threw fewer than 50 times before he was shut down.

There were good reasons for the Phillies to try to develop McFarlane as a starter. Miami doesn’t seem to max out their pitchers on campus, and McFarlane’s fastball featured better sink in pro ball. He also has a great pitcher’s frame and is a fabulous on-mound athlete. But now that he’s about to enter his 40-man evaluation season with so few innings under his belt, it’s much more likely McFarlane is moved quickly as a potential late-inning weapon, assuming his stuff comes back after his rehab.

Burkholder, who ranked 70th on the 2024 Draft Board, was signed away from a West Virginia commitment for $2.5 million in the second round. He’s a long-levered speedster whose swing has tended to be on time to pull the baseball even though Burkholder is a lankier guy. Per Synergy Sports, he ran a roughly 73% contact rate on the showcase circuit, which is just south of the big league average. Burkholder’s hitting hands fire a little late, but they work well; they’re snappy through contact and give him surprising pop for someone his age who is as sinewy as he is. Right now, that manifests as gap-doubles power, and there might be more thump on the way via added strength and perhaps even a tweak to his mechanics. There is currently very little happening with Burkholder’s lower body during his swing, and he could stand to have a more athletic cut and see what kind of power arrives.

Burkholder easily has the speed to play center field, but his balls skills are middling. The likelihood that Burkholder and Dante Nori, who is more obviously a center field fit, traverse the minors together will probably mean they split reps out there, with Nori taking the bigger piece of chicken. Burkholder has the foundation of a part-time outfield prospect, with more offensive upside than that if his frame and swing develop in a meaningful way.

The combination of Nori’s age (he was a high school prospect who turned 20 not long after the 2024 draft) and lack of projectability (he is built similarly to Sal Frelick) is a big part of why he wasn’t prominently featured on my 2024 pre-draft rankings. His lack of body and power projection made it imperative that he develop a special hit tool to be an impact player, and most prospects for whom that is true end up in college, where they can more solidly demonstrate such an ability. Instead, Nori became something of a surprise first round pick and signed for $2.5 million. After the draft, the Phillies appropriately sent him straight to the Florida State League, where he played center field and got 66 plate appearances, with a handful more during postseason dev activity.

Nori has some exciting catalytic qualities, namely his speed. He’s a flat 70 runner and makes some of the fastest little strides in pro baseball. Though his feel for center field is a little unpolished, Nori has the wheels to be an impact glove out there at maturity. His offense is probably going to be a little lighter than that of most everyday center fielders, who tend to have some power. Nori’s hitting hands work in such a way that it causes him to spray lots of oppo contact. He’s going to pepper the gaps and the left field line with liners, and produce extra-base hits more with his legs than his power. Perhaps Nori’s contact ability will be great enough for him to outpace this projection, but until there’s more tangible evidence of that, he looks more like an extra outfielder.

After his breakout 2023, Rincon had a rough 2024 and was either injured (a hamstring injury cost him three months) or striking out way, way more than he was the season before. He K’d at a 25% clip at Low-A and a 31.4% rate at High-A. Rincon went to the Arizona Fall League after the regular season to pick up some of the reps he lost due to the hamstring injury and continued to struggle there. He was at or under the Mendoza Line all year when he was healthy enough to play. How much of this was rust, or related to discomfort and tightness that preceded the IL stint, and how much is related to Rincon’s talent? His underlying contact rates dipped from 88% in-zone and 81% overall in 2023 to 81% in-zone and 74% overall in 2024. Rincon looked better at shortstop the further away he got from his hamstring injury, and was good there in the AFL, but the same was not true of his hitting hands, which were still a little slow and stiff. A year ago, it looked like Rincon would have the skill set of a Geraldo Perdomo type of second division regular. Now he’s looking more like a lower-impact reserve whose best skill is his plate discipline.

Abel hasn’t developed as I hoped he would when he was drafted as a prototypical prep pitcher with upper-90s arm strength and two potential plus secondary pitches. He’s posted double-digit walk rates at each minor league stop and regressed on that score in 2024, when he labored through a 15% mark at Triple-A. There are still starter components here. The arm-side action of Abel’s curveball gives it utility against lefties, and his best sliders are 87-90 mph darts. Abel’s fastball velocity still peaks in the upper-90s, but it doesn’t sustain there, and his command and lack of explosive movement cause it to play down. He also has very little feel for locating his changeup, or really any of his offerings with any consistency. These have been Abel’s issues for several years now.

Now Abel’s option clock has started and he only has so much time to polish his strike-throwing before the Phillies will be forced to put him in the bullpen, or do something else, like trade him to a franchise that has the time and opportunity to keep developing him as a starter; the “win now” Phils are less likely to have that luxury. If we can reasonably project Abel to have a velo spike with a shift to relief, then he should have the stuff to pitch toward the back of a bullpen even if he’s never able to start. That said, he probably still needs to develop another grade of command in order to be trusted in such a role.

Rincones’ father pitched briefly in the Mariners system before an injury derailed his career. His family moved to Venezuela and then later to Scotland for his dad’s new job in the oil industry. Rincones would eventually find his way to prospect factory Plant High School in Florida (the alma mater of Tuckers Preston and Kyle), where he would initially struggle to make the team before establishing himself as a junior college prospect. He then spent two seasons at St. Petersburg College before transferring to FAU, where in just one season he slashed .346/.451/.658, hit 19 homers, and elevated his stock into the third round of the draft.

Rincones, a career .250/.349/.436 pro hitter who spent the healthy chunk of his 2024 season at Reading, has missed quite a bit of time due to injury in two out of the last three years. He didn’t play pro ball after the 2022 draft because of a shoulder injury, and he missed two months of 2024 due to a torn right thumb ligament. Rincones showed no ill effects from the thumb issue when he returned. He was second in the Phillies org in hard-hit rate (53%) behind Kyle Schwarber and totaled 28 extra-base hits in 68 games. Rincones has plus left-handed power, but he struggles too much with secondary stuff to consider him a lock to be a suitable 400 PA platoon guy. Rincones’ limited amateur baseball reps and his time missed due to injuries leave room for him to improve a bit into his mid-20s, enough to be a lesser option of this sort.

Pineda is a big-framed lefty power bat with good pull-side power against middle-in pitches. He has some oppo ability against pitches middle-away, but really struggles to cover the top of the strike zone. He hit .260/.331/.413 in 2024, including a successful trial with Reading at the very end of the season. Pineda’s power isn’t monstrous; instead, it’s solidly average and projects above as his statuesque 6-foot-3 frame continues to fill out. He began playing first base in 2024 and has continued to get reps there in Venezuela this winter. He should have enough playable power and defensive versatility to merit a low-end platoon role. This is probably a slower burn player who is still a couple years away even though he’s made it to Double-A.

Johnson didn’t have great college numbers at Campbell in 2019, but his stuff was electric, and the athletic former middle infielder was new to the mound and thought to perhaps just be scratching the surface of his ability. The Rays selected him with the 40th overall pick, then watched Johnson’s stuff take a leap as he posted a strikeout rate of nearly 30% in his 2021 full-season debut. He made it just a month into 2022 before he was shut down with an elbow injury, and was later traded from Tampa Bay to Baltimore at the 2022 deadline as part of the multi-team Trey Mancini swap. Johnson had Tommy John just a few days afterward. The Orioles were willing to use a 2023 40-man spot on a rehabbing Johnson, who returned to an affiliated mound barely a year after that. Now more than two years post-surgery, his control hasn’t gotten much better. He also doesn’t have a weapon to deal with lefties, as Johnson’s best secondaries remain his usual curveball and cutter. Especially now that he’s entering his last option year, Johnson is pretty likely to be a stock middle reliever.

McGowan returned from TJ in the middle of 2023 with a revamped delivery and was able to sustain 94-96 mph sinkers across 42.2 innings between the regular season and the Arizona Fall League. In 2024, multiple IL stints limited him to 56 innings combined between the regular season and the AFL. Spotty strike-throwing and injuries funnel McGowan’s projection toward the bullpen. He sat 95-96 mph and was up to 97 in the Fall League last year, and worked with two good breaking balls, a low-90s cutter and an 84-87 mph sweeper. McGowan’s changeup lags behind those pitches. He should be a solid middle reliever.

Baker’s raw stuff is incredibly nasty, but he’s been so wild throughout his career that he was passed over in the 2024 Rule 5 Draft despite sitting 97 and bending in lots of plus-plus sliders during the season. Baker struck out a little more than 32% of opposing hitters in 2024 and spent most of the year at Reading. His incredible 83-86 mph slider generated a nearly elite 50% miss rate, but it’s often nowhere near the zone and isn’t chased very often. Baker only threw his fastball for strikes 59% of the time last year (65% is average) and is probably always going to be walk prone, but the quality of his stuff should enable him to play a low-leverage bullpen role.

Signed for $350,000 in January of 2023, Pan became the talk of that year’s minor league spring camp because he arrived throwing very hard. Pan sat 92-94 mph during amateur international competition, but during his first spring with the Phils was sitting 96-98 while topping out at 99 mph. He quickly moved to the bullpen and held the velo bump through 2024, where he missed time early in the year with a broken pinkie finger before ascending to the closer role at Jersey Shore by the end of the season. Unfortunately, Pan needed Tommy John in November, putting him on pace to pitch in this year’s Arizona Fall League like Andrew Painter did in 2024.

Pan looks like a potential higher-leverage reliever when he’s really humming. In addition to the premium velocity, he has a firm slider that averages about 85 mph and he’ll flash a plus-plus splitter. Though his slider is more consistent, Pan’s best splitters are easily his nastiest pitches. An invisible parachute pops out the back of his splits and opposing hitters flail at them helplessly. Pan should be back in 2026, his 40-man platform year, and be pushed to the upper-minors pretty aggressively to put him in position to prove he deserves a roster spot.

It’s logistically difficult for Hawaiian position player prospects to travel to the mainland for a ton of showcase activity, so it was Saltiban’s showing in the 2023 MLB Draft League and that year’s Draft Combine that first put him on FanGraphs’ radar. The Phillies gave him a little over $600,000 to sign.

I had Saltiban written up as an outfielder prior to the draft because he didn’t seem to have the hands for the infield. Given his relative lack of experience, it made sense for the Phillies to at least see if he could develop as an infielder, so he played shortstop after signing and second base in 2024. He’s still too mistake-prone to consider a viable infield prospect, but Saltiban is a plus runner and I think his best chance of playing an up-the-middle position is to deploy him in center field.

Saltiban is built like a little running back and has an exciting power/speed combo, which allowed him to hit 17 bombs in Clearwater last year, a couple of which went out to the opposite field. He has a very authoritative top hand through contact and is capable of turning on fastballs up around his hands, but he struggles to recognize sliders. Saltiban is perhaps the highest variance prospect in this system. There’s a chance he doesn’t make enough contact to be anything at all, but there’s also a chance he’s a 20-homer center fielder in spite of a ton of strikeouts. Because his position is still totally up in the air, Saltiban remains more of a toolsy dev project than a true impact prospect, even though he has that kind of ceiling.

Segura is a very projectable 6-foot-3 righty with an open-striding, low-slot delivery that creates tailing, uphill action on his low-90s fastball. He’s a nightmare for opposing righties because of his arm slot, which makes it tough for them to see his slider. Segura’s changeup feel is good for a pitcher his age, and he’s a loose, lanky athlete who stands a good chance to throw harder as he matures. There’s a relief path for him that looks more like Miguel Castro, but for now Segura looks like a developmental starter who climbs into this FV tier because he has such a good looking delivery and projectable build.

After Graves struggled badly with walks during his 2023 pro debut, he now looks like a very stable high-volume strike-thrower with modest present stuff and projection, a long-term backend starter. Graves is a massive 6-foot-6 and his delivery is so easy and effortless that it almost look lackadaisical. His consistent release allows Graves to fill the zone with four pitches, the best of which is his tight (albeit a little slow) two-planed slider. It’s tough to see Graves adding significant velocity as he matures because he’s already so massive, and he’s not an especially twitchy athlete. This is why he’s considered a fairly low-variance prospect despite his age and measurables.

Moore has been a known prospect since his underclass high school days, and he ended up matriculating to Arkansas early in order to be an extremely young (20.3) junior for his draft year. There was a stretch where he looked like a future first rounder, but Moore had a downtick in performance as a junior and there was a rumor at the time that he might go back to school to try to recoup some draft helium with an age-21 senior season. Instead, Moore signed with the Brewers for $800,000 as a second rounder. After two seasons in Milwaukee’s system, Moore was traded to the Phillies for Oliver Dunn. In 2024, he posted a .240/.323/.364 line at Reading, a fairly accurate representation of his talent as a hitter. The tiny Moore struggles to hit for power and has some plate coverage issues from the left side, often failing to contact pitches on the outer third. Plus actions and advanced defensive acumen are now his carrying tools, enabling him to project as a viable defender at both middle infield positions and a low-impact utilityman overall.

Brito is a gamer/grinder infielder with pesky bat-to-ball ability, the sort who tends to be on the 40-man fringe. He’s a compact athlete with a very short swing that makes him tough to beat in the strike zone, but what little power Brito has ends up being undercut by his approach, which prioritizes early-count contact. Though he doesn’t have ideal shortstop arm strength, Brito’s effort level and instincts allow him to make some difficult plays. He’s fair at shortstop and above-average at second base. In the Yonny Hernández mold, Brito should play an up/down utility infield role.

Villavicencio is a punchy little infielder with good power for a hitter his size and enough arm for shortstop. He has experience at several positions already and should be a versatile utilityman down the line. Though he has pretty good power for his age and size, Villavicencio isn’t all that projectable and will probably max out with below-average hit and power tools. That’s still enough to fit in a bench role so long as you can actually play shortstop.

Amarante originally signed with the Pirates but never threw a pitch for their org; about six months later, he was cut loose and signed with Philly. He spent two years in the DSL and the first chunk of 2024 with the complex affiliate before a late-July promotion to Low-A. Amarante commands a really great two-plane curveball, which should spearhead a lefty specialist future for him, especially if he sees a velo boost out of the bullpen.

Campbell was a high school infielder who ended up settling into right field during his college career at Texas, where he had a little bit of a power breakout as a junior. He slashed .251/.331/.372 in the chilly Midwest League in 2024 and stole 42 bases in 49 attempts. The compact Campbell has a minimalistic set-up and swing, with basically no stride and a very short load. He’s a dangerous gap-to-gap hitter with this simple operation, and it looks as though he’s using a two-strike approach the whole time, expertly guiding the bat head around the bottom of the zone. Campbell does have trouble with up-and-away fastballs at times, and right field is a tough profile when you don’t have a plus offensive tool. Campbell is a damn good right fielder and has played some center field but, despite his stolen base totals, he isn’t a true burner like is usually required in center. Perhaps there will be more thorough revisitation of second base now that Campbell is a Phillie (the Dodgers traded him for international bonus pool space the week before list publication), which would go a long way to allowing him to play a multi-positional role.

Spikerman is a plus-running switch-hitter who plays great outfield defense. He’s a decisive outfielder with plus range and arm strength. Spikerman has a gap-to-gap line drive approach as a left-handed hitter and is more opposite-field oriented as a righty, though both swings tend to be vulnerable to fastballs at the top of the zone. Speed and defense should allow Spikerman to play a marginal role down the line.

DeMartini has above-average lefty bat speed, but it takes him quite a bit of noise and effort to generate it, and he had a 27.7% strikeout rate in his draft year at Tech, which is comfortably in red flag territory. His swing is geared for low-ball power in the extreme. DeMartini often collapses to one knee on his biggest swings, and he averaged 20 degrees of launch after the draft at Clearwater, where his K rate was half of what it was in college. Realistically, DeMartini is going to struggle to cover the outer third because of his approach and has a power-over-hit skill set. If he can play multiple defensive positions, then a role similar to the one Kody Clemens has been playing is realistic. DeMartini played third base for the Hokies and got middle infield reps on Cape Cod, then the Phillies played him at all three of those positions after the draft. Plus hands are his defining trait on defense, as DeMartini lacks typical middle infield range and his arm strength is average. He had a labrum surgery on his shoulder in 2023 and it’s possible aspects of his defense will improve as he gets further away from that injury.

Estanista is a frustrating, lightning-armed righty with a riding mid-90s fastball and plus-flashing slider. He might have a cutter and slider, or Estanista’s release may be so inconsistent that it just appears he has two breaking balls. His ideal pitcher’s build, a spindly 6-foot-3, and athleticism are why he’s on the main section of the list even though Estanista has struggled with walks throughout his career. His 2024 walk rate (13.6%) is a stark improvement compared to 2023. Estanista was sitting 95-96 with Team Netherlands during the offseason and has the stuff to be a good middle reliever if he can develop 40-grade control.