Philadelphia Phillies Top 34 Prospects

Miller became scouting famous as a high school underclassman, in part because he was old for his class (a little over 19 on draft day) and developed a bit earlier. His age and a broken wrist during his senior year contributed to his slide to the back of the first round, where the Phillies drafted him 27th overall and gave Miller just over $3 million to turn pro rather than go to Arkansas. He had a monster first full season in 2024, as he slashed .261/.366/.446 across both A-ball levels and got a shot of espresso at Reading to cap the year. His second full season started more slowly, and Miller struggled to hit for power during the first half, but he exploded after the All-Star Break and posted a .955 OPS en route to a September promotion to Lehigh Valley. He ended up slashing .264/.392/.433 on the season, hit 14 homers and 27 doubles, and stole a whopping 59 bases in 74 attempts.

Miller’s swing has been on time to pull pro pitching. His hands work in a lovely loop that create pull-side loft through the middle-in portion of the zone; it’s one of the cooler looking righty swings in the minors. This is a high-ball hitter who covers the inner half and top third of the zone with a potent contact and power blend. His hard-hit rate and peak exit velocities were both above the big league average in 2025, and Miller is a broad-shouldered kid in his early-20s and might add another half grade of power or so if he keeps getting stronger. Because he’s so geared to pull, Miller pulls off of a lot of sliders, including many that finish on the plate. His selectivity (all of his chase data, no matter the pitch type and count, was excellent in 2025) helps him hunt pitches he can pull until he’s forced to protect the outer third of the zone later in the count. Miller has been able to make an above-average rate of contact so far, but the way to beat him (locate breaking balls away from him) is clear enough that his grade here anticipates a little bit of a dip in this regard at the big league level, though his OBP skills and power are still very exciting for a potential shortstop. Fans should expect offensive output similar to what Zach Neto has been able to muster in Anaheim as Miller gets big league traction.

Miller still has some technical details to polish on the defensive end (his hands and throwing accuracy are still inconsistent), but he’s a great athlete who’ll do some acrobatic things to make tough plays around the bag or on the run. The Phillies have only ever played Miller at shortstop since signing him, and it’s the position at which he’d be the most valuable, but with Trea Turner entrenched ahead of him, it might behoove them to expand his defensive horizons in 2026 in case, be it via trade or injury, it turns out he’s needed at either second or third. Should he turn out to be a more comfortable, consistent defender at either of those positions, then a permanent move should be considered. Miller is going to be good enough at shortstop to play there, but only just so. If he can be a plus glove at second or third, that might be a better long-term fit.

Painter became one of baseball’s best pitching prospects throughout 2022 and entered 2023 seemingly poised to complete a meteoric rise akin to Josh Beckett‘s and aid Philadelphia’s rotation at some point during the season. Instead he tore his UCL during spring training, though he didn’t immediately undergo surgery. Painter received a PRP injection on the off chance that it, along with rest and rehab, would allow him to return by the end of the season, potentially during a pennant race. Unfortunately, he and the Phillies rolled snake eyes; Painter didn’t heal enough to avoid surgery, which he had late enough in 2023 that it cost him basically all of 2024 as well. He returned to action in the fall of 2024, including an Arizona Fall League stint in which Painter’s stuff looked intact. In 2025, after some A-ball tuneup starts in April, the Phillies sent him to Triple-A Lehigh Valley and he struggled badly enough there — a 5.40 ERA and 18 homers allowed across 22 starts and 106.2 innings — that by the middle of the season it was clear that, rather than be justified by his own performance, it would take multiple injuries ahead of him for Painter to debut in Philly.

So, what happened here? Painter’s arm slot lowered throughout the season and changed the direction of his fastball’s movement, which had less vertical life than the dominant 2022 model. The dip in results was staggering: a 29% miss rate and .645 opponent OPS in 2022 versus a 17% miss rate and a 1.006 OPS against it in 2025. Whether Painter’s fastball quality can be reconstituted through mechanical work we just won’t know until the start of 2026. For him to be a dominant, top-of-the-rotation power pitcher, he needs a dominant, power-pitcher’s fastball. If Painter can’t get back to that, his overall projection is still favorable, but no longer very special.

That said, this is still a spindly 6-foot-7 youngster who was sent straight to Triple-A after two years off, and after only 13 combined starts above Low-A. He is built and moves like a durable and consistently effective big league starter. His breaking pitches (and his feel for locating them) are both impressive for an athlete his age and size, and have utility against both left- and right-handed hitters as strike-getting and finishing pitches. Painter’s changeup also improved a lot in 2025, and his usage of it tripled late in the season as it performed like a plus pitch. Whether this improvement will stick might be dependent on whether Painter’s arm slot is back to its original orientation in 2026. Player development doesn’t often take a linear path, and so while Painter took a step back in 2025, it was at least for identifiable reasons that could feasibly be remedied and return him to dominant form in short order. If not, he’s more likely to be a secondary-oriented mid-rotation guy.

There’s a sizeable gap between the player Crawford is right now and the one that his numbers and visually identifiable talent and athleticism suggest he could be. Though he was drafted as more of a developmental project, Crawford has yet to experience an on-field speed bump and is a career .322/.385/.446 hitter. He’s fresh off a .334/.411/.452 line at Triple-A Lehigh Valley in his age-21 season, and is in position to help the Phillies’ big league outfield in 2026, maybe even when camp breaks. Why then is his FV grade still a little south of the threshold associated with the Top 100 list or an average everyday big leaguer? Because the top 20 center fielders across a multi-year sample almost always hit for power, and unless Crawford’s swing and batted ball profile evolve as he gets stronger, he doesn’t lift the ball enough to do that. Most of Crawford’s underlying data supports his baseball card stats. His contact rates (both overall and inside the strike zone) are plus on the big league scale, and he is hitting the ball pretty hard (46% hard-hit rate, 110 mph max) for anyone, let alone a projectable 21-year-old. Crawford’s body rotates with beautiful verve, and his ability to bend his lower body throughout his swing to adjust the depth of his barrel takes both physical talent and technical skill to execute.

But Crawford’s long levers take a while to get going, and he’s often too late to the contact point to pull and/or lift the baseball, especially fastballs. The results — a 2.7 degree average launch angle and 60% groundball rate — are unlike all but a couple of big league hitters who have played regularly during the last half decade. Raimel Tapia is the only major leaguer with a meaningful sample (900 PA) during that window to have a groundball rate of 60% or more, and of the hitters with an average launch angle under five degrees, only Christian Yelich has an above-average batting line. Especially as he faces better fastball velocity, Crawford’s current swing will probably keep his SLG% under .400, and unless you’re a Kevin Kiermaier type of defender, such production is more typically associated with second-division everyday center fielders or luxury timeshare outfielders.

Whether mechanical intervention will improve Crawford’s output, or whether it will happen naturally as he gets stronger, we just won’t know until he’s allowed to face and adjust to big league pitching over a long period of time. His groundball rate has at least been trending in the right direction since he turned pro. He was way up in the 70% range when he first debuted, and his spray chart looked like the most cartoonish slash-and-dash hitter. Zac Veen is a recent prospect whose underlying data contained similar warning signs (Crawford is also fairly chase prone), but his on-field performance began to dip once he reached the upper levels, while Crawford’s has not. Make no mistake; Crawford’s tools are going to help a big league club in some capacity, just probably as an action-pressing nine hole hitter who bunts and slashes his way on base.

The son of former Devil Rays outfielder Carl Crawford, who led the league in triples and stolen bases four times, Justin’s blazing speed is the most resonant trait inherited from Carl. If there’s another, it’s that his speed plays down on defense a bit. Carl struggled to read the ball off the bat and was relegated to left field; Justin’s reads are a bit crude, and he can be tentative at that catch point, especially around the wall, but he’s only 22 and has double-robbing gap-to-gap speed. He’ll eventually be a fine defensive center fielder, and he’s already the second-best outfield defender on the Phils’ 40-man after Johan Rojas. Crawford is probably going to play major league baseball for a long time, and this grade leaves room for him to have a star-caliber peak season or two during his six years of team control, but it mostly soberly assumes Crawford will struggle to get to power during a lot of his pre-free agency time and settle into the back half of the everyday center fielders in the league during that window.

Escobar spent two years in the DSL and then had something of a breakout during a 2024 Florida Complex League season shortened by shin splints; he walked twice as often as he struck out and posted exciting underlying power metrics. He entered 2025 as a Pick to Click and arguably did, as he slashed .270/.361/.413 split between both A-ball level and reached Double-A as a 20-year-old at the very end of the year. But Escobar’s performance dipped as the season went on, and after a white-hot start in Clearwater, he slugged just .369 in Lakewood and his season-long K% was double his 2024 mark.

Escobar is still a well-rounded hitting prospect with a shot to be an everyday second or third baseman. We learned more about his defensive abilities in 2025, as he was actually healthy and playing almost solely second base, where he’s slick around the bag but not great when he needs to run around and collect grounders near the edge of his range. Escobar is listed at 180 pounds but is probably closer to 220 and is built like White Sox era Juan Uribe. He might merit more time at third base to make him more versatile (2026 is his 40-man platform year, after all), or to see if, like Uribe, it turns out to be a better fit for him.

Regardless of where Escobar ends up on defense, it’s going to be important for him to hit and hit for power to profile as an everyday player. After he looked like a special contact bat on paper in 2024, he was more average in 2025 when challenged by better pitching; his 76% contact rate and 110-mph airborne max exit velo are right in line with the big league mean. That’s still good for a hitter this age (albeit one with less physical projection than is typical), and Escobar certainly looks like an explosive and talented hitter to the eye in many ways. He’s adept at using the ground to generate pull power, he moves the barrel around the zone fairly well (especially the top of it), and he can spray hard contact from pole to pole. If he has an underlying issue it’s that, despite looking like a short-levered guy, Escobar’s bat enters the hitting zone too late to pull any fastballs. When a hitter’s spray chart looks like Escobar’s does against A-ball fastballs, we should be cautious about assuming his power output will hold against big league heat. This FV grade represents a modest upgrade compared to where Escobar ranked last year, but still has him positioned as more of a second-division regular or good part-time player who could use some defensive versatility to ensure he can play the latter role in Philly starting in 2027 or 2028.

Wood was a power reliever during his first two years in Fayetteville and then moved into the rotation as a junior, only to be shut down pretty quickly with a shoulder injury that limited him to 10 starts and 37.2 regular season innings. To say Wood looked healthy when he returned would be an understatement. At the 2025 College World Series, Gage did his best Kerry Wood impression and ripped riding fastballs and knee-buckling curveballs past Murray State hitters in a 19-strikeout no-hitter.

Wood is small, he’s had injury issues, and he really only has two pitches at the moment, but he was still a late first round prospect because his fastball’s velo/ride/angle cocktail is deadly, and his curveball’s vertical snap plays beautifully off of it. Are there echoes of Ty Floyd here? Wood is similar in terms of his stature, repertoire, and collegiate postseason heroics. His ability to spin the baseball should yield at least one other good breaking ball. He threw something like 50 cutter/sliders and 15 changeups in all of 2025; those pitches are raw. Adding to Wood’s relief risk is that he can only consistently throw his fastball for strikes, but even that is a developmental win considering he was in the bullpen a year ago, and recall that there are many big league starters who feast off of heavy fastball usage when it rides like Wood’s does. He’s risky, but he could be a good no. 4 starter.

Acquired with Seth Johnson from Baltimore in 2024 in exchange for Gregory Soto, Chace entered 2025 as a Top 100 prospect thanks to a dominant riding fastball. He was sitting in the mid-90s throughout 2024, and his heater benefitted from basically every positive secondary trait a fastball can have beyond its pure velocity. It looked like a harder version of Joe Ryan‘s heater, albeit in an overall package that featured more significant relief risk than Ryan. It seemed plausible that Chace, who was put on the 40-man after the 2024 season, could play a very important role in Philly in 2025, even if that was as the team’s setup man or closer. Instead, Chace’s velocity tanked into the low 90s, his walk rate regressed to his problematic, early-career levels, and after six starts, he was shut down and needed Tommy John toward the end of May. The injury not only casts doubt on how Chace’s stuff might look when he returns, but also robs him of valuable reps needed to develop the durability, control, and secondary pitches of a starting pitcher.

Chace’s slider flashes late, hitter-freezing, two-plane bend, but it doesn’t do so consistently. At times, his changeup has 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 young pitcher with this kind of arm speed, but now that large chunks of two of Chace’s option years (barring the Phillies being granted an exemption due to his injury) have been spent on the shelf, it’s more likely that he ends up in relief, though with a fastball like this, we’re still looking at a potential late-inning weapon. I’m told by sources within the organization that the Phillies plan on deploying Chace as a starter when he’s back.

After two consecutive years of excellent strike-throwing, Cabrera spent his first season on the Phillies’ 40-man roster entirely at Double-A Reading, where he posted a career-low strikeout rate (22.2% K%) and nibbled a bit more than he has otherwise tended to (10.6% BB). Still, his projection hasn’t changed. Cabrera’s two hiccup seasons have come when he skipped the domestic complex level and went straight to Low-A in 2022, and then when he had his first prolonged exposure to upper-level competition in 2025; these are pretty natural places to stumble a bit.

Cabrera still does the things one looks for in a steady, back-of-the-rotation starter. He’s limber and athletic, he repeats his delivery well and with little violence, he has demonstrated that he has season-long big league starter stamina (he worked 137 innings last season), and he has the toolkit to thwart both left- and right-handed hitters. Issues with his fastball’s shape and playability forced Cabrera to lean more heavily on his slider as a strike-getting pitch in 2025, and subsequently use his changeup (which played like a plus pitch for the second consecutive year) more as a finisher. These are firm, one-seam sinker style changeups in the 85-88 mph range. Cabrera can work east/west with his slider and changeup, while his fastball’s movement is less dynamic; that’s the piece of his profile that really caps his ceiling. Cabrera is a more reliable strike-thrower than the other Phillies starters likely to begin the 2026 season in the minors, putting him in the no. 6 or 7 starter spot on the depth chart and making him likely to debut in 2027 and exhaust rookie eligibility.

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 the prospect factory that is 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 draft stock into the third round thanks to his big lefty power.

In three pro seasons, Rincones is a career .246/.357/.434 hitter. He spent 2025 at Triple-A Lehigh Valley, where he posted a .799 OPS and set career highs in homers (18) and extra-base hits (41). A shoulder injury (2022), torn thumb ligament (2024), and sprained ankle (2025) have cost him big chunks of his pro career and, odd amateur arc included, he’s played far fewer high-level baseball games than most prospects his age. But when he’s been healthy (including right after returning from that nasty thumb injury), Rincones has destroyed righties. He’s career .256/.362/.476 hitter versus them (.164/.257/.224 vs LHP) and has some of the best raw power in the organization, even when you include Philly’s big league roster. A strapping 6-foot-3, 225 pounds, Rincones will flash plus-plus pull-side juice against pitches in the middle-in portion of the plate, but doesn’t access it all over the zone.

His lever length leaves him vulnerable to elevated fastballs away from him, and overall Rincones’ whiff tendencies put him toward the bottom third of the big league scale (Trevor Larnach, Will Benson, Seth Brown and Josh Lowe are all fair comps) but they aren’t so bad as to worry he’ll bust entirely. This includes his splits against righties, against whom he has a career 71% contact rate. When you have big power like Rincones does, you can whiff this much and still play a meaningful part-time role. Now that he’s on the Phillies’ 40-man roster, Rincones should get the opportunity to do that as part of a timeshare with Adolis García and/or Nick Castellanos at some point in 2026.

Renteria has arguably the best raw power projection among the 2026 international signees, as his enormous 6-foot-4 frame has a ton of room left for strength and mass. He’s already putting on impressive shows in a BP setting and hit 18 bombs in Venezuela’s LMBP Home Run Derby during the winter of 2025. Renteria’s hit tool projection is more difficult. Though he participated in many events — some in the U.S. with Perfect Game, others as part of Venezuela’s national team, with some summer league ball against older pros in VZ — Renteria’s bat-to-ball data is mixed despite his short swing. He hits with a high front side that might leave him vulnerable to softer stuff at the bottom of the zone. When Renteria first agreed to a deal, it seemed like he’d have a shot to develop in center field, but he’s just kept getting taller and now is a nearly certain to end up in a corner, where he’ll likely have the power to profile in an everyday role if he hits enough.

Fisher, who is from the same part of Indiana as the Mattingly family, ranked 32nd on the 2025 Draft Board but signed for $1.25 million (the slot value of pick 68) in the seventh round, the highest bonus ever given to a seventh rounder. He was 19 on draft day and is a bigger, heavier athlete than most high school pitchers, but Fisher is very limber and athletic, and has a gorgeous arm action, with the cut/ride fastball/curveball combo that lots of modern scouting departments covet.

Though Fisher’s body lacks the usual projection, his fastball still experienced a velo bump late in high school. He was more 88-92 mph during his showcase summer, then was 92-95 in his pre-draft spring. Fisher’s fastball is the kind that thrives when located at the top of the zone, spinning in at 2,500 rpm and averaging 17 inches of induced vertical break, with natural cut at times. He’s a natural supinator with a big two-planed curveball in the 78-82 mph range that spins at roughly 2,900 rpm, giving him the foundation to be able to add multiple breaking balls and maybe a kick change as he develops. He’ll be 20 years old before he throws his first pro pitch at an affiliate and the cement on Fisher’s arm talent is almost certainly a bit drier than that of his debutant peers, but his stuff is exciting and he has the same sort of mid-rotation potential as any high school pitching prospect with this kind of fastball/curveball starting point.

This is an aggressive evaluation of Espinosa meant to illustrate his ceiling. He presents a rare combination of present contact feel and long-term power projection for an up-the-middle prospect. Espinosa’s build comps to Elly De La Cruz at the same age: endless limbs on a broad-shouldered 6-foot-4 frame, with the room to add big strength while remaining sufficiently lithe and agile for shortstop. The 2025 DSL season began a few days before Espinosa’s 17th birthday, and he managed to slash .282/.363/.430 there while posting a 77% contact rate (a shade better than the big league average). That’s a very positive contact-hitting origin point for a shortstop prospect built like this, as long-levered hitters like Espinosa are often still uncoordinated at this age.

The very wobbly Jenga block in Espinosa’s early-career prospectdom is his current inability to identify breaking pitches. His chase and whiff tendencies against breaking stuff is in a red flag area right now, and that’s against crude DSL pitching. This issue will be severe enough to destabilize Espinosa’s offensive output as he climbs if it doesn’t improve. Past studies indicate a player’s plate discipline tends to be a pretty static aspect of his skill set, but those were all conducted before technology allowed for contemporary methods of development, and last year Espinosa was playing pro ball at the age of a high school underclassman. Let’s see how his chase rate trends in year two. He’s one of the more exciting and tumultuous prospects in all of rookie ball.

Obermueller entered his junior year with a reliever’s profile, coming off two straight seasons of walking six or more batters per nine and wielding only two pitches. In his draft spring, he cut his walk rate down to a respectable 9% and was maybe the best pitcher in the Big Ten; he led the conference in strikeouts and was in the top five in ERA and FIP. He signed for just under $1.2 million in the second round and did not pitch at an affiliate after the draft.

Obermueller has relief risk because he’s smaller, he throws just two pitches, and he doesn’t have great command of either of them. But he’s a special athlete with a beautiful delivery, which arguably allows for mold-breaking command and changeup projection. Obermueller is an incredibly loose, explosive athlete with bendy, whippy limbs and a powerful lower body. His delivery adds deception to his stuff in basically every way. He’s able to hide the ball for a long time because of how far back his arm lays before release. He takes a cross-bodied stride and has a lower arm slot, but he still manages to power down the mound and generate plus extension despite an indirect line to the plate. Plus, Obermueller gets to a more vertical hand position on release than is typical of someone with his arm slot. All of this creates huge uphill angle on his fastball, which averages 91-95 mph. That’s up a tick from his sophomore year, and he’ll peak in the 97-98 mph range.

Obermueller’s slider has huge sweeping action, but it starts breaking really early and is easier to spot out of hand. He generally lives in and around the zone with it, and he doesn’t have precise or focused usage of it right now, but it moves enough that college hitters couldn’t handle it. In pro ball, he’s going to need to dot it more precisely, and find a third pitch. Obermueller threw his changeup 30 times in 2025, 2% of his usage, and just 19 times in front of a Trackman unit. It often sails on him and it isn’t a good pitch right now, but he has all the athletic and mechanical markers of a guy whose changeup will get better thanks to his arm speed and deception. The Phillies could move Obermueller through the minors quickly as a nasty lefty specialist, but his long-term ceiling is as a fourth starter.

Nori, whose father is an assistant coach for the Minnesota Timberwolves, was one of the older high schoolers in the 2024 draft and turned 20 a couple of months after signing. The Phillies skipped him over rookie ball and he slashed .262/.363/.381 at Clearwater in 2025, then was promoted to Jersey Shore and Reading in short succession at the end of the season before Nori had a stellar Arizona Fall League stint.

Nori can really run, and while he needs to improve on reading balls hit over his head, he is otherwise a very promising center field defender. He goes full tilt into both gaps to rob doubles, and he has slick ball skills as he goes to the ground sliding or diving to snatch would-be singles in front of him. His defense is going to carry him to a big league role, but his offense is going to dictate what kind. Though he posted an above-average contact rate in 2025, Nori’s bat is pretty slow and he tends to push contact the opposite way. Built like Sal Frelick, his body is maxed out, so it’s tough to project on his bat speed and power based on physical maturation. His hit tool is going to have to be very special for him to profile as an average everyday center fielder, and it’s much more likely that his lack of power will cause his hit tool to play down a bit and that Nori will wind up as a luxury model fifth outfielder.

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 2023 season, however, the team began to drastically limit the length of McFarlane’s outings, his stuff waned, and he was ultimately shut down at the end of August and had Tommy John that September, which put him out for all of 2024. He returned in 2025 with his arm strength intact, shifted from the rotation to the bullpen in August, and then was promoted to Reading. Though he didn’t dominate after the role shift, McFarlane’s fastball leapt two ticks after he was ‘penned; Synergy Sports has him averaging 97 mph and touching 101 during that span. He’ll enter 2026 as a pure reliever and could play a meaningful late- or multi-inning role in the big leagues this year, provided McFarlane throws strikes in Reading and Allentown.

McFarlane is a little undersized (not that it matters as much in relief), but he’s got a body built for longevity and is a fabulous on-mound athlete, with huge arm speed and plus-plus raw spin on his slider. His fastball has tailing life and some uphill angle created by his lower arm slot, and it’s best when it’s shattering bats around the hands of righty batters. Even when he was working as a starter, McFarlane barely threw his splitter and was a fastball/slider guy 92% of the time. Though in some respects his slider performed like a 70-grade offering in 2025 (it’s swinging strike rate was up over 20%), McFarlane is much better at locating it in the zone than he is at dotting it on the corner, and he needs to do the latter more consistently for his slider to play like a plus or better pitch in the big leagues. Honing this skill is the key to him reaching his high-leverage relief ceiling.

Bowker was on the fancy school express, transferring from Georgetown to Vanderbilt for his junior year. There he successfully transitioned into a starter-only role and had a career year in 2025, with a 31.6% strikeout rate and 8.9% walk rate in 72 innings. He signed for $700,000 and didn’t pitch after the draft.

Bowker has an extreme drop-and-drive, low-slot delivery. His right shin is practically scraping the ground as he delivers, creating extreme uphill angle on his pitches. Bowker sat in the 91-94 mph range all year even as he blew through his career innings high, and he throws fastballs for strikes (70% strike rate with plus-plus miss and chase) despite mechanical funk. Though his secondary pitch feel is not as crisp, Bowker has a bunch of them. He changes speeds on two breakers — a mid-80s cutter and low-80s slider — that play nicely off his fastball near the top of the zone, and he can turn over a changeup in the low 80s if he wants something to finish low. It’s a starter’s pitch mix in a mechanical package more commonly seen in the bullpen, which is why Bowker is projected to slot into multi-inning big league role.

Anthony was a third-team All-American in 2023 but went undrafted in part because he was one of several athletes at Iowa and Iowa State ruled ineligible after a gambling sting conducted by the Iowa DCI. Some of the athletes were charged with misdemeanors, while others reached plea deals; Anthony faced no criminal charges and wasn’t accused of betting on his own team, but he was one of the athletes whom the NCAA deemed ineligible.

In pro ball, Anthony quickly moved to the upper levels of the minors and has hit above .300 at every stop, with a .323/.378/.484 line split between Double- and Triple-A in 2025. Indeed, he has fantastic hand-eye coordination and plate coverage, but his approach and manner of swinging (which is very similar to Nick Castellanos) is geared toward the opposite field in the extreme, and Anthony (in part due to injury) has yet to have a double-digit homer season as a pro. It’s fun to watch him put on a clinic for “staying inside” the baseball to hit oppo singles and doubles, but he lacks great pure bat speed and it takes him a while to get to the contact point. He has had trouble elevating velocity (he posted a 65% groundball rate against pitches 92 mph and above last year), as well as diagnosing balls and strikes against fastballs (30% chase, the big league average is 24%), and both of these issues are obstacles threatening an already brittle righty-hitting first base profile. Anthony’s skillful hitting should allow him to be a big leaguer, but it looks like there’s an obvious way to attack him in order to limit his power.

Craig pitched in six college seasons with two stints at Tyler JC sandwiched around a season at Texas A&M, followed by three at Baylor. He was utterly dominant in his final season in Waco, as he carried a 0.56 ERA and allowed just 19 baserunners in a career-high 32 innings, earning All-American honors as a dominant reliever. Craig’s slider is a beast. It has absurd lateral action and can look like a ball out of hand, then like a strike mid-flight, then a ball again as it continues bending off the corner. It “only” generated a plus miss rate in college, but that’s because Craig leans on it to throw strikes as well as finish hitters. His fastball is a standard 93-96 mph heater, the kind you see on a slider-heavy bullpen piece. Craig is likely to rocket through the minors in 2026, and there are folks who think he could debut before the end of the season. Because he has just one outstanding pitch, he’s more likely to slide into a standard middle relief role than a late-inning one, but if there’s more gas in the tank, or if Craig finds a third pitch, then he has more upside.

Marquez signed out of Mexico for $10,000 and raced to full-season ball six months after he signed while becoming one of the better pitching prospects in the Phillies system. He dominated complex ball in Florida for 10 outings and was elevated to the full-season roster in Clearwater for the season’s final month, altogether posting a 1.25 WHIP and striking out 72 batters in 55 innings.

Marquez throws hard for his age, albeit with downhill plane and movement that makes it vulnerable to contact. His best pitch, and maybe the best individual pitch in the system, is a Bugs Bunny changeup that generated an elite miss rate (just over 60%!) last season. It has an absurd amount of sinking and tailing action, and is absolutely the kind of pitch that could spearhead a relief profile on its own. Marquez also has a fringy slider that sometimes has a cutter look and velo, and he might be suited to have an explicit cutter rather than the hybrid look of his current breaker.

Though Marquez threw a starter’s rate of strikes in 2025 and looked comfortable as he was stretched out to work four and five innings per outing later in the season, his delivery has a head whack so grotesque that David Cronenberg would consider it excessive. It’s rare for pitchers whose deliveries look like this to remain starters, and perhaps Marquez’s fastball will need the boost from shorter-outing deployment to be effective. Even if these issues prove meaningful, Marquez would still be a great pickup for his price tag as a changeup-merchant reliever.

Campbell was a high school infielder who ended up settling into right field during his college career at Texas, where he had a bit of a power breakout as a junior. Drafted by the Dodgers, he slashed .251/.331/.372 in the chilly Midwest League in 2024 and stole 42 bases in 49 attempts, before he was traded to the Phillies for some of the pool space required to sign Roki Sasaki. Campbell had a pedestrian first season as a Phillie split between High- and Double-A (a .215/.298/.367 line, good for a 95 wRC+), then got white hot in the Arizona Fall League, where he carried a 1.044 OPS. Campbell’s regular season performance was more in line with a player who gets a cursory mention at the end of these lists, but his Fall League look and the Phillies’ willingness to experiment with him on defense has kept the pulse of his prospectdom alive.

Short levers and strong wrists give Campbell notable hitterish traits, and he told MLB Pipeline’s Sam Dykstra that he was working with a new swing in the AFL (for what it’s worth, it looked the same to me). Though he has kept his infielder’s mitt handy for occasional second base duty in pro ball, Campbell was introduced to first and third base for the first time in the AFL. A stocky athlete whose meaty torso and trunk taper down to toothpick ankles, Campbell runs well in a straight line but isn’t the best lateral mover. Defensive versatility is going to be important to his rosterability, but he played the corner infield so infrequently in Arizona that seeing him enough to satisfactorily evaluate his prospects there was difficult. Campbell is back on the radar as a potential bat-first utilityman who plays the outfield corners and hopefully at least one infield position.

Ferrebus has hit well enough each of the last two years (he’s a career .275/.357/.404 hitter) to receive mid-season promotions, from the DSL to FCL in 2024 and then from the FCL to Low-A in 2025. He is a long-levered C/1B prospect with precocious oppo contact feel who struggles some with selectivity and receiving.

Ferrebus is really projectable for a young catcher, but he needs to be stronger and quieter at the catch point. His hands are better picking balls in the dirt than they are at squeezing pitches around the edges of the zone, though too often he relies on his hands to pick the ball rather than move his body to block it. His lean, sinewy build might be part of why, and added strength might make it easier for him to wear one when he needs to. Throwing accuracy helps Ferrebus’ average arm play up when he gets a clean throw away, but too often messy or slow footwork prevents him from doing so. There’s enough here that Ferrebus should absolutely continue to develop behind the dish even though he isn’t a lock to stay back there, and even if things work out, it’s probably going to take a while.

Added strength over time should aid Ferrebus on both sides of the ball, as he probably needs to shorten up a bit to hit big league fastballs. Of the young, 17-to-20-year-old, deep-projection position players in the Phillies system, Ferrebus is the one who has most demonstrated proficient contact feel, so he sits atop that group.

Araujo is a bat-first catching prospect who had an awesome 2025 DSL debut during which he slashed .289/.377/.528 with 21 extra-base hits in 45 games. He’s a medium-framed, short-levered hitter whose top hand drives the explosion of his swing, facilitating lots of loud pull-side contact. Araujo can flatten his bat path to cover the top of the zone or use a more uphill angle to scoop low pitches.

Because of his youth and inexperience, Araujo is currently a very raw defensive catcher and is not a lock to stay back there. He played a lot of first base in 2025, too, though that was due as much to Philly’s DSL catching depth as it was Araujo’s own shortcomings. If he doesn’t develop as a catcher, then Araujo’s modest size (think Ty France’s body) would likely cap his power and, it follows, his ceiling as a first baseman. For now, he’s a talented young hitter who’ll be tested by Florida complex arms as an 18-year-old in 2026.

Cruceta is a well-rounded young center field prospect with exciting physical projection and present contact skill. He slashed .291/.438/.373 in his DSL debut and managed a 77% contact rate. That low slugging percentage is indicative of Cruceta’s strength and bat speed right now — he lacks both. But his hands work in an aesthetically pleasing way, he’s a good athlete, and he runs well, and at a statuesque 6-foot-1, he could mature into that center field Goldilocks Zone where he adds power but stays rangy on defense. Cruceta looks a lot like the domestic high schoolers who get a $1 million bonus, give or take, and he has a non-zero shot to be an everyday player eventually.

An Oregon commit from the northwestern part of Los Angeles, Hettiger signed for just shy of $400,000 in 2023 and hit .195 at Clearwater in his first full pro season. In 2025, he gave up switch-hitting and slashed .232/.330/.389 in Lakewood, good for a 117 wRC+ in the South Atlantic League.

The hitting environment in the Sally masked Hettiger’s power, his carrying tool. This guy can really swing it. His hands are explosive and generate blood-thirsty pull-side launch, with Hettiger showing average big league power as a college-aged prospect with room on his frame for more strength. Hettiger also has a real approach and tends to target high pitches, the ones he’s suited to crush. He’s probably going to strike out a bunch (he K’d at a 29.1% clip in 2025) because he runs deep counts and sells out for power when he swings, but his feel for contact also might improve some as he focuses solely on hitting left-handed.

Lefty-hitting catchers with this kind of bat speed are uncommon, and that’s what is giving Hettiger some prospect value here. Though the Phillies gave him a shot of espresso at Double-A in September, Hettiger is still very much a developmental prospect, especially as a defender. His receiving and pitch framing are sushi raw, and some of the pitchers in Reading were visibly frustrated by his struggles at the very end of the season. Hettiger has also played a lot of first base; it wasn’t until the last month of 2025 that the Phillies really dedicated Hettiger solely to catching. He’s athletic enough to have a shot of sticking back there, though it’s probably going to take several years before he’s good enough to handle the duties of a big league job.

Johnson was a converted middle infielder who seemed like he was scratching the surface of his abilities at Campbell and could plausibly make substantial improvements with pro development. 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 was traded to Baltimore as part of the 2022 Trey Mancini swap, then had TJ and missed most of 2023, was traded to Philly in the Gregory Soto deal in 2024, and moved to the bullpen in a 2025 season spent mostly at Lehigh Valley, with a dusting of big league action. Johnson’s command not only plateaued in a way that forced him to the bullpen, but made it so that his stuff plays down a bit. He sits 96 and touches 100, but his heater played like an average pitch in 2025. He’s at his best when he’s mixing in all four of his pitches in an unpredictable fashion, which includes him using his upper-80s slider to get ahead of hitters. His secondary stuff is good enough for Johnson to be an inefficient middle reliever.

McCambley progressed slowly through the Marlins system after reaching Double-A as a starter in 2022. He has average arm strength and can touch 97, but the round-down shape traits on his heater(s) has pushed him to rely more on his cutter and slider. He took a step forward as a strike-thrower in 2025 and had a good year pitching in relief at Miami’s upper-level affiliates before the Phillies popped him in the Rule 5 Draft during the offseason. His feel for spin, particularly pronounced on the slider, helped him miss quite a few bats last season, and it’s a little surprising the Marlins never gave him a shot. On the strength of his plus breaking stuff, he projects as a low-to-mid-leverage reliever.

Pacheco has had early-career success as a rookie ball starter, with 1.19 WHIP in 62.1 career innings. He throws hard, with his fastball residing in the 93-96 mph range through most of 2025 as he worked four to five innings per start. Pacheco’s arm action is explosive, and he generates six-and-a-half feet of extension even though he’s only six feet tall. He’s been able to throw strikes despite his delivery featuring a good bit of effort, and he’s walked just 6.5% of opposing hitters since signing. His arm action (and ability to kill spin) allows for lots of projection on his power changeup, which currently lives in the 86-90 mph range. His breaking ball is a blunt 80-mph curveball that might morph into a harder slider/cutter with time. It’d be easier to project Pacheco as a starter if he were a bigger athlete; it’s rare for righties this size to wind up in a big league rotation. But he throws hard, throws strikes, and should have at least one viable secondary weapon at peak (the changeup), which would allow him to be a reliable middle reliever.

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 was sitting 96-98 during his first spring with the Phils while topping out at 99 mph. He quickly moved to the bullpen and held the velo bump throughout a 2024 campaign that saw him 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 and missed all of 2025.

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 of the back of his splits and opposing hitters flail at them helplessly. The 2026 season is Pan’s 40-man platform year, and he should be pushed to the upper minors pretty aggressively to put him in position to prove he deserves a roster spot.

Rincon had something of a breakout in 2023 when he managed an 88% in-zone contact rate, and 81% rate overall, in A-ball while playing a good shortstop. In the following two seasons, he has hit under .200 while dealing with some pretty serious injuries: a severe hamstring injury in 2024 and a broken hamate in 2025. His carrying tool is his shortstop defense, which should allow Rincon to wear a big league uniform for fits and starts of his physical prime. He has average range but plus hands and arm strength, and he’s an above-average defender overall at short, with the physical ability to be plus at the other infield spots, though the Phillies haven’t deployed him anywhere else just yet. Rincon is entering his 40-man platform year, and it would take an unforeseen offensive surge to net him a roster spot after this season. He’s squarely on the 40-man fringe and will likely be on and off various orgs’ rosters during his peak as a glove-first mercenary.

A $602,500 signee out of the third round in 2023, Saltiban hit 17 homers at Clearwater in 2024 but was still held down in the 35+ FV tier last list cycle because of sketchy infield defense and underlying contact issues. In 2025, his looming strikeout woes bubbled to the surface; he K’d 31.2% of the time and hit .190 in 66 games at Jersey Shore during a season shortened by a ruptured testicle. The Phillies sent him to play winter ball in Australia, where Saltiban out-tooled everyone and had a .899 OPS for Adelaide.

He’s a plus runner and packs a powerful pull-side punch for a smaller guy, but Saltiban remains a high-risk prospect because of his strikeout issues, which stem from a lack of breaking ball recognition. Saltiban played second base in 2024, then a mix of second and center field in 2025. He is a flub-prone infielder and was still struggling to read the ball off the bat in center at the end of last season, but the timeshare and injury limited him to just 37 games out there. He only played center field in Australia and nearly doubled his career start total at the position. It’s imperative for his defense to improve out there; Saltiban needs to be able to make an impact in the field to give his strikeouts room to breath. This is a toolsy, slow-burning prospect who turns 21 in February.

Burkholder was ranked 70th (early third round) on the 2024 Draft Board and was signed away from a West Virginia commitment for $2.5 million (more like a late first round bonus) as a speedy, long-levered center fielder with some hit tool risk. Burkholder has really struggled in pro ball; sliders are his nemesis. He was striking out 30.9% of the time in Clearwater before he was put the IL in June, and then hit .190 during a month-long rehab stint on the complex afterward before he was shut down in mid-July. Burkholder was a 70% contact guy on the high school showcase circuit, a rate that cratered to 60% in 2025, too low to be a prospect. Still, because he barely played due to injury, and because Burkholder has real tools — plus-plus speed, wristy gap power with projection — his prospectdom still has a heartbeat.

Mercado entered pro ball as a high-profile high schooler with a good curveball who was coaxed away from Stanford with a bonus just over $2 million. 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, he was then traded to the Phillies ahead of the 2023 roster deadline and was added to their 40-man. He has since debuted, but hasn’t pitched well enough to root into the active roster; he was non-tendered this offseason and brought back on a minor league deal. Mercado has improved his changeup throughout the last two seasons but hasn’t been able to polish his strike-throwing, which keeps him in up/down relief territory.

Curet led the minors in strikeouts across the 2023 and 2024 seasons combined, with 303 tickets punched in just 223 innings. Though he struggled with walks some during that time, his massive size and ability to sustain big velo across a starter’s load of innings gave his profile starter-y elements, and his changeup seemed to improve late in 2024, which gave him a more suitable starter’s mix of pitches. He entered 2025 (his second season on the Rays’ 40-man roster) as a Top 100 prospect with a mid-rotation ceiling and late-inning relief floor. Then Curet’s tenure in Tampa Bay was unmoored by a shoulder injury that cost him roughly half of the season. When Curet returned, so too had his arm strength, but his delivery looked out of whack and he struggled very badly to throw strikes in games. He had several starts late in 2025 where he couldn’t get past the third or fourth inning because he was walking so many guys.

With just one option year remaining, the Rays DFA’d Curet after the season and then traded him to Philly for 26-year-old reliever Tommy McCollum. Curet pitched a couple of times in the Dominican Winter League and was still throwing hard, but he had very little feel, especially for his upper-80s slider. He’s an interesting change-of-scenery pickup by the Phils, as a little over a year ago, he seemed talented enough to pitch in the eighth or ninth inning even if things didn’t work out for him as a starter. Still, at this point, he’s purely a bounce-back candidate whose lack of option years puts extreme pressure on him to throw more strikes during 2026 spring training or else be on Philly’s roster bubble.

Tortosa was originally a Tiger and became a six-year minor league free agent after the 2023 season, but he didn’t sign or pitch at an affiliate in 2024 and only popped up pitching in Puerto Rico after the season. He signed with the Schaumburg Boomers of the Frontier League to start 2025 and was signed by the Phillies in May after just three innings in Indy ball, as he was in the midst of a pretty serious velo spike. Tortosa touched 100 a few times at Jersey Shore the rest of the year, and has continued throwing hard in Venezuela this winter. This is a lefty with rare arm strength and a slider that has performed like a plus pitch thanks to the depth created by Tortosa’s arm slot rather than pure spin. He has poor control, maybe bad enough to prevent him from holding down a role even though he has slam dunk seventh inning stuff.

Kennedy-Hayes is a Rec Spec-sporting, multiple-chain-wearing, hard-throwing relief righty whose fastball peaks in the 99-100 mph range. He spent time at three different junior colleges before landing at Austin Peay, where TKH worked just 20.2 innings in relief in his redshirt junior draft year. Titan’s name aptly evokes his arm strength, and after his velo was down a little bit early in 2025, it rebounded and he was his usual 95-plus later in the season as he struck out 31% of his foes and reached High-A. He has a slider that he throws so hard that it tends to be auto-classified as a cutter. It’s 87-90 mph, but has the big lateral wipe of a slider, and could be a deadly pitch if only Kennedy-Hayes could control it. He can’t right now, walking 30 guys in 45.2 innings last year. Here, inconsistency is forecast to limit Kennedy-Hayes’ role to that of an up/down reliever.