ZiPS 2025 Top 100 Prospects

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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