The Complete Prospects Compendium (Part 1)

The most detailed scouting reports on all of the best prospects in baseball. 200 Players and over 130,000 words.

I am proud to introduce the first annual Complete Prospects Compendium. This is the most comprehensive and detailed guide to all the nuances of the best prospects in baseball that is out there. Nearly 140,000 words on the best prospects in baseball, who they are, how they play, how they can get better, and what could cause them to fail.

Due to medium having some technical difficulties with documents this large, the book has been split into two parts. You can view part two here. Alternatively, you can read the entire thing in one document by downloading this PDF. With the PDF version, some links and embeds will likely be broken. If you choose to read on Medium, you might be best off by using Reader View. Safari has it pre-installed and with little effort you can get a browser extension for it on Chrome. My experience is that reader view lets huge documents like this run much smoother.

This list is compiled entirely on my own opinions and scouting reports but I do actually have sources this time around who supply me with some data on players. Some of it I was explicitly told not to share so it’s omitted but it does influence the rankings. Big thanks to everyone who supplied me with anything, it really helps a ton.

This book will cover the top 100 prospects in baseball, another seven that I have a 55 FV on, 90 players on one of the other major publications top 100s that I chose to omit for whatever reason, and then three guys I like for 2022 but missed out on the 55 FV tier to bring us up to an ever 200 Prospects total. I won’t go deep on the process and methodology behind this book since I plan on doing a more in depth post on how I scout, what I value, and the resources I use later this month but I will touch on a few things here.

My FVs tend to be higher than other publications because I try to rank players independent of their team. My way of neutralizing the player development curve is looking at every player under the lens where I assume their team is competent and puts all their resources into letting them succeed- basically I pretend every team has the Dodgers development. This means high end outcomes are more common than just average development yields them which is what people assume. My tiers line up fairly closely with Fangraphs rankings (in terms of quantity in each tier) if you bump everyone down by 5.

I will always value ceiling over floor in these rankings. That is how teams value players in free agency and trades, to value prospects any differently seems silly. On the pitching side this is especially easy to see. Yusei Kikuchi just got paid 36MM/3yrs when he has consistently been below-average because the upside is so high. On the other hand, you have Michael Pineda or Tyler Anderson who are consistently league average starters but get less than a fourth of what Kikuchi did. Teams are constantly chasing upside and paying a premium to do so. Why would they prioritize getting a safe bench piece on the minor league side?

The final thing I need to strongly emphasize is that you shouldn’t focus on the rankings. The rankings are there as a baseline but most players are interchangeable within their tier. All of the top four had a good argument for the #1 spot and I wouldn’t really protest any of them being ranked there. The purpose of such long and detailed reports isn’t to justify my rankings, it is to provide you with all the information you might need to make your own educated opinion on the player. The report matters more than an arbitrary number I assign each player.

I also need to stress very clearly that I think every prospect in the 55 FV tier is good. It is not an insult or the sign of a lack of faith if I’m slightly lower than you on them. If they are on their list it is because I full-heartedly believe in their impact potential at the major league level.

This list is not designed to be used for fantasy baseball. I value skills based on how they are valued by real world front offices. Stolen bases are entirely irrelevant to me in all but the most extreme of circumstances. Defense matters more than just the position they play. OBP is always preferred over batting average. Again, I am not ranking players according to the system they are in so this doesn’t even directly line up with who I think will be the most successful players.

With that out of the way, here is my ranking of the top 107 prospects in baseball. Please, feel free to jump around and read about only your favorite teams players or rankings you find interesting. I don’t expect anyone to read the entire thing.

The PF wRC+ listed in the player cards is created by @WillSugeStats. It is literally just wRC+ adjusted based on Baseball America Park Factors. Minor league wRC+ on Fangraphs is not park adjusted normally. You can view a full leaderboard here.

1. CF Julio Rodríguez, Seattle Mariners

It’s much easier to justify Julio Rodríguez at #1 overall this year than it was last year when I wrongly placed him there (More on that here). I’m far from the only one to hold this opinion as he’s a consensus top-three prospect and well-respected scouts like Geoff Pontes, Carlos Collazo, and Joe Doyle also have him at #1 overall.

It’s hard to find a red flag in Julio’s game at this point. You can call the groundball rate atrocious and it certainly isn’t good but he has enough raw power that he’ll still hit ~30 home runs a year even if that never improves. The approach has matured significantly and he cut back on the swing and miss.

The power is unbelievable. His Max EV of 117.4 MPH last year would have been in the 99th percentile of all major leaguers- tied with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The even more impressive feat of his raw power, actually came in Spring Training against the Royals Ace, Carlos Hernández when he hit a home run 115 MPH to the opposite field. That is the hardest-hit opposite-field flyball of all time. Yeah, Julio has elite raw juice at his best.

Julio appears to be operating at his best the majority of the time. He averaged 91.1 MPH off the bat last year which would have ranked in the 85th percentile of major leaguers. His 90th percentile EV is 108.6 MPH. That is in the 93rd percentile of all qualified MLB players. He’s a strong rotator with a mechanically efficient swing, god-tier bat speed (Consistently 80 MPH+), and premium physicality. The results speak for themselves.

Even his mishits are demolished. On September 2nd, Julio Rodríguez hit a popup with a hangtime of 7.22 seconds. The hardest hit popup in the majors this year was a 104.3 MPH blast off the bat of Dom Smith. That astonishing popup had a hangtime of 7.26 seconds. The ability to mishit the ball with such authority is rare and speaks volumes of Julio’s elite raw power.

The hit tool is what really makes Julio special, however, even with his transcendent raw power and even elite game power. The hit tool is what separates him from every other elite power and what will make him a superstar.

Julio Rodríguez made major strides in the most simplistic of areas this year- namely just making contact. Julio Rodríguez ran above-average contact rates for the first time this year. He whiffed a mere 26.1% of the time between High A and AA. He screwed his head on more this year and manged to keep in his shoes and not overswing anywhere near as often. He is still direct to the ball and has all the bat speed and mechanics to hit velocity up in the zone.

Julio Rodríguez also started prioritizing contact when behind in the count and it’s why his whiff rates are so much higher than his plus strikeout rates. He chokes up a tad and slows things down ever so slightly to guarantee he makes contact. Unlike most two-strike approaches, Julio’s actually works- arguably better than the normal one. He still maintains his elite feel for the barrel and still shows power even if it’s more plus than elite in those scenarios. He’s not forced to turn to his contact swing often because of how disciplined he is but when he does, it’s highly effective. Two-strike approaches are usually dumb but Julio is one of the few exceptions to the rule where it makes sense to have one such as his.

The real gains in his contact skills, however, were due to Julio Rodríguez’s rapidly improving approach. Julio Rodríguez slashed his chase rate this year. He only chased a mere 24.7% of the time last season. That is in the 70th percentile of major leaguers and tied with guys like Bryce Harper and Bryan Reynolds. His approach is more than that though, it’s how aggressive he is in the strike zone that makes the approach special.

If we assume that Julio Rodríguez sees balls in the strike zone at a MLB average rate then we can estimate that Julio has a 71.4% z-swing%. That is in the 79th percentile of major leaguers. Only Brandon Belt, Matt Olson, Josh Bell, Ryan McMahon, Dansby Swanson, Vlad Jr., and Bryan Reynolds did as good as him in both z-swing% and chase rate. That is a conservative estimate for Julio’s z-swing% too as he likely saw less strikes since pitchers have less control at his level and he is the most intimidating hitter in the minors so throwing to him is not common.

An approach is more than just making the correct swing decisions, as awesome as Julio is at that part of his job. Julio also adjusts his swing to optimize the contact quality and frequency based on pitch location and type. Julio will alter his stride length, lengthening it to get to breaking balls and striding shorter and firmer against fastballs up in the zone. He’ll also adjust his swing path based on pitch location. His vertical bat angle on pitches up in the zone is ~24° and his average VBA on pitches down at the bottom of the zone is ~43°. He changes his swing based on the pitch he sees coming and as long as he’s not blind it pays huge dividends in both contact quality (Particularly batted ball spin) and frequency.

Julio Rodríguez was a plus hitter even before the contact rates came around because his contact quality- independent of power was so elite. He actually got better in that regard somehow. His LD rate jumped from 22.4% to a 95th percentile 26.6%. He popped out slightly more but the overall effect was his xBAcon based on batted ball type jumping from .336 to .346.

If we assume his spray charts haven’t changed on individual batted ball types, (His Pull/Cent/Oppo overall ratio is largely the same so it’s not unreasonable to assume that) then Julio Rodríguez is literally perfection personified. Julio was one of five players on my top 100 last year with a below-average pull rate on groundballs, an above-average pull rate on flyballs, an above-average pull rate on line drives, and a below-average popup rate. It’s the perfect mix of sprays. If Julio hasn’t lost that then his xBAcon from 2021 would jump up to .373. That would have led all the minors in 2019.

This is all without considering the effect of his power on his BAcon. Julio Rodriguez hits the ball as hard as just about anyone not named Giancarlo Stanton. These numbers which already have him as one of the best xBAcon guys on the planet are assuming he has only average power. Even if Julio Rodríguez had a strikeout issue, which he very much does not have- he would still hit for a high average because the contact quality is so exceptional. That is what makes the hit tool exceptional. He adjusts and the result is hard contact at optimal angles with good directions and spin.

Julio Rodríguez unlocked a new gear when he returned from getting the Dominican Republic it’s first ever medal in the Olympics for baseball. I’m not sure if it was because he saw Yamamoto and no one in the minors has comparable stuff, or if he got some new advice that made things click for him. Whatever it was, Julio evolved into the best hitter I’ve ever watched. It felt like watching Juan Soto on a rehab assignment from that point.

After hitting a robust .417/.444/.625 in the Olympics, he was arguably better in his return. He cut his strikeout rate to 15.2%, walked more than ever at 13.8% and hit an absurd .395/.483/.565 in the most pitcher friendly home ballpark in the entirety of the minors. His contact rate rose ~3% and his chase rate dipped below 20%. He continued to be aggressive in the strike zone and hit the ball with authority too. It’s only a 145 PA sample size where he was the greatest player to ever live but just wow.

If you want offensive flaws for Julio there are three I can squint at and pretend are real issues. Julio Rodríguez loses some power when he hits outside pitches. He’ll sometimes let his frontside leak when lunging across the plate for pitches and it results in weaker contact. He also doesn’t often hit balls thrown at the very top of the zone- most of that is because he doesn’t swing at them that often but you can pretend it’s a hole that might be exploited. When pitchers go fastball way up, curveball way down, and do that back and forth, Julio can be made to look a fool. This clip of Freddy Pachecho striking him out illustrates this perfectly.

The final issue and only one I worry about at all is that Julio Rodríguez has some struggles with offspeed stuff. He’s run reverse splits- especially in contact rates because of that struggle. I think most of that is a lack of exposure but he does show some vulnerabilities to good offspeed stuff of the plate that could be an issue. Still far from a kryptonite, however, with changeups only constituting a small percentage of the pitches he will see.

Most of the industry is finally acknowledging that Julio Rodríguez is an above-average runner now. I still think they’re way too low on his athleticism. I’ve clocked him in the 4.1–4.2 range going home to first regularly with his best times being closer to an 80 than the 50 people think he is. That speed undeniably plays on the basepaths. In 217 career games he has 15 triples and is 32/40 on stolen base attempts. This year alone he went 22/27 (Counting Olympics) in 79 games. He beat Victor Labrada in a race during High Performance Camp and Labrada frequently earns 70+ speed grades.

That athleticism should translate to defense at least a little. Julio Rodríguez is a fine centerfielder. His routes can be a bit adventurous at times and he has some issues tracking flyballs but the range is there. He reacts quickly and covers a lot of ground. He’s not going to be a spectacular centefielder in all likelihood but he can play there. If for whatever reason he moves to right field, Julio would compete for gold gloves when you pair his premium range with a 70 grade arm that is accurate to boot. He’s not going to win games with his glove but he won’t lose them either and that is more than enough when you hit like Julio does.

Every person I’ve talked to who doesn’t have Julio Rodríguez #1 has the same flawed reasoning. Julio Rodríguez won’t be as valuable as a Bobby Witt Jr., or Adley Rutschman because he plays a less valuable position. For the sake of this argument, we’ll pretend Julio Rodríguez is shackled to right field, and electronic strike zones are never going to be a thing.

This argument is still stupid. Right fielders have as a whole won 13 more MVPs than shortstops. Right fielders own the single season rWAR and f WAR record. Left fielders own the single season records post-integration. The last time the best SS had more rWAR than the best outfielder was 2009. 15 runs of defensive value separating Julio from an elite SS or 20 from a catcher is a lot of value to overcome, but I’m pretty confident Julio’s wRC+ will typically be more than 15 points higher than Witt Jr.’s.

Julio Rodríguez is the complete package. He does it all at the plate and can provide value in the field and even on the basepaths. He’s an MLB ready bat who should compete for Rookie of the Year this year and will quickly establish himself as the face of the next great Mariners team.

2. SS Bobby Witt Jr., Kansas City Royals

Somehow, the ridiculous hype coming out of the Royals alternate site surrounding Bobby Witt Jr., last year was actually warranted for the most part. He’s maybe not quite Álex Rodríguez, but he’s still genuinely amazing and will be a star at the major league level. Even if that amazing is more in the Javier Báez way then you’re probably comfortable with.

Bobby Witt Jr. has a whiff problem. He whiffed 30.5% of the time last year while splitting his season pretty evenly between AA and AAA. He gets some slack for being only 21 and in the highest regions of the minor leagues but it’s still only an average projection.

The swing is designed to hit fastballs with regularity and he does just that. His swing is short and compact as he’s cut most of the wasteful movements from his high school days. He has some of the best bat speed in all the minors and his short loading phase makes it easy for him to grip it and rip it against upper velocity. He’s probably the best players on this list when it comes to doing damage against velocity all over the zone- even if he also whiffs a bit against them. The damage he does to upper velocity when he swings is special.

Bobby Witt Jr. does a great job of flattening his swing against high pitches. His VBA only averages ~23° on pitches in the top third of the strike zone. He flattens out and it lets him stay on plane with the high fastball and demolish the flat VBA arms most players struggle with. Velocity nor location lets the fastball beat Witt Jr.

What does beat Bobby Witt Jr. is himself. Bobby Witt chased 32.6% of the time last season. That is in the bottom quartile of all minor leaguers. If we assume that Bobby Witt Jr. sees balls in the strike zone at a MLB average rate then we can estimate that Witt Jr. has a 68.5% z-swing%. That is in the 66th percentile of major leaguers. It’s not an atrocious z-swing% but relative to the chase rates it is only a small step above. Bobby Witt Jr. does not make great swing decisions and it negatively effects both his K% and BB%.

The good news is the majority of Bobby Witt Jr.’s whiffs come because of his subpar approach. Bobby actually has respectable in-zone contact rates. If he were to fix the approach somehow, then I don’t think it’s outlandish to think the hit tool could jump to a 65–70 grade.

The thing is, I don’t think the approach is completely hopeless either. Bobby Witt Jr. has good pitch tracking- or more accurately pitch recognition skills. Those skills are evident in how he produces flush contact. Bobby Witt Jr.’s VBA is only ~23° on pitches up in the zone. On pitches down, Witt Jr., steepens his swing to ~39°, and on pitches in that remaining middle third he sits at ~32°.

The way his swing changes so noticeably based on pitch location makes scouting Witt Jr. extremely easy. If he guesses wrong it’s obvious because his swing is off-shape. If he guesses right then it’s obvious because of the bat angle- even when he mistimes it or misjudged the exact spot. That is how we know that Bobby Witt Jr. is at least recognizing that what he is seeing is a breaking ball down- even if he can’t help but chase it. If he has that pitch recognition then it is entirely possible that he takes the next logical step and turns it into not chasing.

Of course, to a lesser extent, you can say the same thing about Javier Báez. He also makes frequent flush contact but adjusting his swing based on pitch location. Báez seemingly guesses wrong a lot more than Witt Jr., and has more in-zone whiff issues but this isn’t an exact science. Recognizing what a pitch is and guessing the location is not always going to translate to guessing the location.

It also is worth noting that it’s not always for the best to be more patient with this profile. Witt Jr., does a lot of damage on contact even against bad pitches. Forcing patience would just lead to more strikeouts, probably more walks, but also lower quality contact. The Braves tried to force it on Drew Waters this year and it blew up in their face. I can’t go crazy projecting on the approach even if I think there is upside in it.

Like with Julio Rodríguez above him, Bobby Witt Jr. is a special talent because of his elite contact quality- even independent of the elite power. The how is a bit different than Julio but the overall outlook is about the same.

I’ve already touched on it in relation to his approach but Bobby Witt Jr., has an elite feel for creating flush contact. He adjusts his swing shape to insure that all of the contact he makes is squared up and that consistent feel for barreling the ball is a difference maker. His contact is flush and the result is a lot of backspin on his batted balls and an even more significant reduction in mishit balls.

Bobby Witt Jr. also has premium raw power. He has possessed 90th percentile bat speed since High School and he still does now. Arguably the most impressive part of Witt Jr.’s bat speed though is the instant acceleration. His wrists are incredibly strong and effortlessly flick the barrel into the zone. Even when Bobby Witt Jr., is late on a pitch and hits it the opposite way, it’s still crushed.

There is maybe a modicum of inefficiency in his swing and he sometimes overrotates but the power potential is undeniably elite. Bobby Witt Jr. has a maximum exit velocity of ~113 MPH and he has hit that mark on three separate occasions. He averaged 90 MPH off the bat last year which would have been in the top quartile of major leaguers last year.

Bobby Witt Jr. has elite feel for elevation. That comes with the tradeoff of a slightly above-average popup rate (Also partially because of how much of his contact is against fastballs), but it’s a more than worthwhile tradeoff to run a 94th percentile groundball rate despite his youth. That elite feel to elevate and all fields power due to his quick acceleration lets Witt Jr. get to all of his raw power in games and then some. He’s going to be one of the game’s premier power threats in his prime, even if it could look a bit unconventional.

Bobby Witt Jr., is an all world athlete. He’s not the best athlete on the planet like his trainer might have you believe but he’s one of the best in the minors. He’s a 70 grade runner with elite top speed and even better acceleration. The timing of his jumps is still a work in progress when stealing bases but he has all the physical gifts needed to swipe bags, it’s just a matter of cleaning up their application.

Witt Jr. also has elite potential in the field. His range is absurd. He will fly across the diamond and field groundballs to the left of second base and then the next play range back into deep left field to catch a bloop hit. He goes after every batted ball no matter how unrealistic and his speed and quick reactions let him get to a lot of them. Bobby Witt Jr. also has premium arm strength. He’s perfectly capable of making throws on the run, without setting his feet, or from his knees. That elite arm strength turns infield singles into outs. It turns groundouts into double plays.

Bobby Witt Jr., despite his unreal physical gifts and raw defensive intangibles, has a ways to go on defense. Witt Jr. struggles with charging in on groundballs in front of him. It’s the routine play where all he has to do is wait for the ball and make the easy throw that he pushes too hard and muffs. Witt Jr. also often struggles to find his grip on the ball and will double clutch which causes his arm to play down. He’s overaggressive and will often try for impossible double plays that lead to him getting no outs out of a routine groundball. The upside is a plus defender at shortstop but I’m not expecting him to be that player from day one.

Bobby Witt Jr. has all the tools in the world. If the approach comes around then you could pretty easily justify him as the top prospect in all of baseball. Even if the approach doesn’t come around, Witt Jr. should still be a star. The combination of quality contact, defensive chops, and pure athleticism is tantalizing. Last offseason I called him the second highest upside player in the entire minors and I stand by that assessment (The name in front of him changed though. Witt Jr., pairs that ethereal upside with a shockingly high floor- he has enough power and defensive value that even the hit tool collapsing still could have him as an everyday player.

3. CF Riley Greene, Detroit Tigers

Riley Greene has always had raw power, I’ve known that since his prep days and never doubted that for a second. I doubted if it would ever manifest in games because of his adamant refusal to ever change his flat swing when he was drafted but the power potential was always there, lurking in the background. He’s since tweaked his swing somewhat and made clear that the raw power is a lot better than I ever imagined.

Riley Greene hit a ball 115.8 MPH in Spring Training this year. That would have placed in the 92nd percentile of all qualified major leaguers last year. That was at the time, the hardest-hit ball ever by a Detroit Tiger- clearing Miguel Cabrera by 0.2 MPH. It’s harder than any ball ever hit by Spencer Torkelson. Jonathan Schoop reclaimed the Detroit Tigers record in July with a 117.1 MPH double but that doesn’t take away from Greene’s power in the slightest. It is elite max stuff.

Riley Greene’s power is consistent too. His average exit velocity sits at 91 MPH despite him posting a pull rate just below 40%. That consistent hard contact plays in all areas, even if his feel to elevate rate now is below-average.

I have faith that Riley Greene will learn to elevate more consistently with time at the same level to adjust to his competition and tweak things. Riley Greene has a very steep bat angle when he swings. Independent of pitch location, Riley Greene has an average VBA of ~-39°. This naturally gives Greene explicit loft that should make it easy to adopt a high elevation approach. He can develop the implicit side of things by improving his attack angles with more exposure.

That steep VBA has its drawbacks but it does a lot for his contact quality. A ~-39° VBA is in the 97th percentile of major leaguers. Players with a VBA steeper than -38° had an average BABIP of .336 last year. Steeper VBA’s typically lead to more aerial contact, more line drives, and less popups. This backs up the legitimacy and repeatability of Riley Greene’s 93rd percentile line drive rate, and 2.7% popup rate.

Riley Greene has an elite feel for barreling up balls and hitting with the sweet spot. His swing shape helps with that somewhat, but the feel is there, independent of swing shape. He doesn’t just settle for making contact but always puts his A-swing on and squares the ball up. He gets the barrel of the bat in the zone early with a quick whip swing and keeps it there to maximize his window of opportunity. He’s going to be a BABIP monster with his ability to both optimize his launch angles and square balls up. He also has elite power and the ability to go the other way which certainly doesn’t hurt at all.

The drawback of the steep swing is in his contact frequency is adversely hurt by it. A steeper swing doesn’t stay on plane with vertically moving fastballs for very long. It also leaves him more vulnerable to stuff up in the zone and the inside fastball. Most players with steeper swing paths have very high whiff rates on the high fastball. Freddie Freeman is the primary exception to that rule.

Riley Greene has advanced plate discipline and won’t chase that high fastball often. He also does a lot of damage on anything below the letters. His approach is advanced enough to thrive even if he never mitigates the hole- which he is already showing signs of doing. Greene has remarkable lower half flexibility that lets him adjust up to the high fastball, and a very compact swing that shouldn’t lead to troubles with velocity.

He also has some whiff issues against in-zone curveballs- particularly those with good vertical depth and very little sweep. He can struggle to stay on plane with them and when he does connect with them it’s not always optimal. The good news is only 4.4% of all pitches at the MLB level are in-zone curveballs so it’s probably fine if he occasionally struggles with them.

Riley Greene’s approach at the plate and pitch recognition are pretty clearly above-average. He shows the ability to discern which breaking balls are going in the zone and is aggressive in hunting them. The whiffs will always be present since secondary stuff is just inherently more whiff reliant and Greene hunts them. However, as long as the approach remains mature, Greene will be able to keep the strikeout rates in check due to the lack of called strikes. He’ll also work walks by laying off stuff out of the zone.

Riley Greene’s athleticism is wholly underappreciated. I might be the only one but I think Greene can be an average centerfielder. He’s not a burner by any stretch but he is an above-average runner with some hidden speed potential that reminds me of Bellinger somewhat. I’m probably underrating him. I’ve pretty regularly clocked him in the 55–60 range of ~4.1 seconds home to first. He’s also shockingly apt in centerfield.

Statistically, Riley Greene is a plus centerfielder. Davenport Runs had him at +6 runs last year (Scaled like DRS) in 72 games in that particular spot. FRAA had Greene at +4.0. This isn’t just me trusting stats though, it’s primarily based on eye test looks. Greene is an efficient route runner who covers a lot of ground. He reacts instantaneously and is awesome at tracking flyballs. He’s not an ideal centerfielder with only an average arm and without the speed to make a lot of plays but the consistency he offers on the routine lets him play the position. He won’t be flashy but he’s a Kyle Lewis esque option who doesn’t need elite speed to stick.

Riley Greene only really has two fantastic tools and three 50–55s. He’s not the five tool monster you want to put a player this high on any prospects list. If Riley Greene does not hit, he will quickly become replaceable. Fortunately, I’m as confident that Riley Greene will be a plus bat as anyone on this list not named Julio Rodríguez. He’s not a complete zero in the field either, even if his average arm makes the fallback plan left field instead of right. I think there might be an adjustment period for Greene at the MLB level but once he hits his stride, Greene will be a superstar.

4. SS Oneil Cruz, Pittsburgh Pirates

Oneil Cruz fell down every prospect list except mine last year because he was involved in a car accident and there was a rumor that he was drunk- an unsubstantiated one with plenty of evidence to the contrary. Back to playing baseball this year, Oneil Cruz reminded us why he’s the highest upside player in all the minor leagues and why he’s a good bet to reach a large portion of that upside.

Oneil Cruz has more raw power than anyone in MLB history not named Giancarlo Stanton. . Oneil Cruz in five batted ball events at the MLB level boasted a Max EV of 118.2 MPH which is in the 99th percentile. In the minors he hit a ball 120 MPH this year and is only the third player to ever hit 120 MPH; joining Giancarlo Stanton (x14), and Aaron Judge (x1). Gary Sánchez also technically did it once but considering that one hit was 3 MPH harder than any other ball he’s ever hit, it seems like an error.

Oneil Cruz hit 4 balls 117 MPH+ this year in the minors. Only Giancarlo Stanton had more (10) at any level. He also did 116 twice. And 115 three times. In total he had 20 batted balls hit over 111 MPH. Only Giancarlo Stanton had a higher 95th percentile EV last year. Only Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. had a higher rate of balls in play at 111 MPH+. He had an average exit velocity of 94.2 MPH last year in the minors. Only three players topped that in the MLB last year. I’ll refrain from repeating myself by listing them again.

Oneil Cruz did all this while hitting 29.1% of his batted balls to the opposite field last year. Of all the major leaguers who hit more balls the opposite way last year, the highest average EV was 92.1 MPH from JD Martinez. The ability to go the other way with power only further separates Oneil from the pack of power hitters and puts him in even more rarified air.

The feel to elevate is not there for Oneil yet. His groundball rate of 46% was in the 30th percentile of all minor leaguers last year. In all honesty, the feel to elevate might never come around. He has a steep VBA but nothing so extreme, I think he’ll get to average feel to elevate but it’s entirely possible he never gets there or beyond it.

I doubt that would matter at all. When you have his much raw power you don’t have to elevate. Giancarlo Stanton won an MVP with a below-average groundball rate. (By like 0.2% though). So did José Abreu in 2020. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., just won the Hank Aaron award with a below-average groundball rate.

Sometimes just hitting the ball very hard with consistency is enough for the power to play. Oneil might not have 80 grade power because of elevation issues but it will be at least a 70 and that’s enough for him to be a superstar.

The thing that makes Oneil Cruz so exciting is he is not like all those hulking sluggers we’ve seen before. He’s more athletic than Stanton or even Judge. He’s built like them but he has the flexibility of a much smaller player. He has the speed of a 5'10" guy. He’s so much of an athlete that the upside of his contact tool is significantly higher than Judge.

That’s not a knock on Aaron Judge at all. He whiffs ~35% of the time but works counts masterfully to keep the strikeouts manageable enough to let him do his thing. He thrives by not chasing and works around below-average zone-contact rates because of that discipline.

He’s vulnerable to pitches in the inside corners and bottom outside because he lacks the lower half flexibility to put the barrel on the ball from those spots. He has limited plate coverage because his levers get crossed up and it leads to the third-highest OOZ-whiff% in the MLB since his debut behind only Miguel Sanó and Joey Gallo.

Let’s put that plate coverage difference into context. Oneil Cruz has only had five career batted ball events with statcast. One of those five batted ball events was a home run off of a Mychal Givens changeup that was 1.23 feet of the ground. In 1332 career batted balls, Aaron Judge has one batted ball off a lower pitch.

Oneil Cruz homered off that pitch- practically from a knee with a 103.8 MPH exit velo. Aaron Judge off of his one pitch that was lower did not homer but grounded out at 61.2 MPH. The lowest pitch that Judge ever homered off of was 1.47 feet off the ground. The lowest hit 103.8 MPH+ was 1.32 feet off the ground and hit for a groundout with a -15° launch angle.

When Judge will strike out anytime he goes fishing for pitches below the zone, or even on that bottom edge, Oneil Cruz is the opposite. He will effortlessly homer from one knee on pitches that any normal human being would deem unhittable- especially from a player of his size. The flexibility of Oneil Cruz is not normal and is what separates him from every other player- not just prospect on the planet.

This is Tieran from a few months in the future with a breaking update. This Spring Oneil Cruz has done it again! This time it was a homerun off a pitch from Jason Foley even lower- just 1.07 feet off the ground. That not only blows anything Judge has ever done out of the water, it blows out just about everyone to ever play baseball. On only 39 occasions has a player hit a home run on a pitch that low in the statcast era. This isn’t just god tier plate coverage for someone his size anymore, it’s elite plate coverage period. This is historically unprecedented ability to hit the ball with elite power everywhere- both inside the zone and out.

I realize a 30.2% whiff rate sounds intimidating but that is still lower than Bobby Witt Jr., Marco Luciano, Nick Gonzales, Brennen Davis, etc. It’s also largely the byproduct of a subpar approach. Oneil Cruz has a bit of a chase issue. He’s an aggressive hitter who is too trigger-happy with breaking balls below the zone. His in-zone contact rates are actually solid, it’s just the approach. @ydouright has Oneil Cruz with an estimated 81.5% in-zone contact%. That’s just an estimate based on other factors but it’s probably a general ballpark range of what to expect.

I’m banking on his youth and aggressive assignments being a primary culprit behind the approach issues. I also am banking on his power forcing pitchers to not throw him as many strikes as they do most players and helping the walk rates that way. Also, like with Judge, eventual electronic strike zones so he actually gets calls down low could help his chase issues there. If the approach were to somehow reach current Aaron Judge levels then he might literally become Barry Bonds.

The contact quality was always going to be good just by virtue of how hard he hits the ball. For the sake of simplicity, let’s round Oneil Cruz’s hard-hit rate down to 50%. Hard-hit balls have an average BAcon of .500. Anything softer averages .218. That would give Oneil Cruz a .359 BAcon which would be in the 78th percentile of major leaguers last year. That is an oversimplified methodology but probably an accurate one.

Oneil Cruz has average launch angle optimization and spray distribution. I’d lean towards the over of that .359 expectation because a 50% hard-hit rate would only put him 17th in the league and he’s likely to be closer to the league-leading 57.9% in his prime. He’s going to show plus BAcon skills because he hits the ball so freaking hard. This is not rocket science. Power impacts the game in a number of ways.

Oneil Cruz is the hardest player to evaluate defensively in all the minors. Oneil Cruz is 6'7". The tallest shortstop ever to play regularly before him was only 6'4". As far as I am aware, there are only three of them- two of whom are active in Corey Seager and Carlos Correa. The third was Cal Ripken Jr. Two of those players “too big for shortstop” won a Gold Glove. The third has been plenty playable there with his only -5 career DRS in over five thousand innings. Size has not proven to be an issue before. Perhaps Oneil is too far past the top of the scale, or perhaps his size will be an asset.

Oneil Cruz has never had size be an issue for him before, either. He’s logged +8 Davenport Runs at shortstop in his minor league career. He has +3.6 FRAA in his career. He’s not been terrible statistically. And the issues he has had in the field haven’t been size-related at all.

The primary issue for Oneil Cruz is that he makes more throwing errors than just about anyone to ever exist. His career fielding percentage at shortstop in the minors is .927. Almost all of his errors are from throwing the ball into the dugout. The worst fielding percentage by an MLB shortstop last year was .957. He would rank 280/306 qualifiers if his numbers were in the MLB for worst career fielding% by a shortstop.

Oneil Cruz has 80-grade arm strength. He has 30-grade arm accuracy and some footwork issues. The result is a lot of errant throws and legitimate questions on if he should move to the outfield where he could let it rip without consequence. Arm accuracy is fixable but it is not a guarantee. The arm is an asset if he can corral it but Cruz might be better off just toning things down and sacrificing as much power as needed for better accuracy.

The legitimate gripe with a shortstop of his stature is that Cruz won’t play as low to the ground as his contemporaries. He’ll have issues charging in on balls and scooping some grounders on weird hops because of it. That is a warranted concern but again, I’ll point out that it hasn’t exactly been kryptonite to other big shortstops and crouching is absolutely a thing. Cruz still rides low to the ground, even though he is big. He has some issues charging in, but it’s far from a death sentence.

Now let’s talk about how Oneil Cruz’s size gives him an elite ceiling defensively. Oneil Cruz has the largest catch radius of any shortstop ever. He’ll snag line drives over his head that are a guaranteed double with anyone else at shortstop. He won’t have to move for some plays that others struggle with because his limbs are so long. He takes long strides so the impact of that first step is magnified.

Oneil Cruz offers elite speed which plays in the form of range. He has great reaction times. He’s agile moving in all directions. He can stretch out and make plays from his feet that most players have to dive for. He can dive for easy hits with anyone else at shortstop. He has elite arm strength that also lets him make throws from his knees or without setting his feet that no one else can. He can make throws from deep in the hole and create outs that way.

Overall, I think Oneil Cruz profiles similarly to Fernando Tatis Jr. defensively. He’ll make five star plays that the SC Top 10 will ooh and ah over but also botch ones that should be routine. Consistency is his kryptonite. There will be mountain seasons where he might win a gold glove and valley’s where he is one of the worst defensive shortstops in the league. Overall, I’m calling it average but it’s a very uneven and high variance average.

If Oneil Cruz hits his defensive ceiling he’s the best prospect in baseball. If he hits his offensive ceiling then he is the best player in baseball. If Oneil Cruz hits his offensive and defensive ceilings simultaneously, he might just be the best baseball player of all time. There are no limits to the potential of Oneil Cruz. I don’t think he’ll hit his ceiling but he should still be a star on the strength of that god-tier bat coming from the shortstop position. Risk factor pushes him to the bottom of the 70 FV tier.

5. SP Grayson Rodriguez, Baltimore Orioles

Usually, when a pitcher has an outlier pitch, they are likely to contribute in a valued role. For some that is as a lockdown high leverage reliever, for others, it is as a middle of the rotation starter. When a pitcher has two total outlier offerings, you’re looking at an Ace. I’m not even sure if a single pitcher in all the world has three such offerings. Grayson Rodriguez has a chance to be the first.

When I talk about an outlier offering, I’m saying the traits on the pitch are so good that less only one percent of pitchers can match them. Grayson Rodriguez genuinely has two pitches that meet such a designation and a third you could argue meets the same terms. He also has a fourth plus pitch just because. I’m genuinely not confident that a single major league arm has as good of (pure stuff) for a well-balanced four-pitch mix. Grayson is such a special talent that I can’t say enough good things about.

The fastball is his first outlier offering. He throws it at 97.4 MPH on average. Only three starting pitchers threw harder last year. Jacob deGrom, Sandy Alcántara, and Gerrit Cole. That is the kind of company you want to keep no matter who you are. He throws it with spin rates parked around ~2500 RPMs. Only eight starting pitchers averaged higher last year.

The fastball movement stands out just as much as the velocity. He averages 17.7 inches of induced vertical break. That is roughly in the 75th percentile of all major leaguers. That is good but it’s the horizontal that makes the pitch an outlier. He throws it with an average of 13.8 inches of tail on it. That is the 12th most horizontal movement on a four-seam fastball this year with a minimum of 100 pitches; roughly in the 98th percentile.

No pitcher this year matched Grayson Rodriguez in both horizontal and vertical movement. No pitcher did in 2020 either. Or 2019. In fact, only once in the statcast era has Grayson Rodriguez been matched in both horizontal and vertical movement.

Of course, that pitcher is… Ariel Miranda? (2018) Ariel Miranda isn’t bad- he won the KBO equivalent of a Cy Young in 2021 but he’s not exactly the Ace MLB.com predicted he would be. Is this a red flag for Grayson? Absolutely not. Miranda threw 7 MPH slower with the worst extension in the MLB and frequently pitched down with the fastball when he should have pitched up. Honestly, it’s kind of baffling the pitch was even as useable as it was with his optimization or lack thereof of it.

Grayson Rodriguez has better fastball command- especially up in the zone which is why he has an plus VAA with the fastball. He also throws his pitches from a release height of ~5.9 feet which is right around league average and doesn’t hurt the fastball movement at all, even if it doesn’t enhance it either.

His fastball has a 37% whiff rate last year and he was also consistently throwing it for strikes. That is a higher whiff rate than any MLB starter had last year (Min 300 pitches).This might not be the absurdly-VAA dominant offering I typically love but it’s still an 80-grade offering with the combination of elite velocity, elite movement, fastball command, and results. There is no pitcher on the planet with a comparable fastball.

The changeup is quite arguably better than his 80 grade fastball. He throws the changeup at 84.3 MPH which is 13.1 MPH slower than the fastball. That alone would make the pitch an outlier. Let’s put that number into perspective. Only five starting pitchers had a higher velo gap between their fastball and changeup last year at the MLB level. Eli Morgan, Dylan Cease, Logan Gilbert, Spencer Howard, and John King. None of them threw their changeup over 80 MPH. Grayson Rodriguez throws his at 84.3 MPH. It’s a power changeup that still has elite separation from the fastball.

I missed badly on Spencer Howard’s changeup because he has mediocre deception, inconsistent movement, and lackluster command. That has me somewhat wary of Grayson by default but I don’t think either of those issues or the issues of Gilbert (Lots of waste CH) apply to him. He spots his changeup for strikes 65% of the time and only half of those are swinging.

Grayson Rodriguez stands out for more than movement anyways. He also has -1.4 IVB on the cambio. Only six changeups at the MLB level averaged as much induced drop last year. (Min 75 pitches). He also has 11.2 inches of horizontal break to his arm side on the pitch. That second figure is actually well below-average; it ranks in the bottom 20% of changeups thrown in 2021.

However, the combination of vertical and horizontal movement is only matched by three pitchers in the entire league last year. The first is obviously, Devin Williams and the Airbender. Duh. He’s on all of these lists. The other two are not good pitches in Noé Ramirez’s changeup, and Carlos Martínez’s? So what gives?

Well, changeups are complicated. They aren’t defined by simple movement or even deception. Feel and command are everything. Noé Ramirez has none of those as well with very little velocity separation between it and his fastball. The movement isn’t enough o carry the profile with such bad everything else.

I don’t even actually think Carlos Martínez has a bad changeup either. He’s lost feel and power in recent years; but in his prime, it was fantastic and even more recently, it hasn’t been bad at missing bats or limiting quality contact. He’s just had walks and the occasional long ball inflate the run value. Grayson Rodriguez also has nearly double the velocity separation of Carlos Martínez and over twice that of Noé Ramirez.

The changeup is an outlier and an elite offering. If changeups weren’t so erratic it would be an 80 grade. Instead, it’s a 70 with an asterisk to label it as the best pure changeup I’ve ever scouted (Pepiot and Canterino are Airbenders). There are some concerns that his screwball-esque pronation will lead to health issues later in life but that will be factored into the FV not pitch grade. The pitch has the perfect combination of elite deception and movement that could make it an 80 at the highest level. Even if I think it will settle in just below that.

The curveball isn’t a once in a blue moon pitch like the fastball and changeup but it still has a lot of unique and rare characteristics. The curveball is thrown at 82.4 MPH. That is premium velocity- roughly in the 85th percentile of all major leaguers. He also throws the curveball with 8.7 inches of sweep. That is slightly above-average.

He brings it all together by showcasing -12.1 inches of induced vertical break on the curve. That is in the 65th percentile for a curveball. All of those traits are above-average. None of them warrant outlier status on their own but when combined, only Jimmy Nelson and Tommy Nance tops Grayson Rodriguez in all three categories just outlined. Typically it is velocity or depth- not both.

Grayson Rodriguez has a whiff rate north of 50% against the curveball last year. He was also throwing it for strikes just over 60% of the time. The command of the curve is enough for me to bump plus traits to a 65 grade. If he adds another tick to it or improves his spin efficiency to enhance the movement profile further then it could quickly reach outlier status.

By the standards set by the rest of his arsenal, Grayson Rodriguez’s slider is tame. By the standards of 99% of pitchers it’s a plus offering that could serve as an out pitch. The pitch even has a chance to achieve great results because of how it synergizes with Grayson’s changeup.

The slider is thrown at 83.4 MPH, that is 0.9 MPH slower than the changeup. He throws the slider on a 9:38 spin axis. He throws the changeup on a 3:22 axis. That is almost perfectly a spin mirror to one another- just sixteen minutes apart. The two pitches look the same out of the hand, at the same speed, only for them to move in opposite directions entirely.

The slider has a lot more spin, so it doesn’t drop nearly as much as the changeup. There is 6.6 inches separating the two vertically. The slider does still demonstrate plus sweep, however, at 9.6 inches which is only 1.6 less than the changeup in the other direction.

Grayson Rodriguez uses his slider almost exclusively against same-handed batters which is probably ideal for this movement profile. I don’t particularly want to see the one plane slider deployed more against OHB since it would likely be hit hard if he did so.

What I do want to see is more changeups against SHB to help set up the slider. The changeup has the traits to even beat lefties and it would only make his slider more effective. The slider already had a whiff rate north of 40%. This is a plus pitch on the combination of deception and movement. I am likely even underselling the pitch as the pitching bot, an objective observer considers it to be a 70 grade offering based on purely the data. That is second to only the fastball in his arsenal.

Grayson Rodriguez also made major strides regarding his control this year. He cut back on the walks significantly and was actually above-average this year. Closer to plus than average in that regard. He’s always had solid fastball command but this year he finally started showcasing good command over his secondaries and it made all the difference in the world. He still occasionally will spike the curve or try to backfoot the slider and take out someones knees but the gains are obvious. I only have him as average because I have to be cautious about something in the profile but you could argue a 55 easily.

I also still have Grayson Rodriguez as a plus batted ball guy despite FaBIO souring on him this year with him only ranking in the 46th percentile in that regard. He was one of the best in the minors in 2019 when he placed in the 95th percentile per FaBIO. Both his BABIP and HR rates remained elite this year- actually scratch that, BABIP improved, and HR rates were still elite. His popup rates dwindled obviously, but I’m not reading into that because the difference between an IFFB and a very steep OFFB is neglible.

I still believe in the fastball movement being both barrel missing and bat missing. I still believe in his location getting optimal aerial contact and with the horizontal movement it won’t be blistered when they make that contact. He has the ability to get groundballs with the secondaries too when they actually make contact on them. It’s a well rounded plus in that regard. On paper, Grayson Rodriguez is the perfect storm of traits to have an elite batted ball profile. We’ll see if it plays out that way in practice.

Grayson Rodriguez runs reverse splits as a heavy FB/CH/CB guy primarily which are all neutral or heavy reverse split pitches. He still has the weapons to completely dismantle same handed batters in both the slider and all his other stuff that is still plenty viable against right handed bats. He’s the best pitching prospect in baseball and despite peaking at AA probably the safest if we ignore potential injury.

Grayson Rodriguez is not a 70 FV for three reasons: 1. the screwball esque changeup pronation is probably risky and could lead to major elbow trouble later in life. It hasn’t yet but I’m still a bit concerned. 2. I’m traumatized by MacKenzie Gore- the last so called perfect pitching prospect who saw the bottom fall out. 3. Yeah, there’s not really a three. He’s as close to perfect as any pitching prospect I’ve seen in my ~5 years of doing this. (I didn’t have data for Gore so there was less confidence). All the data backs it up and the results do as well. He’s going to be a star if he doesn’t get broken. But he’s a pitching prospect so that is not close to a guarantee.

6. 3B/SS Marco Luciano, San Francisco Giants

Forgot to change run to a 45. Sue me.

Last year I said that there was a high chance that Luciano would rank #1 on this list next year. While he was in Low A, I was pretty confident in the accuracy of that prediction. Then the Giants moved him up to High A and things started going wrong. Instead, he ended up falling two spots and a FV tier in order to rank here.

There are some surface level similarities between Luciano and Oneil Cruz who ranked a few spots above Luciano on this list. They are both bigger shortstops (Relatively, Cruz dwarfs Luciano) who most scouts don’t think they will stick. They both move well for their size and have 80 grade raw power. Cruz is probably the better defensive option in the long term but Luciano has the better hit tool and feel to elevate.

Any scouting report about Marco Luciano has to start with the awe-inspiring power he possesses. His bat speed is still some of the best- if not the best I’ve ever seen. He’s explosive from the millisecond that his foot hits the ground. He swings and it is literally a blink and you will miss it swing. He’ll aggressively whip the barrel through the zone and catch up to any pitch he sees. He punishes mistakes and even good pitches. The ball sounds like it was shot out of a cannon when he makes contact. It’s effortless raw power at a very young age that will likely only get better.

Marco Luciano has elite measurables for his raw power on top of the elite visuals. When he was 19 Marco Luciano hit a ball 119 MPH off of Ryan Rolison. As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t bested that one yet. He did hit 115 MPH twice this year though which is still elite stuff. He also did 113 MPH to the opposite field which is again exceptional.

His most impressive feat of raw power this year, however, is a home run he hit on August 6th. He hit the home run to the opposite field with a 49° launch angle. Only five players have ever hit a home run with a launch angle that steep. All of them were pulled. The highest launch angle ever on an opposite field fly ball that went for a home run is 45°. Unprecedented stuff. The Emeralds only have the ball tracked at a 99.9 MPH EV (Which is exceptional for a popup) but that ball flew ~350 feet. No one has actually topped that distance. Even 340 has only been hit by Chris Davis. Either he was playing in a hurricane or Luciano hit that ball harder than 99.9 MPH. Trackman is awful with tracking exit velocities on popups so I lean towards the latter option. (Jimmy Rollins anyone?)

The power should be manifest in games as well. Marco Luciano has plus feel for creating aerial contact. His groundball rate was a mere 37.8% which is in the 74th percentile. When a player with his raw power has feel to elevate you know you have something special. Luciano is going to tap into almost all of his still growing 80 grade raw juice in games.

The hit tool is underappreciated because of how bad he looked in the first little bit at A+. Marco Luciano ran above-average contact rates in Low A. He only struck out 22% of the time and ran plus walk rates in the process. The Giants pushed him to High A and for a while, he looked outclassed. Luciano struck out in 27 of his first 58 PA in High A as he hit a particularly robust .170/.224/.302.

Then he flipped the switch the rest of the year. He only struck out 30% of the time over his next 103 PA and hit .275. I’m choosing to believe his early struggles aren’t reflective of his true talent because Luciano did almost the exact same thing in Low A at the start of the year. In the first 58 PA at Low A he hit .224/.274/.448 with a 27.5% strikeout rate. He then flipped the switch and hit .293/.398/.587 with a 21.1% strikeout rate until he was promoted. He also tried this schtick again in the AFL, and back in 2019, he started slowly in Short-Season. We missed the best part of Luciano’s bounceback but I’m confident it would have happened. Luciano takes time to adjust to his level but is a monster once he does.

A lot of this is logical, and to be expected for a player in this mold. Marco Luciano functions as a guess hitter and I mean that in the best way possible. Marco Luciano goes all out to hit the ball where he thinks it will be. Fernando Tatis Jr. does the same thing. On pitches up in the zone he’ll flatten his swing and shorten his strides to catch up to them. On pitches down, he’ll steepen his bat head and alter the stride length to ensure his timing remains correct. This all-out approach will always lead to whiffs but the strikeout rates should be more manageable. I don’t really think there is much whiff inflation incoming as Luciano climbs the ladder, in fact, I more so expect the opposite that with more experience, the whiffs will only continue to drop.

When Luciano thinks fastball up and then the curve falls off the table he’s left looking like he has no clue what he’s doing. When Luciano is prepared for the curveball down he’ll adjust his swing and either lay off or drive it into the stands. He just misses in an ugly way when he guesses wrong and it exaggerates his swing and miss concerns. It’s the same thing as you see in Fernando Tatis and it’s why he has so much more whiffs than strikeouts. A guy like Brandon Pfaadt with a plus breaking ball down and a flat fastball up from the same tunnel will eat him for breakfast.

I’m not sure there’s really a way around that in his future. The good news is 99% of pitchers aren’t pitchers are not like that. if he thinks sinker down and it’s a breaking ball down then he’s capable of slowing his swing enough to get a piece of it. When he thinks fastball up then he can’t adjust at all to the low pitch because his swing shape is completely different so he misses by a foot and looks completely overmatched. He’ll live and die by his pitch recognition. The whiffs do look worse than they are though because of how much he misses by when he whiffs.

Marco Luciano is ideal for this type of approach because he has advanced pitch recognition- both for his age and in general. His chase rates were above-average last year at ~30%. He was elite in that regard in Low-A. He’s also already shown the ability to make adjustments once he gets comfortable with who he is facing. He showed impressive plate discipline against the best competition of his life in the AFL after he settled in. He projects for above-average discipline at the highest level as the power should help scare pitchers away from the zone as well.

Like with Oneil Cruz, the power creates a floor for his BAcon. Luciano hits the ball so hard that you know he’s going to boast plus BAcons. The launch angle optimization was only average this year but that is dragged down by his subpar performance in High A. At every other level and in every year, he was elite in that regard. I’m still optimistic about his BAcon skills and the strikeout rates should be solid enough so I’m actually going to project him as a plus hit tool.

Marco Luciano is probably not a shortstop. Statistically, he is subpar. He posted -11 Davenport Runs last year at the position. His actions aren’t fantastic and he doesn’t have the best range. I like him best at third base where his plus arm should play and his actions and athleticism will be more up to par. That’s actually what I have him graded as above since it’s his best spot. I do think he could also be a viable corner outfielder but I don’t see why you would try that when he’s good at third and that is more of an organizational inefficiency than the outfield.

Marco Luciano is going to be a dynamic offensive force who could easily wind up the best hitter on this list. He’s an intriguing blend of offensive potential who still will probably provide positive defensive value. There is quite a bit of risk here but I do think a lot of people are overflowing that concern. I expect Luciano to be a superstar in a few years.

7. 1B Spencer Torkelson, Detroit Tigers

We can probably finally call the Spencer Torkelson, third baseman experiment dead and buried. Honestly, it went way better than I ever imagined and actually has been enough to move his projected defensive performance at first base up considerably. He’s not good at third base but he’s probably an Alec Bohm level defender.

His actions are fine and his range is fine. The arm strength isn’t great but he’s a feasible option at the hot corner in a pinch. We got to see that Torkelson had much better range than expected at third last year and that has me bumping Torkelson to a plus defensive option at the cold corner.

Last year, I questioned if Spencer Torkelson would ever make that much contact. Ultimately, I ruled that he did not have to because his combination of power, approach, and BABIP skills would still make him one of the best hitters in all of baseball. It turns out the answer to my question was yes.

Spencer Torkelson actually posted above-average contact rates this year during his climb from the Pac 12 to AAA in just one season. He whiffed a mere 25.6% of the time while facing the best competition of his life. For comparison, he whiffed 23% of the time in College when the average pitcher was throwing junk in the eighties. Suffice to say the contact skills got significantly better this year. He only struck out 21.5% of the time and that isn’t because he was hyper-aggressive and not reaching two-strike counts.

Spencer Torkelson saw his BABIP fall off a cliff last year as he prioritized contact quantity over contact quality. His swing flattened out a tad and he would shorten up in places. I’m still a believer in the BABIP skills because he hits the ball hard- to all fields, has above-average launch angle optimization, and a track record of elite BABIPs. The .285 mark is mildly worrying but I’m choosing to believe last year was a fluke and not a harbinger of things to come.

The approach at the plate is one of the best in the entire minors. Spencer Torkelson runs plus chase rates despite average swing rates. He’s aggressive in hunting strikes and shows a great feel for not chasing spin. He worked walks at an elite rate last year without any inflation to the strikeout rates. He only chased 16% of the time in College. Those are all earmarkers for fantastic discipline. He should continue to work walks at the game’s highest level without being a TTO guy because he cut back on the Swing and Miss.

Despite the hardest hit ball of Spencer Torkelson’s lifetime only being 111.8 MPH as far as I’m aware, I still have Torkelson as a 70 grade raw power guy. Spencer Torkelson has the 5th highest average EV in the history of College Baseball (As of November 2020) at 97.1 MPH. He averaged 101 MPH in the shortened 2020 season.

During the 2019–2020 seasons (74 games), Torkelson hit 5 balls at 100 MPH+ with a launch angle > 40°. Not only is that the most in college baseball but it would be the 14th most in the majors in 2019. No player has more than double that many such batted ball events despite having about twice as many games. Torkelson hits everything with insane authority, even his mishits. His average exit velocity was 91.1 MPH in 2021 which is in the 83rd percentile of major leaguers last year.

Spencer Torkelson might not have the best max raw power in the world. He doesn’t have the same kind of punch as an Oneil Cruz or Marco Luciano. What he does have is a consistency they can only envy. His swing is so efficient and consistent. He times his rotation perfectly and stops on time. He consistently gets elite swing extension regardless of pitch location. He consistently squares balls up and drives them over the fence. It is power to all fields with consistent exit velocities, largely independent of batted ball direction. The power consistency is enough to overcome the lack of holy shit batted balls events and still let Torkelson project for elite raw juice.

The game power is even better. Torkelson had a mere 31.4% groundball rate last year. That is in the 92nd percentile. He hits the ball consistently hard in the air. That is going to result in a lot of home runs. I’ll admit, the lack of elite max power and current all-fields approach has me slightly worried about it playing in the spacious confines of Comerica but it is still an elite punch that he packs. In a neutral environment, Torkelson would hit 40 bombs annually. I don’t grade players based on their ballpark, even if I think Torkelson might be particularly hurt by his.

Spencer Torkelson has reached that lofty threshold offensively where his position is largely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if Torkelson doesn’t provide any defensive value, and even if he has to DH. Torkelson is going to hit and hit and hit so more. He is the complete package at the plate with probably the highest floor offensively of anyone on this list. He also has one of the highest ceilings at the plate. Torkelson should be a star in the major leagues as one of the best pure hitters in the entire game.

8. SP Shane Baz, Tampa Bay Rays

I went into the process of crafting this list knowing quite a bit about Shane Baz because he appeared in the majors so I had his pitch data. It seemed utterly inconceivable for anyone but him to be the best pitching prospect in baseball. Lo, and behold, through no fault of his own, Shane Baz falls to #2 because Grayson Rodriguez is too perfect. This was still a close decision and that speaks volumes of how high of esteem with which I hold Shane Baz.

Shane Baz throws the second-best fastball of any prospect in baseball- that’s not Grayson in front of him btw. The fastball averages 97 MPH with above-average extension. The pitch has 18.1 inches of induced vertical break which is in the top 10% of the league. The pitch also has a fantastic angle coming from a 5.6 foot vertical release point. The combination of elite vertical movement and a low release leads to a truly spectacular -4.1° VAA.

This is literally the exact fastball that Gerrit Cole throws. No seriously, the exact same pitch. Gerrit Cole last year averaged 97.7 MPH with 6.6 feet of extension. Shane Baz averages 97 MPH and 6.7 feet. Gerrit Cole throws his fastball with a 1:15 spin axis. So does Shane Baz. Gerrit Cole averages 18 inches of IVB from a 5.7 foot vertical release point. That leads to a -4.1° VAA.

He also has an average spin rate of 2452 RPMs. Baz averages 2415 RPMs. It gets even better. If you look at just Cole post-sticky stuff he averages 2417 RPMs. Literally the exact same pitch. Cole is 6% higher spin efficiency with Baz playing closer to a 1:00 due to some minor SSW effects but the overall package is identical. Considering that Gerrit Cole has probably the third best fastball of any starting pitcher (deGrom, and Freddy Peralta only ones better), I’d say this says fantastic things about Shane Baz.

The slider is also potentially a special pitch. He throws it in the 86–87 MPH bucket with very high amounts of gyro spin. The pitch has a mere 13.1% spim efficiency which is tied for the 8th lowest slider spin efficiency in the league and ranks in the 99th percentile of all sliders thrown as many times as his last year. The pitch has good vertical depth, and very little sweep. It has above-average spin rates and the extreme gyroangle lets it miss a lot of bats.

The slider missed 40% of bats last year in the minors and didn’t lose a step in the majors. He also has a good feel for throwing the slider for strikes. It’s a plus pitch that might have the potential to be more with further development.

The curveball has been his least impressive pitch in terms of results but the intrinsic traits also might be the best of any of his secondaries. Curveball command is still a work in progress but on pure stuff it is elite.

He throws the pitch with premium velocity as he averages ~82.5 MPH on the curve. He has spin rates close to 2700 on average and throws it on a 7:00 axis with primarily transverse spin as illustrated by his 73.6% spin efficiency. The pitch that is the result of all those factors in tandem pairs elite power with elite vertical depth, which makes it on paper one of the best curveballs in all of baseball.

The curveball averaged -14.6 IVB in his MLB debut season. That is fantastic vertical action on the curveball, it ranks in the 93rd percentile of all curveballs. Almost every curveball with more depth is a slow floater in the low 70’s that has movement because it’s slow. Baz isn’t like that. The power he puts on the pitch is exceptional. Only one player with more vertical depth to their curve throws at 80 MPH+. He’s the Rays current Ace in Tyler Glasnow. I have very high hopes that his curveball will miss bats at an elite clip as his command over it progresses to even be passable.

The changeup is interesting. The horizontal movement on the pitch is exceptional. On 11 changeups in his first taste of the MLB, Baz averaged 17.8 inches of horizontal action in the pitch. That is in the 96th percentile of all changeups. More intriguing perhaps, is how little the cambio drops. It only has 8.9 inches of IVB. This would make the pitch’s shape more equivalent to a sweeping slider but flipped.

Except it’s very much not that because it has no gyro with 97% spin efficiency. A Jorge Alcala, Jose Cisnero, and Griffin Canning all have similarly shaped pitches and they’re not great for them. Command and deception matter and despite the 40% whiff rate and 60% strike rate in the minors with it, I’m not convinced it will be any better than a 55 against elite competition. If he learns to kill efficiency with the pitch it could be special but I won’t hold my breath.

The batted ball profile is the lone real weakness for Baz. He’s going to get hit hard when he misses his spot with the fastball just like the pitcher he molds the pitch after. He’ll get popups when he elevates the fastball but he doesn’t have great GB support options. He will continue to run into line drives just as he always has to date.

Shane Baz’s control made huge gains this year and now projects as at least average. The delivery isn’t pretty but it’s effective and it’s less ugly then it used to be. He cut back on the walks drastically and there is no reason to suspect that is a mirage. The fastball command is great. The slider command is great. The other two are still a work in progress.

The other concern with Baz is workload, if he can hold Cole-esque velocity over a full season. The answer is he probably can’t but the Rays are creative so they’ll find a way to still get Gerrit Cole esque performance- even if that’s over thirty less innings than a conventional starter.

Shane Baz isn’t as complete as a Grayson Rodriguez type. He has his flaws. He can just overlook his flaws by striking out over 30% of batters he faces at the major league level. Shane Baz has the pure stuff to be a true #1 starter. He has above-average control to give him a real chance of actually hitting that outcome. He’ll be vulnerable to XBH risk but solo home runs can’t cripple you and that’s all they will be with the K/BB profile so elite. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that with Tyler Glasnow injured, Shane Baz is the best starting pitcher on the Rays already.

9. C Adley Rutschman, Baltimore Orioles

This is undoubtedly the most controversial ranking this year. My issue isn’t with Adley in particular but the catching position. Adley is as close to the perfect catching prospect as anyone I’ve ever seen. He’s probably the favorite to win rookie of the year in 2022. That doesn’t mean that he’s the best prospect in baseball. Catchers are a complicated group who are often overvalued in scouting circles.

Electronic strike zones are inevitable. We’ve been testing them in the Atlantic League for a while now. They made their way to Low-A last year. They’re now in AAA. If we don’t get electronic strike zones in the majors the league will be screwed by the next generation of catchers not knowing how to frame and the next generation of umpires not knowing how to call strikes. I’ve been told by sources in the industry to expect 2024 as a target data for MLB implementation.

Where does that leave catchers? Framing is the single most valuable contribution a catcher makes. Taking that away greatly reduces the value of every catcher in baseball. Not just the ones who are excellent at framing like Adley but all of them. Even the bad framers have at least some defensive value in that regard. There are no Ryan Doumit’s anymore.

The league has implemented a standard for framing that has to be surpassed to catch now. That standard will be gone with electronic strike zones and the Ryan Doumit’s, etc. of the world will be welcomed back behind the plate. The transition to catcher is easier, sticking is easier, and now the defensive value of the catcher position of a whole has decreased, not just by the framing runs they had previously added.

So with electronic strike zones, what irreplaceable service do catchers render that make them a positive defensive asset? Passed balls really are not that common. The most a catcher has allowed this century was 20 by Jason LaRue. The most a catcher ever allowed was 28 on three occasions. The best catchers average ~5 a year? Adley allowed 4 in 82 games last year.

Time for some complicated math to show how little of an impact passed balls wind up having. For the sake of simplicity let’s assume every passed ball is a one-base error. Let’s also assume that there is an even distribution of runners going from first to second, second to third, and third to home on these passed balls. The difference between a hypothetically elite catcher who allows 5 passed balls, and someone who ties the MLB record in passed balls is 8.6 runs. The difference between Kyle Schwarber and Martin Maldonado offensively is 49.3 runs. Why the heck would I ever play Maldonado over even a league-average hitter?

The other key defensive contribution for catchers is throwing runners out. Except stolen bases have been on the decline for years are at an all time low. Maybe having not-catchers behind the plate is what it takes to revive them. Let’s hope so, that would be fun.

Let’s say that having Schwarber or whatever catching turns every team he faces into the 2010 Rays who have the highest single season BsR since 1915 at 37.6. That is still less than the offensive gap between Schwarber and Maldonado. That is also an impossible scenario and we know in modern times that pitchers control most of stolen bases- not the catcher. There isn’t any benefit to a good defensive catcher with e-zones.

Game calling is the other key part of the catcher’s job for now. First off, there are plenty of smart hitters who could call a game and don’t pass the other requisites for playing catcher. Secondly, why are catchers still calling games? The Giants have 16 coaches on their MLB staff. Hire a 17th to plan with the pitcher for the start. In College, coaches call games for the catcher. The signs are done electronically so they aren’t even relaying things anymore.

Don’t shoehorn catchers into a role that doesn’t fit them. Let coaches and the pitcher do the heavy lifting and let catcher’s focus on actually being decent hitters. When you have a great game caller like Adley he can certainly assist, but it shouldn’t be a requirement to play catcher.

Adley seems to be the exception to all these rules, he’s elite at every one of these things. He should still compete for gold gloves, and be a top hitter at the position- even with the offensive bar likely rising as the defensive one drops. This shouldn’t affect him, right?

Except it very much does. If the defensive value of catchers go down he’s providing less value relative to what he could. He might still be the best catcher in baseball, in fact, he likely will be but that won’t be as valuable as the best player at any other position.

The thing is catchers don’t get to play all that often due to the physical demands of their position. The most games any catcher has over the last three years is 326 by JT Realmuto, roughly 85% of possible games. 62 non-catchers played at least that many games over the same time span. That is the literal best-case scenario for a catcher and that is counting games at DH in that number. When catchers lose their defensive value the question becomes simply would you rather have 130 games of 130 wRC+ or 150? I’m choosing the 150 games every time.

It feels very much note-worthy that in the last five years, the best catcher in baseball still peaked at 13th in fWAR that season. Most of the time they are outside the top 20. This is while counting their framing contributions and defensive adjustments considering them worth more than twice a shortstop. It’s really hard for catchers to be truly elite contributors. The games played limitation is a huge hurdle as is the taxation and fatigue it puts on the bat. Posey is the lone exception to the rule and even he was broken offensively by the time he hit his thirties- it took an entire year off and having an off day basically every other day to see the bat bounce back this past year. He then retired at 34.

Adley Rutschman is already 24. That wouldn’t usually be a real issue but Adley is a catcher so it is one. Tim Britton did a lot of research into catchers aging curves in regards to JT Realmuto back in 2020. Catcher fWAR as a whole falls off the side of a mountain at 30. In the last decade, 30 year old catchers were worth ~80 fWAR. 31 year olds were worth 50. 32 year olds were worth just under 12. The average (weighted to 502 PA) catcher goes from 2.5 WAR at 30 to under one at 32.

It’s the way elite catchers age that is more telling. Elite catchers start to decline at 28. They then lose about .75 fWAR annually until they are only average (2 fWAR) at 33. If Adley follows normal aging trends for his position then we’ll really only see four years of peak Adley. If Adley doesn’t quickly acclimate to the majors then we’ll get even less. It’s really hard for a catcher to provide elite value over an extended period of time, even with framing helping them out.

Adley Rutschman is an awesome hitter. His approach is amazing on paper. He had a sub 20% chase rate last year and would have been in roughly the 95th percentile of all major leaguers last year. Although his plate discipline is indisputably elite, that chase rate is still largely the byproduct of a passive approach.

If we assume Adley Rutschman sees the ball in the strike zone at an MLB average rate, we can estimate that he has a 59.5% Z-Swing%. That would have been the second lowest z-swing% in the MLB last year behind only Jonathan India. He’s taking a lot of called strikes and the lack of aggression is a driving factor in the lack of chases., not just elite pitch recognition. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, his chase rates, and z-swing rates are almost identical to Juan Soto (Contact rates too) who might be the best position player in baseball. The approach isn’t a knock on Adley, it’s just highlighted to contextualize the rest of his data.

Adley Rutschman makes contact at an elite clip. He only whiffed on 18.4% of his swings last year which would have ranked in the 86th percentile of major leaguers last year. Those contact rates are driven by the choice to only swing at the stuff he knows he can drive. He doesn’t chase a lot of breaking balls, and watches pitches he doesn’t like frequently. The contact rates are somewhat artificially inflated by his elite plate discipline. If the discipline randomly vanished he would be like a 55 contact guy. There will always be more strikeouts than the whiff rates should suggest because he takes so many called strikes as he waits for his pitch.

Adley Rutschman is the rare switch hitter who it actually benefits despite somewhat different swings from both sides. Both of them are awesome and effective. He has only average BABIP skills with both his line drive and popup rates grading out as average. He makes some flush contact and adjusts based on the pitch but it’s not exactly a standout skill. He’s an extreme flyball hitter which will depress his BABIPs as much as his backspin helps it anyways, as flyballs post by far the lowest BABIPs.

The elevation heavy approach works like a charm in other areas, however, as it allows him to get all of his plus power in games. Make no mistakes, however, it is only plus power not elite. His Max EV is only ~112 MPH from what I’ve heard. His average is a genuinely not spectacular 87 MPH. More extreme launch angles produce less EV so I wouldn’t read too much into it but if you’re expecting him to greatly outperform his Max EVs because of the feel to elevate then you are barking up the wrong tree. Fangraphs even said he had a below-average barrel rate last year which seems concerning. I have the power closer to a 55 than 65–70.

As a whole, at his core, Adley is a plus hit/plus power bat with an elite eye. He probably won’t be moved off of catcher even if he might provide more value by doing so. I’m confident he’s a 130 wRC+ bat in his prime, I just don’t know how long that prime will last or how often he’ll play. Catchers are weird and they’re only going to get weirder in the next few years as the position evolves into something once inconceivable. Adley is in some ways safe but he’s a catcher and I have trust issues with catching prospects.

10. SS Anthony Volpe, New York Yankees

There was a rumor in the leadup to the 2019 draft that the Mariners were highly interested in Anthony Volpe and were leaning towards taking him at #20. I distinctly remember begging God to have the Mariners be “smart” and pass on him. My prayers were answered and George Kirby was taken instead. Volpe fell to the Yankees and I laughed about it. I now wish my prayers had been ignored.

I was so painfully wrong about Anthony Volpe for so long. I didn’t really know what I was doing back in 2019 when I called him a mid-rounds talent. I was an idiot who thought half of scouting was making shit up, and the other half was looking at stats. However, I did know what I was doing when I put a 40 FV on Volpe last offseason.

Anthony Volpe has improved by leaps and bounds in the last year and some change, it’s not just that I was wrong but also that he got significantly better. Perhaps that is because of the reported 80-grade work ethic I was so dismissive of.

Anthony Volpe is the most optimized player in the minors. He plays like Brandon Belt at the plate. He’s also a plus defensive shortstop somehow because life is totally fair. The tools don’t jump off the page physically but the way they perform absolutely does.

I will be using statcast data to illustrate Volpe’s performance. Unless I directly say otherwise, assume any data presented in this writeup is exclusively from his time in Low A.

The hit tool is very optimized. Anthony Volpe runs plus contact rates. This is largely because of his mere 24.4% chase rate in Low A. He still swung at 65.4% of balls in the strike zone so it wasn’t just him being passive either. His in-zone contact rates were largely average but his contact rates are still well above-average because he makes high-quality swing decisions.

The BABIP skills are what makes Anthony Volpe special. He hit the ball in the sweet-spot of launch angles 36.5% of the time last year which is already elite. That undersells the BABIP skills a hundredfold.

Anthony Volpe hit the ball with a launch angle>50° on 8.7% of his batted ball events last year. League average was 9.8% last year. That is in the 62nd percentile of major leaguers. Batted balls in that range have a .015 batting average and an identical wOBA on average.

Anthony Volpe hit 31.5% of his batted balls in the rather wide 25°-49° bucket. The average player posted a .285 Batting average and .481 wOBA on those batted balls. League average was 23.2% last year. Volpe would have had the 22nd highest rate of those batted balls in the league last year by MLB standards- in the 95th percentile of all major leaguers.

Anthony Volpe hit 24.2% of his batted balls with a launch angle higher than 10° and lower than 25°. He’s not quite exceptional in this regard but he is still in the top quartile of these batted balls. The league average hitter has a .658 BA and a .710 wOBAcon on those batted balls. They hit 21.7% of their batted balls in that range.

Finally, Anthony Volpe hit 35.6% of his batted balls with a launch angle of 9° or fewer. The average player hits 46.5% of their batted balls in that range. Those batted balls result in a .262 average and a .241 wOBA. Anthony Volpe would have been in the 89th percentile of avoiding these.

If you are still with me after all that nitty gritty launch angle drama then let me sum it up for you. If we pretend Anthony Volpe only has average power and adjust the estimate that for every aforementioned launch angle bucket, he has the average performance, Volpe is expected to post a .348 BAcon. That would have in the top quartile of major leaguers. His wOBAcon would have been slightly better in terms of expected results at .417 which is in the 85th percentile of Major Leaguers.

That was assuming Anthony Volpe only had an average power output. Anthony Volpe hit 51.7% of batted balls at 95 MPH+ last year. That would have been in the 93rd percentile of minor leaguers. This comes in the package of a guy with an elite approach and good contact rates. Anthony Volpe is going to be an on-base menace.

Anthony Volpe’s power is technique based. His 108.3 MPH max EV is extremely average. There have always been questions on if the frame and bat speed were enough for Volpe to have impact raw power. He did not answer those questions in the affirmative last year. His raw power is still only average, what is not average is the game power.

Anthony Volpe rotates really well. He might not have the most separation or bat speed but the consistency of it is key. He controls his hips and it leads to a higher median EV than Bryce Harper. He puts the ball in the air and abuses his pullside to get all of his power and then some to play in games.

Anthony Colpe consistently hits the ball hard and in the air. His contact quality is optimal at all times and he makes a lot of it while also putting up quality at bats even when he fails to put the ball in play. Volpe has a chance to be a middle of the order force in the Yankees lineup and one of the best players in baseball. There is some risk because of the lack of eye popping tools but I’m a big believer in smart players like Volpe who out game their opponents.

Anthony Volpe is also a plus defensive shortstop. The arm strength is a question mark but it should be passable enough for a shortstop. The rest of the defensive intangibles are a premium. He has awesome range with a quick first step. He plays low to the ground and can charge in on balls with ease. His actions are smooth and his glove is slick. He checks all the boxes except for having a strong arm. If he moves to second base, he’ll win gold gloves there.

Anthony Volpe is the complete package, an unconventional five tool player with the approach to match the tools. He’s not a toolsy five tool player but he can do it all. He has a relentless work ethic that has taken him so far, and one of the highest baseball IQs in the game. I’m not sure where exactly the floor or ceiling is, but I’m confident he’ll be a star in his prime.

11. SS CJ Abrams, San Diego Padres

CJ Abrams both broke his tibia and sprained his MCL last year which brought about a premature end to the 20 year old’s season. He made the jump all the way from just two games at Low A to 42 at AA. He handled that jump with aplomb as the Padres top prospect posted a 127 PF wRC+ before getting hurt.

The speed has long been considered CJ Abrams carrying tool- despite the fact that speed can’t be a carrying tool in the MLB. It’s easy to understand why people think that though. CJ Abrams is fast. He had a 6.29 second 60-yard dash at the perfect game showcase events before he was drafted. He has 28 stolen bases in 76 career games (36 attempts). He has eight triples as well. He bunted for four infield singles last year.

However, I’m slightly lower than the consensus on how quick CJ Abrams actually is. First off, my run times on him were consistently lower last year- in the 70 range instead of an 80. On five runs (Three trials of each run), I have Abrams averaging 3.97 seconds which is in that 70 range for a lefty. I’m also naturally hesitant to call anyone coming off of two semi-major leg injuries an 80-grade runner for obvious reasons. He’s still fast but not Billy Hamilton or anything.

CJ Abrams is a decent bet to stick at shortstop. He’s not a lock but he projects to probably be average at the most premium spot. His range is a plus as he’s an explosive fielder with a powerful first step who can glide across the diamond. Most the defensive concerns for Abrams are in his actions. He struggles with scooping balls at times and often will commit in a direction too early and completely miss balls because of it. There’s a myth I’ve heard about him only having an average arm but it is just that, a myth. His arm strength was in the 96th percentile of the 2019 draft and it hasn’t gotten worse. He’s fairly accurate even if not a sniper or anything.

There are only a few reasons to question if Abrams will stick at shortstop. The first is that his athleticism might vanish coming back from a leg injury and force him to a less rangy spot. That is a worst-case scenario but he wouldn’t be the first to have that happen. The second reason is that the speed plays better in centerfield and he would be more valuable there. That is a totally valid argument but I would rather keep him at shortstop for now, where his defense is more of a known quantity.

The hit tool for Abrams is a special skill. He makes contact at a plus rate. As a twenty year old in AA, Abrams made contact at an above-average rate. A 25.9% whiff rate isn’t spectacular but in the context of his age and the jump, he was making it is. I love the swing and think he should continue to project for plus contact in the future, even at the highest level.

The BABIP skills are what separates the hit tool of CJ Abrams from the pack. CJ Abrams offers the somewhat rare combination of a plus line drive rate (86th percentile) and a plus popup rate (5.6%). He also has above-average feel to elevate. The result is going to be a lot of batted ball resulting in a hit because his launch angles are so well optimized.

CJ Abrams really stands out for his ability to optimize his swing shape based on pitch location. His swing gets down to ~39° on pitches down in the strike zone. On pitches down the middle, he’ll average about ~27°. On pitches in that top quadrant, he is… I’m sorry, I have to double check that. Surely, it has to be a typo. Hmmm… just remeasured and it still says the same.

Somehow, beyond all comprehension, on five different swings- six actually, I eliminated the outlier we’ll get to later; I have him averaging ~14° on pitches in that top third of the zone. That outlier I eliminated was on a fastball dotted just at the top of the zone. His swing had a VBA of 7.47° on that pitch. He somehow managed to turn that into a double. I genuinely didn’t know it was possible to get that flat.

I’m not at all confident that CJ Abrams hasn’t found a threshold for too flush of contact and barreled past that invisible line. Like the next player on this list, CJ Abrams has the tendency to get to the low pitches by collapsing his front half. That lowers the damage he does when he makes contact with low pitches, and deflates his EVs. He needs to keep his core more intact on those pitches or just not swing at low stuff at all.

CJ Abrams is absolutely the best high ball hitter on this list and should be a BABIP merchant on those pitches with the combination of how flush he is and his attack angle mastery. It’s where most of his hits come and for good reason. He has the elite bat speed to catch up to inside cheese and a simple and quick, mechanically efficient swing that is so effortless and repeatable. He’s so flat that he has no trouble with vertical movement or flat VAA arms that are largely the best pitchers in the game. He doesn’t get tied up ever and should make a lot of contact up there, on top of having elite contact quality.

CJ Abrams also had one of the lowest pull rates in the entire minors last year, ranking in the 1st percentile in that regard at 32.8%. The average player hits .450 on opposite-field groundballs. Abrams might not hit the most groundballs (That is good long term) but he’s going to run high averages on the ones he hits because of his ability to go the other way. Yeah, Abrams has one of the best hit tools in the entire minor leagues and probably the best on this list so far.

The inability to pull the ball does have a negative effect on CJ Abrams power output. CJ Abrams has plus raw power. His Max EV was 109.6 MPH in Spring Training this year which is firmly in plus territory. His bat speed and exit velocities were in the 90th percentile in perfect game showcases back in 2019. There is even some projection to the frame still. CJ Abrams has an above-average feel to elevate as well.

All that holds the power back is the inability to pull the ball at all. His average exit velocity was only 86 MPH last year because he wasn’t able to pull the ball and get to the power in games. The HR/FB% was only 5% because he didn’t hit cheap flyball homers to his pullside ever. He has the bat speed, the strength, and the swing to hit for power. He just has to learn to pull the ball. That is one of the easiest things to teach and while it will slightly hurt the BABIP skills, those are probably still enough to make the tradeoff of 55 power worthwhile.

CJ Abrams has the potential for plus tools across the board with a potentially elite tool in his hit tool. He has some questions left to answer, and the distance between his current power projection and the future one is significant enough to hold him down the list a tad. The upside is elite and while he just misses out on the 65 FV tier for now, if he comes back healthy, and shows some new aptitude for pulling the ball then he could be #1 next year.

12. C Gabriel Moreno, Toronto Blue Jays

Gabriel Moreno’s statline makes no sense. He hit .373/.441/.651 in a pitcher-friendly ballpark across his total of 145 plate appearances in 2021. He did this on a .398 BABIP in spite of a pathetically low line-drive rate and his groundball rate spiking by 13%. He has a .282 BABIP when we last saw him in 2019.

So how much of his performance was real? Is he better than the batted ball data? Or worse than the results? The answer is as always in the middle but I definitely lean closer towards the side of holy shit it’s legit. First off, let’s ignore the offense for a second and talk about how incredible of an athlete Gabriel Moreno is.

Gabriel Moreno has wheels. I’ve clocked him with 70 grade run times on an infield single (Video below) and while I think that more illuminates the flaws of that particular metric than anything, I’m definitely comfortable calling Moreno an above-average runner despite his stocky build. Looks aren’t an accurate way to scout speed- like at all. He might lose a step but he also might not and he’s presently fast.

Gabriel Moreno also has plus arm strength and amazing accuracy with a lightning quick transfer. He posted a 1.89 second poptime in the AFL this year and that grades out as a 60 on the 20–80 scale for max poptime. He’s an accurate thrower who has rarely made errors and catches nearly half of all baserunners who try to test his arm.

Gabriel Moreno is an exceptional pitch blocker. He’s mobile behind the plate and can collapse inwards to stop a pitch from sneaking behind the plate. He’ll lunge to the side as well to snag errant wild pitches. Obviously a small sample size, but in 31 games behind the plate last year, Moreno only allowed one passed ball.

Gabriel Moreno is a poor pitch framer, that skill will become obsolete soon and the skills he has (Blocking and throwing); could make him an elite defensive option in the new version of catching. This is still a hit to his value as a player, but relative to his peers, he could move up the ranks with e-zones even if overall the value drops.

Gabriel Moreno is also better equipped to handle the higher offensive bar and the need to keep him in the lineup than most will be. Gabriel Moreno can play another premium defensive position in third base at what is quite possibly an above-average level.

His reps are limited there but the reaction times, arm strength, and general athleticism translate. He looked good in my limited looks (Like a dozen plays) for what it is worth. If he’s even a 45 there, I would rather have him at third base than catcher so you can keep his well-rested bat in the lineup as often as possible.

Speaking of that bat, I’d say we can finally stop going over the boring stuff and talk about how dynamic of a talent Gabriel Moreno is at the plate. Gabriel Moreno has elite contact skills. His 20.5% whiff rate is in the top 10% of all players and he has pretty much never struck out at any level. He’s a fairly patient hitter as of 2021 who has gotten better at laying off of low-breaking balls and waiting for his pitch to drive.

Of course, his pitch to drive is not always in the strike zone because of his incredible plate coverage. Incredible is an understatement, it’s unfathomable. Gabriel Moreno has homered on a pitch 8.8 inches off of the plate 3.75 feet off the ground. (Pixel measurements, feel free to double-check). There have been only 5 home runs off a pitch that far off the plate in the statcast era. The highest one was 3.59 feet off the ground. (Josh Naylor) Gabriel Moreno did it to the opposite field.

Gabriel Moreno has an incredibly flat swing plane most of the time. His average VBA is ~24° on pitches near the heart of the plate. On pitches, in the top third, it’ll flatten out to a ludicrous 17°. On pitches down in the zone, he’ll get as low as 36°. The extremely flat swing plane most of the time makes him quite possibly the (second) most dangerous high ball hitter in all the minors. His ability to steepen things out when needed still leaves him solid against stuff down so you can’t just avoid the top of the zone religiously.

Gabriel Moreno’s BABIPs are ridiculous, that’s not unique to 2021. Okay, that was a lie. His BABIPs have typically sucked because he popped out 7.4% of the time and had zero power. He more than halved his popup rate last year. What he always excelled at was hitting groundballs and turning them into hits.

PRIOR to 2021, Moreno had a career .322 BABIP on groundballs. That is a 222 GB sample, so not at all just a small sample size. The only major league player to match that last year was Trea Turner. Only two players (Min 200 GB) were over .300. If Moreno can hit .300 on groundballs then they are no longer an unproductive plate appearance or an outcome to be avoided. We’ll see if he sustainably can against better defenses but I lean towards him at least being in that borderline good- .285 range.

So why is Moreno doing so good on groundballs? There are a number of factors at play here. First off, he’s hitting with back spin because of his swing always being flush with the pitch location and that leads to less side spin and harder plays in general. There’s a reason why Alex Bregman has the most bullshit plays in the league and it’s his ability to get flush up in the zone. Moreno does that too.

It also is owed at least partially to Moreno’s plus power and plus speed. The primary reason, however, is likely his spray charts. Gabriel Moreno sold out to his pullside in 2019 and we don’t have spray chart data for 2021. He went back to distributing the ball to all fields this past year, however, and his 2017–2018 sprays were exquisite.

In his 109 groundballs hit from 2017–2018, Moreno only pulled 41.4% of them. He hit 28.5% of them to the opposite field. That pull rate is in the 90th percentile and the opposite field rate would have led the MLB in opposite-field hit rate on groundballs last year (Min 100 GB). Moreno could be expected to put up a .276 BABIP on groundballs in the MLB with average power, angles, and speed if he replicated those sprays exactly. Factor in all the other factors and it’s not hard to see him pushing above .300 regularly.

Line drives are the primary motivator behind any high BABIP that is sustainable. Gabriel Moreno hit line-drives 13.7% of the time last season. That would have been the fifth lowest line-drive rate in the entire majors last year (Min 140 PA) out of 421 eligibles. That is a warning sign that Moreno can’t repeat his BABIP bullshit right?

It is but less than you would expect. The New Hampshire Fisher Cats scorer has some vendetta against line-drives apparently. The Fisher Cats as a team had 3% fewer line drives than any other team. Moreno is still subpar in the line drive department (Small samples aside) but only below-average rather than abysmal. It’s easily balanced out in the BABIP department by never popping out and dominating all sorts of groundball contact.

Gabriel Moreno has electric bat speed. If you blink you will miss his swing. There is some length in the back to it but when he swings it’s one smooth stroke and quick and efficient. It’s powerful too. He decimates pitches up in the zone better than anyone. He has rare power to the opposite field because of how he uses his hips. He accelerates instantly and the hips don’t lie.

I’m actually to the point where I don’t think he actually loses anything in the power department by going the other way. Juan Soto is like this- so are Jorge Alfaro and DJ Lemahieu as well but it’s a very short list of guys who have just as much power going the other way. I think Moreno will find a home on that list.

His raw exit velocity numbers are good but not exactly eye-popping. He only averaged 89 MPH last year. That is above the big league average but not exactly wowing anyone. His max exit velocity was 112.5 in the AFL. That is a plus but again, not quite elite. His feel to elevate is highly suspect.

I still believe in the game power. Moreno just doesn’t make bad contact. Every flyball has a chance to go over the wall because of the consistent power when he elevates. He hits with backspin to increase the carry. He doesn’t lose anything going the other way. They are rare but there are players who hit for plus power with terrible feel to elevate. I think Moreno will join them. Maybe it could be better if he elevated more but it really doesn’t have to be.

This bat is so special. I cannot say enough good things about Moreno. The one real drawback to Moreno that I can find is he will often collapse his front side to get to pitches down in the zone. This results in him hitting with less power. He still makes contact at good rates, even if he’s not the savant he is up in the zone. The obvious solution is just don’t swing- unless there are two strikes. In that case, he could just pursue fouling it off. His numbers probably aren’t even bad down in the zone, they just aren’t the god-tier stuff he does on pitches up.

Gabriel Moreno is going to be a superstar. Yes, he’s a 21 year old catcher with only 150 PA above A ball. Yes, his defensive home is unknown. Yes, he’s got some injury questions. Yes, the profile is weird. I just don’t care about any of that. I’m almost certain he’s going to mash and the bat can play anywhere if he hits like I think he will.

13. SP Roansy Contreras, Pittsburgh Pirates

A year after the Jameson Taillon trade and it looks even more lopsided than I initially thought. Roansy is the only one of the four on this top 100 but Canaan Smith-Njigba is a 50 FV (Top 200ish) and Miguel Yajure is at the top of the 45s. I even still like Escotto. For a mediocre back of the rotation starter, the Pirates got a top-three pitching prospect and more!

Roansy Contreras checked every single box imaginable in an absurdly great 2021, his first year as a Pirate. He climbed all the way from having never played above Low A to in the majors as a 21 year old in a single season. The stuff is elite for the now 22 year old but it is so much more nuanced than that. Every single element of his game is now exceptional. There’s not a single area that he’s showing holes in.

The fastball seems like the most logical place to start. Roansy Contreras now sits 95–97 MPH on his fastball and topping out at 99 MPH. The fastball has the same shape as the Pirates last Ace; Gerrit Cole (And their former future one, Shane Baz). He throws it from a 1:15 spin axis with 93% spin efficiency at 2467 RPMs and 96.3 MPH in his one MLB start. Gerrit Cole sits at a 1:15 spin axis and at 97.7 MPH with a spin rate of ~2450 RPMs, and slightly higher spin efficiency at 98%. The two even have very comparable arm release heights with Cole at 5.7 feet and Roansy at 5.8 feet in 2021.

That is the upside of Roansy Contreras’ fastball. The pitch that holds the single-season record for baseball savant run value (2019 Cole). The arm slot is slightly more upright for Roansy and the spin has a tiny bit more optimization yet to come but the ceiling of the pitch is Gerrit Cole. He’s not there yet and I think the velocity will fade some, also the deployment is different but its’ a great pitch.

Roansy has command over his fastball and can pretty regularly spot it all over the strike zone. He’s not a one-dimensional fastball up guy. He can do it all. The pitch has a heavy tailing shape to miss barrels and solid vertical movement as well. And again velocity + angle are top-notch. He uses his down in the zone more than Cole would and the results are different but not necessarily worse than spamming it up would be. I have it as a 70-grade fastball which might be underselling Mr. Contreras.

The slider was arguably the most dominant pitch in all of minor league baseball last season. In the minors, the pitch had a 60% whiff rate and a 66% strike rate. In the majors, it remained dominant in a very small sample size (50% whiff rate, 64% strike rate). The pitch is more than just results though, as awe-inspiring as those are.

He sits at about 85 MPH on the pitch with a mere 17% spin efficiency on it despite averaging ~2500 RPMs. He gets 2 hours of seam shifted wake and the pitch has only 4.2 inches of total movement. That is in the 88th percentile of killing movement and 96th percentile gyro spin. The pitch has very comparative velocity, movement, and angle to Shane Bieber’s slider. It goes without saying that Bieber throws a very good slider. Roansy will likely do the same.

There is a very important small sample size caveat here as I don’t have his MiLB pitch data but Roasny’s curveball might be a complete outlier pitch. On five pitches, Roansy Contreras’ curveball averaged 79.9 MPH with 60.1 inches of drop and a spin rate of 2837 RPMs.

The pitch is almost completely identical to Dylan Cease’s curveball. Cease throws his with comparable spin rates, the same 6:30 spin axis, and the same velocity. Roansy has slightly lower spin efficiency but that be improved pretty easily and it’s still high for a breaking ball in general. The combination of power and depth is rare and could mean big things for Roansy.

It paralyzed batters for called strikes in the minors but I’d like to see him use it more like Dylan Cease uses the similar curve of his own and pitch below the zone for chases. It should work amazingly as a pair to the vertically oriented fastball upstairs. I see the curve as a plus pitch, leaning heavily on the ability to replicate his electric arm speed on the curve for that projection, on top of the obvious power and movement. I’m the least confident in that pitch grade of any of his pitches grades though.

The changeup he only threw one of in his sole start with statcast so I’ll be evaluating it almost exclusively off of the eye test. The pitch was arguably his best pitch entering the season. After everything else took the next step this year, it is his worst. It is still an average pitch.

Despite the one pitch sample at the MLB level saying otherwise, he more regularly will sit 86–89 on it. The arm speed has had some issues as he’s cranked his fastball arm speed up over the last year and that makes the pitch play down a tad. There is still enough arm speed that he can fool most hitters but the more perceptive ones might pick apart the difference now.

The changeup is a high spin pitch. He’ll typically throw it around 2300 RPMs with heavy tailing action and limited drop. It has somewhat screwballish movement. The release is consistent and it misses bats off the plate and down in the zone. The pitch isn’t actually a big whiff-getter for Roansy in my looks but a source of groundballs as he’ll somewhat frequently throw it for strikes against LHB to get groundballs as a sort of pseudo-sinker. The pitch has bat missing characteristics but that’s not the only dimension to it.

The changeup is somewhat limited in its utility because it’s so one plane in its movement that there is probably a hard cap to how frequently he can throw it before it becomes easy to pick up on. There is also very limited viability against RHB so it’s only a 50.

The batted ball profile is borderline perfect. Roansy Contreras posted 99th percentile line-drive rate between AA and AAA in 2021. This makes sense because of the horizontal action on his fastball and his consistent command over it all around the zone. Roansy Contreras also posted an 83rd percentile groundball rate. That would already be a plus batted ball profile but the icing on the cake is his 11.6% popup rate between AA and AAA this year which is another plus element to the batted ball profile. He has always been an above-average batted ball guy but he really took the next step this year and then a few more steps after that.

Roansy also swore off of walks and was consistently hitting his spots this year. The delivery is solid and he was repeating it every night without losing any stuff. He got called strikes at a high rate as well so it wasn’t just luck that he was avoiding the middle. Roansy was the complete package in 2021 as he excelled in every facet of the game and was amongst the league leaders in literally everything. He has the repertoire and command to beat any hitter by attacking their weaknesses and limiting the risk that way.

The lone concern with Roansy is durability but that is more of a minor quibble. He was limited to 61 innings in the regular season by a forearm strain but came back, dominated, made the MLB- was effective for one start, and then continued his dominance in the AFL. This was his first year with any real health issues and well his size naturally introduces durability questions, they’ve mostly unproven warranted. Roansy Contreras is extremely well rounded and while he lacks the wow-wow-wow out pitch of an Ace, he might be one anyways because he just does everything exceptionally.

14. SP Aaron Ashby, Milwaukee Brewers

Aaron Ashby led all of AAA in both K% and GB% before his promotion to the majors. The groundball rate actually led all the minors and his CSW%, Whiff%, and K% were all top ten at the time of his callup. He got absolutely lit up in his debut and then was back to being one of the most dominant pitchers in the game; serving as a swingman who split time between the rotation and primarily the bullpen.

Aaron Ashby had one of the highest groundball rates in the league- second to only Framber Valdez among starters and 8th amongst all players with 30+ innings. He paired his elite groundball rates with a 95th percentile strikeout rate at just under 30%. The combination of stuff and the batted ball profile is highly covetous and something very few players can match.

He reigned in his control issues at the major league level and Command+ actually has him as average (99) in that regard. If I was confident that those gains would hold then I would have Ashby as the #2 pitching prospect in the game. Instead, the poor fellow has to settle for #4.

The sinker is frequently parked in the 94–96 MPH range with Ashby topping out at 99.5 MPH. He sits a bit higher than that in his shorter outings but even as a starter it is plus velocity. The sinker is one of the best sinkers in the entire MLB. He throws it on a 10:30 spin axis with 89% efficiency and 45 minutes of SSW that creates more lateral movement. It has good depth and some tail as well.

What really makes the pitch stand out, however, is the plane he has with the pitch. He has a very steep VAA on his sinker that comes from a 6.3 foot release height. The resulting pitch has a -6.9° Zone-Neutral VAA which is in the bottom 10 percentile of sinkers.

He throws his sinker in the heart of heart of the plate a lot- in the bottom 10% of all major leaguers at 32.6% of the time. As such, he has one of the highest swing rates on a sinker of any major leaguer at 52.5%. I realize both those sounds like a bad thing and for anyone else they might be but the combination of velocity, angle, and movement gives Ashby the ability to throw in the heart zone without being hit hard most of the time.

Despite his sub-optimal location, Aaron Ashby had the second lowest launch angle average against the sinker of any SP behind only Framber Valdez at -7.3°. His elite line drive avoidance remained at the MLB level as he was second to only Max Fried in LD% off the sinker. He also ranked in the top quartile in Hard hit% against the sinker.

He limits damage with the best of them despite his shit sinker location. He draws swings at a very high rate and that’s a good thing because it leads to quick and easy groundball outs. The sinker is a plus pitch and it’s arguable I’m underselling it- it’s about as good of a pitch to contact pitch as is physically possible. The pitch is nearly impossible to barrel up and there is no such thing as a meatball with his sinker because of the combination of angle and movement.

The slider is his bread and butter. The slider is a fantastic offering. He throws it at 83.7 MPH with 38% efficiency on a 5:15 axis that morphs into a 4:00 when it reaches the plate. The pitch has elite vertical depth- in the 92nd percentile of IVB and he also has plus sweep with his 9.8 inches of it ranking in the 81st percentile.

The slider command is what really stands out. Aaron Ashby had the second highest called strike rate on a slider in the entire MLB behind only Ryne Stanek. He also had an 18% swinging-strike rate which is great. The result is the third highest CSW% of any slider in the league at 44.9% behind only Jacob deGrom and Alex Reyes. Obviously, small sample size and all but still crazy.

He was also somehow in the 91st percentile of xwOBAcon last year. The ability to spot the slider on the edge for called strikes against right handed hitters and get chases against lefties is incredibly valuable and makes the slider a truly elite offering. It is his most frequently used pitch and for good reason, the pitch is unfair.

The changeup is also above-average and you could probably convince me to make it a plus if you tried hard enough. The cambio has 8 MPH of separation from his fastball. The pitch doesn’t really have any less spin than the sinker- it loses exactly 100 RPMs which is unusual, to say the least. The sinker is also thrown on a ~10:30 spin axis but this one has 7% less efficient and so it rotates an extra 45 minutes and plays at a 9:00.

The pitch drops 10 inches more and has the same horizontal movement. This kind of changeup can be highly effective at tunneling and deceiving the batters into thinking fastball but it’s entirely dependent on velocity differential. The arm speed is good but there will be starts where he wavers and the changeup is unusable. There will also be starts where he’s really feeling it and the SI/CH combo completely shuts down the opposition. The pitch would be a plus if he adds/subtracts another tick or two to differentiate the two but for now, it’s only a strong 55.

The curveball is thrown at 79 MPH with spin rates of ~2500 RPMs. The slider and curveball basically have the same ~5:10 spin axis out of the hand but the curve shifts the other way by 15 minutes- closer to the six hour mark whereas the slider goes to a 4:00. The pitches only have ~4 MPH of separation but despite the same tunnel to start, they have very distinct movement patterns.

The CB drops 17 inches more and has 3 inches less sweep. The curve has -15 inches of IVB which is in the 90th percentile of all pitchers to throw at least 20 curves last year. He also has average sweep. The high release gives the curve good downhill plane and it should miss bats as long as he throws it for strikes. I think it’s a 55 pitch even if his feel was oftentimes non-existent last year. The upside is a plus or more if the feel is there and the slider is also working.

Aaron Ashby has bad control probably. He flashed better this year but that was the result of spamming the sinker down the middle and a small sample that was mostly spent in relief. The lack of control hardly matters anyway, the knack for groundballs will erase most of his free passes with double plays. There is very little extra-base hit risk with Ashby because he just doesn’t do home runs and never gives up line drives. Stranding runners isn’t pretty but it’s effective and it’s something that should be commonplace for Ashby.

Aaron Ashby profiles very similarly to Framber Valdez and although Ashby will never set the MLB record for GB%, he’ll still be just as good as Framber because he misses more bats by a pretty significant margin. Framber Valdez and Ashby both might never wind up with sparkling ERA estimators due to their style of play- they will continuously be some of the most effective starting pitchers in the entire league and could win a Cy Young with the right defense behind them.

There is some reason to believe that Ashby won’t ever be an innings eater like Framber is so his value will be limited by his inning counts but he also has the best pitcher in baseball upside if the control develops so that low is balanced out. There is variance in this profile, and the role Ashby will fill but the one thing I know is that whatever role it is in, Ashby will thrive and be a valuable contributor.

15. CF Michael Harris II, Atlanta Braves

Following in the shoes of his fellow II, Cedric Mullins; Michael Harris dropped switch hitting this year because switch hitting is dumb and converted to exclusively hitting left handed. Like with Mullins, Harris made major gains in just about everything as a result and now looks like an elite offensive threat who also offers a premium glove.

There are scouts who think Michael Harris II is a better defensive centerfielder than Cristian Pache. They’re wrong but the fact that they can hold that opinion and actually admit to having it speaks volumes about the quality of Harris’ glove. I’ve also been told that he lead all minor league centerfielders in DRS. I’m all in on the Michael Harris defense hype train and think he’s a plus center fielder with a plus and probably better arm.

Michael Harris II is a 70+ runner with elite acceleration and incredible jumps in centerfield. His route running is solid and he’s an acrobat in the field who will lay out and make sensational plays. There is only play I saw where he’s in pursuit of a line drive and does a running long jump of ~15 feet to cover the distance and catch the ball on his belly. It’s astonishing.

Not the video I was talking about but I’m not going through the trouble of clipping MiLB TV myself.

There is premium arm strength present with him hitting the mid-nineties off the mound and his throws have both carry and zip. He has pretty clean footwork and solid accuracy to boot. His arm will be a difference maker in whatever spot he fits in at in the majors.

Michael Harris is an awesome fielder but what makes him such an elite prospect is the bat. Michael Harris can hit. He had a mere 23.4% whiff rate in A+ but it’s so much more than that. Michael Harris is a bit of a bad ball hitter. He doesn’t wait for fastballs he can drive- most of the damage he does is on secondary stuff and not just the meatball ones. He’ll expand the zone and chase at a high rate but still makes contact because he has unreal plate coverage. His whiff rates in respect to his chase rates are somehow even more impressive.

He swings aggressively but his chase rates are actually fine relative to his swing rates- and both they and his walk rates steadily improved over the course of the season. He has great pitch recognition and tracking that shows somewhat in his ability to make flush contact and make contact with pitches way over or out of the zone. He’s at ~26° up, 38° down, and 32° middle-middle. I have high hopes that the pitch tracking skills will turn into at least average walk rates in the future, and could potentially, drop his whiff rates into elite territory.

Harris II also has elite line drive rates- ranking in the 93rd percentile last year. Additionally, since he’s primarily a low ball hitter who does most of his damage against everything but fastballs, he rarely pops out. He also hits the ball on the ground just over 50% of the time and while that hurts him in the power department, it helps his BABIP massively because he hits more balls the other way than he pulls them.

I don’t love the in game power but it’s better than the stat sheet would indicate, and I adore the raw juice that Harris brings to the table. Michael Harris has elite bat speed as a left handed batter with a quick and efficient swing. He’s a strong rotator who hits the ball very hard regularly. His Max EV was 114 MPH last year and he had multiple batted balls hit in excess of 110 MPH.

His average exit velocity was 89 MPH last year. That is slightly above the MLB average for exit velocity. I realize above-average doesn’t sound like elite but the context makes it so. Michael Harris II hit 39.3% of his batted balls to the opposite field. The highest opposite field rate at the MLB last year by a player with an EV as high as Harris was Nathaniel Lowe at 33.7%. The highest average EV by a player to go the other way as frequently as Harris II last year in the MLB was Gerardo Parra at 87.5 MPH.

Going to the opposite field and hitting the ball hard are not supposed to be possible in tandem. Very few things hurt average exit velocities as much as a proclivity for going the other way. The league average player loses 5.5 MPH when they go the other way. Harris has one of the highest opposite field hit rates in the league. His power is getting depressed by his tendency to go the other way.

Michael Harris II isn’t a Moreno type who has elite core strength and acceleration that lets him go the other way without losing anything. He subtracts significantly from his power by failing to pull the ball. The power could take off if he learns to pull the ball. That would undoubtedly hurt his BABIPs but the power gains would almost certainly be more than worthwhile.

Michael Harris has a collection of plus tools across the board. There is still some refinement needed. The approach could definitely use some workshopping but he has the potential to be the best prospect in all of baseball this time next year. He’s a superstar in the making who is going to continue his rise with a strong start in AA this year. The sky is the limit.

16. SS Noelvi Marte, Seattle Mariners

This blurb is mostly just copied and pasted from my Mariners Top 30 Prospects blog. Feel free to skip it.

Noelvi Marte had an explosive start to his 2021 season. He cooled down the stretch but there is no denying just how absurd his upside is anymore. The offensive tools are very much there.

Noelvi Marte has filled in his frame- a lot since the 2019 season when we last saw him and traded his 80 speed for big-time power and physicality. The swing is powerful and driven by his lower half and core. His leg kick is powerful but not too loud and effectively shifts his entire load to his front hip and into the baseball. It’s a powerful drive that creates big-time raw power. The hip control for that power to be consistent is evident. The hand speed is nothing short of electric.

He’s maybe not the 70 or 80 raw guy that Jerry Dipoto would have you believe he is on his podcast and he’s certainly not better than Julio despite some bold claims to the contrary. However, he’s a 65 and the game power isn’t much behind that.

His maximum exit velocity is 112.5 MPH which is obviously impressive for a player who spent the entire season at 19. Noelvi Marte has a slightly below-average feel for elevation but pulls the ball enough and makes such consistent hard contact that I’m pretty confident he’ll tap into most if not all of that raw power in games. The elevation should develop naturally with time and doesn’t have to be forced yet. Worry about it once he’s 25 but until then just assume it’ll be playable.

The contact rates are fairly average for Noelvi Marte. He whiffed 27.8% of the time as a 19-year-old in A+ last year which was 2.9% better than league average in the Low A West League. His swing has some length to it but he’s gotten much shorter in the last few years and he doesn’t get tied up. His bat speed still lets him pulverize velocity as well so it’s not an issue in that respect.
Noelvi Marte’s hit tool gets bumped up to above-average and you could persuade me it’s a plus because of the BABIP skills. Noelvi Marte is one of the best players in the entire minors at making flush contact.

His average VBA on pitches up in the zone is ~20° and his average VBA on pitches down is ~41°. The MLB average is 26/35. So what does this mean? Flush contact means more backspin on batted balls, and it means lower spin rates on the batted ball. It means high BABIPs in a nutshell. That is why Tim Anderson doesn’t believe in expected stats- because he is so good at creating flush contact.

The tradeoff of Noelvi Marte customizing his VBA to such an extreme degree based on pitch location is that it means a whiff more often than not if he guesses wrong. That is one of the driving forces in Noelvi’s whiff rates. Tatis does the same thing as does Ohtani and it causes us to over-exaggerate how hopeless they are at the plate. Miss by a centimeter or a foot- the outcome is the same. The ones who miss by a foot will have better contact quality too.

The good news is that Noelvi doesn’t often guess wrong. He’s a patient hitter who lays off of most breaking balls and although he chases fastballs- he has the swing plane and bat speed to still make contact with out-of-zone fastballs. The approach isn’t exceptional but there is one and the integral pitch recognition skills are evident. I expect in time and with experience, it will mature into an above-average one given his pitch tracking skills.

His launch angle optimization could be cleaned up. He hits a lot of line drives as you would expect but also pops up more than you would like. This is actually not that surprising with how flat the swing gets up in the zone- anytime a swing that flat gets too far underneath a pitch it’s a popup.

That is the drawback of flat VBA hitters and why they typically produce lower wOBAcons. I’m fine with accepting that he’ll never excel in that field but as he gets better at laying off the high heat out of the zone, I think he could still be at least average. Noelvi Marte is going to mash and the bat would be electric from any position. Noelvi Marte plays shortstop.

In the past, scouts have projected him moving off of the position- myself included. I came around on the possibility that he might be an average shortstop in 2020 during fielding drills at Summer Camp and this year has been a reinforcement of that belief and then some.

I watched a lot of Modesto Nuts games this year. Not once did it ever feel like Noelvi wasn’t a shortstop. He checks just about every box. He has excellent lateral agility that plays in the form of range. He makes clean scoops and can charge in on balls. He has plus arm strength and will make throws from his knees that make you go wow.

There are two major developmental hurdles for Noelvi to clear if he wants to remain a shortstop. Noelvi struggles to throw on the run. He needs time to stop and set his feet for his throws to be at all accurate. His footwork hasn’t yet become second nature to him and takes time to practice.

The second issue is that he often rushes the transfer between his hands and muffs it entirely. Usually, this is on tough plays where he can’t take his time. Those are both easily coachable issues that should be worked out with more repetitions. Noelvi Marte had a .920 fielding percentage in 2021 but his range was still so good that he was actually worth +5 Davenport runs.

He’s also made major strides in the error department in the last year. He went from a .877 fielding percentage to a .920 this year. There were fewer mistakes and miscues than before by a significant amount. Some of the skills here suggest a plus fielder not a fringe one- he just has to stop making simple mistakes. I have him as average because of the risk he just completely outgrows the position even I think that is unlikely but this is an average grade closer to a 55 than 45.

Noelvi Marte is also a plus runner, even if not the 80 guy who was in 2019. He’s a tremendous athlete with a very comparable body to the greatest shortstop of all time, Álex Rodriguez. The sky is the limit for this kid. He’s grown into his body and the baseball skills are there. He’s going to be a special talent at the most premium of positions. I would not be at all shocked if he’s the best prospect in baseball after this year.

17. 3B/2B/1B Miguel Vargas, Los Angeles Dodgers

This is the third consecutive year that I’ve had Miguel Vargas as a top 100 prospect. This is the first year that people other than me and Baseball Prospectus have woken up to how amazing Vargas is. It only took a 142 wRC+ for him to finally get his much deserved respect. Vargas is one of the best hitters in all of the minors.

Miguel Vargas has a truly elite hit tool. The contact ability is a premium skill. He hardly whiffed at all as he posted a 20.1% whiff rate last season. He was only 21 and splitting time between A+ and AA. That is truly impressive both on its own and especially with respect to his age. Unlike most high contact players, Vargas doesn’t achieve those contact rates at the expense of contact quality.

Miguel Vargas also has exceptional BABIP skills just like almost every player I’ll ever put near the top of any list. Miguel Varas is a sweet spot machine with elite barrel control and feel to expand the size of his barrel to maximize his ideal timing windows. He has a track record of plus line drive rates and also shows the ability to avoid popouts.

Miguel Vargas did bolster his pull rates slightly this year but back in 2019, he hit 24.3% of his groundballs to the opposite field for free singles. That is almost double the rate of the average player and helped inflate his BABIPs. He’s probably dipped some in that regard but I’m willing to bet he’s still above-average a the very least.

Miguel Vargas also has some of the most insane VBA’s I will ever see. His VBA on pitches up in the zone is ~29° he can homer on those pretty easily. His VBA on pitches down in the zone is ~45° (That is the lowest (Highest? Closest to zero) of the three swings I measured on pitches middle down). He can homer on those too.

Ideally, you would like to see him flatten out more at the top on paper; but the fact that he is so ridiculously steep on pitches down means that he is quite possibly the best low ball hitter in the minors. He hits everything down in the zone both hard and in the air. There are some limits to his capabilities up, he’ll whiff when he chases out of the zone because he can struggle to reach that high but he doesn’t chase up often and hits the high fastball in the zone so it still works splendidly for him.

Miguel Vargas also never chases and swings at almost everything in the strike zone. The combination of elite pitch tracking and recognition skills with his fluid swing that makes lots of contact and his plus-plus BABIP skills probably make this a 70-grade hit tool.

The raw power is above-average. Miguel Vargas’ has above-average and probably plus raw power. He has hit the ball in excess of 110 MPH before. His average exit velocity of 89 MPH is slightly above the MLB average. That is probably slightly deflated by him not pulling the ball all that much but it’s only a minor difference.

The feel to elevate is what has me so enamored with Vargas’ power potential. Miguel Vargas just decided groundballs are for suckers last season. He hit the ball on the ground just 29.7% of the time.

Even with a league-average HR/FB%, a player who elevates as often as Vargas would be expected to hit 26 home runs in 400 BBE. If his strikeout and walk rates translated exactly he would have 436 BBE per 600 PA (~28 HR). For the record, I think Vargas will run above-average home run to flyball rates with his above-average raw power. He is going to hit for power just by virtue of the launch angles.

Miguel Vargas is a fringy third baseman with limited lateral mobility but he probably won’t kill you there. He’s also gotten some action at first and second base. I like him best at the keystone where I think his lack of mobility but strong fundamentals is perfect to play that shift aided second baseman role who does a lot of covering the bag and easy plays but leaves the tougher stuff to the shortstop to his right. Regardless, of what position Vargas winds up at, the bat will absolutely play anywhere and make him a star.

The now 22 year old, Miguel Vargas will likely be up at some point in 2022 and should make an impact in a star-studded Dodgers lineup early on. Even if I like him best at second, I have a nagging feeling that he is going to be the successor to Justin Turner at third base and play full time there starting in 2023. He’ll likely make a similar impact to the prime of the previous version in his prime. Miguel Vargas is going to hit and be another unfairly good bat in the most ridiculous lineup in baseball for years to come.

18. SP George Kirby, Seattle Mariners

This blurb is mostly just copied and pasted from my Mariners Top 30 Prospects blog. Feel free to skip it.

In the past five years, I’ve completely made the transformation from someone who thinks strikeouts are overrated and guys who don’t walk people and limit quality contact are chads; to a guy who thinks strikeouts are king, walks hardly matter at all, and batted balls are still super important. When the Mariners first drafted George Kirby, I was in on him because of his control being so ridiculous and that was when I was in peak Moneyball- walks are all that matters mode.

I’m not big into the control fetish that most scouts have anymore. The 4.1% career walk rate means almost nothing. Limiting free passes to that extent is almost always a bad thing because it means you’re trading off more meaningful areas- strikeouts and batted balls to throws in the zone and limit walks. What I am a big fan of is guys with his high quality of premium stuff and guys who mix K + BB + GB to the extent that he does.

George Kirby is a dude who well he might not have the best stuff in the world on paper- still has great stuff and just does everything well. Once upon a time, there would have been no controversy behind such a statement. Then George Kirby added velocity. Then he added some more.

He now throws really, really hard. He’ll sit 96–98 most nights as a starter and only lose a single tick in the later innings. His fastball has touched 102 MPH. He also has close to seven feet of extension so it plays up even more.

From a movement perspective, however, it is rather bland. Average spin rates, average vertical movement, and, average horizontal movement. However, on the bright side, Kirby throws the pitch from an average release height of just 5.6 feet. He has also shown the ability to consistently locate his fastball wherever the fuck he wants so it plays well above the movement profile.

The Mariners swapped him to a tailing version of the fastball from his dead zone one after drafting him and it’s been a positive development, to say the least as it’s certainly played a role in the transformation of his batted ball profile.

He exploits his VAA to get both called and swinging strikes at a high rate but he still should elevate more to tap into that element of his game. His 29% whiff rate on the fastball isn’t elite by MiLB standards but it is above-average and he throws strikes with the pitch 75% of the time.

This is an elite pitch even with no movement. Want proof? Take a look at Zack Wheeler. Zack Wheeler throws 97 on average with 7 feet of extension from a 5.6 foot vertical release point. His fastball has almost exactly average vertical and horizontal movement. How they get there varies, Wheeler is high spin and low efficiency but Kirby is inverted. The important part is that they have the same endpoint.

Zack Wheeler finally started to elevate his fastball this year and what happened? He won a Cy Young. Okay, fine, he didn’t- but he should have. He was in the 93rd percentile of CSW% with the high fastball. Movement is king but good location with velo/angle also is incredibly potent.

The slider is Kirby’s best secondary for my money’s worth but the curve is close too. It’s almost exclusively useful against right handed bats. The slider is a heavy horizontal sweeper with a double-digit horizontal break on average and limited drop while sitting in the 87–90 MPH bucket now. He gets lots of chases on it and misses even more bats.

It doesn’t have the utility of the curveball but it forces hitters to expand the zone and not just wait for the constant strikes over the plate. It was a much needed addition to his arsenal and will always feature prominently as long as he continues to aggressively fill the zone with his fastball. The pitch had a 45% whiff rate in 2021.

The curveball sits just north of 80 MPH which automatically makes it a good pitch. That is somewhat tongue in cheek but even curves with bad movement in the eighties- think Bruce Zimmerman, Keone Kela, Derek Holland, Sean Manaea, Robbie Ray, etc. all run into good results.

George Kirby’s is thrown with double-digit horizontal break and above-average drop for his velocity band hence why it’s a plus pitch rather than a 50–55. Velocity and movement are incredibly potent as a tandem. It doesn’t have the same plane as the slider due to his low slot but the sweeper still misses bats and when he has feel for it- can get called strikes as well. It’s a big improvement over the slower curve that he showed better command of in college.

The changeup is good too- at least against left-handed batters. The cambio is his least used secondary but it also was his most dominant. The pitch is thrown ~11 MPH slower than the fastball which is elite velocity separation. He has slightly above-average movement on both planes with 4.3 inches of IVB and 14 inches of armside run. The pitch got whiffs on 60% of swings last year.

You could argue that the changeup is a plus but I’m slightly more pessimistic. He has some issues with getting it in the strike zone and there is some Logan Gilbert syndrome here. His whiff rates are a byproduct of the lack of hittable changeups. The swing rates aren’t high but a pitch in the dirt will always be a whiff when swung on. The arm speed is somewhat erratic and the pitch hasn’t shown it can retain effectiveness while being used as an out pitch. I think this is a high variance 55 grade changeup that might wind up defining if Kirby is just a #3 or a Cy Young.

I expected a strikeout increase this year with the added velocity. What I didn’t expect was the complete reformation of his batted ball profile. I had George Kirby as a 40 batted ball last year. He has never gotten groundballs, he had terrible LD avoidance, and was a plus in popups which isn’t actually that impressive considering it was Elon. I was very rationally terrified that our next Shane Bieber was actually the next Josh Tomlin because of the loud XBH risk and lack of outgen fundamentals.

The batted ball profile improved by leaps and bounds and then some in 2021. He rated in the 99th percentile in groundball rate in A+ and only slowed down a little at AA. He also was 93rd percentile in LD avoid at A+ but showed some slight vulnerability to pulled flyballs. He slowed down more in AA but again, as a whole, was still a plus batted ball guy this year. The reason behind his improvements is painfully obvious.

George Kirby forced fewer strikes this year. In 2019, George Kirby allowed a mere six walks in 438 batters faced. This year, George Kirby more than doubled his walk total with 15 in only 274 batter’s faced. His walk rate jumped from 1.4% to 5.5%. I suspect this change was deliberate because both his hit by pitch rate and wild pitch rate both improved this year. His previously unhealthy obsession with attacking hitters and filling the zone was replaced with a careful craftiness and more willingness to pitch around the edges of the zone. Fewer balls over the plate meant less quality contact.

I would love to see him go full Shane Bieber and trade-off, even more, walks for batted ball and strikeout gains. The control benefits are very minimal and even a small gain in either K or batted ball makes it a fair trade-off. George Kirby has 80 command but his improving philosophy makes it a 60 control grade in practice and hopefully, it’ll soon be even lower.

I haven’t put a 60 on the batted ball yet, because, of the track record, but you could easily convince me that I should have one on it. I also leave it at a 55 because there is the possibility that elevating the fastball more for whiffs, costs him in the batted ball department- particularly in groundballs. He’d get more popups to compensate and his movement profile suggests a pretty equal balance but it’s possible he just doesn’t.

If you’re like me and looking at George Kirby with his plus stuff, plus batted ball, plus control; and looking for the catch; then I regret to inform you that there is one. His shoulder had some trouble this year and while there was no reported structural damage, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen later. He sold out for velocity and that might have cost him in the health department. I still like the mechanics and don’t see any red flags but I’m not a biomechanist. Pitchers are scary and any shoulder trouble is scary. It’s not close to enough to turn me off of Kirby but it is a warning sign.

George Kirby is not as MLB ready as most Mariners fans will him to be. He ran into some speed bumps in AA after returning from a month out with shoulder trouble and the results would have been a lot uglier in any other ballpark. His stuff still has some refinement that is very much needed. The execution isn’t flawless yet. He’s close to ready but he should start in AA and get moved up around July if he dominates as we expect him to. Regardless, of when he arrives, when he gets here, George Kirby could be an Ace level starter who forms a deadly a 1–2 with Logan Gilbert (1–2–3 cause Robbie Ray!) in a few years.

19. SP Matt Canterino, Minnesota Twins

If I could guarantee that Matt Canterino would stay healthy for the rest of his career, Matt Canterino would be the #1 prospect in baseball. Not just pitching prospect but prospect period. The stuff is completely off the charts.

The fastball is beyond words. We saw him throw only 26 of them in games with statcast during Spring Training. The data from those 26 fastballs is unfathomable. Those 26 fastballs averaged 95.8 MPH and topped out at 98.7 MPH. The movement is obviously what sets the 80-grade fastball apart.

Matt Canterino averaged 9 inches of drop on the fastball. He also averaged 9 inches on nine fastballs in the Low A SE. He touched six inches three times. I can’t verify this because as far as I’m aware there is no minimum drop leaderboard easily accessible but from what I have found, only two pitches had less drop than that last year. Both were by Pete Fairbanks.

Let’s put that nine inches of drop on average into perspective so you can understand just how generational that is. Forget about velocity for a moment, the only pitcher to throw a fastball averaging 9.1 inches of drop or less in the MLB this year was Anthony Gose who throws 99.3 MPH, and drop is largely dependent on velocity. The only pitcher in the statcast era to do so is Anthony Gose. (Statcast changed how vertical movement was measured after 2017 when 9 pitchers technically did so but the average was much lower then). The moral of the story is to respect Anthony Gose.

Meanwhile, you have Matt Canterino over here who throws his fastball 3.5 MPH slower than Anthony Gose with the same amount of drop in spite of that. I would estimate that Canterino is at ~21 inches of IVB on his fastball which would have been second to only DeMarcus Evans last year. That is 80-grade movement paired with plus velocity.

The lone drawback is that Canterino throws from a very high release point at ~6.5 feet which gives him a theoretically suboptimal angle on his elite vertical fastball up in the zone. Most of the time, that is a bad thing on a vertically moving fastball. But when you have this much vertical movement it might just be incredible.

Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and James Karinchak all throw similarly high release fastballs with stupid vertical movement that makes it play as an elite pitch. The first two had probably the best fastball of their generation. The last one had the best fastball in baseball before the sticky-stuff crackdown. There is an upper threshold of pitch movement where high release is no longer sub-optimal. Canterino has passed that threshold.

The velocity is there for Canterino and he has perfect movement with the ability to locate his pitch all over the zone. This is an 80-grade fastball if I’ve ever seen one. It is a foundational pitch that makes it so easy to believe he will dominate whoever he faces in whatever role he is in.

The slider is arguably Matt Canterino’s best secondary. He throws it at 88 MPH with spin rates that sit at about 2650 RPMs. The pitch has an 11:00 spin axis with heavy gyro spin to it. It drops about 32 inches on average with 5 inches of run. The angle isn’t the same so it’s a somewhat weak comparison but the shape, spin and, velo is nearly identical to Gerrit Cole’s slider which is what has turned him into a top-three starter in all of baseball. This pitch has the potential to be a truly elite offering.

The curveball sits at 82 MPH with ~50 inches of drop and minimal run on it. The more important part is the angle he gets coming from such an extremely high release point and over the top arm slot. I don’t have a perfect comp for it but it plays so well off the fastball with a mirrored movement pattern that I’m sure it will be a plus.

A guy like James Karinchak again comes to mind. He throws slightly harder than Canterino with slightly less movement but the basic elements overlap. It’s just hard curves from a really tough angle to hit against that miss bats. I think it will be a plus pitch with some viability against left handed hitters- if Canterino needs it at all.

The changeup is his best pitch. I tried to pretend it’s the slider because of consistency issues but it’s the changeup easily. The changeup had an 80% whiff rate in the minors in 2021. The changeup has three different traits that if it was all the changeup was, would still make the pitch an outlier.

The changeup is thrown just over 13 MPH slower than his fastball. If you remember from when I was talking about Grayson Rodriguez, only five players topped that in the majors last year. None of them topped 80 MPH. Canterino isn’t quite Grayson but sitting 82–84 on it is still absurd.

I should stop referring to Matt Canterino’s changeup as a changeup. It is very clearly an Airbender. He throws it with spin rates of ~2450 RPMs. That is actually higher than his spin rates on the fastball by ~100 RPMs. Only 13 pitchers (613 qualifiers) throw a lower spin fastball than their changeup. This is a changeup with an elite velocity gap those are not supposed to be high spin pitches. Matt Canterino’’s changeup defies all convention and gets in the opponent’s head.

The movement profile is of course, also exquisite. He has 35 inches of drop on the changeup which is in the ~70th percentile. The more impactful part, however, is the 19 inches of fade to his arm side. That is in the 98th percentile for changeups. He throws it on a 2:45 spin axis and while the spin efficiency is somewhat inconsistent, it flashes being the best pitch in all the minors when he’s on. This Airbender could dominate in any role as one of the best bat missing offerings in all the majors.

Whether you like the delivery or not, (Not is the correct answer) that doesn’t change that Canterino has a track record of throwing strikes. He walked only 4.8% of batters last year. He is at 6.8% in his minor league career. He only walked 5.8% of batters in his last two seasons at Rice. This guy has continuously thrown strikes despite the horrendous appearances. I should put the control as above-average based on track record but I’m accounting for a possible injury that could damage that irreparably so it’s only average.

Matt Canterino has a plus batted ball profile even if the shape of that isn’t exactly clear. He had 100th percentile popup rates in college. The Twins had him start pitching lower in the zone with his fastball and he turned that elite PU rate into plus groundball rates and slightly below-average popups. Both shapes make some logical sense with the way his fastball moves. I think I might prefer the popup version for as long as the control is there but both versions are great. Regardless of what shape he is taking, the elite line drive rates have never been in question.

This sounds like the best pitcher in baseball so obviously, there has to be a catch. Matt Canterino has at least a dozen red flags in his delivery that suggest future injury issues. That’s an understatement, he is the textbook example of what not to do in pitching mechanics. Not to mention that he’s already been hurt constantly, even if it hasn’t been career-altering surgery yet. He only threw 23 innings in 2021 because of a barking elbow.

I won’t go into detail on the many less than ideal mechanical quirks of Canterino but there is one thing I’ll highlight. The generational changeup might be a source of a lot of the elbow troubles Canterino had. He has a very vicious early pronation on the pitch that is very reminiscent of a screwball. He snaps his wrist on it to increase the spin and while it does what it’s supposed to, screwballs are known as the elbow shredder for a reason.

I would not be opposed to Matt Canterino entirely abandoning his changeup, despite it being possibly the best pitch in all the minors. As awesome as the changeup is, Canterino does not need it to be a front of the rotation starter. His fastball can be spammed and dominate anyone. The slider completely dismantles same handed batters. The curveball is more than capable of functioning as an out pitch against lefties. The Airbender is awesome and could make Canterino into the best pitcher in baseball but he doesn’t need it to be a front-line guy. What he does have to do to be one, is stay healthy. I think Jesus summarized the idea the best:

“And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.” — Matthew 5:30, NKJV

I understand why most scouts are hesitant on Canterino. His delivery screams reliever. His health issues scream reliever. I scream reliever deep down. The likely outcome for Canterino is a reliever to preserve his health. I just think that if Canterino is a reliever, he will be the best one in all of baseball. The stuff is hat good and would only get better in short bursts. A reliever is maybe the likely outcome but you have to respect that his upside is the best pitcher in all of baseball. That is why a probable reliever is ranked so highly.

20. C Francisco Álvarez, New York Mets

Francisco Álvarez is a teenage catcher which is gross. He also happens to be one of the best hitters in all the minors. The latter qualification is enough for me to overlook the whole teenage catcher thing and still rank him highly even without him expected to provide much defensive value.

Francisco Álvarez is not a good defensive catcher. His receiving is questionable in my looks, if framing was still a thing, I’d worry that he might not have enough skill in that regard to stick behind the plate. He gets off easy with electronic strike zones likely being in place for his entire career.

Francisco Álvarez has good mobility but even when catching from a crouch, he’s struggled with consistently downing breaking balls in the dirt and keeping those in front of him. The arm strength is a plus but it hasn’t always played as such in terms of its impact on controlling the run game. I think Álvarez is a fine defensive catcher but he’s not much more than that, even with electronic strike zones.

The hit tool shows a lot of promise in a variety of areas but he’s yet to show promise in every area simultaneously. I only have him as a 55 hit tool right now but it’s easy to envision him pushing that to a plus or even a 70 next year. It’s also not hard to see it settling in at a 50.

The contact rates are entirely average- technically below average actually. He whiffed 29.9% of the time last year. He was a nineteen year old catcher splitting time between Low A and High-A; most of that coming in High-A. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and call him average or even above at making contact.

He’s had stretches where he can’t be beaten and hits everything and stretches where he is swinging through meatballs down the middle. He’s young and that’ll happen. I think he’ll eventually figure things out but I’m not confident enough to put all my eggs in one basket.

The BABIP skills are interesting. Francisco Álvarez has fairly average launch angle optimization. His line drive rates are largely average, actually a tick below last year. He had below-average popup rates but more good than elite and expect he’ll trend closer to league average once he starts elevating more frequently to really tap into his elite raw power.

That brings us to the calling card of Francisco Álvarez’s BABIP skills, the fact that he hits the ball really freaking hard. I will avoid being needlessly repetitive and say if you want more on the impact of hitting the ball hard on BABIPs to scroll up and read about Oneil Cruz or Marco Luciano.

The real reason I’m willing to project on the hit tool so much and think it has such high upside comes down to two things. First off the visual evaluations are very strong. The swing is beautiful and looks like it has few holes. He gets the barrel in the zone early and doesn’t really get tied up with velocity due to his 80 grade bat speed and direct approach. Swing cosmetics don’t mean much but Álvarez is closer to the top of the class in those.

The real difference maker, however, is the approach. Francisco Álvarez has elite pitch recognition and tracking skills. His z-swing was above the MLB average last year and his chase rate was slightly below as well. He’s going to likely continue to walk at a high rate and keep the strikeouts in check as he gets more experience and climbs the ladder.

He’s shown the ability to hit breaking balls and fastballs all over the zone. He whiffs on all of them but he makes the right swing decisions and doesn’t have any huge kryptonite (Pitch type or location) that could make him unplayable. The hit tool is just solid all around. I have an easier time projecting on that than someone with an insurmountable potentially fatal flaw. Especially when he is doing all that while three years younger than his competition. The whiffs might just be him showing his youth. Ditto for the mishits that are too frequent right now.

The power is what could make Álvarez one of the best hitters in the game. His average Ev last year was 91 MPH. His Hard-Hit% was close to 50%. He hit a ball in excess of 114 MPH. He pulls the ball a lot. The bat speed is exceptional. He’s an amazing rotator who barrels up the ball regularly. The power is going to play, he might elevate at a below-average rate right now but it will come with time.

Francisco Álvarez could take a number of different paths to success at the major league level. He dominated in the low minors on the back of an elite power/ high walk rates combo with decent strikeout rates. It’s possible that all of those skills get better. It’s also possible that the strikeouts dip and he hits for a higher average at the expense of some power. Or he could go the other way and whiff more as he chases contact quality. I don’t know how it will look but I’m pretty confident that he can be a ~130 wRC+ bat and for a C/1B/DH hybrid even, that will play.

21. CF Corbin Carroll, Arizona Diamondbacks

Corbin Carroll has dropped four spots despite posting a 263 wRC+ last year. In case, it wasn’t obvious, Carroll only appeared in seven games this year before shoulder surgery ended his season. More specifically, it was a posterior capsular avulsion fracture AND a torn labrum. If you know me at all you know I’m terrified of shoulder injuries more than just about any other injury. Especially labrum ones.

The story of Corbin Carroll is that he rates so well metrically in those seven games that he didn’t really drop at all. If he had been hurt in Spring Training, he would have dropped to a 55 but we had those seven games that raised my evaluation of him so much that he could have shoulder surgery and not plummet.

First off, I just want to call attention to how ridiculously good the pitching that Carroll faced in those seven games was. He faced Matt Brash, who is ranked one spot below Carroll, a top 100 prospect according to Baseball America in Brandon Williamson, a first round pick the previous year in Emerson Hancock, a 50 FV in Levi Stoudt, and the guy who tied for the highest whiff rate (Min 80 IP at one level) last year in Kai-Wei Teng. Then he also faced Juan Then and Nick Avila. That was not an easy slate that he completely dominated in every facet of the game.

Corbin Carroll posted a batted ball with an exit velocity in excess of 111 MPH. I don’t know why I am surprised by that, I really shouldn’t have been but it’s still encouraging to see. He had 94th percentile bat speed at the perfect game showcases. He averaged 91 MPH off the bat in 2019 after he was drafted. I had him at 55 raw power and while it’s not that much of a boost, the Max EV is enough to push him up to a 60- where he probably always should have been. He also showed a newfound elite feel to elevate last year but it’s way too small of a sample to move the needle at all.

The other big change was in his approach. Corbin Carroll did his best Juan Soto impression in his seven games in High A this season. He walked 20% of the time but more than that, his chase rate dipped below 20%. Chase rate stabilizes at only ~50 PA so this is at least something worth monitoring and maybe not just small sample madness. His understanding of the strike zone has always been there but not like this. I’m using this to bump him from a high 55 eye to a low 60 but it could swing in either direction.

The hit tool, speed, and defense haven’t really changed at all in seven games so I’ll copy and paste those sections from last year after this conclusion. Corbin Carroll showed the potential to take his game to a whole new level in a small sample in 2021. He rated somewhere between a plus and elite in every regard possible. However, we’ve seen so many players- established stars in the majors be broken by shoulder injuries. Last year alone, Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, and Eugenio Suárez all took huge steps back after shoulder surgery. Carroll flashed the potential to be the best prospect in baseball last year and it just really sucks that he blew out his shoulder and his career entirely is in jeopardy.

His hit tool is extremely advanced and in my opinion, the best of all the prep players from the 2019 draft. The bat path is simple and extremely direct so he doesn’t beat himself on high velocity. He shows an advanced understanding of the strike zone and is a patient hitter who won’t just swing at anything. He recognizes spin as well as any high schooler and can even hit it with some regularity. He has elite plate coverage and can hit balls anywhere in the zone. He will likely never post crazy BABIPs in spite of 70 speed due to how flat his VBA’s are and how many groundballs he’ll hit but he does everything else at a high level so I still believe in his hit tool.

Corbin Carroll is one of the best defensive centerfield prospects in the minors. His speed is an easy 70 grade that plays both on defense and on the basepaths. He has rare explosiveness as a 99.73rd percentile 10 yard split would indicate and can from zero to a hundred in an instant. His reaction times are tremendous and it’s apparent in all aspects of his game. His routes can be a bit odd at times although he typically tracks balls well and his hands are slightly suspect. Despite those concerns, I’m not betting against the athleticism of Carroll and the 80 grade range making him any less than a plus centerfielder on the low end. His arm is above average at worst and his footwork is clean. It’s one of the quicker catch and releases in the game and it helps the arm play above its natural strength.

Corbin Carroll has the chance to be an absolute nightmare on the basepaths. He stole eighteen bases in nineteen attempts in his first taste of pro ball across a 42 game span. His explosiveness leads to him getting really good jumps and his instant acceleration lets him take bags. The Diamondbacks will determine how many steals a guy like Carroll gets with how aggressive they allow him to be because the limit for how many Carroll would be capable of is a very high number.

22. SP Matt Brash, Seattle Mariners

This blurb is mostly just copied and pasted from my Mariners Top 30 Prospects blog. Feel free to skip it.

Matt Brash is only a few spots behind George Kirby on my top 100, that is how much I adore him. I understand people’s concerns with him but I think all of these concerns are overblown in general- not just in relation to Matt Brash. The pure stuff is the best in the entire system- majors or minors and he could genuinely have top-five stuff in the entire MLB.

Let’s address his warts before we get into his strengths and I’ll go somewhat deep on my scouting philosophy as a result. I don’t care all that much about Brash having a 40–45 control grade. He walked 11.9% of batters last year. So what? I don’t agree with the philosophy that starters with control issues are relievers. Walk percentage has an R² of 0.04 to ERA. It has almost no effect on how effective a pitcher is.

Walk issues limit the ceiling but that ceiling is raised when you punch out more batters or allow less quality contact so again who cares. Starting pitchers don’t have to be well-rounded. They just have to be good and able to beat batters of both-handedness, while facing a lineup multiple times. Shane Bieber broke out and won a Cy Young by throwing the least pitches in the zone in the entire MLB and walking more batters.

Matt Brash is a “two-pitch pitcher” who won’t be able to face the lineup multiple times so he has to be a reliever. At least that’s the argument most people bring up when they try to explain why Brash isn’t that good or belongs in relief.

First off, two-pitch starters are not uncommon in today’s MLB. Matt Brash usies his FB/SL combo ~90% of the time. Let’s take a look at some prominent two pitch starters in today’s MLB by those standards. Dinelson Lamet, Patrick Corbin, Tyler Glasnow, Kevin Gausman, Lance Lynn, the reigning AL Cy Young, Robbie Ray, and Jacob Motherfucking deGrom. Clearly two pitch starters can’t exist.

Secondly, the notion that Matt Brash is a two pitch starter is entirely false. He has a changeup. It’s not close to the quality of his elite fastball or slider so I understand why people overlook it but it has potential. But let’s pretend that Matt Brash doesn’t have a useable changeup to give this argument a fighting chance. Even if he could never throw a changeup again, I would still have Brash as a starting pitcher near the front of the rotation.

I am friends with a lot of Giants fans, and one player we discuss a lot is Zack Littell. Zack Littell is interesting in that he throws two separate and very distinct sliders that have very different purposes despite both being sliders. He’s far from the only one to do so. Kevin Gausman was a two pitch pitcher before joining the Giants with all the usual flaws of that profile but with the Giants he split his splitter in two. One is classified as a changeup on Savant. The result of his new two-split format was Gausman finally being able to pitch deep into games, and his TTO splits were more normalized.

The two variants of the same pitch thing is actually well not common- not rare. Julio Urías throws two different curveballs and well he has two other pitches- it effectively makes him a four-pitch pitcher. Jesús Luzardo does it with his curve. Lance Lynn is a one-pitch pitcher who throws like 70 different variants of his fastball. I could go on naming examples but the point is labels are deceiving. Define how many pitches a pitcher has based on how many pitches with distinct movement/velo someone has not the number of pitch classifications or types.

Calling someone a two-pitch pitcher because they only throw a fastball and slider is disingenuous. There is a level of nuance to it. If they throw a fastball and two sliders then they are as a much of a three-pitch pitcher as a guy who has a FB/SL/CB combo. In the case of Brash, he’s a five-pitch pitcher (six-cause changeup) with a four-seam fastball, two-seamer, cut-fastball, vertical slider, and sweeping slider. He has plenty of repertoire depth to face the lineup three times and has done so in the minors and college both to great success.

Let’s talk about Matt Brash’s fastball. He sits 95–97 MPH most nights and touched as high as 99.9 MPH (So close) in 2021. Actually, he averaged 97 MPH this past season according to BA so I might be underselling his standard range. He holds his velocity through every pitch he throws in just about every start I’ve seen from him- which is most of them. He gets 6.7 feet of extension on the fastball as well so it plays up a tiny bit above that as well.

Matt Brash has great angle on his fastball as he is only 6’1” and has a low arm slot. The result is an average release height of ~5.2 feet according to my pixel measurements and one person with sources said it was very low. I just talked in great detail about how high-velocity fastballs from a low release point miss bats even in the dead zone when elevated. Brash is nearly a half foot lower than that example.

Matt Brash doesn’t throw a dead zone fastball, however, he throws one with a lot of movement. All of them have ride but the shape of them varies. The least commonly used variant would conventionally be called Brash’s best. It’s the plus vertical movement four-seam up in the zone that plays for popups and whiffs. He only really uses that one deep in counts when they are sitting on the low pitch to get them to whiff as they’re left off plane.

The best variant of the fastball is the heavy-tailing one that still has solid vertical movement (Rise not sink to be clear) on it. From his low slot it has that pseudo-zig-zag appearance and the horizontal elements allow him to miss barrels and limit the quality of contact in ways that the vertical fastball doesn’t. He pitches down aggressively with it and gets groundballs while still missing bats at a decent clip in the process.

The final variant of his fastball is the cutting one. Cutting a fastball is bad in a vacuum 99% of the time. Cutting the ball reduces vertical movement by adding gyro and rarely the good kind. Unless you are a god at creating a seam-shifted wake, it just makes the pitch worse. Even if you are, it usually does. Matt Brash’s cut-fastball is easily the worst of his fastballs as a standalone pitch.

But Matt Brash doesn’t throw it as a standalone. He throws it off the tailing version with a reflected tail. He throws it in the same spot as the tailing one back to back with it coming from different directions to mind fuck the hitter. He uses it down in the zone for groundballs against left handed bats that can better see and hit the tailing variant. I don’t love the pitch in a vacuum but it works for him because of the synergy it provides.

With all of his fastballs, Matt Brash lives down in the zone. Low-release fastballs (Especially with ride) down in the zone get a lot of called strikes. They also get groundballs and still miss bats. They miss fewer bats because of their location so for most pitchers, elevating is more effective but for ones with elite strikeout stuff other than the fastball, or no strikeout pitch (Zack Greinke) it’s the best path forward. Sonny Gray uses his low for this reason. That’s also how the Yankees broke him by the way, they tried to make him elevate his fastball when it worked best collecting called strikes down.

Matt Brash has this approach mastered to an art form. Despite his frequent inability to find the strike zone, and his ridiculous whiff rates- (31% on the fastball) he gets called strikes at an elite rate because of the low fastballs. In fact, he gets more called strikes than swinging strikes as a whole- in spite, of his 80 grade slider. Not only that, but he lead all of AA in Called Strike% at 19.7% last year. That would have ranked 10th out of 263 pitchers to throw 1000+ pitches at the MLB level in 2021. That is ridiculous stuff for anyone. Yet alone a guy who finds the zone at such a low rate.

So yeah, I’m all in on the fastball and have a 70 grade on it. I think it’s quite possible I’m still underselling its adaptability and the value of its versatility. It could truly wind up as an 80-grade pitch and I wouldn’t be at all surprised. That being said, no matter how good it winds up; I’m pretty confident it’ll still be second to his slider straight from hell.

The slider is the kind of pitch that is only supposed to exist in video games- both of his sliders are. The first slider sits 84–87 MPH and is the more obviously absurd offering out of the two. It’s a gyro-centric breaking ball that he throws with what is probably a 10:00 spin direction. The pitch has high spin rates and that leads to heavy sweep with not a ton of drop but acceptable levels.

Heavy sweep would be the understatement of the century. The pitch averages close to 20 inches of horizontal movement according to Corey Brock of the Athletic. Post- Spider Tack ban, Collin McHugh had the most horizontal movement on his slider in the MLB at 18.6 inches. But let’s assume Brash is globbing it on there and look at pre-sticky stuff ban sliders. We’ll use 18 inches as our benchmark for close to 20. Only Kyle Crick, Adam Ottavino, Chaz Roe, Daniel Zamora, Trevor Bauer, and Brad Hand join McHugh at averaging 18+ in an entire season in the statcast era.

The thing that sets Brash apart from every single one of these names is that he throws so much harder. All of these players averaged somewhere between 78 MPH-81.9 (Hand 2017) on their slider. Matt Brash averages north of 84 MPH on his. The most horizontal movement on a slider at 84 MPH+ last year was Dillon Maples at 14.5 inches.

Slider velocity and slider movement are both so rare and valuable but Brash is elite at both of them. That combination is almost impossible to find in one player. Matt Brash’s slider is breaking new ground and well there is no pitch comp for him- the fact that we know his traits all play individually ridiculously well means that putting them together should lead to an explosive impact.

But we’re not done yet! Matt Brash also shows the ability to backfoot his heavy sweeping slider, something that pretty much all of his contemporaries never figured out how to do. Sliders that break 20 inches aren’t supposed to be deployed like that. The pitch is meant to be a chase pitch to right-handed batters that makes them fall over, fishing for a ball a foot off of the plate. Against lefties, they usually have no viability. It’s why none of the names above ever became elite even while their sliders had 50% whiff rates. They couldn’t get lefties out. But Brash can.

Matt Brash will throw a slider with 20 inches of sweep and it’ll stop on the inner edge of the plate. It’s the most marvelous thing to watch. The batter will flinch out of the way thinking it’ll hit them for it to be called a strike. He doesn’t do it often because he has better weapons to beat lefties but it’s a trick in his arsenal that he can turn to that most can’t.

The better of his two sliders for my money’s worth is not going to make headlines with its hellacious movement. It’s been classified as a curveball in the past to separate it from the sweepy slider but it is very much a slider in its own right even if it is a distinctly different one. Now all his sliders are classified as curveballs by trackman for whatever reason.

He sits 81–83 MPH on this slider and throws it with a knuckle-curve grip. That would be more notable if he also didn’t throw his other slider with a very comparable grip just without knuckling the pointer finger but instead flattening it on the horseshoe.

The pitch is not your conventional knuckle curve but instead is a gyro heavy breaking ball with a lot of inefficient spin due to the high gyro angle rather than topspin (There is a trace of topspin though) like a conventional curve. The pitch has way higher spin rates than just about any gyroball I’ve ever seen which is a weird combo. The result is a pitch that spins like a bullet and shows a considerable drop to it. It has a hint of sweep- probably five inches or so but that’s not its primary focus.

The vertical breaking ball, especially coming off of his fastball just works. He pulls the string and misses bats as they swing all around it. These kinds of pitches always work. It dominates right-handed bats to a lesser extent than the horizontal slider but still is highly effective. It also dominates left-handed hitters because of the vertical orientation and lack of reliance on the sweep. It’s his primary pitch against left handed batters as he frequently will backfoot it to them and it is most of the reason why he has pretty consistently posted reverse splits.

The slider plays up more than most similarly shaped sliders because of the way Matt Brash throws his sliders. In his words: “So the arm action on my slider, is pretty much the exact same as my fastball. I don’t try to sweep my arm or create more spin. I’m throwing it as hard as I can, as hard as my fastball and I just kinda let the grip do its thing.”

Matt Brash as he said doesn’t vary his arm action or slot at all on the slider. He throws it the exact same as his fastball and as such both pitches play up significantly. They come from the same tunnel and help hide each other within them. He also throws them in similar locations and the vertical slider plays particularly well off the cutting version of his fastball.

The horizontal slider doesn’t see the same benefit because of how extreme and different the movement is but the vertical slider is loving every second of it. The horizontal one thrives on just being too filthy to handle but the vertical one is more reliant on deception and location.

Both post ridiculous results and both are 70-grade pitches as standalone offerings. Together they form an 80-grade “slider.” The sliders were thrown a combined 47.2% of the time last season and remained completely dominant even while spammed with a 41% whiff rate and a 63% strike rate. They combined to sit at 83 MPH with just over 16 inches of sweep and that undersells the traits of both of them by merging them but still is beyond elite stuff.

We’ve been ignoring the final tool in Matt Brash’s arsenal this entire time- the changeup that we wrote off for a hypothetical at the beginning of this way too long blurb. Matt Brash’s changeup projects as average. That is a high variance average grade but throwing an average pitch is a perfectly fine thing. An average pitch is not unusable like the reputation the pitch has suggests. An average pitch is even probably underselling it considering it had a 46% whiff rate last year with an 8.2% usage.

His changeup will sit in the low eighties which is an absurd velocity differential from his fastball that touches 99.9 MPH. He’ll flash the ability to pull the string and make batters fish when he buries one in the dirt as it drops close to 40 inches and has double-digit tailing action as well. The caveat is that his circle change often gets firm and hung over the plate or is a non-competitive pitch nowhere near the strike zone. His arm speed is also noticeably slower on the changeup in some outings. The changeup absolutely has plus potential but right now it’s a work in progress and some nights it looks unplayable. Again, he doesn’t actually need his changeup.

The delivery is relieverish with a lot of crossfire action, violence, and a lower slot than most. Who the fuck cares? He holds his stuff deep into games, hasn’t had any major arm trouble in his past, and still shows fine enough command. He’s proven time and time again that the delivery is not a problem for him at all. He still has the stuff and stamina to start in spite of it.

The batted ball profile is one of the most well-rounded batted ball profiles in the entire minors. The tailing fastball and cut-fastball as well as his tendency to pitch down lead to plus groundball rates. He manages to pair that with above-average popup rates (slightly) because of how flat his VAA is on the rare occasion he pitches up with his four-seamer.

His pitch movement on literally everything is a lot, and he lives on the edges of the plate rather than over the middle. That might lead to walk issues but it gives him elite line-drive avoidance as well on top of the whiff gains from that approach. The lack of extra-base hit risk presented by the batted ball profile makes his walk issues even less impactful than they are for most other pitchers (And remember, they already don’t mean much.)

Matt Brash will walk batters. He won’t look the part of a conventional starting pitcher. That is perfectly acceptable because he’ll dominate with the game’s best in his prime. He’ll strike out a lot of batters and limit the quality of contact. That is enough to overcome his walk issues and even any theoretical stamina issues. I’m entirely confident that he’ll be at least a role 55 player in the big league’s and considering the absurd upside of his stuff, I have him as a role 60. I wouldn’t be shocked if he exceeds even that.

There isn’t any reason to justify putting him over the safer and more well-rounded George Kirby but it’s way closer than anyone else would credit it for. Gun to my head if you are asking me who I think the Mariners Ace will be in five years, I’m probably answering Brash. I just think the combination of otherworldly stuff and a well-rounded batted ball is impossible to pass up on. The upside is truly incredible. He’s MLB-ready and should be fairly effective from day one.

23. IF/OF Vidal Bruján, Tampa Bay Rays

Vidal Bruján is a very hard player to rank. On one hand, he posted a 99 PF wRC+ in AAA last year. He wasn’t even an average player in the minors and I think he’s a top 50 prospect? Not only that but he’s gone up nearly thirty spots from last season?

Vidal Bruján hasn’t put it all together yet and maybe he never will but he’s flashed the ability to do everything you could ever want him to do in small bursts before. he just has failed to do it all at once but if he can do so, he could be one of the best prospects in baseball.

Last year I wrote this on Vidal Bruján:

“If you think Vidal Bruján can get to even average power, he probably is a top twenty prospect in the game, what with his defensive chops, speed, and hit tool but that feels like a longshot. Even if he matures into average raw power, he still has issues with elevating with any regularity and again rotation consistency. I don’t even think he gets to average raw power regardless but if he does he can be a star. I have him as slightly below-average raw in his prime with 40 game power and when combined with his hit tool it’s like a ~105 wRC+ bat.”

Vidal Bruján proved me wrong last year as his power metrics across the board were at least on par with the average MLBer. His Max EV on 18 batted ball events in the MLB was 107 MPH which is also exactly the MLB average for Max EV. He averaged 88 MPH in the minors which is again almost exactly the MLB average. I have two contrasting sources on his Max EV in the minors with one placing him in the 108 range and the other has him at 111. Regardless of which one he is at, he’s clearly achieved average raw power.

My primary issue with the Ketel Marte comp last year was the lack of measurable raw power that Ketel Marte had shown a the same point in his development. I wrote off them as non-comparable despite the physical similarities and swing similarities because of it. I was wrong, Bruján now has measurable power and there is a real chance he follows the Ketel Marte path and grows into 70 raw power. I still only have him at 50 game/55 raw but he truly could get there.

The hit tool is one of the best in the game. Bruján makes contact at an elite rate from both sides of the plate. His 18.6% whiff rate in AAA last year would have been in the 87th percentile of all major leaguers in 2021. He only whiffed 11 times in 55 swings at the MLB level as well. The whiff rates show less than one percent of variance based on what side of the plate he is hitting from.

He has short levers and it allows him to demolish the inside pitch that most hitters struggle with. His bat path is efficient and direct to the ball. There is elite plate coverage most of the time and he almost never whiffs in the zone as well. There is feel for both recognizing and hitting spinny stuff. The one concern is with high-velocity fastballs since he showed some struggles with them last year but the track record is still great and there is no mechanical reason for that struggle to persist. I‘m really not at all worried about his ability to make contact.

The BABIP skills are interesting but despite a poor showing last year, I think he will settle in as above-average in that regard. The line-drive rates were low against last year at ~18%. That is the second consecutive season in that range so I think it’s likely that is his new benchmark rather than the plus rates he showed prior to 2019.

The spray charts are what makes Vidal Bruján so special. I don’t have his spray data from 2021 but I do for every other year of his career. Here’s what I wrote on his sprays last year:

“On one of the earlier iterations of this list, Bruján was ranked almost forty spots lower. Then after doing a bunch of research on Nick Madrigal, I started looking into spray angles and fell in love with Vidal Bruján. In every single season of his career, five of them in total since 2015, with a grand total of 1373 BBE, he has always had an above-average opposite-field groundball rate, a below-average pull rate on groundballs, and an-above average pull rate on line drives, and an above-average pull rate on flyballs. He hasn’t had the same remarkable consistency with his popups but that is also occurring at a below-average rate.

That combination is absurd. Only three other players on this list have done all of those things since the start of 2019. Vidal Bruján has done that for five consecutive seasons. Vidal Bruján has a well-below average line drive rate in that same time span. Last year it was a mere 18.4%, a good year by his usual standards. His popup rate skirts more on the side of average than above both this year and in his career. He’s still going to post above-average BABIPs with those spray angle optimization skills.”

I’m going to trust the track record of the spray charts that spans five seasons and assume nothing has changed permanenetly, that he was simply unlucky last year. The sprays are perfectly optimized for both hitting for average and producing game power. That combination is rare, exciting, and should lead to very high OBP for Bruján.

Vidal Bruján is an asset defensively. He’s a swiss army knife who plays all over the diamond and is good at every spot. The speed is elite and profiles incredibly well in center field and is elite in a corner spot. His actions are sufficient for any of the infield spots and even if he’s played primarily second base he has enough arm strength to play on the left side. His arm looks even better in the outfield where some scouts believe it is a plus (Myself included).

Vidal Bruján is a do it all player with some of the highest upside in the entire minor leagues. He offers everything you could ever want and plays every position but catcher at a high level. There is a solid chance that he never puts it all together and becomes a star, instead settling in as an average hitter but that is still super valuable with his defensive ability and positional flexibility. If it all comes together then you have Ketel Marte with better defense and that sounds like an MVP to me.

24. 3B Jordan Walker, St. Louis Cardinals

Jordan Walker was the third best hitter under 25 in all the minors (Min 300 PA) by PF wRC+ last year at a whopping 172 mark. That offensive dominance was no fluke. Walker is going to mash at any level and it’s largely the distance from the majors that keeps him this far down the ranks.

Jordan Walker is one of the game’s best young power hitters. At just 18 years old, Jordan Walker posted a 116.2 MPH Max EV. That isn’t something people do. Luciano did 119 MPH at 19 but at 18? There are rumors Jasson might have done 114 MPH but those are unsubstantiated and still significantly less than Walker. Obviously, physical maturity means more than pure age to how impressive this number is and Walker was very mature at 18. Even still, a 116.2 MPH Max EV is in the 97th percentile of all big leaguers- not teenagers or minor leaguers but of the best of the majors.

In his stint at Low A Southeast, Jordan Walker didn’t just post a blinding maximum exit velocity. He also had a 47.3% Hard-Hit Rate and a 93.2 MPH average exit velocity. Those figures would have ranked in the 91st and 97th percentile respectively. After posting a non-park adjusted wRC+ of 205 in his first 122 plate appearances of his minor league career, at Low A; he was aggressively pushed to A+ and did not fail to disappoint there either even as he fell off some.

Let’s rewind for a second and put that 205 wRC+ in the first stint of his minor league career into perspective. Since 2006, only 13 players have posted a higher wRC+ in their MiLB debut campaign (Min 100 PA). They are Kyle Conley, Malcom Nunez, Bubba Bell, Mike Zunino, Max Murphy, Philip Cerreto, Nic Crosta, Bobby Dalbec, Carlos Rincon, Andrew Calica, Kelvin Diaz, Addison Russell, and Cory Spangenberg.

All of them were in their twenties except for Malcom Nunez, Carlos Rincon, Kelvin Diaz, and Addison Russell. Those four were all in rookie ball- a full two levels lower than Walker. The only one of those to play in Low-A or higher was Nic Crosta. Forget the debut thing, no teenager has ever posted a higher wRC+ in Low-A or above.

The only other teenagers even over 200 are Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 2018 at AA; and Bo Bichettes 2017 at Low A. After them, the next best teenager is the unfortunately deceased Oscar Taveras at 190 in 2011 at Low A. Jordan Walker was pushed more aggressively than any prospect to ever post close to the same level of dominance he did in his pro debut campaign. The Cardinals put him in an impossible situation and he was historically great in that spot.

Jordan Walker did not post quite the same breathtaking results when he was even more aggressively assigned to A+. He hit a much less robust .292/.344/.487 and saw his wRC+ (Non-park adjusted; it’s a 143 park-adjusted) cater to a mere 124. His exit velocities died down and he only had a 91 MPH EV. Absolutely horrendous that he’s only 2.8 MPH above the MLB average now.

Jordan Walker has some work to do when it comes to optimizing his titanic raw power. His groundball rates are only in the 33rd percentile although he did get up to average rates in High-A and actually was worse in that field when he was breaking records in Low-A. He also has some growth in terms of pulling his aerial contact that has yet to come.

I’m not sure how much that stuff will actually end up mattering. He doesn’t pull the ball all that much but he’s so strong it just doesn’t matter because he can easily muscle the ball over the wall to any field. He has 98th percentile bat speed and really good hips so it’s consistent loud power. Jordan Walker has unlocked the power by rotating his front leg inwards slightly so he doesn’t lose stability so early (front leg doesn’t slide out from under him while swinging) and lose out on power. He was a plus guy before but this small mechanical adjustment put him in 70+ territory.

Jordan Walker has tinkered with his bat path quite a bit as well. In High School, Jordan Walker had a flat bat angle- independent of pitch location. He’s now completely flipped the script and has a -36° VBA on pitches UP in the strike zone. The thing is that somehow, in spite of how steep he is, Jordan Walker is still connecting with those high pitches. With Jordan Walker’s ridiculous raw power, you know he isn’t just making weak outs either.

We see this with guys like Freddie Freeman, and Bryan Reynolds so it’s not impossible but it is certainly uncommon. I don’t think he’ll get close to their levels and would probably even be better off by not swinging at a lot of the high stuff. Even still, the fact that he isn’t particularly vulnerable up there is very encouraging to see.

I’m also gambling on the future feel to elevate because of how steep his swing is. Attack angles will improve with time and repetitions against age appropriate competition. The swing shape suggests plus feel to elevate so I would bank on it getting to at least average in time. We’ll see though, he’s still a bit off and lots can and have already changed but I’m hopeful.

Jordan Walker also has an above-average hit tool. The newly steeper swing shape is great for optimizing the quality of his contact. Not to mention, that with his absurd power anything that he hits in the sweet spot is lethal. Jordan Walker almost never pops out (3.4%) and also hit line drives at an above-average rate. This comes in spite of him being literally a half-decade younger than some of his competition. That is likely to only get better with time as he learns to optimize his attack angles a little more.

Additionally, Jordan Walker hits the ball absurdly hard. Stop me if you’ve heard this before but that has a huge impact on BAcon. His BABIPs were always going to be at least a plus just based on that and they’ll likely be even better with his plus launch angle optimization. His .394 BABIP in 2021 was not a fluke, even if he’ll be more ~.330 in the majors in his prime.

Jordan Walker surprised me by only whiffing 29.8% of the time between Low A and High A+ last year. That is pretty much a league average rate and he did that as a teenager facing two very aggressive assignments. Even so, I think he settles in as a 45 contact guy. I have concerns over the swing length and I think the steep bat path and limited pitch recognition could form a bad duo that leads to him being completely dominated by actually good high fastballs. If the spin recognition never progresses then this is almost instantly an unplayable hit tool. This is a high variance ability to make contact.

Jordan Walker is a very aggressive hitter. That wasn’t evident on the surface level when he had a 14.8% walk rate in Low A with a 17.4% strikeouts rate but it was very much the reality. He chased 35.5% of the time in Low A. He wasn’t any better in High-A+ when his walk rates actually made sense. However, I won’t be too harsh because of his age and the fact that his power causes him to get so few easy pitches so he’ll always walk at close to an average rate as long as the wOBAcons remain elite. He might have a 40–45 eye in a vacuum but it’ll play as a 50+ because of his game changing power.

Jordan Walker is big and looks slow but he really is not slow. I clocked him with 55 run times out of the box on his way to first multiple times last year. Additionally, he had a 6.56 60-yard dash in June of 2019 which was in the 98th percentile. He’s not close to that fast anymore but he’s still not a turtle. He stole fourteen bases last year and hit four triples. I have him projected down to only an average runner but there’s so little projection left in his frame that it seems outlandish to think he becomes a turtle.

Despite my unusually high opinion of Walker’s speed, my opinion of the defense is not nearly as lofty. In the same year that he tested in the 98th percentile of speed; he flunked the agility tests. His three-cone was in the 44th percentile. His shuttle run was in the 21st percentile. His reaction times were in the 7th percentile. He might have good straight line speed but it’s only straight line speed- and he’s lost a lot of that. I care much more about the ability to move from a third baseman. The prodigious arm gives him a chance to stick but he’s fringy at the hot corner and could shift to the OF/1B.

The bat is enormous. The rest of the package is a bit lacking. If he dominates AA with good contact rates like I expect he will then he could climb into the top 10 next year. If he stumbles and posts a 35% whiff rate he might drop two tiers. This is a high variance player without a fallback due to the lack of defensive value. However, the offensive ceiling is just too loud to disrespect him for a second.

25. IF/OF Austin Martin, Minnesota Twins

On one hand, Austin Martin really underwhelmed in 2021. He hit a mere .270 with a .382 slugging. On the other hand, he had a .414 OBP and went straight from the SEC to AA where he wound up playing in two very pitcher friendly ballparks.

He was the only 2020 position player draftee to skip straight to AA and while the statline felt underwhelming, he still performed really well to the tune of a non-park adjusted 128 wRC+. I really don’t see why Austin Martin has lost the hype and have him ranked about where I had him last year. Austin Martin still checks every box you want from a hitter as far as individual components.

Austin Martin only whiffed 14% of the time in his tenure at Vanderbilt. While making the jump all the way from the SEC to AA he still kept his whiff rate on only 19.4%. On its own, that is a great whiff rate. With the context of the jump he made, it’s fantastic. His whiff rate trended down the deeper we got into the season as well. I have no doubt that he will continue to produce elite contact rates in the majors.

The BABIP skills much to the surprise of no one still project to be elite. Austin Martin had a career BABIP of .412 at Vanderbilt. He dipped to .341 this year when making the jump to AA and I actually think that was a bit of bad luck on his part. Austin Martin has some of the best launch angle optimization in the entire minors.

The New Hampshire Fisher Cats scorer has some vendetta against line-drives apparently. The Fisher Cats as a team had 3% fewer line drives than any other team. Despite that inherent disadvantage for over half of his season, Austin Martin hit line drives 25.1% of the time which ranks in the 91st percentile. He pairs that with a popup rate that was below 3% as well. Both of those numbers track with what he did in college and as such are probably more reflective of the BABIP skill than the raw number he produced.

The approach is somewhat passive in nature. He swings at strikes at a below-average rate. This is entirely mitigated by him posting one of the lowest chase rates in the entire minors- clocking in below 19%. Austin Martin walks at an elite clip.

That maybe leads to some of the hit tool playing down due to him striking out more than the whiff rates would indicate but it’s more of a positive than negative. He has elite control of the strike zone and elite pitch recognition. Those skills give him a very high floor as a bat at the MLB level and make him a certainty to hit for some average at the very least.

The power is tough to place a finger on. His EVs were not good in 2021. He maxed out at 105 MPH and averaged 86 MPH. The home runs didn’t come and he showed no ability to elevate. However, context is required here. Austin Martin was suffering from a wrist injury last year for most of the season and those tend to sap power. It’s a possible explanation for the lack of power that he showed previously.

In 2020 during the truncated season, Austin Martin had some of the best exit velocities in the country with Vanderbilt as he averaged 94 MPH off the bat. In his college tenure in the SEC, he averaged 92.5 MPH. The max EV might only be 107 MPH but he’s shown the ability to consistently post plus averages in the past. Yes, that is with metal bats but it’s also the same average as a guy like Henry Davis, Jacob Berry, or Chase DeLauter who almost indisputably have plus power. He still has power potential that I’m not at all out on yet. He’s still projected for average raw power.

The game power is more complicated still. He shows below-average feel for elevation but I really have a hard time seeing that lasting in the long run. Austin Martin has a very steep VBA and remains steep even on pitches up in the strike zone. (~32°). This gives him a high floor in terms of explicit loft and has me believing that with time and continued exposure to more advanced pitching, he will start to adopt a lift heavy approach.

I do think it’s possible that the constantly steep VBA’s could cause issues in other areas for Martin though. He might be one of those guys (Castellanos, Ozuna, Carpenter, etc.) who consistently underperforms his xwOBA because he doesn’t have great batted batted ball spin. He also could see some issues with high velocity fastballs up in the zone due to his swing shape, even if he’s shown no such issues so far.

The defensive home is a question mark but in a good way. He profiles like Chris Taylor does defensively. Plus fielder at second base and in the corner outfield. 45 at 3B and CF and a 40 at SS with the ability to also play first base if he really wanted too. I think a player like this is best deployed as an everyday super utility player ala Ben Zobrist or Chris Taylor. He’ll play 150 games a year with 30 games at five different spots to rest regulars.

The bat is legit and he’s also an above-average runner. In his prime, he could be a .400 OBP (Or higher) player with 20/20 talent. I think it’s more than reasonable to expect him to be 2020 Jonathan India but more versatile. That is a 4ish WAR player annually. He might not arrive fully formed and be a light-hitting player in a similar vein to a Myles Straw at first but with more power and only an average-ish bat overall but in time he will evolve into a true superstar.

26. SS Kahlil Watson, Miami Marlins

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

Kahlil Watson has been my top shortstop since before the season began and he has only reinforced that notion this year as he has been unbelievable and impressed at every turn. This is a five-tool superstar in the making and in my opinion, the fairly clear-cut top player in the draft. He’s undersized and not white which hurts his stock for some scouts but he’s very clearly an impact talent in all facets of the game.

Kahlil Watson immediately stands out for his hit tool. His bat-to-ball skills are probably the best in the class. Before the season I would have given that nod to Marcelo Mayer but he’s separated himself this year as he only struck out once all season across 58 PA in a 4A High School. This isn’t because he’s a free-swinging maniac who never reaches two-strike counts either. He walked 31% of the time so he’s clearly capable of taking pitches. At the complex level after being drafted he walked eight times and only struck out seven in 42 PA. His contact rates were also a plus according to prospects live.

His swing is violent. He takes big hacks that use his entire body- it’s a stroke that has garnered comparisons to the whiff-prone Jazz Chisholm. That doesn’t matter how it looks as he continues to just make contact consistently and with authority. He controls the violence in his swing and puts bat to ball. He’s the perfect combination of patient approach, good strike zone recognition, the ability to hit spin, and the bat speed to hit velocity, and the bat to ball skills that tie the whole thing together. He is going to hit at the big league level.

His contact quality is very high as well. That is in part because of his power which is among the best in the draft class. He doesn’t look the part as he is listed at 5'9" and 170 lbs or 5'11" and 180 lbs depending on who you ask. Regardless, neither of those frames suggests big-time raw juice but he has it in spades.

Here’s a quote by Mason McRae that I think really does a good job of summarizing Kahlil Watson: “Watson’s entire swing could generate an hour-long presentation on how hitters should move.” His swing is technically perfect and it lets him squeeze every bit of power in his frame out of it.

He doesn’t have an extremely pronounced hip hinge before foot strike, it’s tamer than what you see in most hitters and unassuming. Once his foot lands it’s go time for Watson and only after he strides does his hip hinge make itself apparent. His torso doesn’t so much coil as it does lean back and rest as his hips launch. It’s a smooth and natural movement. He keeps his shoulders from prematurely rotating in the slightest and leans hard into his back leg to transfer force. Then in an instant, he explodes. His pelvis opens up and the moment it completes its own rotation, the upper body unwinds with incredible force.

The torque he generates is nothing short of astonishing. He lacks the physicality of a Marco Luciano type and as such isn’t an 80 power guy but the rotational ability is on par with a Luciano and he pairs it with elite bat speed. The posture is perfect throughout his swing and it really makes a world of difference. The swing is visually breathtaking and analytically it grades out even better.

The other element of his raw power is his barrel accuracy. He has a knack for finding the barrel of the bat and squaring balls up. He makes adjustments with his upper body to put the barrel in the optimal hitting position and make flush contact. He doesn’t overrotate or miss his spots often. His power is consistent due to the feel for the sweet spot which lets it play up in games- possibly even above his raw juice.

He can get a bit pull-heavy at times which could wind up leaving him vulnerable to the shift as his point of contact is very deep over the plate. That is perfectly acceptable as that same late contact point lets the power play up even further. If that wasn’t enough, Watson has a fairly advanced feel for elevation for a high school bat. His vertical bat angle is naturally steep and he has a somewhat inclined swing plane. He knows how to put the ball in the air and how to do it with authority.

Kahlil Watson does have his warts. He’s not a flawless hitter despite a near-flawless swing. He can get beat inside as he struggles to pull the barrel in for those pitches at times. He can also have some attack angle issues at times. He hits too many popups for a guy with his swing path as he’ll occasionally prioritize contact frequency over quality and hit at sub-optimal angles. There are some kinks to be worked out but they are minor issues. He’s going to hit and be an impact talent at the plate.

I also think he can be a good shortstop. I’ve seen lots of people suggest that Kahlil Watson won’t be a shortstop long term- possibly because his lower half will outgrow the position but I don’t see that at all. His waist is narrow and he already has a burly upper half with little weight going to the hips or glutes that would slow him down- there is going to be some speed regression but when your starting point is 65+ it’s not going to ever get that bad. (He lingers in the box but can absolutely fly down the line once he gets underway). He’s also a fairly adept baserunner averaging nearly a steal a game in his high school career while seldom being caught. He went 4/5 on steals in nine games after being drafted.

His actions are very much those of a shortstop. He moves extremely well laterally and can charge in on balls to make the tough plays. His transfers are quick and efficient with easy plus arm strength as throws surpassing 90 MPH across the diamond can attest to. He has smooth hands and just looks the part of a shortstop. He has his lapses like all kids do but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. His processes are good enough that I’m not at all unconvinced that he can’t stick at shortstop even if his mobility completely tanks and he’s only an average runner.

I don’t usually put much stock in character when evaluating prospects as I don’t have the tools to properly assess it. That being said some of Kahlil Watson’s interviews have completely blown me away. He’s a small-town guy who is very down-to-earth. In an interview with Prospects Live, Kahlil Watson revealed that he wants to go into coaching when he is done playing baseball.

When MLB Network asked what player’s the top draft prospects most wanted to meet, most guys responded Fernando Tatis Jr., Mike Trout, Ronald Acuña Jr., etc. Kahlil Watson responded with Jackie Robinson because he changed the game. Kahlil Watson cares about more than just being good at baseball or having fun. He’s a real human being who cares about other people than himself and helping them. That is powerful. Baseball is his entire life but it’s not just his life but the life of the people around him.

If you want to find a wart with Kahlil Watson’s personage, you can maybe squint and call his lack of faith in data that. He is very much a feel guy who prefers to make adjustments based on what feels right and what works for him. He has expressed an aversion to using stuff like blast motion to train as he finds it distracting. There are plenty of feel guys who are superstars. Data is a tool but it’s not one you have to use and some guys are probably better off without it. I might prefer a player who is willing to use all the new technology and get every possible edge in training but it’s not really anything close to a dealbreaker.

This is a five-tool impact talent who is going to be a difference-maker wherever he winds up. If he was six feet tall he would go #1 overall and no one would bat an eye at the selection. If he was white he would probably be the favorite to go #1. He’s neither of those things and for reasons, I can’t comprehend he fell to #16 overall. I still believe in Kahlil Watson despite teams not feeling the same way for some reason I can’t even begin to comprehend. He’s the best player in the 2021 draft and a complete steal by the Marlins.

27. CF Luis Matos, San Francisco Giants

Last year I predicted that Luis Matos would rise into the top 10 by this year. I suppose I was wrong about that. However, he did prove he was more than worth the aggressive ranking I put on him and is now a consensus top 75 talent. I’ll double down on my prediction for 2021 but for 2022 now. He’s going to continue his meteoric rise up the rankings.

I am a sucker for guys who swing at junk. Not because I hate walks, love strikeouts, or even like guys with crazy plate coverage. To be more specific, I don’t love them because they swing at junk; I love them because they swing a junk and still run plus contact rates.

Luis Matos only whiffed 22.2% of the time in Low A. That is independent of everything else, plus contact rates. Matos is also a 19 year old in full season ball for the first time. More importantly, Luis Matos ran that plus contact rate while swinging 59.2% of the time; the fifth highest rate in all of Low-A. That would have been the fourth highest swing rate in the majors last year.

Luis Matos had a chase rate of about 40% last year which is putrid. Despite swinging at so much junk, he was running plus contact rates. The amount of major leaguers who can lay claim to the same skill is Hanser Alberto and Bo Bichette. That is pretty much the entire list. Matos has one of the highest zone-contact rates in the entire minors and there is plenty of reason to believe he can improve his approach and make the contact rates truly spectacular.

Luis Matos has good pitch tracking skills despite his tendency to swing at junk. Luis Matos makes flush contact pretty frequently. His swing gets very flat up in the strike zone as he gets as low as -16° on high pitches and averages closer to ~-20°. He sometimes forgets to tweak his angle on the low pitch but he still averages ~-36° on pitches down when he remembers to adjust.

Matos is at his best with the flatter swing where he gets the barrel in the zone instantly and drags it there ala Yelich. He makes contact out in front of the plate but lengthens his window of opportunity by giving himself the window to make contact from the start of the swing. As such, he is best served by swinging early and often and letting himself be on time for breaking stuff and late on fastballs which actually means on time. (Something Yelich has forgotten as of late).

Matos hasn’t seen a lot of the high fastball in Low A because 90% of pitchers don’t have enough command to throw it up there with any consistency but I do expect him to almost never whiff against the pitch with how flat he can get his bat and how long of a window he gives himself to hit the ball.

There are popup issues because when Matos guesses wrong rather than bending at the hip- which he’s shown he can do, he ducks down and tries to use his flatter swing down in the zone where it is largely ineffectual and results in him getting too far underneath pitches. This problem is especially prominent on sinkers which sounds like a contradiction because that’s the opposite of what sinkers are supposed to do. His steeper swing is actually how he does most of his damage even if I think the flatter one will be more advantageous in the long run.

He has a natural feel for lift and really hits balls with authority. He has unreal plate coverage at the bottom of the zone so while he chases balls in the dirt he’ll sometimes do a Vlad Sr. and get a hit off of those balls in the dirt. He again has popup issues when he tries to turn the down swing into the up one but as the pitch recognition improves and he has more exposure he could do so.

This could just as easily morph into a Luciano situation where instead of extreme popup rates you have whiffs. Right now, he’s too aggressive in trying to make contact when he guesses wrong rather than whiffing more and prioritizing contact quality over quantity.

Luis Matos had excellent spray charts in 2019 but I don’t have the 2021 data. I’m still taking the 55 BABIP moving forward but despite his innate feel for barreling pitches and his innate flush contact skills, I have to be cautious somewhat cautious here, after such underwhelming batted ball data. It’s still a 65 hit cause feel for contact + power but not quite elite yet; and won’t ever be if the approach doesn’t improve at least a little.

Luis Matos has plus raw power. His Max EV is in excess of 112 MPH and he’s done 107 on an opposite field flyball before. He averaged 89 MPH off the bat in 2021. He has great bat speed, a strong core, and has a rotational swing with good separation that creates power that way.

Luis Matos also has plus feel to elevate with a 39.3% groundball rate last year. His attack angles are steep and that gives him the implicit loft needed to produce big time in game power. He also has feel to pull the ball with his pull rate on aerial contact consistently being above-average. He’s going to make a lot of contact while running above-average HR/FB rates in his prime. That leads to plus game power pretty quickly.

I have Luis Matos tentatively penciled in as an average centerfielder but I can fully understand why some scouts are pushing him to a corner. Luis Matos is a plus runner who still has some room to add healthy weight to his frame. If the speed drops, he’s unlikely to stick in centerfield. The instincts are good but nothing game changing. He needs speed to stick. I think he keeps it, a lot of scouts don’t. He also only has an average arm so left field is the more likely fallback.

Luis Matos is an interesting player. His chance at stardom is solely tied to his ability to mash. There are some limitations he will have to overcome to do so. The approach needs to be cleanup up for him to truly thrive. He might still be able to Bo Bichette his way to success without a better approach but it’s a thin line to walk. If he does clean up his approach then you are looking at one of the best players in baseball. I’m all in on the superstar upside of Matos hit/power combination.

28. 3B Josh Jung, Texas Rangers

Josh Jung is an MLB ready middle of the order masher who plays an above-average third base. His offensive ceiling is ridiculous and the floor is high as well. He will never be a five tool god like most of the prospects surrounding him but I would bet he has a better career than a number of the names above him.

Josh Jung is a weird power hitter. The hardest hit ball of his that I can find evidence of was only 107. Prospects Live only has his Max EV as a 55 which is in the ~109 range. However, despite the lack of blinding Exit velocities, Jung could be an elite power threat.

The power comes from his bat speed. His average bat speed of 78.6 MPH last year according to Baseball America would have been tied for fourth in the MLB last year behind only Stanton, Judge, Vlad Jr., and tied with Acuña Jr. (Driveline provided MLB leaderboard). The consistently elite bat speed for whatever reason hasn’t really played that way in games.

His average exit velocity is a rather impressive 91 MPH but that is all that stands out. His 90th percentile EV of just over 105 MPH is right around the MLB average. His Max EV is not great especially relative to his bat speed. I’d assume the lack of elite power to go with his bat speed is a result of some lower half inefficiency- even if it’s not one the naked eye can easily observe. I’m optimistic because of the bat speed, projecting him up a rung to at least plus raw power.

The game power is better than the raw but the lack of confidence in the raw has me shading it down a tad. Josh Jung has elite feel to elevate. His groundball rate was a mere 34.2% last year which is in the 87th percentile of all minor leaguers. After only pulling two flyballs all year in 2019, Jung saw his pull rate rise over 20% last year. I’m still not sure he’s a big pull hitter in the air but he’s made strides and now hits some bombs as a result. If he cleans up some of his inefficiencies and taps into his elite bat speed, than elite power is very much possible eventually.

Even if the elite power never comes, I still think Jung can be an elite bat because of the strength of his hit tool. The contact quality is impeccable as Jung checks just about every box. He’s the rare player with elite feel to elevate who also never pops out. His popout rate was a mere 1.8% last year. He also somehow managed to post a 97th percentile line drive rate. He’s going to be a BABIP monster with one of the highest sweet-spot rates in the entire MLB.

Josh Jung also has feel for making flush contact and hitting with backspin. His swing averages ~19° on pitches at the top of the strike zone and will steepen out to ~40° on pitches down. He always hits with the barrel and drives the ball. His swing generates very little side spin which is why he hooks so few foul balls. The contact quality is exquisite and it could be generational if he converts his god-tier bat speed into equally fantastic exit velocities.

I’m projecting on the approach quite a bit. His walk rates are only average and his chase rates are actually below. I’m still a believer in the long term approach projection. The lack of mishits and very low GB rates points to elite pitch tracking that allows him to hit everything on the button or not at all because he guessed wrong. It’s because of that elite feel for flush contact without the mishits that almost always come with the profile that I’m projecting his 45 grade chase rate into an above-average eye. There is some comparables to Joey Votto in the craft of his hitting profile.

The contact rates are only a 55 with the 23 year old whiffing 26.2% of the time between AA and AAA. He shows some feel to hit spin and even the occasional offspeed stuff. He has the ba speed to pummel velocity. There will always be whiffs for a flush contact savant but they won’t ever sink him in all likelihood. That’s more than fine when you are running as elite of wOBAcons as I expect Jung to do and still makes for an elite hit tool. Hit tool and contact tool are not the same thing, Jung is elite at the former and still above-average at the latter.

The defense is above-average at the hot corner in my looks. He’s not what you typically think of when you envision plus defense and he’s not fast but he covers ground quickly because of instincts and that first step. He has smooth hands and his above-average arm strength plays up to a plus with the speed of his transitions and his elite arm accuracy. Josh Jung is MLB ready right now and one of the frontrunners for AL rookie of the year. He has stardom in his future.

Update: Josh Jung tore his labrum and fallen down the list as a result. his report was written before he suffered that unfortunate injury. A healthy Jung ranked #14.

29. SP Eury Perez, Miami Marlins

There probably isn’t a prospect in the game who saw their stock rise more than Eury Perez in 2021. He dominated all year between Low and High A. He happened to play in Low A SE as well, so we have the publicly available pitch data to prove the still only 18 year old starter truly has front of the rotation stuff.

Eury Perez has an elite fastball. He throws it hard- sitting at 94.9 MPH on average. Interestingly enough, his hardest fastball is only 97.1 MPH. I’d actually argue that as a positive as it demonstrates just how consistent the fastball velocity is. He’s still sitting 93–96 even at the tail end of his outings. His velocity is consistent start to start as well, he doesn’t have off days where he gets completely rocked because he doesn’t have the same power to his fastball. There will likely be some dropoff in that velo consistency if he’s asked to pitch 100 pitches deep instead of ~75 but it’ll be lesser than most. He has elite stamina in an age where that is increasingly rare.

The fastball movement is also spectacular. He throws the fastball on a 1:00 spin axis with elite spin rates; averaging ~2670 RPMs. That would have been the third-highest fastball spin rate in the MLB last year behind only Trevor Bauer and Daniel Bard. That spin axis leads to equal parts horizontal and vertical movement, and even with somewhat unspectacular spin efficiency, it is a plus in both. Bauer also throws his 2700 RPM fastball on the same spin axis but with close to perfect spin efficiency. The result was the most vertical break in the MLB (Slightly less horizontal).

Eury Perez averaged 12 inches of drop and 12 inches of run on his fastball last year. Only Gerrit Cole matched his vertical and horizontal movement last year. The vertical movement on its own, was in the 92nd percentile. The horizontal movement was in the 92nd percentile as well. That combination of both elite vertical and horizontal isn’t supposed to exist. Gerrit Cole is the only comparable and he’s cheating on vertical movement by throwing 3 MPH harder.

The fastball also has a somewhat unique angle. On paper, a 6-foot vertical release and a -1.4 foot horizontal is pretty standard and nothing that tough for hitters. The horizontal is uncommon but not exactly unique. The average pitcher has the same vertical. However, the context you’re lacking with those numbers is that Eury Perez is 6'9".

He’s throwing from a low 3/4 arm slot with his arm much lower than his height because of how deep he gets into his glutes, and how far he strides. There is serious latitudinal deception from Perez because the release doesn’t line up with the height at all. It’s a similar mechanic to Bailey Ober’s plus fastball despite poor velocity and movement. The brain struggles with processing a giant that throws from so low.

I have the pitch as a 75 because I don’t think it’s quite at Grayson/Baz/Canterino level but it’s not far off from that group and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it ended up the best of the bunch. It could also easily mature into an 80 if he fills in his lanky frame and adds more velocity but I think he’s more lean than projectable.

The changeup is Eury’s best secondary. He throws it 7 MPH slower than his fastball- averaging 88 MPH on it with a spin rate 900 RPMs lower. That is average velocity separation. The spin axis is only 20 minutes more lateral than that of the fastball. The pitch comes out of the same exact release point with fastball arm speed. The deception elements are incredible on the pitch.

The cambio also has a promising movement profile. He’s flashed up to 21 inches of horizontal movement on the pitch and averages 14 inches with only 25 inches of drop. That is basically an inverted slider. Only 8% of sliders have that little drop. Only 5 changeups with as little drop as him have as much tail. Movement isn’t the calling card but his works as a reverse slider type.

The changeup had a 60% whiff rate in Low A this year which is kind of ludicrous and obviously, a sign that he’s doing something right at least. Even if the CSW% is only 31%. It probably won’t be quite that good in the MLB but it’s clearly a plus pitch at the MLB level.

The curveball is only average and I’m not sure how much potential it really has to be more than that. The pitch has good spin rates but nothing spectacular as he averages ~2520 RPMs. The curveball has a middling velocity at 78.2 MPH on average. The pitch averaged 48 inches of drop and 5 of sweep. Actually below-average. There is some room for improved spin efficiency to maybe push it to a 55 but right now it’s only a 45 so I’ll meet in the middle.

Of course, despite the mediocre traits, I do have to note that his 35% CSW% against it was the best of any of his pitches in Low-A. Most of those were called strikes though that abused electronic strike zones and bad hitters that he could spam them over the plate against.

What really makes Eury Perez stand out, however, is his advanced control and command at such a young age. He throws everything but the changeup in the strike zone consistently, without just tossing meatballs into the middle. He has a smooth and projectable delivery, while also showcasing plus stuff, and avoiding walks. Perhaps most importantly, he’s shown the ability to consistently elevate his fastball and dominate that way.

The batted ball profile is above-average as well. Eury Perez is very flyball oriented but it still should be a net positive. For starters, Eury Perez has a 13.8% popup rate (Infield only). That alone is an elite figure that ranks in the 96th percentile of his league. That undersells just how great the flyball profile is.

22.6% of the batted balls allowed by Eury Perez in 2021 at Low A had a launch angle >50°. Only one player with at least 100 batted balls in a season has ever had a higher percentage of balls with a launch angle that high; he won the NL Cy Young that year. I’m talking about Trevor Bauer. One player beats Eury, out of 2710 qualifiers. There have only been three home runs on a flyball that steep in the Statcast ERA. The average flyball that steep has a .018 batting average and .025 slugging. 22.6% of his batted balls are essentially automatic outs.

Eury Perez also has elite hard-contact suppression. He held opponents to a 24.7% Hard-hit rate last year. Obviously, the league-average hard-hit rate is a lot lower in Low A SE than in the MLB but only eleven minor leaguers at that level with at least 100 BBE (Hitters) had a lower hard-hit rate. That is still ridiculously low. The EV suppresion isn’t exactly a sticky skill but it’s still a very encouraging sign for his ability to limit damage; something that is essential with the extreme flyball profile.

Eury Perez did not face a single batter younger than him all season long. Not one plate appearance. Despite that extreme age disadvantage, Eury Perez dominated in every facet of the game. This is what Aces look like. He’s young and a ways off so there are lots of ways this can go, but he has a good chance to be the best pitching prospect in the game entering 2023. I have very high hopes for the Marlins budding Ace.

30. CF Brennen Davis, Chicago Cubs

Brennen Davis has his limitations that create extreme risk in the profile, and no one on the list thus far has less of a chance of being even an average regular. Of course, to compensate, Brennen Davis has some of the highest upside of any prospect in the game.

The power is his calling card for reasons that are obvious if you’ve ever watched him swing the bat. He’s a 6'4" behemoth who weighs in at 210 lbs and is completely shredded. The athleticism is there in spades and it really plays in games.

Brennen Davis has big time hip-torso separation in his swing. He has premium bat speed. The instant acceleration of his hands because of how strong his wrists are leads to the power playing potently to all fields. There are plenty of reasons that Brennen Davis has posted EVs of ~113 MPH last year.

The caveat with Brennen Davis’ power is that he’s not getting to all of it in games- visually at least. Brennen Davis chokes up on the bat just about always. He also has to sacrifice a lot of his core strength in order to even make contact on low pitches. Not only that, but he doesn’t produce the same power if it’s an inside pitch because he has to tuck his hands in and can’t get full extension.

Despite those visual limitations that should greatly deflate his average EV below what the max would indicate, Davis averages 91 MPH off the bat. That is in the 81st percentile of MLBers (Assuming there is no rounding). Despite the swing not being perfectly optimized to maximize his EVs, instead oftentimes prioritizing making contact, Davis still rates highly in that regard.

Not only does Brennen Davis hit the ball hard, he hits it in the air. Brennen Davis hit the ball on the ground only 34.8% of the time last year. That is in the 84th percentile of all minor leaguers. That premium feel to elevate lets him hit a lot of home runs because he’s also running plus HR/FB rates even with his current limitations in-game power based on the swing cosmetics. I might be underselling the power by putting a 65 game and 70 raw power grade on him.

The contact skills despite the swing prioritizing that right now are lackluster. Brennen Davis whiffed 34.6% of the time while spending the bulk of his season at AA. That is obviously not good. This comes with the caveat of Brennen Davis being a 21 year old facing much older competition.

However, how am I supposed to reconcile the idea that he with his contact oriented swing right now, is better off trading some of that contact and turning a weakness into a flaw in order to maximize the power output? You can’t reasonably think that is the correct decision. So the power potential has to remain untapped right? There is no conceivable way he gets to maximize his hit tool and power. He has to choose one or the other. I lean towards the hit but we’ve already seen that even prioritizing it won’t make him great in that one field.

The contact quality is power centric with the rest of his launch angle optimization only being average for the most part. The line drive rates are average. The popup rates are average. The sprays are average. This is a lot of average paired with plus power. I won’t repeat myself on the impact of that but Davis is a degree lower than the Oneil Cruz/Luciano grouping.

The approach is fantastic at least. He swings at strikes at an above-average rate while also rarely chasing pitches in the dirt. The result is improved contact quality, less strikeouts than the whiffs might suggest, and high walk rates. This is absolutely a positive that makes him a much more complete offensive threat and raises his floor at the plate.

However, this also speaks volumes about his in-zone whiff issues and illustrates that he’s not whiffing because of bad swing decisions that can be cleaned up. There is an underlying issue here that I’m not sure can be fixed. That issue does not have to be fixed for him to be a good major leaguer but it keeps him on a tightrope as he tries to perform a difficult balancing act.

The speed is a plus. He’s not the most graceful runner but he does have great speed with his long gait that covers a lot of ground. He’s opted out of using his speed to steal bases as of late but it really plays in centerfield. He has really good burst out there and it plays in the form of plus range. He does well when tracking flyballs in the air and can lay out for line drives. He also has plus arm strength and accuracy. Not only will he stick in centerfield, Brennen Davis will be above-average there.

Brennen Davis is a polarzing prospect. There are different cues in the profile that would indicate he can succeed in a number of areas. The hit profile has some promise. The power has a lot more promise. Both seem to have untapped potential but I don’t think he can maximize both simultaneously. The 90th percentile outcome for Brennen Davis is absurd but there’s also a scenario where he gets stuck in the middle and neither tool actualizes to it’s potential. This is a high variance prospect despite the proximity but I think he’ll be a star.

31. SP Kyle Harrison, San Francisco Giants

I said last year that Kyle Harrison despite not making my top 100 would be a top 50 prospect by 2022. Lo and behold, I was right. Kyle Harrison took a big step forward in a number of areas after being drafted in the third round of the 2020 draft and now is poised to be one of the best pitching prospects in all of baseball.

Kyle Harrison’s velocity keeps on climbing. He was sitting 89–92 MPH on draft day with the fastball. Then just a few short months later he was 91–94 MPH in instructs. Fast forward to the next April, and in 2021; Kyle Harrison sat 94–96 MPH on his fastball and was regularly touching 98 MPH. The velocity progress in a little over a year is truly astonishing.

Kyle Harrison’s velocity pales in comparison to the angle his fastball gets. Kyle Harrison has 97th percentile fastball VAA at ~-4.3° on average. That is behind only Freddy Peralta, Luis Castillo, Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, Shane Baz, Josiah Gray, Joe Ryan, and Shane Bieber amongst all starting pitchers in the majors last year. I’m almost certain that his zone-neutral VAA would rank even higher.

Kyle Harrison achieves his VAA primarily because of the fastball release height being so low. Harrison throws the ball from a release point of ~4.9 feet. That would have been the lowest in the majors by any starting pitcher last year. The fastball movement is completely irrelevant from that point. Look at what Chris Sale and Tanner Houck do with their fastballs that have no movement from a ~5.2 release.

Kyle Harrison is not even a complete zero movement-wise as Houck is. He throws the fastball with below-average vertical movement but he is more in the ~14 inches of IVB range than Houck’s 7 inches. More importantly, he has heavy tailing action on his fastball most of the time. He then will show feel to manipulate the pitch into a more cutting variant that sets up the slider at the expense of some vertical movement.

The fastball misses bats at a ridiculous rate. He also gets groundballs at a high rate. The fastball isn’t even spammed at the top of the zone and he’s already posting some of the best VAAs in the league because of how good the inherent traits are. As Harrison’s command improves, and he starts to more frequently locate the pitch at the top of the zone, the performance should only get better. This pitch has 80 grade potential with a tad more optimization.

The slider is a plus and I might be underselling it. Harrison’s experimented with a few different variants on the pitch throughout the years but found his best variant in the second half last year. The loose slurvy breaking ball of yesteryear was shown the variant in favor of a tight low eighties breaking ball that prioritizes drop.

Kyle Harrison’s slide piece has awesome vertical depth and still has a fantastic horizontal approach angle due to his low slot. The pitch missed bats at a high rate towards the end of the year and should continue to do so. The only thing keeping him from a higher grade is his struggles with commanding it. I’m not entirely certain that those struggles are at all relevant with how many chases he gets even when he spikes it in the dirt.

Kyle Harrison’s changeup could be a difference-maker and is a third plus offering in his arsenal. The pitch has 10 MPH of velocity separation which is a plus trait and more importantly, according to Baseball America has the most horizontal action of any changeup on their top 100. I don’t know exactly how much movement that means but based on the data I do have, I know that is at least 17 inches of tail. (Actually, got sourced, It’s 18)

Here is a complete list of changeups with at least 10 MPH of velocity separation from the fastball and 17+ inches of tailing action on the pitch: Alex Claudio, Devin Williams, Joe Kelly, Aaron Loup, and Connor Brogdon. That is a pretty exclusive group that includes zero starting pitchers except for Harrison. Only Claudio is over 18 inches.

Kyle Harrison also has the benefit of throwing his changeup from a low release and wide slot. This gives his changeup movement a lot of deception and lets the pitch play up even further. There are command issues and he gets firm at times but he still had a whiff rate north of 45% and a strike rate over 60%. This is a plus pitch with the chance to blossom even more in the future.

Kyle Harrison pairs his inhuman bat missing talent with one of the better batted ball profiles amongst all prospects on this list. He pairs 87th percentile groundball rates with 95th percentile groundball rates. There is almost zero extra base hit risk with Harrison on the mound. He doesn’t get a ton of popups but with how flat the fastball VAA is, I expect that will change given the time. With Kyle Harrison not allowing any extra base hits, he allows zero runs since it is impossible to string together singles against a guy with his ability to miss bats.

The lone weakness of Kyle Harrison is control and command. Kyle Harrison does not do a great job of filling the zone. His slider frequently misses off the plate and his fastball isn’t exactly precise either. He walked a lot of batters, frequently completely lost it and put one in their back, and didn’t even get called strikes at a high rate. His current approach to throwing strikes seems to be to close his eyes and pray.

The stuff is good enough to make that work but to truly be elite he needs moderate command gains. He’s a great athlete with a fine delivery so I’m somewhat optimistic but this is a major weakness- that mostly doesn’t matter because walks aren’t that impactful with plus batted ball and elite whiffs like Harrison offers.

Kyle Harrison as a whole had a MiLB leading 38.6% whiff rate which is completely asinine. The entire arsenal projects to miss bats at an elite rate. This wasn’t just an MLB arm beating up on the poor competition, all of his pitches have room for significantly more improvement, even over their lofty grades right now. His delivery might be relieverish and he might have control problems but he’s quite possibly the favorite to rank #1 amongst all pitching prospects a year from now.

32. RF Andy Pages, Los Angeles Dodgers

Andy Pages trends somewhat one dimensional at the plate but he’s so good at that one dimension that I don’t think it will matter. He’s going to hit his way into the heart of any lineup; even one as loaded as the Dodgers.

The profile has some similarities to a Joey Gallo type. He elevates more than anyone in baseball with a mere 24.7% groundball rate. No one in the majors or minors had a lower groundball rate last year. (Min 300 PA). This allows him to play well above his raw power numbers for reasons that should be obvious by this point in the blog. Andy Pages also pulls the ball over 50% of the time so his power plays up even further.

The raw power is a plus too which means the game is truly elite. His max EV is north of 111 MPH. The average EV is in the 90s. The HR/FB rate is a plus and he is hitting the most flyballs in all of baseball. He is very rotational in his swing with elite torque and a strong core that lets it play. There is even some strength projection left. There is no reason to doubt that his ISOs will be ridiculous and that he should hit closer to 40 homers annually.

The approach is also great. Like most three-true outcome sluggers, Andy Pages walks at an elite clip. He does that despite a swing rate that is basically league average. @ydouright has his z-swing estimated at 73.7% (A plus) and his Chase% at 26.2% (Above-average for MLB). That probably isn’t perfectly precise but the average error bar is only a few percentage points and it lines up with the eye test of his plate discipline. He makes elite swing decisions that lead to high walk rates without the usual drawback of more strikeouts because of called strikes.

The thing that makes Andy Pages different than the Joey Gallo’s of the world is that he doesn’t actually have a whiff problem. He only whiffed 27.5% of the time in 2021. That is slightly better than the MLB average. That low whiff rate is a byproduct of his lack of bad swing decisions but it’s still better than what most three-true outcome guys do; even with elite plate discipline like Pages has.

However, I do have some concerns with the ability of the swing to translate to decent contact rates as he climbs the ladder. His bat path is absurdly steep. Even on pitches up in the strike zone he is at ~-35° and he gets down past -40° on pitches on the bottom edge. This leads to some probable whiff issues against the high fastball that will be spammed at the highest level. I think he has the discipline to avoid chasing them so he should succeed in spite of that vulnerability but it is a huge limiter.

Andy Pages hit more balls in the air than anyone in minor league baseball. That leads to more popups than the average player by a pretty wide margin. Even the outfield flyballs, when they don’t go over the fence result in outs more often than groundballs. He’s probably like a .270 BABIP guy or so- there is some variance in that grade depending on what happens with shifts in the new CBA. Even still, I think with the premium power, respectable contact rates, and elite approach; he’ll hit something like .250/.370/.530 in his prime. That will absolutely play.

The defense is fringy in centerfield but I like him a lot better in right field. Andy Pages only has average speed but he uses it incredibly well. His first step is explosive and he has good long speed. The routes are crisp and he tracks flyballs well. I’m not ruling out the possibility he plays center as he has done so far even with the speed limitations but I’m not holding my breath either. The arm strength is elite but the accuracy causes that tool to play down to only a plus.

Andy Pages is not a five tool player. There is only one road to being a superstar for him. He has to post ridiculous power numbers, walk a ton, and keep the hit tool respectable. I expect that he will do all of that. This isn’t the most conventionally attractive profile but he will be an extremely valuable anchor in the middle of any lineup.

33. SP Bobby Miller, Los Angeles Dodgers

Bobby Miller was the Dodgers first round pick in 2020, and his first season went almost exactly to plan. He kept his workload down, only averaging 14 BF/G in 17 games. He didn’t allow runs, greatly improved his control, and climbed all the way to AA in his first year. He now looks the part of a potential front half of the rotation starter.

Bobby Miller’s fastball was as good as gold in the AFL. Bobby Miller threw four four-seam fastballs in front of Statcast last year. That is a microscopic sample size. But the data on those four was beyond incredible. He averaged 98.7 MPH on those four pitches. Small sample caveats aside, in the entire MLB that would have been the third highest average fastball velocity.

The fastball also had 85th percentile horizontal movement; averaging 11 inches. Additionally, the four-seam fastball averaged 10 inches of drop. If that is 10 flat and not rounded down at all, that would have been the most vertical movement on any qualified fastball last year.

The sinker rated nearly as well as the four-seamer. He averaged 97.6 MPH on 27 of them thrown with statcast. That would be the 13th hardest sinker in the MLB. He throws it with 16 inches of horizontal movement as well which ranks in ~75th percentile. The vertical depth is below-average, however, with that also coming in at 16 inches.

Both pitches are fools gold. The fastball even in the AFL with absurd movement, according to a trusted source, only got two whiffs all-league long — combined from both the fastball and sinker. That was on 55 fastballs. That is a 3.6% Swinging-strike rate. Only 3.5% of fastballs in the MLB last year missed as few bats as Miller did in the AFL. That is despite some of the best velocity in the MLB.

Despite the ridiculous AFL numbers, Bobby Miller’s fastball actually has a super generic movement profile. On the season as a whole, trackman has his fastball with 15 inches of induced vertical break and 14 inches of horizontal movement.

Trackman has it as one fastball, not two. The AFL pitch tracking took his best fastballs and separated them from the bad ones to make both pitches look better and the four-seam usage look like untapped potential. In the reality, it’s one inconsistent pitch that is usually very bland.

That movement profile is terrible. The velocity is still a premium asset as he genuinely averages 97 MPH. Of course, we have yet to see how that holds up when he is pitching a more normal workload. He’s going to have plus velocity but I can’t call it elite yet and velocity alone doesn’t make a fastball.

The fastball does have elite spin rates, however, with Bobby Miller sitting at 2500 RPMs most nights. The fastball has the potential for elite movement but low spin efficiency and a 1:30 spin axis hold the pitch back. He also has elite angle on his fastball with his vertical release point sitting at 5.6 feet. There is absolutely a scenario where his fastball develops a respectable shape and is an 80 grade offering. I just can’t consider that scenario the likely one- when I ignore that the Dodgers player development is a factor here.

The slider is the best secondary in Bobby Miller’s collection of above-average ones and grades out as a plus offering. He throws it at 84.8 MPH with 40 inches of drop and 9 inches of run.

He shows surprisingly apt command over the slider and will spot it on the bottom edge of the plate. It has some chase characteristics but the breaking ball works best as a swing and miss pitch in the strike zone where he can rely on how the velocity difference and how it tunnels with the fastball to exploit timing and location mess-ups. There are probably too many hanging breaking balls still but it’s an advanced pitch with great shape.

The pitch had almost identical velocity, vertical, and horizontal movement in the AFL from the same release point as Anthony Bender’s wipeout slider. Miller spins his about 100 RPMs higher and the pitch’s performance doesn’t boil down to just movement but how it is achieved but it’s possible I’m underselling the slider’s traits because the velocity is so lame.

The curveball is also above-average based on small sample size pitch movement data. On four curveballs in the AFL, Bobby Miller averaged 79.8 MPH with 55 inches of drop and 10 inches of sweep. Only eight curveballs had him beat in all three fields last year. I actually think the pitch looked better in my MiLB looks than in the AFL. He was typically sitting 80–83 MPH on it with plus sweep. The vertical element was inconsistent in the minors as he struggled to consistently get over the top of it but it flashed elite stuff.

There is still a lot of refinement for the curveball, it’s far from a big league ready offering but it has real potential and projects as above-average in all likelihood. The combination of sweep +velo and inconsistent but potentially plus depth is impossible to pass up on.

Bobby Miller has a weird changeup. He throws it at ~87 MPH which is ~10 MPH slower than the fastball. That is plus velocity separatation. The pitch is extremely high spin, sitting close to 2400 RPMs most nights but still lower than the fastball.

The fastball drops 30 inches on average- just about double that of the fastball coming from the same tunnel. That’s actually above-average for a changeup at that velocity despite the spin rates that should kill lift- he either is killing spin efficiency instead of spin or throwing a screwball-esque changeup.

The fact that he also averages 19 inches of horizontal movement would indicate the latter option. That horizontal movement is in the 98th percentile of all changeups. The pitch is only graded as a plus by yours truly due to a lack of feel and consistency but I am probably underselling it. I really like his changeup.

The control is above-average even if the command isn’t. His approach to throwing strikes is unrefined in that it’s fastballs over the plate with the movement stopping the location from mattering all that much. His sinker command isn’t even all there but it’s good enough to avoid walks and the K + GB combo means that is enough.

The batted ball profile is robust with groundballs and prior to this year (then again in the AFL), he had elite line drive avoidance skills so I’m still relying on the track record and projecting that being at least average. There is some reason for skepticism in that prediction, the control gains might have been at the expense of avoiding line drives but that’s why I’m meeting in the middle.

There are few pitching prospects as complete as Bobby Miller. He has some relieverish traits in his delivery, but I just think the combination of a well-balanced arsenal that can strike out batters of all handedness, the plus groundballs rates, and strike throwing acumen makes considering him anything but a starting pitcher an act of foolishness. There is refinement needed and a huge chunk of variance here but Miller has the upside to be the best pitching prospect in the game entering 2023 if things go right this year.

34. SS/SP Masyn Winn, St. Louis Cardinals

I think Masyn Winn is going to be an All-Star shortstop. I think he could be a really good pitcher. I don’t think he’s going to be both so this ranking is more reflective of where I have him as a shortstop with a slight boost at the Ohtani role upside more than a rank of a two-way player with these tools. Even Ohtani can’t play the field every game and pitch. He is a DH and a starting pitcher. Lorenzen is an occasional outfielder and a relief pitcher. Masyn Winn could be a starter or he could be a shortstop. He can’t be both.

I don’t even think that he can realistically play shortstop and pitch in relief. Lorenzen has done it very occasionally but the outfield demands a lot less from the arm than playing SS does. And it’s a lot fewer opportunities. Nothing would make me happier than being proven wrong but I think Winn isn’t going to play both ways. There is more value from his glove at SS than there would be by having him as a DH/P (Or even CF/P? That one warrants some discussion). He might not even hit enough to play DH every day. He’s not Ohtani at the plate. What he is, however, is the best defensive shortstop in all of the minors.

Masyn Winn has generational arm strength. We’ll call it the best of all time by a shortstop because he owns the record books for the statcast era. Back in July, he had all eight of the hardest throws by an infielder in the statcast era. The top eight spots all belonged to a guy with less than two months of MiLB experience. He has three times as many throws at 92+ than any other SS in 2021. His hardest throw at 96.6 MPH is over 3 MPH faster than Tatis who tops out at 93.1. If we count relay throws than he has hit 99. Tatis again leads the majors at 97. He laps all of his competition in arm strength.

There are games in some ballparks with too low of framerates to even see the ball when Masyn Winn throws it. It’s consistently elite strength too. Tatis will uncork 93 on occasion but Winn will average that. All of his throws are literal bullets. We see in guys like Carlos Correa just how valuable elite arm strength can be. Arm strength and the ability to throw off balance improve range because you have longer windows of opportunity to make plays.

Masyn Winn will create outs on plays that no one else on the planet can make because of how absurdly strong his arm is. He can throw off-balance and on the run with decent accuracy. He doesn’t need to take any steps when he throws- even without a windup, he is topping what a lot of shortstops do with three crow hops before they throw. He fires literal bullets.

There is also the impact of his arm on balls to the outfield. Masyn Winn is the perfect guy to cut off the outfielders throw. He’ll turn easy hits into outfield assists for his teammates. He doesn’t just cut off throws to the shortstop either. The Cardinals shifted him around to wherever last year so it would always be him cutting off the throw because in one smooth move, he would throw a 99 MPH bullet to third base and get an out. He makes everyone around him better.

Masyn Winn is also freakishly fast. He’s at worst a 70 runner and I’m inclined to push it to an 80. He had 98th percentile speed at the PG showcases and hasn’t lost a step since. He was an amazing baserunner in his first taste of pro ball. He stole a lot of bases in not that many games and scored from second on a sac fly multiple times. He also tagged up from first and went to second on those. He has absolute wheels and BA coined him both the fastest runner and best athlete in the Cardinals system.

That is the other thing that stands out about Winn; as awesome as his speed is- the athleticism is even better. He has mad hops. He’s strong, he’s agile, he is light on his feet and extremely explosive on his first step out of the box and in the field. He covers the ground like nobody’s business. He plays low to the ground and can shuffle to both sides rapidly.

The one wart in Masyn Winn’s defensive profile is errors. He made 24 of them in 86 games. A .930 fielding percentage is not good. Most of those errors are a hands issue, not an arm accuracy one although there are some of those errors too. He’s 19 and those are the easiest parts of defense to teach. I honestly do not give a shit. Especially when you have a kid with Masyn Winn’s makeup who will almost certainly improve.

His work ethic is reportedly amazing. He’s got a Lindor esque flair and smile with the same infectious love for the game. If you watch games of Peoria before and after Masyn Winn the attitude of his teammates is completely different. Everyone is having more fun. There are smiles all around. They also won a lot more with him despite him only posting a 48 wRC+ in A+. The Palm Beach team meanwhile saw their winning percentage drop .100 without him. I don’t believe in the whole winning mentality thing but Winn provides a good argument to its existence and it being a difference-maker.

The defensive ceiling here is Andrelton Simmons. The realistic outcome is a little lower but that is the level of pure skill we’re talking about here. The raw talent for the shortstop position is beyond words. That is why I don’t want him pitching and instead want him in the field as much as possible. I think it’s much more likely he’s a 20+ DRS SS than a 3 WAR pitcher most years. Maybe he hits enough to DH but he’s at his most valuable when he’s allowed to do what he does best and that’s play shortstop.

Now, let’s talk about the bat. Despite how long it took me to get to this point in his evaluation, it’s not an afterthought. Masyn Winn has hit a ball 110 MPH as a 19-year-old. That is in the 71st percentile of all major leaguers and ranks significantly better amongst teenagers. It’s already 55 raw power at worst and there is reason to believe he will grow even more in that regard.

Masyn Winn is a thin kid with sloped shoulder and room to fill in his frame but narrow hips that make it unlikely to hurt his speed too much. He has plus bat speed and rotates well with strong hips. He just needs to add physicality to improve the consistency of his raw power and get it playing in games. Masyn Winn already has an above-average feel for elevation so once the strength comes it’ll pretty quickly become above-average game power. Okay, that’s a lie. He doesn’t pull the ball at all so it’s average actually but that’s a relatively easy adjustment to make.

Masyn Winn has above-average contact rates despite a long somewhat awkward stride in his swing that was supposed to cause hit issues. He whiffed 25.7% of the time in his pro debut season while being pushed fairly aggressively up to A+ at only 19. He also showed above-average (In a good way) chase rates in Low-A but faltered some in A+. Even still, he was a tick above-average on the season as a whole, despite the aggresive assignment.

He also showed strong BABIP optimization skills. He is a spray hitter who knows how to go the other way. He also hit 39.2% of balls in the Sweet-Spot in Low A which ranks in the 91st percentile of big leaguers in 2021 and considerably higher in Low A SE. He might have faltered some in A+ but I’m choosing to view the aggressive push to A+ more as bonus time than a red flag against the larger sample in Low A.

The one major critique I have of Winn is that he is too aggressive on the low pitch where he doesn’t show much power. He doesn’t make flush contact but instead kind of just drops his hips and lets all of his power leak out so he can make contact while maintaining a ~30° VBA.

I think he would be better served by either bending at the hip more and making flush contact or simply laying off of anything he doesn’t have to swing at that is pitched down. He does his best damage against the high fastball. The bat isn’t anywhere near the level of his glove but it is still potentially above-average. This is a superstar-level player. There is plus raw power with an above-average hit tool. That is more than enough to be a star with his glove being so fantastic.

Oh and he also pitches by the way. I don’t think his likely outcome has him doing so, but it does limit the risk of the glove not developing and give him maybe the highest 99th percentile outcome on this list. Masyn Winn only threw one inning in 2021. I’ve watched that inning close to a dozen times because it was just so spectacular. He throws four different pitches and would have been a 50 FV prospect just as a pitcher even if he couldn’t hit or play the field at all.

Masyn Winn sits 96–98 MPH on his fastball in relief and has touched 99 MPH. Although, he probably would be more 93–95 MPH as a starter. The pitch has above-average vertical movement and is thrown from a low release height due to the fact that he is only 5'11" and throwing from a 3/4 arm slot. The result is a very flat VAA. The pitch has high spin rates and bat missing traits. He has 80 grade arm speed, 70 velocity, and 60+ VAA. This is an elite pitch. 70 grade offering that might take off with actual development.

The breaking balls are both awesome. He gets it up to 3000 RPMs and both flash plus shape. The slider is the better of the two and was 87–89 in his one outing this year after not really throwing one in high school. It’s a heavy gyro spin pitch from what I can tell that was inconsistent in his one outing. He flashed one 70 with elite vertical depth that got an ugly chase and whiff but the other two pitches were 45s that he hung. It’s a plus projection because of velo or spin but that is a very loose 60.

The curve is just as high of spin sitting 76–79 MPH. He gets great bat missing depth on the pitch that has a sweeper axis but lacks impact velocity. I still have it as a plus because of spin + I think his elite arm speed makes the lack of velocity less impactful. It looks like he’s throwing the pitch much faster than he is so it gets whiffs in the same way as a changeup would- velocity separation and deception.

The changeup is very clearly his fourth pitch. He didn’t throw it at all in his one outing but it was decent in high school and his athleticism helps with the projection. He sells it with the arm speed and has decent fade while being thrown over 10 MPH slower than the heater. It’s very much a work in progress but it’s a high variance average grade.

The command is interesting. He threw strikes in high school but the delivery has a lot of violence. He showed above-average command in his one outing this year but it was 14 total pitches. Elite athleticism makes the violent delivery work. I think it’s average command/control but there is obviously variance here.

The 90th percentile on the mound is an Ace. The pure stuff is exceptional and there aren’t many red flags in the profile. That being said, I’m setting the bat at 3 WAR as a pitcher to value him as a two-way player over just what he provides as an everyday SS and I don’t think that’s his median outcome. He’s a great pitching prospect but not good enough to justify developing him as one.

Maybe he has superhuman stamina and durability so he actually can play SS and pitch once or twice a week but I doubt it and Masyn Winn the SS is too good to consider an alternative that doesn’t have him there. If the bat stalls pitching is a nice fallback plan at least. Whatever shape it takes, I’m confident that Winn will be an impact playmaker in his prime.

35. SS Marcelo Mayer, Boston Red Sox

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

Marcelo Mayer is the best player in the draft according to most people. It’s not at all hard to see why that is. Marcelo Mayer is one of the best hitters in the prep ranks and also projects to be a good shortstop. Like Watson, he is a five-tool talent who projects to be an impact player at the big league level.

Marcelo Mayer is very clearly a hit tool first prospect although that isn’t intended to say anything negative about the rest of his tools. His bat-to-ball skills are quite impressive as a 6.2% strikeout rate in a 6A School in California can attest to. He possesses elite plate coverage and just has a natural smoothness to his operation. His swing is smooth and sweet as silk. There isn’t any violence or over-aggressive rotation in his stroke.

He’s well composed and all his mannerisms look choreographed when he stands in the box. His swing is consistent and beautiful. He once again posted above-average contact rates in 107 PA at the complex level after being drafted. He also struck out 25.2% of the time while walking 14% of his plate appearances.

His contact quality is exceptional. He has tremendous barrel accuracy and squares balls up with regularity. He has a steep swing plane that lets him make aerial contact semi-frequently despite some attack angle issues. He is incredible at hitting the ball to the opposite field and avoiding his pullside, in the past that has limited his power output but he’s gotten better at occasionally pulling the ball this season and getting to more of that power. He’s going to be a high BABIP hitter with his feel for the sweet spot and a somewhat optimal spray profile that projects to translate at the next level.

Speaking of his power, Mayer also has plus raw juice in his frame. He’s a very physical hitter with a very physical frame. He’s 6'3" 185lbs with room to add maybe forty pounds of good weight and strength to bolster his power. He efficiently utilizes his full body in his swing and well he doesn’t have the most torque or elite bat speed.

He still hits the ball hard because he is very strong and has great barrel accuracy. His power plays a tick lower than the raw in games due to the occasional troubles pulling the ball but it’s clearly still above-average. This is going to be an impact bat with plus/plus potential at the plate. He admitedly struggled with elevating some after being drafted but I’m not that worried. He also boasted an average EV of 88 MPH and a max EV of just over 109 MPH after being drafted which are pretty fine for a teenager.

His acumen at shortstop can not be doubted for even a second. He’s a plus runner who might slow down to only above-average but that’s not what you should be concerned about because he doesn’t need speed to succeed. He’s a clear-cut shortstop who could survive with well below-average speed because he has incredible instincts and actions.

He’s able to move in all directions with conviction and make all the tough plays. His hands are quick and he shows the ability to read the ball off the bat. He’s not the most explosive fielder but he’s an agile one with all the actions to be a good defender at shortstop.

He also has plus arm strength with quick and concise footwork. He may grow into more of a third base profile ala Manny Machado but if he moves there then he will be special there and likely compete for Gold Gloves at his best. He’s gotten comparisons to Brandon Crawford in the field and they aren’t all that outlandish.

Marcelo Mayer is a five-tool talent with franchise-altering potential. There is some development to be done. He probably has to tweak his swing to generate more torque and grow into more raw power. There is a lot of projecting into what he might one day be when calling him a future superstar. The upside, however, is as high as just about anyone in the entire draft last year.

What separates him from the rest of the upside plays below him is how strong the hit tool is that makes him a regular even if he doesn’t make the changes needed to hit for significant power. Mayer has the potential to be an all-around stud who makes an impact all over the diamond in every facet of the game. The Red Sox are lucky to have had the privilege of drafting him, even if it required a big chunk of their bonus pool.

36. SP Nick Lodolo, Cincinnati Reds

Nick Lodolo is a player who I didn’t particularly like coming out of the draft. I still didn’t particularly like him last year either. He made some improvements last year but this is more of me adjusting my opinion on this profile- having been wrong on similar prospects in the past.

Nick Lodolo has a weird fastball. He sits 93–96 MPH most nights now as his velocity has jumped slightly since being drafted by the Reds. The movement profile is unconventional. He primarily uses it as a sinker with some tailing action. (Not anything elite even horizontally). This is a profile that almost never has good whiff rates.

However, there are two things we are failing to consider that let his fastball miss bats. First, Nick Lodolo has a very low release height at ~5.5 feet on average which gives him a respectable zone-neutral VAA in spite of his poor movement profile. Additionally, Nick Lodol has immaculate fastball command. The pitch has missed bats in the minors, and I’m of the belief that it will continue to do so at the game’s highest level.

The pitch has the same release height and extension as Brady Singer’s sinker. He averages 94 MPH on his sinker. Singer averages 93.7 MPH on his. Lodolo averaged 20 inches of drop and 12 inches of tail on his sinker in the futures game. Singer averages a very comparable 18 inches of drop and 13 inches of tail. The pitches are near identical.

With the nearly perfect replica of Lodolo’s heater, Brady Singer had a 35.2% CSW% against his sinker last year. That is in the 98th percentile of all fastballs. I still believe this is a plus pitch despite bland movement because of command and angle.

The slider is also a plus offering. He uses it as his out pitch to put away left handed hitter primarily but it also has some deployment against right handed bats. The velocity range on the pitch is wide- often sitting anywhere from 82–88 MPH. That velocity seems to make a huge impact as when he’s sitting on the lower-end it misses significantly fewer bats and can get hittable.

However, when he sits on the top of that velocity range, the pitch looks even better than the plus grade I have on it. The slider has high spin rates sitting at about 2600 RPMs with unusually high spin efficiency and a spin axis that is possibly closer to that of a curveball than a conventional slider.

The pitch averaged 40 inches of drop and 8 inches of sweep in the futures game. I have little reason to doubt that is about where he sat for most of the year. From a visual and data standpoint, the pitch has above-average vertical and horizontal movement; ~3 inches above-average in both. The pitch plays up because of how it tunnels with the sinker that breaks in the opposite direction from the same release point. (Hi! Future me here, I found out on a podcast featuring Geoff Pontes that the slider has over a foot of sweep. So I’m actually underselling it.)

Nick Lodolo has feel to manipulate his plus slider into a more conventional slutter hybrid. He throws that pitch in the 87–90 MPH range with spin rates that sit closer to 2400 RPMs. The pitch varies in more than velocity as he turns a lot of the transverse spin on the slider into almost entirely gyro spin. The resulting pitch has almost no horizontal movement while still dropping 30+ inches.

The pitch is often firm so it’s only an average projection right now but if he improves his feel and consistency it could easily wind up getting bumped to at least a 55 and potentially even a 60 depending on how much it works off the sinker with increased usage.

The curveball is my least favorite option in Nick Lodolo’s extremely diverse arsenal. Honestly, you could argue that it’s just an extension of the slider since there are a lot of surface level similarities between the two offerings of his.

The curveball typically sits 78–81 MPH with sweeper shape. His curve shows only average depth but it has plus sweeping action. I think this particular breaking ball often gets humpty and he needs to tighten up his shape for it to play. Additionally, he lacks the deception due to some arm speed issues, and the power behind the pitch for it to rack up chases.

If he adds power, it might be more effective but it would bleed into the slider too much and likely hurt that pitch. He is probably best served by not tinkering too much with this pitch and continuing to use it sparingly as a show-me pitch.

The changeup is a hard pitch to gauge perfectly. From a pitch traits standpoint, it is terrible. Most nights, Nick Lodolo will sit in the 87–89 MPH range with his cambio. That is only 5–7 MPH slower than the fastball. 7 MPH is about average separation for reference.

The changeup from a movement standpoint is not good either. The pitch has very little in the way of horizontal movement and only slightly above-average vertical depth behind it. The pitch kills an average amount of spin as well.

None of these traits really jump off the page but there is still a lot of reason to hope. Nick Lodolo sells the changeup extremely well with good arm speed behind it and can command the pitch in the strike zone. He also throws from a sidearm slot that I think is generally conducive to letting changeups outperform their horizontal movement.

You could even argue the lack of fade on his changeup is a good thing because it stops him from outrunning the sinker and giving itself away. I have a hard time projecting more than average on any pitch with such underwhelming traits but I will fully acknowledge the possibility that I am very wrong about it. The pitch dominated right-handed bats last year and he has such great command, so, it wouldn’t shock me at all if he blew away his projection and did the same in the majors.

Nick Lodolo might have the best pure command in all the minors. That only plays as plus control, however, because Nick Lodolo has a brain and recently realized that spamming balls down the heart of the plate is stupid, he walks the occasional batter. He will even now, run very low walk rates, have close to no HBP, no WP, and will rack up called strikes when he freezes batters by spotting the edge of the strike zone with rare precision.

Nick Lodolo’s batted ball profile is so hard to properly value. In the end, I settled on an above-average grade but nothing from a 30 to a 70 would shock me. In 2019 after being drafted, Nick Lodolo had the worst batted ball profile in the entire minors. He only got groundballs 40% of the time while also posting a LD rate just over 30%, and a 2% popup rate. That was only a 42 BBE sample size, but his track record wasn’t good then either. He only ran slightly above-average groundballs rates at TCU with below-average popup rates, and even farther below line-drive rates. The batted ball profile wasn’t good or even close to it.

Then, 2021 rolled around, and seemingly just by deciding to not spam strikes, his batted ball profile became one of the best in all the minors. The ground ball rate jumped all the way to the 92nd percentile. The line drive avoidance went from maybe the worst in the entire minors to a borderline plus skill. His talent for avoiding pullside aerial contact in college re-emerged and further crippled his home runs rates.

So where does that leave Lodolo now? He’s seen the highest of highs and the lowest of lows in this one small portion of his game. I like always, will meet in the middle but I do think the high end projection is more likely to come to fruition than the low-end one. As long as his strike-throwing doesn’t regress back to spam it over the heart, I think the premium command and tough angles will continue to let him avoid damage on contact.

I am a sane human being so I like Nick Lodolo’s mechanics. However, he also dealt with shoulder injuries last season and those are terrifying and often nagging. He’s probably the most likely pitching prospect on this list to reach at least a 55 FV outcome- barring injury. However, barring injury isn’t a consideration that exists in the real world. Even still, I could easily see a healthy Lodolo dominating in terms of strikeouts, batted ball, and control; and easily exceeding my already aggressive 60 FV projection on him.

37. SS Tyler Freeman, Cleveland Guardians

I cannot wrap my head around the lack of respect given to Tyler Freeman by most outlets. He has a bit of a tweener profile as a probable second baseman without loud game power but the hit tool is so good, I don’t think it matters. I also think playable game power is no longer impossible.

Tyler Freeman bulked up during 2020 and at the alternate site and oh boy did it show last year. Tyler Freeman showed the potential for league-average power last year- and potentially more on top of that. He averaged 89 MPH off the bat last year. The MLB average is 88.2 MPH. He had a Max EV just over 107 MPH. The average qualified MLB player is at 107.2 MPH. Tyler Freeman now has average raw power.

I’m going to take a victory lap here and point out that I highlighted this possibility last year. Tyler Freeman is a good rotator with a rare feel for squaring balls up and driving them at optimal angles to all fields. Now that he has the measurable power, I expect good things to come. His ISO was already league average last year when you adjust for park factors.

Tyler Freeman has a ways to go in optimizing his game power. His groundball rates jumped this year up by just under 4% and he now sits in the 22nd percentile in that field. Tyler Freeman loves to go the other way but prior to 2021, his career pull rate on fly balls was 22.6% which is just under 2% below league-average pull rates on flyballs so it hasn’t really been a major factor. The feel to elevate isn’t there but the game power is still a 45. I don’t want that to change because if he sells out for game power he breaks what makes him special in the first place.

Tyler Freeman has a good argument for possessing the best hit tool in all the minors. He runs elite contact rates- only whiffing 13.3% of the time in 2021. This is both a product of solid swing decisions- he’s aggresive at swinging on pitches in the zone (~75% z-swing%), and still runs average chase rates. This is also a byproduct of short levers and a quick swing without much complexity to it. He hits everything too. Velocity, spin, and offspeed, up or down, inside, or out. He hits it all pretty consistently.

Tyler Freeman is also a BABIP wizard. Sorry, that’s an understatement. He is a BABIP god who checks every box there is. The line drive rates were in the 99th percentile this year at 28.2%. This is not a new development, in 1172 career PA at the minor league level, Freeman has a 24.9% line drive rate. With a minimum of 1000 PA in their MiLB career, that is the 11th highest line drive rate in the history of the minors. (4519 qualifiers). This is very much a sustainable and translatable skill. Freeman hits everything in the sweet spot and as a result, does a lot of damage.

Tyler Freeman also never pops up. He popped up a mere 3.5% of the time last year. He only has done so a less impressive 6.2% of the time in his MiLB career. His ability to make flush contact cannot be undersold either and it helps drive his elite launch angle optimization.

Tyler Freeman has elite feel for hitting groundballs to the opposite field. Tyler Freeman had a 26.9% opposite field ground ball rate in 2019 and is at 28.5% in his career. I don’t have the 2021 spray data but I’ll trust the track record of 814 batted balls and say that should still be a thing. Opposite field groundballs have a .449 average on them. Freeman hitting more opposite field groundballs in his average year than any big leaguer has since 2018 (Excluding 2020) is a huge deal that pays massive dividents for Freeman’s batting average.

Tyler Freeman does not walk despite good plate discipline for reasons. What he does do as much as just about anyone is get hit by pitches. He actually has 7 more hit by pitches in his career than walks. His 56 HBP in 1172 career PA is absurd. That is a 31 HBP/650 Pace. This isn’t just a byproduct of his time at low levels. In AA last year he still was on pace for 22 HBP/650 PA. He might not walk but he does still reach base via the free pass. Also, the walks could totally come with his swing decisions already being advanced.

Tyler Freeman is back to me listing him as a shortstop this year. He was statistically fine defensively there but that’s not the reason for my shift in perspective on his defensive value. My shift actually comes from the time he didn’t spend at shortstop.

We got to see Tyler Freeman play third base for the first time this year. He looked really good there which was the last thing I ever expected to see from him since his arm strength is what kept him from playing shortstop long term. Yet, when he was playing third base- not only were his range and actions great, but he threw some bulets.

I’m extrapolating here but I think the arm limitations were more because of some of the angles a shortstop has to throw from then because of an arm strength limit. Jean Segura has a similar issue and was a shortstop for years. Also mechanics are probably teachable and strength isn’t.

I also don’t have much against Freeman as a shortstop beside the arm angle issue. His actions are fine. His range is somewhat limited by his stockier build but he’s not going to kill you out there. He has great hands. I think Freeman can stick at shortstop, even if he’s below-average there.

Players like Tyler Freeman do not grow on trees. Freeman will compete for batting titles in his prime. There’s still a chance that is an empty batting title but with the power development over the last year or so, it seems unlikely. Tyler Freeman also won’t be a non-factor defensively as a shortstop. This is an impact player for the Guardians who should be up next season. The only reason he is not higher is his season was ended prematurely by a shoulder injury last year.

38. SP Max Meyer, Miami Marlins

Last year, I was very aggresive in calling Max Meyer a top 20 prospect. I also claimed that he could be the best pitching prospect in a year’s time. That scenario did not come to fruition. The possibility was always more unrealistic then I credited for and while it still exists; I’m no longer counting on it coming to fruition.

Max Meyer’s fastball is headache inducing for scouts. The fastball was parked at 95–98 MPH and touched 101 MPH in previous years. He averaged an absurdly great 97.4 MPH in his final year at Minnesota. He dropped down to 95 MPH in a full season this year and as far as I’m aware is no longer bumping 101 MPH. Regardless, this is still fantastic velocity.

The fastball has elite spin rates. He averages just under 2600 RPMs with it. That is in the 99th percentile of all fastball spin. He also throws from a low release height with him sitting at 5.5 feet in the Future’s Game. He averages just over six and a half feet of extension as well. He has a 12:45 spin axis from what I can tell. You would expect a player with his underlying traits to have an elite VAA and as such; an elite fastball.

You would be oh so painfully wrong in that assumption. Max Meyer’s fastball as currently constituted is not good. His fastball has comparable shape to Gerrit’s- sorry wrong Garrett. I meant Garrett Richards.

The problem with his fastball boils down to spin efficiency. Max Meyer pronates while throwing the fastball. I used to think this was an easily fixable issue but after talking to a number of people involved in the game, I’m no longer confident in that assesment. I’ve also seen people suggest that his spin rates and axis are largely born by him pronating so it might be counterproductive to straighten him out. I’ve also heard that it could negatively impact the slider. I still believe in the pitches upside enough to call it above-average but I can’t say anymore even if it has 80 upside if things break right.

The fastball as it is now is not a good pitch. Max Meyer averaged 23 inches of drop on the 95 MPH heater with only three inches of horizontal movement in the futures game. That is in Coors so he’s probably closer to 20/5 in a normal environment but that is still terrible.

The fastball is shaped almost identically to Garrett Richards as I was saying earlier. Richards averages about 95 MPH on his heater too with spin rates in the 2600 RPMs range. His fastball drops about 20 inches as well. He has less extension but it still comes from a release height of ~5.7 feet. His has even less horizontal movement but the basic pitch traits are the same. The highest whiff rate Richards has ever posted with his four-seam fastball is 19.1%. The highest run value Garret Richards fastball has ever had as a starter was +0.3 RV/100 (2020 he was largely in relief and not leaning on it). (Negatives are better for this stat). His fastball is inarguably below-average despite Driveline once declaring it the best fastball in the game from a stuff perspective.

We’re seeing the same stuff from Max Meyer already. His fastball despite the velocity and plus angle is not missing bats. Meyer spent the year in AA and still had a below-average whiff rate against the heater. The pitch gets groundballs but that all it is good for- and the pitch also had a below-average xwOBA against it according to Prospects Live. (@The_Arrival). The pitch has all the potential in the world but it has to make major changes in a to be determined direction to actually be good.

The slider is a foundational pitch and the only reason he is still ranked as high as he is. He throws it in the upper eighties- averaging 87 MPH. The pitch has the perfect blend of sidespin and gyrospin in order to miss bats at a high rate. The pitch has high spin rates sitting at 2600 RPMs as well. What really separates the pitch, however, is the movement profile.

The slider averages 11 inches of sweep. He pairs that elite sweeping action with tremendous depth as he averages over 40 inches vertically. Those traits admittedly dom’t sound that ithat impressive- even together, there are 33 pitches with as much vertical and horizontal movement as Meyer. However, that is missing the most important trait of the slider. Velocity.

Max Meyer throws his slider at 87 MPH on average. That is in the top twenty percent of major leaguers. More than that, it’s the combination of velocity and movement that makes him special. There is only one pitch at 87 MPH+ that had as much sweep as Meyer (Dillon Maples. There is only one pitcher who throws 87 MPH+ with as much vertical depth as Max Meyer. (Luke Jackson).

It should go without saying that no one beats him in all three areas but let’s go a step further. There is not even a pitcher with 37 inches of drop and 4 inches of sweep at 87 MPH+. Only Dillon Maples has 34 inches of drop and more than 8 inches of sweep at 87 MPH+. Players with this combination plus vertical movement, horizontal movement, and velocity are not supposed to exist. Max Meyer stands alone.

The changeup gets mixed reviews. He did not miss a ton of bats with it last year but there is definetly potential. The pitch is thrown just about 10 MPH slower than the fastball. The pitch has good tailing shape and angle with fastball arm speed. My concern is with both the depth and tendency to get firm. It’s a high variance average grade that he might need to have hit the higher end of that spectrum.

The delivery is somewhat violent but I don’t actually think it’s bad- he just does a lot to create torque in the delivery. The force generation from his motion is elite and lets him squeeze every inch of velocity from his frame. There is a clean medical history here and he’s pretty consistently thrown strikes at what is at least a league average rate. I have a hard time seeing that changing anytime soon.

The batted ball profile is fantastic. He posted high groundball rates at the Colleigate level and that translated to the minors in his first taste when he was in the 92nd percentile. He also has a track record of allowing very few line drives. These are both logical based on the fastball traits and the track record indicate they will be sustained moving forward.

There is some relief risk with Max Meyer. He only actually has one good pitch right now. The slider is incredible and we’ve seen his profile work in the rotation before but there is still theoertical risk. I think there is less then is typical for this profile since he shows almost no platoon split, and has the batted ball support rather than leaning exclusively on missing bats but the risk does exist. There is also a chance that he figures out how to make the fastball work and is a true #1.

39. C Iván Herrera, St. Louis Cardinals

Iván Herrera only had a 102 wRC+ last year and if you adjust that for a park factors he drops to 92. As a reasonable human being, he jumped up my list by close to 50 spots as a result. Fine, not a result, in spite of the pedestrian performance.

Iván Herrera’s ranking is primarily driven by my subscription to the Prospects Live Patreon. With that subscription you get access to a spreadsheet that has 20–80 grades for over 500 players. Those players are graded in contact%, Max EV, and Chase%. Iván Herrera has a 60 grade contact rate, a 60 grade Max EV, and a 70 grade Chase rate.

There is only one other prospect in all of the minors with a 60 contact rate, 60 Max EV, and 70 chase rate. Those two are Adley Rutschman and Iván Herrera. That list does not grow at all if you just look for 60s in all three categories. Iván Herrera has elite underlying traits that almost no prospects are capable of matching. That matters more to me than the lack of loud production.

Even better still, we have Low A Southeast now. Iván Herrera didn’t play in that league but other players on that sheet of 20–80 grades did. The lowest chase rate by a 60 who played exclusively at that level was 20.6%. That means a 70 chase rate is at least 20.5%. Iván Herrera only whiffed 20.6% of the time in AA last year. He also has a Max EV of 112 MPH.

With those exact figures, we can compare that collection of skills from Iván Herrera up the ladder to major leaguers. Here is the complete list of MLB hitters with an equal or better Max EV, Chase rate, and contact rate: Yandy Díaz, and Juan Soto. End of list. Herrera’s skilllset is extremely rare at the MLB level as well.

Contact rate, chase rate, and power (Hard Hit rate is better than Max EV but more indicative of current skill than potential where Max EV is preferred) are the three core atributes of a hitter from a data standpoint. They all measure one thing but it is super informative and pivotal to be successful. Players who are plus in all three attributes are just about always plus hitters (More on Yandy Díaz in a different blog eventually cause he’s fascinating). Herrera checks all three boxes.

Herrera also has one key advantage over Adley Rutschman, the only other prospect in this illustrious club. He is two and a half years younger than Adley. He is facing a challenging assignment in AA and thriving and then some in response. Plate discipline is usually the last thing to come around in aggresive assignment and yet Herrera was at the top of the entire league in chase rate.

The other part of his hit tool that defines the ability to hit for an average is BABIP. He flunked in that regard last year with a .257 mark. I am calling total bullshit on that number being indicative of his skill. Iván Herrera had a career .375 BABIP prior to this season. That is a 692 PA sample size.

The launch angle optimization is only average. Neither his popup or line drive rates stand out- both are almost exactly league average. This comes with the caveat that he is a 21.5 year old spending the year between AA and AAA but I’m still not expecting a ton in that department. The skill is somewhere in the range of a 50.

What has me very excited is the ability to produce flush contact. Iván Herrera is consistently flattening out his swing on stuff at the top of the strike zone. His VBA sits at about ~-22° on pitches up in the strike zone. That drops down to ~-32° on pitches down the middle. I don’t have much data on him swinging at low pitches because he pretty much never does it. On a one pitch sample I have him measured at -36° on a pitch at his thighs. That’s not to say that he can’t hit things down there, there’s nothing in the profile that suggests he can’t- it’s just to indicate how picky he is down there in the present.

I still am lacking in spray charts from the 2021 season (@MLB get your shit together and update the database) but his sprays were incredible in 2019. Here is what I wrote on Iván Herrera at the time:

“More importantly, he is one of the best hitters in the game at optimizing his spray angles. He pulls groundballs 43.8% of the time which is over 10% better than average and makes him both immune to the shift and likely to post higher BABIPs than the average hitter will. He also pulls flyballs 35.3% of the time which is over 10% more than the average hitter and also an ideal outcome. Likewise, he pulled line drives 41.5% of the time in 2019 which is also better than average. There are only five hitters on this list who do all those things and popout at a below-average rate and Ivan Herrera is one of them.

Coincidentally, two of the others were at one point in the Cardinals organatization. (Is it an intentional quirk of the Cardinals development program? Just a quick once over says yes as almost all their prospects of any note are opposite field heavy on groundballs at the very least) This is a plus hit tool by every measure and unless catching kills it will certainly be above-average.”

I still believe Iván Herrera has plus contact skillls and projects for an above-average BABIP but I’ve actually come down on the hit tool as a whole a bit. The reason for this boils down to his approach at the plate. Iván Herrera is very picky- like his z-swing is estimated as below 60%. He takes an absurdly high amount of called strikes. The pickiness helps him walk and do damage on contact so it probably shouldn’t change. However, I worry that the passive approach will inflate his strikeout rates so he “only” has a 55 hit tool.

I’ve already touched on Iván’s power upside but I’m going to go more in depth than just Max EV now. Iván Herrera is very strong. He’s capable of deadlifting 495 pounds and bench pressing 305 lbs. He has also squatted 405 lbs. All of these occurred in the last five months. He’s strong with explosive bat speed and great hips that have yet to be broken by catching.

There are some elevation issues from Iván Herrera. There are a few reasons for these struggles. The first reason is that he doesn’t swing at low pitches or use the explicit loft centric swing very often. The second reason boils down to attack angles. You could write that off as a quirk of his youth but I won’t. The pull rate on flyballs is fantastic so he should still get to above-average game power even with the elevation issues.

Iván Herrera is a catcher and that sucks. I really liked his receiving abilities but that isn’t really relevant when ABS will be in place for most of his career. He’s an average defensive catcher by today’s standards in the other fields- that might put him as above-average in a few years as the position is more offensive focused. He is a solid blocker despite limited mobility and I’d imagine would improve further with more repetitions from pitchers with quality stuff. The arm is only average.

I am a huge believer in the bat of Iván Herrera. What holds him out of the 60 tier is the same thing keeping Adley away from a 65 FV. There is no alternative to catching for Herrera. He doesn’t have the speed to play third base or left field and be good there in all likelihood. He’s too short to even be ideal for first base. If he’s a great bat he could play DH when he’s not catching but that’s a tall ask. I think realistically, you aren’t going to be getting a full 650 PA annually from Herrera even when he is healthy and that is why he’s not quite a role 60 player at this point.

40. CF Josh Lowe, Tampa Bay Rays

Josh Lowe only putting up a 126 PF wRC+ last year in AAA as a 23 year old kills a good portion of the hype he probably deserves. The Rays failing to give him more than two plate appearances at the major league level doesn’t help either. However, he was largely getting- for lack of a better term, unlucky in AAA. His xwOBA was two standard deviations above the league average (Roughly top 5% which is equivalent to a ~150 wRC+ in the minors). Those reasons are why Lowe is only ranked here when some data suggests he should be significantly higher. I’m not sure how much weight those reasons should have. I might be over/undervaluing them significantly.

Josh Lowe had a higher hard hit rate last year than Nick Pratto. And Riley Greene. And Julio Rodríguez, the literal best prospect in all of baseball. The only prospect on this list who I know hits the ball hard more often is Oneil Cruz. Josh Lowe has a lot of raw power. His average exit velocity of 91 MPH is admittedly only in the 85th percentile of major leaguers. His Max exit velocity is only ~113 MPH but I’m still more than confident based on the hard-hit rate that the raw power is truly elite.

The game power should be even more elite. Josh Lowe hit a mere 34.2% of his batted balls on the ground. That ranks in the 87th percentile of all minor leaguers. He hits more balls at 95+ than just about anyone. The average flyball at 95+ goes for a home run 37.7% of the time. Josh Lowe has a 39.5% OFFB%. That should result in a metric ton of home runs.

To an extent it does, Josh Lowe was on pace for 30 HR/650 PA last year which even in a hitter-friendly environment is not anything to sneeze at. Except it could and should be so much more. Josh Lowe has the 14th lowest pull rate in all the minors at 34.7% (Min 400 PA; 377 qualifiers).

Not pulling the ball and hitting for power is supposed to be impossible, I’ve detailed that a number of times in this blog so far (Michael Harris is the first I believe). This isn’t just unreasonable core strength like with Moreno, he is genuinely losing something by not pulling the ball. That is why his game power plays down. I’m not counting on a 24 year old drastically boosting his pull rate but there is so much untapped power potential just by adjusting his timing ever so slightly to pull the ball more consistently. If not the power will only play at a plus level. Oh, the horror of it all.

Josh Lower has amazing BABIP skills. Not only does Josh Lowe hit the ball obscenely hard, and have elite feel to hit the ball the opposite way; he also has awesome launch angle tightness. His line-drive rates are a plus as he ranks in the 81st percentile of AAA East at 23.8%. His popup rates are even better with his 3.2% popup rate placing in the top 7% of minor leaguers.

The combination of elite launch angle optimization, elite power, and elite ability to hit the ball the other way could make him genuinely match his .340 career BABIP in the minors in the majors. just based on launch angle, without considering the spray chart or the 80 grade hard-hit rate, he would have a .345 xBACON based on what the league average player does on each batted ball type. That figure alone would be in the top quartile of major leaguers. We’ve been over the impact of hitting the ball hard countless times (Oneil Cruz) and the benefit of opposite field groundballs on BABIP (Bruján I think it was). He’s going to be a BABIP monster even with age adjustments and the QOC competition upgrade nerfing him a fair bit.

Josh Lowe has a good approach too. He has consistently walked at a high rate and doesn’t chase all that much. He even shows above-average aggressiveness when it comes to swinging at balls over the plate. Plus plate discipline doesn’t matter as much with such a great wOBAcon profile but it still is nice to see and gives Lowe multiple routes to success.

The catch here is Josh Lowe has a whiff problem. He whiffs 29.7% of the time despite being an older prospect who camped in AAA this year. With his chase rates where they are, it’s likely those are particularly underwhelming whiff rates in the strike zone. He really struggles with pitches on the outer third of the plate as well and can get dominated by the high heat. The whiff problem will always be there and likely only get worse. I still think it’s an above-average hit tool because of how insane the wOBAcons should be but there is serious hit risk in Lowe that keeps him from a 60 FV.

Josh Lowe is the rare player who should get the chance to play every day for the Rays. He shows literally zero platoon split so deploying him in a platoon with Margot or whoever would be exceptionally foolish. His contact rate is the exact same against both handednesses. His line drive and groundball rate are off by 1%. He’s an everyday player, not just a part.

Josh Lowe is a fine centerfielder, he’s not exceptional, and I’m not even sure that he’s average but he can play there. He has plus arm strength and plus speed. The Kiermaier comparison he earned in his youth are not at all reflective of him now, just like the below-average power he earned then isn’t either. He’s a fine fielder but don’t expect exceptional based on very outdated reports or from stubborn scouts. He’s been statistically below average and that matches my visuals.

Josh Lowe is a good player. Perhaps even a great one. He does everything but make contact (at the plate) at an elite level. He has some of the highest offensive potential on this list. But there are easily exploitable holes in his swing and risk simply due to him being slightly older than most comparable prospects. I’m fairly confident he’ll be a regular but I don’t think a star outcome is realistic despite that being the upside. I hope I’m wrong, Lowe is tons of fun.

41. SP Jack Leiter, Texas Rangers

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either. Stats are as of the draft and not updated with the rest of the MLB campaign unless otherwise noted.

Had you asked me in May, Jack Leiter was the top player in the draft and it wasn’t even close. Not only has Jack Leiter struggled some after his torrid start but I’ve come across some info that has made me completely reassess my opinion on him and has me now considerably less hyped about his potential.

Jack Leiter has an incredible fastball. His best pitch and maybe the best single pitch in the draft depending on how you choose to interpret the data. His fastball is a special pitch. He typically sits more 93–95 MPH touching 97 but in some starts, he’s 95–97 MPH and touching 99 MPH. He also has seven feet of extension on the average fastball which lets it play at a higher effective velocity than his actual velocity. With his mechanics, it’s not hard to see him sitting near that higher velocity range more often than not.

His fastball shape, however, is much more important than his velocity and that is what separates him from the pack. His spin rate is only 2300 RPMs which gives him about 24.5 Bauer Units on the average fastball which is basically MLB average. His fastball is typically thrown with a 1:00 spin axis with near-perfect spin efficiency. That leads to 19.8 inches of induced vertical break on average. Of all pitchers to throw at least 500 fastballs this season at the MLB level, only John Means and Trevor Bauer have more induced vertical break on their heaters.

What really separates his fastball from the pack, however, isn’t just the shape but the angle. His vertical approach angle is historic. Jack Leiter throws from a 5.0 foot vertical release height which is extraordinarily low. Among all pitchers to throw at least 300 fastballs this season, only Alex Wood and Freddy Peralta have a release height as low. No one is lower. The combination of the low release height and elite vertical movement leads to a historic vertical approach angle from a starter. He averages -3.7° on the fastball. Since 2017, the earliest we have VAA data available from, no starting pitcher who threw at least 200 fastballs that year has ever had a VAA that flat. That historic angle lets the fastball really play up in the zone.

Jack Leiter has some issues commanding his fastball, particularly to the arm side and up in the zone. I just am not at all certain those command issues matter much at all. Jack Leiter could throw the fastball down the pipe and it will very rarely wind up a hit. In fact, in 2021, opponents hit .182 with a .455 slugging on the fastball down the dick. (Down the middle). He could sell out for control if need be and be perfectly fine because the fastball traits speak for themselves. There are signs that his command will improve but it doesn’t have to. The fastball traits are too historic for the command to hold it back.

Except they aren’t actually that historic because Vanderbilt is an evil institution that spreads false information for the purposes of propaganda. Jack Leiter has absurd home/road splits and we aren’t talking about results but pitch data. Jack Leiter might have an average release height of a mere five feet but the split for that is fascinating. He has a release height of 4.72 feet at home and 5.63 feet on the road. (Not all road games have trackman which is why that has an average of five feet).

Jack Leiter release point graph from 2021 at Vanderbillt to further prove the splits theory.

His fastball has 20.2 inches of vertical movement at home and only 18.9 inches on the road. 1.3 inches might not sound like a huge difference in movement but it absolutely is. That drops his vertical movement from third in the entire MLB to only 87th percentile if we only look at road games for Leiter. That is a massive difference.

That drop in vertical movement, along with his release height jumping over half a foot from what we previously believed it to be has a major effect on his VAA. He goes from the best VAA ever by a starter to a -4.4°. That takes him into the Trevor Bauer, Max Scherzer, and Brandon Woodruff range of mortality. Yeah, this is still going to be an elite fastball even with him not being completely historic, it’s just only a 70 rather than the 80 I previously thought it to be. This still might be the best pitch in the entire draft just not the best in the entire minors anymore.

His secondaries are nowhere near the quality of his ethereal fastball but they are quality pitches in their own right. The slider is the best of those secondaries. He throws the pitch with heavy gyro in the low eighties. His spin efficiency on the pitch is extremely low, sitting around 25% with a more vertical axis at ~10:30 on average. The shape of the slider leads to very little vertical movement and lets the sweep play up even if it’s not the most in the world. He averages 8.8 inches of horizontal movement and 30.4 inches of drop. Here is a complete list of sliders with less vertical drop and more sweep this season: Luis Patiño, and Heath Hembree. That is a pretty elite company as far as sliders go. This is probably going to be a plus pitch.

There is a chance that his slider might be better than this season-long number too as scary as that might sound. In road games, Jack Leiter averaged 29.6 inches of drop and 11.6 inches of sweep with the slider in road games this season. Here is a complete list of pitchers with as much sweep and as little drop as his: . The least drop by a player with as much horizontal movement as him on the slider is from Lance McCullers who checks in 31.2 and 13.4 inches. His slider shape is tremendous and while I’m grading him based on the season-long pitch data rather than the tiny sample of road games, there is a chance that I’m selling it short because the Vanderbilt trackman is completely terrible.

His curveball in terms of traits is extremely average. He averages 79 MPH with the curveball which is entirely unremarkable. His average spin rate of 2350 RPMs is no better. The pitch has 52.3 inches of drop on average. The MLB average at that velocity range is ~53 inches. His curveball has 9.3 inches of sweep on average. The MLB average at that velocity range is ~9 inches. There is literally nothing at all that stands out when it comes to the curveballs’ inherent traits.

His curveball performs despite very mediocre traits due to elite command over it. As the Pitching Ninja likes to claim it is a “bowel locking curveball.” He’ll drop it in the zone out of the same tunnel as the high heat and split the plate vertically with the fastballs mirror image that is ~15 MPH slower. The deception on the pitch and feel for it gives him a second above-average secondary pitch.

His changeup is his worst secondary offering but it still projects as an average pitch at the big league level. He throws the changeup sparingly, only using it 3.3% of the time in 2021 but it has some solid traits. He averages 12.5 inches of an induced vertical break on the changeup. Of all 127 pitchers to throw at least 100 changeups this season, that would be the 10th most IVB in the majors this year. The IVB is a positive number so we are measuring rise not drop meaning his changeup doesn’t drop.

He doesn’t get much horizontal movement as his 13 inches of run on the changeup is in the bottom quartile of the league but the vertical shape is very good. The changeup also has an inherent floor because his low release height is always going to make it easy to flatten out the changeup and limit the drop on it. The lack of feel for the pitch has the changeup only graded out as average but the traits are there that it could very realistically develop into a plus pitch with time and effort.

His supplementary skills are not as good as the pure stuff which is what has him a tier below Watson and Mayer. His batted ball profile is only average after taking a step back in that department this season. He gives up a lot of aerial contact and well it is low-quality aerial contact, it still leaves him vulnerable to the longball. His fastball suggests that he should have elite popup rates and well he hasn’t yet, I still believe he will eventually so I have him as an average batted ball guy despite the FaBIO fundamentals suggesting he is below-average.

Jack Leiter is undersized which leads to some workload concerns with scouts; workload concerns that were compounded when Leiter had to skip a start to recuperate during the long season. However, his mechanics are so technically sound with no red flags and very efficient force generation, that I find it near impossible to be concerned with his stamina. It’s also worth noting that he was averaging 25 BF/G this year so it’s not like he’s not pitching deep into games or anything.

His command can wane and in general, repeatability of mechanics doesn’t actually have much effect on command so I don’t have him as more than average there. He doesn’t have to be. The stuff will absolutely play and the so-so supplementary skills will be made largely irrelevant because of it as long as he strikes out 30% of batters like I fully expect him to. This is an impact arm that with further refinement, could easily sit at the top of a rotation. He got the highest signing bonus in the draft and he’s probably worth it (Except Watson was right there). If he proves the road games and not the home ones were the fluke data sample then he could be argued as the best pitching prospect in baseball next year. For now, he’s only the best of the 55 FV arms, however.

42. CF Steven Kwan, Cleveland Guardians

Steven Kwan is probably the player whose ranking I wrestled with the most of any prospect in the game. From a statistical standpoint, he’s the safest prospect on the planet and also has a high ceiling. However, his pedigree is garbage and despite the seemingly safe profile, there is still risk the bat doesn’t actualize. Ultimately, I opted to put him in the same bucket of prospect I had the similarly built Nick Madrigal in last year.

The hit tool is incredible. If Tyler Freeman does not have the best hit tool in the minors then his teammate Kwan does. Steven Kwan led the minors in whiff rate last year at 7.6%. That seems like a pretty great thing to do. He also had the 5th lowest swinging-strike rate by a minor leaguer in a single season ever. I don’t have to go into detail here. He made contact at an absurd rate and will continue to do so. This is not complicated.

Steven Kwan also has an amazing approach at the plate. His whiffs don’t just come from elite bat control and timing but because of elite swing decisions. Steven Kwan chases less than 20% of the time. As such, he walks a lot even with the lack of power. He’s also running plus zone-swing rates to boot.

This often doesn’t translate to elite walk rates- Nick Madrigal never chased (Not to the same extent) but is walking less than 5% of the time in his MLB career. This is because Nick Madrigal only hits singles- a walk is just as scary as the 90th percentile outcome of him making contact. There is no reason to not pump a fastball down the middle when behind in the count.

I think there is a decent chance Kwan avoids repeating Madrigal’s flaw in that regard. Steven Kwan has plus BABIP skills- granted so did Madrigal but the hows are completely different. Madrigal runs high BABIPs by going to the opposite field on groundballs at an elite clip as well as never popping up. Kwan does both of those things at an above-average rate but the difference maker boils down to his aptititude for punching balls in the gap.

Steven Kwan had a 25.8% line drive rate last year. That is in the 93rd percentile of all minor leaguers. Unlike the opposite field groundballs that Madrigal favors (.023 ISO), Kwan’s preferred method of posting high BABIPs often goes for extra base hits (.208 ISO). The threat of something more dangerous than a walk should let the approach play as at least average. David Fletcher is proof of concept as in 2019 and 2020 despite some of the worst EVs in the league he still got walks because he hit line drives at an elite clip.

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I also think Steven Kwan has more power than Fletcher, Madrigal, and their ilk- in games at least. Steven Kwan does not hit the ball particularly hard. In fact, I would be inclined to say the opposite. His Max EV is only 106 MPH. That is in the Dee Gordon/David Fletcher/Tommy La Stella range. The last name is the one I want to highlight.

Tommy La Stella does not hit the ball hard- he never really has. Since, joining the Angels in 2019, La Stella has shown newfound plus feel to elevate and pull his aerial contact. His home runs are mostly wall scrapers to the shortest part of the ballpark but there’s not any extra runs provided if you hit the ball 500 feet. In that three year span since joining the Angels, La Stella has averaged 23 HR/650 PA. Steven Kwan likewise has plus feel to elevate. Somehow, coincidentally, Kwan played at a 23 HR/650 PA pace last year. That is a somewhat realistically obtainable outcome for Kwan in the right ballpark.

Let’s look at the 90th percentile where Steven Kwan develops average power in games. If Steven Kwan had average power he would have a 75th percentile wOBAcon based on his batted ball buckets (LD%, PU%, GB%, OFFB%). The names above him all have plus or better power. If you adjust everyone to have average power (Credit: Ryan Blake) then he is in the top 10% of the league.

If you then consider his strikeout, walk, and HBP rates all to be perfect representations of his skill in the majors then he would be expected to have a .403 wOBA with average power. That would have been fourth in the entire MLB last year behind only Juan Soto, Bryce Harper, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Average power is not likely but it’s not impossible either- he’s not quite Madrigal and if it comes he’d be a top ten hitter in the game easily.

Steven Kwan is not a highly valued defender but he’s certainly serviceable. Center field is arguably the second most valuable position on the diamond (Not counting pitcher obviously) and Kwan should be average out there. He has plus speed that is sufficient for the position and is great at tracking tough flyballs. He has some issues with the initial burst but I don’t think it’s crippling. The arm strength is only average so some scouts would rather use him in left field.

I’m fairly optimistic that Steven Kwan will avoid the pitfalls of his former teammate Nick Madrigal and the floor really isn’t at all lower. Nick Madrigal is a 110 wRC+ and I think Kwan will likely settle in somewhere in that range as well. The extra base upside is what has me actually believing Kwan more than the proven Madrigal at this point (Madrigal is low 55 if he was eligible). I like Kwan quite a bit more than the FV reflects but the profile is too lifeless for lack of a better term to justify ranking him any higher than this.

43. LF Jairo Pomares, San Francisco Giants

It’s totally a coincidence but I think it is absolutely perfect that Steven Kwan and Jairo Pomares are back to back on this list. They are polar opposites and you won’t find any two position player prospects less alike than them.

Jairo Pomares is a juxtaposition of a player. He whiffs 33.1% of the time and because of that, despite the extreme whiff rates, I know some scouts who actually think he has the best hit tool in the Giants system. I would definitely put Matos #1, and probably Ismael Munguia (12.9% whiff rate is crazy) but I don’t disagree with the sentiment. In spite of the whiffs, Jairo Pomares has a plus hit tool.

To understand what makes Pomares such a graeat hitter we actually have to rewind and start with his power. The raw power is explosive. He has some of the best bat speed in all of the minors and unreal core strength to fish out even pitches in the dirt and drive them over the wall. He has plus feel for elevation and the raw punch to make the most of it.

Jairo Pomares has a Max EV of 115.5 MPH. That is in the 96th percentile of max exit velocity. I also have the data for nine other batted balls that he has hit in excess of 111 MPH. His 95th percentile exit velocity is 112.7 MPH. That would have tied with Ronald Acuña Jr. for sixth in the majors last year.

Through Twiter, there is another 7 batted ball events that we have the exit velocities for. Those 17 batted balls give us enough data to calculate that he has a Top 8th EV of 111.1 MPH. Driveline has done studies on top 8th EV and found it’s the single most illustrative number of game power. Pomares would have ranked fifth in the majors in Top 8th EV last year behind only Giancarlo Stanton, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Aaron Judge, Ronald Acuña Jr., and tied with Miguel Sanó.

This is consistent hard contact that no one except for probably Oneil Cruz can match in the minor leagues. The game power is off the charts because this is all coming from a player with a 38.5% groundball rate. He’s a 70 game/70 raw power guy and I’m almost certainly underselling him in that regard. He might now have the 80 max strength but it will play without question in games and the impact of such will be incredibly loud.

Now back to the hit tool, Jairo Pomares has the best BAcon skills in the entire minor leagues. The whiff rates are exaggerated by Pomares tendency to swing at garbage pitches. He chased upwards of 40% of the time last season. That sky high chase rate inflates his whiff rates despite his very high contact rates outside of the zone (Relatively). He has fantastic plate coverage and can reach just about anything. His contact rates are only slightly below-average on pitches in the zone so he has more of a recognition/tracking issue then a hole in his swing.

Jajro Pomares has absurdly good feel for flush contact. He flattens up to ~ -23° on pitches up in the zone, steepens slightly to pitches in the middle at ~ -33° and on pitches down he decides to play golf and steepens his swing path to ~ -46°. If he guesses the pitch location wrong it’s an ugly whiff and he guesses wrong more than you would like. Even when he guesses right he still whiffs some down in the zone because his target is so small.

He is literally guessing to be clear. From what I can tell, the approach is completely incoherent. He guesses the pitch type and location and prays he is right. When he is right he dominates, when he’s wrong he whiffs. The driving factor in the whiff rates is a guessing game. Guess hitters usually are not good but they’re often stable moving up levels because they’re still just guessing. If he sits fastball 90% of the time he’d still be successful because of the contact quality.

I would not consider it likely, but there is absolutely a possibility that his strikeout rates drop in the major leagues. Jairo Pomares is a guess hitter facing a bunch of unknowns right now. He doesn’t know what half his opponents throw and they don’t even know where they are throwing it. In the majors he would have access to all of that information that could make guessing much easier. He would also have access to a team of coaches and if he stays with the Giants, a pitching machine designed to throw what he will face in batting practice before games. There’s a scenario where those new advantages takes him to even loftier heights.

Jairo Pomares also has elite launch angle optimization. He hits a lot of line drives (Relative to his scorers- it’s technically average rates), and rarely pops out. He doesn’t pull the ball too much but instead is well balanced and sprays it to all fields as he has more than enough raw pop to go yard when hitting it the other way. His groundballs are of the hard and high variety that more often go for hits and his flyballs are typically lower and distance over hang time oriented. His Sweet-Spot% is undoubtedly ludicrous because it feels like every batted ball from him in most games falls in that range.

So what happens when you pair 70 grade power, 70 grade plate coverage, 70 grade flush contact, and 70 grade launch angle optimization? You make get the highest quality contact on the planet. Jairo Pomares had a .470 BAcon last year. That would have not only lead the majors last year; it would have been the second highest single season mark since 2008 (As far as I can search on statcast). Fernando Tatis Jr. set the record in 2019 at .482. Third place is Aaron Judge at .464 in 2017. That is insane to say the least.

Jairo Pomares does nearly as well when you start properly valuing extra base hits. His wOBAcon last year was .575. Shohei Ohtani lead the MLB last year at .550. Jairo Pomares’ .575 mark would have been the fifth best single season since 2008 behind only 2017 Judge, 2017 JD Martinez, 2019 Sanó, and Chris Davis in both 2008 and 2013. That is elite company to be in and even if Pomarez was in the minors, it’s still absurdly impressive. Especially when you realize his wRC+ goes up after you adjust for park factors.

Jairo Pomares is at his best when he is uber aggressive at the plate. If the Giants are smart they won’t attempt to break him by forcing him to develop an approach. The Braves had this profile without the power and broke him by forcing him to be patient. This kind of player is only hurt by taking pitches and walking more.

Let’s do some fun math. Jairo Pomares made 325 plate appearances last year. He had a .430 wOBA on the back of a .575 wOBAcon in 215 batted balls, 16 walks, 7 hit by pitches, and 87 strikeouts. Let’s lock in those hit by pitch numbers for the sake of simplicity. Now let’s imagine a patient Jairo Pomares, one who walks 50 times more than he does right now. That player has a 20.3% walk rate. The cost of walking 20.3% of the time instead of under 5% is simply 10 extra strikeouts. Surely that is a worthwhile tradeoff, right? He would have the highest walk rate in the game, one of the best wOBAcons, and still have a strikeout rate under 30%!

His wOBA would come out as… .430. His wOBA does not go up at all by subtracting 60 batted balls and turning them into 50 walks and 10 strikeouts. A 5:1 BB/K ratio is the break even point. If you use a 49/10 ratio he is only a .429. A walk has a wOBA of .692. Any batted ball has a wOBA of .575 for Jairo Pomares.

Even if you’re skeptical of his wOBAcon being repeatable- a totally reasonable thing to be; the same logic applies to a lesser extent. If we replace wOBAcon with @WillSugeStats xwOBAcon estimate (Ask him about what goes into it), Jairo Pomares is “only” at .529. For it to be worthwhile for Pomares to change his approach, Pomares would have to add walks at a 3.4 BB/K ratio. That is still pretty much entirely unfeasible so he’s better off sticking with the uber aggresive approach he has now.

If walking more means his strikeout rate goes up at all- and it will because of called strikes, then you are moving backwards. He wouldn’t add walks at a 5/1 ratio to strikeouts. That is an outlandish idea. He’d be lucky if he added 3/1 and that would drop his wOBA. The best approach is his current one unless the contact rates improve drastically. Do not break him by trying to make him something he is not. (The same philosophy is applicable to guys like Luis Robert, and Javier Báez)

Jairo Pomares is a left fielder only. He’s an average runner with an average arm. The defensive value he provides will be close to zero. That is totally fine because Pomares is going to mash. He will look unconventional doing so and probably cause people to tear out their hair but at the end of the day when he’s hitting something like .280/.310/.560 it’ll be hard to complain too much.

44. 2B Nick Yorke, Boston Red Sox

Remember when everyone considered Nick Yorke a huge reach in the first round? Well, everyone but me. He had one of the best 2021 campaigns of any prospect and now no one doubts the value of that selection at all.

The hit tool is phenomenal. Yorke does not whiff very often at a 22.8% clip between Low A and High A as a 19 year old. His swing is short and sweet- direct to the ball and he has elite control of the bat. The ability to hit spin is very much present and he is making wise swing decisions. He gets the barrel in the zone early and that lets him really widen his window of opportunity.

As good as he is at just making contact, the BABIP skills are what sets Yorke apart. Nick Yorke has plus feel for optimizing his launch angles. He paired a 90th percentile line drive rate last season with a below-average popup rate. Just based on launch angles, that is a .347 xBACON. That would be in the 70th percentile of big leaguers. This does not account for power or sprays at all.

The spray charts for Nick Yorke are very extreme. Nick York does not ever pull the ball. His pull rate is the second lowest in all of minor league baseball (Min 420 PA). Oppsosite field groundballs go for hits thrice as often as their pulled counterparts. Yorke is the textbook definition of a spray hitter. He pulls the ball 34% of the time, goes the other way 35% of the time, and hits it up the middle the other 31%. The distributions are almost perfectly even so there is no defensive alignment that can beat him. He’ll run high BABIPs as a result.

Nick Yorke also has plus pitch tracking and adjusts based on the pitch location and type. He alters his lead leg positioning based on pitch type and his bat angle is dependent on pitch height. His swing averages a VBA of ~-26° on pitches up and ~-39° on pitches down. The ability to adjust enhances contact quality, frequency, and reduces side spin in favor of backspin on his batted balls. There is a non-zero chance that Nick York is a .350 BABIP guy most years and he will likely also be running something like an 18% K%.

Sure, there is a real shot at a potentially 80 grade hit tool from Yorke, but I would rather see him develop some actually useable game power. Nick Yorke has above-average raw power. His Maximum exit velocity is ~110 MPH. That is great! His average exit velocity is 88 MPH- that is almost exactly the MLB average. Nick Yorke can hit the ball hard. He has average feel to elevate.

The game power still plays as below-average because he can’t ever pull the ball. Pulled flyballs go for home runs seven times as often as their opposite field counterparts. His lack of pulled contact deflates the average EV as well. If Nick Yorke wants to be a star, he should trade some of that ridiculous BABIP skill for more pulled contact in order to help the power play.

Nick Yorke doesn’t provide a lot of defensive value. He plays a fairly replaceable position defensively in second base. He’s just about average there and his athleticism is similarly average. He also has pretty average arm strength- maybe a tick above. Yorke’s value comes from his bat, fortunately. I’m extremely confident that Yorke will hit.

45. SP Daniel Espino, Cleveland Guardians

It feels like a crime for Daniel Espino to only rise 13 spots after the season he had but a lot of his previous ranking was me projecting a similar performance to what we saw last year. The same limitations he had last year remain concerns so despite his dominance, and growth, he only rises in proportion to being one year closer to the big leagues.

The fastball lights up the radar gun. He averages 97 MPH on it and has touched 102 MPH in the past. Outside of velocity, the fastball traits are not all that. The pitch has equal parts tail and ride- the latter being below-average for a major leaguer. The pitch still has a good VAA because of velocity and a 5.8 foot release height but it’s nothing special. Despite having premium velocity, it is only a plus pitch.

The slider makes up for all the ineptness of the fastball and then some. The slider wasn’t just dominant last year but it was the single most overpowering pitch in all the minors in 2021. The slider posted an unfathomable 67% whiff rate and a much less impressive 72% strike rate.

That whiff rate would have been the highest of any slider thrown 100+ times last year. Coming in second would be Jacob deGrom himself at 58.1%. The pitch would have also been first of all pitches thrown 110+ times last year although second place José Alvarado’s cutter is nipping at his heels at 66.2%. If we raise the minimum to 170 pitches then Craig Kimbrel’s curveball is in second at 59.3%. Espino is missing bats at a ridiculous rate, to say the least. His strike rate of 72% is “only” on par with the 9th best slider in that field (394 qualifiers).

The slider is already maxed out developmentally but it’s also already the single most dominant offering in minor league baseball so who cares. The slider shape isn’t what you might expect based on results. He throws the slider very hard at 87 MPH on average. The pitch has an absurdly high gyro angle. The ensuing pitch spins like a wiffleball and falls through the zone, missing batting at an absurd clip in the process.

On paper, the movement sucks with very little sweep but it doesn’t need to move to play because the bullet spin and vertical depth is so good- and it plays off the fastball. The lack of sweep also makes it viable against left handed bats, as does his ability to locate it all over the strike zone. The pitch will dominate anyone he could ever face and if you question that fact then you are just stupid.

The curveball is far from fantastic. He throws it in the 75–78 MPH bucket with good depth. He lacks the power to miss bats and right now his gets somewhat humpy. In the past, he’s flashed a harder variant but I think it’s actually worse than the slow one despite my usual preferences for that pitch.

The hard curve was just largely inefficient and there was never a spot where it was better suited for the situation than the soul-stealing slider. The slower variant at least has a place as a change of pace offering. He has good feel for spinning a curveball as he averages just over 2600 RPMs on it but that’s most of what it has going for it. I have a loose average grade on the curve, on the lower side of average at that.

The changeup is extremely inconsistent. He sits 87–90 MPH on it which puts home at about 8 MPH of velo separation on average- slightly above-average for the cambio. The pitch flashes really good parachute movement at times but when he’s not on his A-game it just hangs up and gets crushed. I’m a fool so with his revamped arm action, I think the deception plays up considerably so it’s an above-average projection.

Daniel Espino completely overhauled his delivery since being drafted. He was once massively critiqued for a very long arm action in the back and a flat arm that never fully got up. He’s managed to shorten up that plunge in his arm action, and now gets his arm up before his lead leg lands. Surprisingly, the mechanical tweaks, have not affected his ability to create elite hip-shoulder separation at all and his velocity hasn’t dwindled in the slightest. The new motion should but a lot less stress on his elbow.

With his revamped throwing motion, Espino saw some gains in his control/command last year. The walk rate was still below-average but he stopped hitting batters and spiking balls in the dirt. FaBIO which adjusts for his opponents and league-level has him with 54th percentile control. Considering his revamped delivery, and the elite feel for throwing the slider for strikes, I believe in the control gains entirely and now have him projected as average in that regard.

The batted ball profile is the opposite of sexy. Espino was in the 40th percentile range for groundball rate, popup rate, and line drive rate. The fastball lacks standout traits in any field and his secondaries are all whiff centric. He’s fine from a contact quality perspective but he’s probably below-average now.

Daniel Espino has some development left to do but he’s a small step away from true greatness. If Espino can take the next step in optimizing his fastball’s movement profile and get the changeup some consistency then he probably will top the list of pitching prospects next year. The small gains in control this year helped but he still has to make one more leap to be truly elite. For now, he’s a high variance role 55 with some relief risk (Slider guarantees he would be a high leverage arm, and likely one of the best ones).

46. CF Colton Cowser, Baltimore Orioles

I’m not sure that I’ve ever been more wrong about a draftee. Not mistaken or not predicted development, no false information- I was just outright wrong. I have zero clue what I was thinking when I wrote him up just eight short months ago. I have no clue why he ranked as low as he did. I can’t justify that ranking and I don’t want to.

Okay, I know the basics of where I was coming from. I got lazy. I saw that he only hit .354/.460/.608 in one of the worst conferences in D1 baseball and that is only a 186 OPS+. I decided before I even watched him play that he couldn’t be good because he wasn’t even the best hitter in the terrible Southland conference- heck, you could even argue he wasn’t the best hitter on his team. It was lazy analysis on my part and I hate myself for doing so. I assumed his performance was just him beating up on bad pitching and wouldn’t translate. I was wrong and never should have thought that in the first place.

Colton Cowser was the best player on the field every time he played a game in College. He did just as good if not better against elite pitching. I don’t know why he didn’t hit .500 or whatever against guys throwing 85 MPH with no movement but I do know that he posted a 4% swinging-strike rate against fastballs at 93 MPH+ last year on 75 pitches.

No major league hitter saw more pitches 93 MPH+ last year and whiffed as little. Nick Madrigal led the league at 5.1%. Breyvic Valera was at 3.4% but only saw 58 fastballs that hard. Obviously, major league fastballs are better than college ones- even when filtered by velocity but that is still unfathomably good. Suffice, to say, the ability to hit velocity that plagues most small school prospects isn’t even a consideration for Cowser.

Colton Cowser also has the ability to hit good breaking balls. He has shown no struggle with both recognizing and hitting spin despite his limited exposure. Cowser was elite with Team USA where he regularly saw above-average breaking stuff. He did well in his few chances against the big schools.

Colton Cowser even if we don’t filter to just look at good pitching was exemplary in college by the under the hood numbers, He only whiffed 14% of the time in his college career- part of that was his competition quality maybe but we can safely say it wasn’t at all now. He posted a mere 16.6% whiff rate in Low-A against some of the best competition he’s ever seen.

There was no shift in his identity in Low-A. He didn’t sell out for contact and that’s why the whiff rate didn’t rise. Cowser just tends to play to the level of his competition. His chase rate was likewise 14% in College and barely jumped (Less than 20% per PLive) in his first taste of the minors.

He continued stinging the ball in the gaps after the draft with him actually posting the highest line drive rate of his life against the best competition he ever faced in Low A- over 35% and small samples aside that is absurd. Colton Cowser showed that same complete inability to pop up. His tendency to avoid groundball contact remained the same. He displayed the same aversion to pulling the ball. He still made consistently flush contact.

Cowser didn’t do anything differently, he just kept doing the exact same thing at a higher level without missing a beat. This is an elite hit tool and I feel like a dumbass for not noticing it before. I don’t know if I should have perfectly predicted this but I was still too pessimistic.

I won’t beat myself up overly much for being wrong about Colton Cowser’s power. Colton Cowser only posted a Max EV of 105.2 MPH in College. His average EV was good at 90.2 MPH but not spectacular. I was missing important context with those numbers, however. His school didn’t have a trackman installed. Most of his opponents didn’t either. All of his batted ball data comes against good pitchers in a small sample because those are the ones with the technology.

After being drafted, Colton Cowser posted a batted ball with an EV of 108 MPH on two occasions. In the same game actually. I suspect that the power was always there- the visual power cosmetics are very much present; he just lacked the metrics to back it up. Cowser’s now made it clear that he has above-average raw power. The game power is still only average because of the lack of pulled contact but I will not be at all surprised when it gets to above-average or even plus in time. Especially, when you consider his reported 80-grade work ethic.

Defensively Colton Cowser isn’t all that but he’ll likely be an above-average centerfielder. Colton Cowser is a plus runner with a quick first step. He can cover more ground than most centerfielders with his speed and he also runs solid routes. Colton Cowser also has that superhero gene where he will lay out for a ball in the gap and do something impossible. He can struggle to backpedal on balls over his head but if he plays deep that won’t be much of an issue. His arm, however, is below-average although the accuracy makes up for some of that.

Colton Cowser is the complete package. He packages elite contact skills with great BABIP skills. He has above-average raw power that has room to grow further. He has one of the best approaches in all the minors. He’s a true centerfielder. Cowser has both a high floor and a high ceiling. I will not be at all surprised if he reaches the majors this year, even if 2023 is more likely.

47. CF Robert Hassell III, San Diego Padres

Robert Hassell checks just about every box you could ever imagine. He is a five tool phenom. He might lack one carrying elite tool that would make him a god, his collection of 50+ across the board with a handful of 60s should still make him an above-average regular.

As a human being who has at least a trace of sanity, I adore the sweetness of Robert Hassell’s swing. The stroke is one that you can watch on loop for hours. It’s so smooth and efficient. He’s quick to the ball and gets the barrel in the zone early on to lengthen his windows of opportunity and let him do more damage to the opposite field.

He’s direct in his bat path and it’s hard to see his whiff rate of 25.4% not getting not just not worse- but actually improving as he climbs the ladder. He has an elite feel for tracking pitches and while he does chase sometimes, his ability to make flush contact hints at the underlying elite pitch tracking that could translate to high walk rates in the future.

He has elite barrel accuracy and produces flush contact on his swing planes- even if only a tick above-average in angle- ~25° on pitches up and ~41° on pitches down. The frequency for which he makes that contact while flush is what makes him stand out more than his angles. He is consistently squaring balls up and hitting with ideal spin characteristics.

Robert Hassell III has very flat attack angles. These results in hardly any popups but also a 25th percentile groundball rate. In a similar vein, Robert Hassell III has elite feel for hitting the ball the other way, doing so only 0.9% less than he pulled the ball. This like the former skill works in the positive for Hassell’s BABIP but works against him in the power department and stops him from getting to all of his raw power in game.

Fortunately, for Robert Hassell III, he has plus raw power. His maximum exit velocity is somewhere in the ~112 MPH range. His average exit velocity was right in line with the MLB average at 88 MPH despite his inability to pull the ball. He’s a strong rotator with great bat speed. It’s not the instant acceleration of a Gabriel Moreno type who shows elite power the other way but it’s still going to be plus power if he starts to elevate, pull, and celebrate.

Part of this is an approach thing- most of his swings come against pitches higher in the strike zone- particularly high fastballs that he feasts on. Part of this is also attack angles and being aggresively pushed through the minors. The combination of Pull issues and elevation issues pushes the game power projection down to a 50 despite plus raw but I full heartedly believe that can change.

Robert Hassell III is likely to stick in centerfield. He’s a plus or better runner with good acceleration and bursts. His route running is solid and he shows great athleticism in the field. It’s possible he fills in his frame and is pushed to a corner but the power gains would be more than worthwhile in all likelihood. His arm is a plus tool with big time power behind it and some accuracy troubles.

I think Robert Hassell III is caught in the middle of a few groups and that adversely affects his ranking. He’s the safe up the middle player with a well rounded skillset but he’s also a ways off from the majors. He’s a hit tool centric player without an exceptional hit tool but “only” a plus. He’s a jack of all trades and master of none that has a chance that has the makeup and athleticism to potentially become a master of all.

48. SP DL Hall, Baltimore Orioles

DL Hall was quite possibly the single most dominant pitcher in the minors when he was on the field last year. Unfortunately, he spend the majority of the season on his namesake with elbow troubles so he only faced 128 batters all year. That pun doesn’t really work now that it’s the injured list ugh.

The fastball is wow. The results were maybe the best of any fastball in all the minor leagues with a 40% whiff rate against it and that wasn’t just because all the swing were chases. Hall had a strike rate just below 70% on the heater as he aggressively filled the zone.

The fastball averaged 97.1 MPH last year. That would have been the sixth hardest in the majors of any starting pitcher last year who threw at least 500 pitches. More specifically, with a minimum of one pitch, that is the hardest by a left handed starting pitcher and is eighth amongst all left handed throwers period.

The pitch has awesome movement as well. He throws it with above-average vertical movement as he’ll average 16.9 inches of induced vertical break (League average is 15.6). The fastball also has 7.1 inches of horizontal movement which is right around league average for a fastball.

What really makes the fastball special is his VAA. DL Hall throws his fastball with above-average vertical movement from a ~5.3 foot vertical release point. The fastball as a result has a -4.4° VAA which is in the 95th percentile. When you pair elite VAA with elite velocity you get something special.

This is not a comp. This is not a comp. I am not saying DL Hall will be this player. However, I have to point out the fastball is nearly the mirror image (as in flipped haha) of the best fastball on the planet; that being Jacob deGroms- particularly the 2019 variant. deGrom threw his fastball on a 12:45 spin axis (Hall is inversed 11:15) with a spin rate of ~2400 RPMs (2377 for deGrom, 2431 for Hall). deGrom in 2019 threw his fastball from 5.5 feet on average with 16.3 inches of IVB and -6.2 inches horizontally. Additionally, he averaged 97 MPH on his fastball. deGrom is God because of command and how the fastball plays off the slider, not just pure stuff but it’s still very encouraging to see this from Hall.

The secondary stuff is almost as impressive as the fastball. The slider is a plus pitch and arguably better. He throws it at 84.9 MPH with elite spin rates- averaging 2660 RPMs. The pitch has 92nd percentile drop and also pairs that with above-average sweep. He has a 4:00 spin axis on it. That doesn’t sound important but it will be later so remember it. The pitch misses bats at an absurd clip and should be his out pitch at the big league level.

DL Hall did the one thing I’d almost never reccomend doing to a curveball this year. He subtracted velocity from it. The Curveball was elite before as the power let it miss bats at a ridiculous clip but now he’s turned one plus breaking ball into two because of that change.

His curveball has a 4:30 spin axis- nearly identical to the slider. His spin rate is only 100 RPMs higher on the curve. He throws it 6 MPH slower. The result is a pitch that shares a tunnel with the slider all the way to the plate and it completely indiscernable from one another until the last second. But you can’t sit on both due to the velocity difference and the fact that the curve has twice as much horizontal movement while still possessing plus vertical depth because it trades gyrospin for topspin. The two pitches alone are pluses but you could argue higher together. I won’t- but you could.

The changeup is exemplerary. He throws it 11.9 MPH slower than his fastball with limited drop and plus fade. The result is a heavy split offering that decimates right handed bats as a kind of reverse slider. It’s his third plus secondary and like literally every pitch he threw this year had a 40%+ whiff rate.

The well rounded four pitch arsenal of DL Hall eliminates any relief risk that people think there might be because of his dogwater control. He has the pitch to matchup against any hitter of the game. If they sit high then they die against the curve. If they’re right handed the changeup is a guillotine. If they’re left handed the slider is unhittable. If they sit low they die to the fastball. There is no approach that beats Hall in his entirety.

DL Hall for the first time showed an elite batted ball profile last year. He had a groundball rate north of 60% and elite line drive rates as well. I’m naturally very skeptical of the groundball improvements being legitimate with his 95th percentile VAA. That would suggest he is still pitching up and the movement profile of the fastball still suggests it’s not a groundball pitch.

The surge in groundballs could possibly be contibuted to more groundball contact off his breaking balls down but I’m skeptical that will continue in both a larger sample size and at a higher level. Even if DL Hall is only an average batted ball guy, that is still a big step forward from where he was last year and with his bat missing capabilities enough to slot him in in the front of the rotation.

Even with the severe control limitations this is clearly a front of the rotation arm. Players with four plus pitches are incredibly rare. There are multiple paths to optimization for Hall to step up and become a true #1 starter. The question for DL Hall is simply can he stay healthy enough to start? The jury is still very much out on that one still.

49. C/3B MJ Melendez, Kansas City Royals

MJ Melendez is a certifiable stud- at least at the plate. Melendez had the second highest PF wRC+ in the entire minors by a player under 25 with 300+ PA at a blistering 176 mark. That one player higher than him is the best prospect in all of baseball, Julio Rodriguez. He did that as a 22 year old splitting time between AA and AAA.

The at the plate part of calling Melendez a stud needs to be emphasized again. Behind it there are certainly some questions that will need to be answered in the short term. I’ve heard less than positive reports about his pitch framing- I’ve even heard he’s worse than Salvy in that regard. Statistically, his framing is fine but statistically, Jake Rogers was the best framer of all time at the same level and he’s only actually been a 55. I also don’t give a shit about his pitch framing in the long term. ABS is inevitable and when that comes it’ll be irrelevant.

What will matter is blocking and throwing (Just as much of an impact as in the now, obviously, just more proportionally; still largely an inconsequential defensive position). Melendez does both of those things well. He has plus arm strength and tremendous arm accuracy.

His pitch blocking is harder to assess but he’s mobile even from a one knee setup and has athleticism. Even from one knee he only allowed 7 passed balls in 81 games this past year. That sounds bad but in the context of the minors, it’s actually pretty good as the passed ball rate is nearly double that of the MLB. The other thing that will be important for catchers to do with ABS is rake and Melendez does that more than almost any other catching prospect.

I already mentioned that Melendez was second in the entirety of minor league baseball in PF wRC+, and I am happy to inform you that the under the hood numbers mostly back up his loud results. A 29.2% whiff rate is not exceptional- it’s average but context matters and this is a 22 year old catcher in the highest levels of the minors. He’s better than the whiff rate would indicate.

The approach is awesome and I expect that he will run plus walk rates in his prime. Melendez was at a very advanced level last year but still ran plus walk rates and above-average chase rates. His swing right is right about league average so he’s clearly making good swing decisions and not just being overly passive. He actually doesn’t strike out as often as you would expect either. MJ has some feel for picking up spin and solid pitch tracking skills.

Most of MJ Melendez’s damage comes on the high fastball. He has some whiff issues on breaking balls down but I’m more concerned about the contact quality on low pitches. In all of my looks; most of his damage is coming off the high fastball. He still makes contact on low stuff but most of it is swung over the top of and bashed into the ground or he misses the barrel and hits a lazy flyball.

He has average feel for flush contact with VBA’s of ~-27° on pitches up, ~-31° on pitches down the pipe, and ~-36° on pitches down. He gets to those low pitches by collapsing his back side and driving hard off his lead leg. Logically, I feel like that should cost him power and in my small sample looks it seemingly has. That doesn’t mean it is; there are exceptions to every rule and I’m going off a very small sample since he doesn’t swing very often at the low pitch in my looks.

The sheer amount of pitches he swings at up in the zone will unfortunately depress his BABIP’s some. There are just too many popups and not enough line drive support to balance it out, even if the high groundballs are a difference maker.

MJ Melendez has loud power. His Max EV is in the ~112 MPH range and his average EV is only 91 MPH. The power is consistent and effective. He’s a fantastic rotator with bat speed and core strength. He pairs that plus power with elite feel to elevate as he only posted a 34% groundball rate last year.

He’s not a true talent 30% HR/FB guy but he is a true talent 20% guy. A 20% HR/FB rate with a mere 34% groundball rate is going to result in 30–40 homers in a 162 game season. Granted, we don’t have that this year but you get the idea. It is elite game power.

He’s got some work at third base in games- and pre-game rep in left field. I actually lean towards moving him off catcher long term. I think the bat is too good to let deteriorate behind the plate. He should serve as a backup catcher and probably a regular 3B. Not sure how he’ll look defensively there but I like the athleticism (not speed) and arm so it probably isn’t much worse than average.

The bat won’t be dragged down by heavy fatigue at the hot corner and he’ll really be allowed to cook. This is what superstars look like. His ceiling isn’t quite as high as the production would indicate but he’s one of the best bats in the minors- even if not quite in that upper echelon and he can also catch. I don’t think Melendez is perfect by any stretch and there is hit risk but I’m very confident in the impact potential of his bat.

50. CF Alek Thomas, Arizona Diamondbacks

Alek Thomas has consistently performed while being three years younger than his competition. A career 140 wRC+ over 1272 career PA is incredible and there is no disputing that. I’ve been told by a few sources in the industry that his xwOBA’s back that up. Yet, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why he is producing at such an elite rate. I have Thomas high because of performance + industry feedback; I don’t really see it but I will have egg on my face if I put him any lower and I’m confident in that much.

Alek Thomas often draws rave reviews for his ability to make contact. Except, Alek Thomas whiffed 27% of the time last year. I guess that is good in context to his age and level but it still doesn’t jump off the page. Eye test evaluations really like his ability to hit anything moving east or west but I’ve seen him sturggle with the vertically oriented fastballs and 12–6 curveballs. Players with both of those often eat him for breakfast.

The plate discipline you would think is spectacular with his strikeout rate sitting at only 20% with a walk rate of 10.5%. However, we know that is not true. He has a league average chase rate, and based on his swing%, we can estimate his z-swing is right around league average as well. Again, relative to his youth, we can project out on that but it’s still not spectacular or anything.

The power is a mixed bag. He’s got good bat speed, rotates well, and has posted Max EVs in the ~112 MPH range but it hasn’t played there in games. His average EV last year was only 88 MPH according to Baseball America. That suggests more league average power than the plus juice the max would convey. I lean towards trusting the former figure but it’s not that special of a skill.

Alek Thomas also has almost no feel to elevate. His 53.8% groundball rate is in the 5th percentile of all minor leaguers. He is also pulling the ball at a below-average rate which doesn’t help in the slightest. That isn’t or at least wasn’t just exclusive to groundball contact as in 2019, Thomas only pulled 13.7% of his flyballs. Somehow, in spite of all that, he’s playing at a 20+ homer pace annually and posting ISO’s in the 60–65 grade range. A large part of that is his ballpark- Thomas’ wRC+ drops 23 points when you adjust for park factors in 2021. Even still, I’m probably missing something here.

The main culprit of Thomas’ success is a career .375 BABIP (.370 last year). Thomas strangely enough only has league average line drive rates both this year and historically. He also has fairly average pull rates on groundballs so that’s not the reason either. That also wouldn’t explain the high xwOBA’s either if it was the culprit.

So why does Alek Thomas post such high BABIPs? I would assume it comes down to his lack of mishit balls. Alek Thomas doesn’t pop out often, he only pops out at half of the league-average rate. I would assume even without the data to verify it, he also hits most of his groundballs at higher launch angles. Rather than producing the -20° launch angle groundballs that never go for hits, he sits in the more ideal range closer to and even above zero that more often result in hits.

The only comparable offensive profile I can find to Alek Thomas is Bryan Reynolds. Reynolds elevates a lot more but he significantly outperforms his whiff and chase rates in his strikeout and walk rates. He has the same gap between his average EV (Almost exactly average), and his 112.7 Max EV which is a plus.

Bryan Reynolds also doesn’t popup and runs elite BABIPs in spite of only average line drive rates. His xwOBA is nearly the exact same as his wOBA. Reynolds is a lot better than this ranking but I can’t guarantee Thomas is Reynolds despite the statistical similarities in the profile. I also am not 100% certain that Reynolds can repeat his 2021 and might be more role 60–65 than 70 like he was last year.

Alek Thomas is an above-average centerfielder with plus speed that plays in the form of range. He has good instincts to track flyballs and runs fairly crisp routes. The arm is subpar and maybe fits better in left field but it shouldn’t be enough to force him out of centerfield.

I have no idea what exactly Alek Thomas will look like. The range of good outcomes is somewhere in between Brett Gardner, and Bryan Reynolds, but also like Gregory Polanco or JBJ isn’t that far off statistically in terms of minor league numbers. I’m fairly confident he will make an impact of some sort but how much of one? I’m totally clueless. He’ll be in the MLB this year and we should quickly have a better idea of just what he is.

51. RF Zac Veen, Colorado Rockies

Zac Veen really struggled at the start of the 2021 season when he was in Low A. Across his first 33 games (148 PA), he hit a mere .216/.365/.302 for a 91 wRC+. He turned on the jets after that as he became significantly more aggressive and actually started to do damage. He hit .336/.415/.583 over his final 331 PA for a non-park adjusted 156 wRC+.

Zac Veen has serious power potential. The raw juice he creates is effortless. He’s an extremely powerful rotator with a strong lower half and a burly upper body that can punish baseballs. He had 97th percentile bat speed with the physicality to make something of it in high school. I am happy to report that hasn’t changed at all. He averaged 89 MPH off the bat in 2021, and maxed out in the ~113 MPH range. Both of those figures are already above the MLB average.

The game power is a tick lower despite above-average feel for elevated contact. The driving factor in his flyball rates is the implicit loft created by a VBA of ~34° but it plays below that because he often struggles to pull the ball with regularity. Trevor Story illustrates that pulling flyballs isn’t necessary to succeed in the power department when in Coors field but it would help and I’m projecting him independent of the cursed organization he is in.

Zac Veen has a lengthy swing that has led to swing and miss despite a superb approach. Whiffs will likely always be a part of his game. A 34.3% whiff rate in Low A is ridiculously bad. A lot of those whiffs come against the high fastball as Veen doesn’t really know how to flatten out his swing to make contact up there. His average VBA on high pitches is ~31°. This leads to Veen sturggling to stay on plane with flat fastballs and often swinging underneath them. I think the contact quality should trump the whiff concerns, overall, however.

However, he has excellent launch angle optimization, however, due in part to his VBA. He hits line drives and rarely pops out with a lot of high groundballs as well. He doesn’t pull the ball often either so he should abuse the shift and allow him to run higher BABIPs.

The approach is incredible. Zac Veen has a great eye and rarely chases pitches. He runs a high walk rate without being at all passive at the plate. He needs to get better at waiting for his pitch instead of just swinging at strikes but with his pitch recognition being so advanced I’m not worried.

Zac Veen is shockingly athletic. He stole a lot of bases in 2021 but he was only successful on 68% of his 53 attempts and the rules at Low-A were designed to increase stolen bases so grain of salt. I still think he’s at worse an above-average runner but he could still lose a step.

I like that speed in the outfield quite a bit, although he is definitely not a centerfielder. He posted +12 davenport runs in right field last year and I believe it. The instincts are there and he has an awesome arm. I think Veen could be a plus defender in right field, with some variance in that grade based on how much speed he retains.

I think Zac Veen profiles as a three true outcomes-oriented slugger but one with the BABIP skills to run a .260 average in spite of his strikeout issues. The overall numbers could possibly look something similar to Shohei Ohtani in his career who is a .260/.350/.530 hitter although probably slightly lower in the slugging department (But then higher actually cause Coors). He can’t also pitch but he does play a mean right field. There is a lot of variance here, so he’s only a 55 but he has star potential.

52. SP/RP Ryan Pepiot, Los Angeles Dodgers

Ryan Pepiot has a lot of reliever traits and might be Devin Williams from day one but I would still rather see him in the rotation. The stuff is #1 starter caliber and we know the Dodgers’ success in developing the other stuff so I’m very optimistic about his rotation hopes. Then again, perhaps, he should do a Corbin Burnes/Brandon Woodruff/Freddy Peralta and establish himself as an elite reliever before getting a go as the team’s ace.

The fastball is an electric offering. Pepiot throws it at 94–96 MPH most nights and regularly touched 98 MPH last year. The pitch is more than just velocity as he also pairs that with fantastic movement.

The fastball will sit somewhere between 18–20 inches of induced vertical break according to Pepiot himself. Pepiot also claims that he averages somewhere between 10–15 inches of horizontal movement. That is plus movement on both planes which seems reasonable given the fact that he sits at 2500 RPMs.

Let’s pretend that Pepiot is being modest and averages 20 inches vertically and 15 horizontally. Only 7 fastballs (Min 100 pitches) average as much vertical movement. Only 6 fastballs average that much horizontal movement. Zero pitches have him beat in both.

Now let’s pretend he is being completely honest and sits at 19 inches vertically and 12.5 horizontally to exactly split the difference in his ranges. Only 33 fastballs (517 qualifiers) have as much vertical movement as him. Only 26 fastballs have him beat in horizontal movement. Zero pitchers have more movement both horizontally and vertically.

Let’s now be pessimistic (Realistic) and assume that he was embellishing slightly. Pepiot actually averages the lowest end of his listed ranges. 18 inches of induced vertical break and 10 inches of horizontal movement. That would put him in the 84th percentile of induced vertical break. Horizontally, he would be in the 79th percentile. List of pitchers with more vertical and horizontal break? That would be- not zero? There’s Keegan Akin who sits 3 MPH slower on his fastball and that is it. Still outlier fastball movement profile with the most pessimistic outlook based on the data available.

The fastball also has a fantastic zone-neutral vertical approach angle due to both the plus vertical movement and what is ~ a 5.7 foot vertical release point. That number has an asterisk because the only video with a good camera angle for pixel measurements is a blurry mess. Even still, the movement profile + velocity is enough to easily justify a 65 grade on the heater although the command up in the zone is quite subpar.

The airbender is so so special. He throws his airbender with a four-seam circle change hybrid grip and he can really rip it with his spin rates sitting close to 2600 RPMs on average. The spin axis sits in the 2:45 range and the movement is hellacious. His average induced vertical break on the airbender is in the negatives and his horizontal movement is somewhere between 14 and 18 inches on average.

Only nine changeups in 2021 (Min 100 pitches) had negative induced vertical break last year. Devin Williams was the only one of those with spin rates in the neighborhood of Pepiot. He was also the only one of those nine to average over 15 inches of horizontal movement. If we only look at the lowest ends of Pepiots estimates then he has 96th percentile drop paired with 52nd percentile tail. A pairing only matched by Devin Williams, and Carlos Martínez.

If we only look at the high end estimates then he has 99th percentile drop (Third behind César Valdez and Logan Webb) and 98th percentile fade (Sixth). This pitch has absurd movement. He also has plus velocity separation sitting ~10 MPH slower than his fastball at 95 MPH. The cambio misses bats at an absurd rate as well. This pitch is viable against batters of both-handedness and could very well cause Pepiot to literally be Devin Williams. The command of the airbender is somewhat rough so I have it as tick lower but the upside is an 80.

The slider has morphed from his collegiate days into a slutter hybrid that sits 89–92 MPH. The pitch has between two and six inches of IVB and six to eight inches of sweep. It plays really well off of the fastball and changeup that it tunnels with for a long time as all three of his pitches have late breaking action. It’s comparable to Shawn Armstrong’s cutter in terms of movement and velocity. It works well with his arsenal but I don’t think it’s likely to be much more than average. His changeup is sufficient to deal with OHB so it doesn’t actually have to be.

Ryan Pepiot has work to do when it comes to finding the strike zone. His walk rates are high and he’s often missing terribly which leads to wild pitches and hit by pitches. That along with a somewhat relieverish delivery with crossfire action is why many scouts think Pepiot belongs in relief. I might wind up there long term as well.

The bright side is that Pepiot’s fastball traits are so good that even with him somewhat frequently hanging pitches over the middle, the fastball traits still give him an above-average batted ball profile. He has the perfect tandem of vertical movement for outs in the form of whiffs and popups as well as plus horizontal action to miss barrels and limit the extra base hit risk. His slider even has some potential as a groundball pitch to contact pitch.

Ryan Pepiot is probably going to wind up in relief and that is perfectly fine because the stuff will make him one of the most dominant relievers in baseball. However, you also have to respect the 90th percentile outcome where Pepiot makes it work in the rotation and is the most dominant pitcher on the planet with that FB/CH combo decimating everyone he sees. Whatever role he is in, Pepiot will dominate; the stuff is too good not to.

53. 1B Triston Casas, Boston Red Sox

Triston Casas is someone I’ve never really understood the hype surrounding him. On what is probably his final year on this list, I finally understand why so many scouts hold him in such regard. He’s produced at an elite rate every year despite his extreme youth and there is no reason to believe that performance is a fluke in the slightest.

I think much of my confusion surrounding the hype of Triston Casas was born out of the 80 raw power grades he so frequently received. Triston Casas does not have elite raw power measurables. His average exit velocity was only 89 MPH last year. His Max EV is only in the 112 MPH range. His average flyball distances are only average. His hard-hit rates probably don’t stand out either.

Triston Casas has elite raw power potential but it is not in game raw pop. The bat speed is elite. He was in the 96th percentile of the perfect game showcases. The body is elite, he’s 6'4" and built like a tank. The swing is elite with really good torque throughout and it should result in thunderous exit velocities. It does not play that way, however.

The reason behind the lack of god-tier in game power is simple. Triston Casas chokes up on the bat. I don’t mean that he does so with two strikes like most players do. He chokes up even when he is ahead in the count. Joey Votto did the same for most of his career to great success, even as the power played down. I would be lying if I said there weren’t any similarities between Casas and a young Votto.

Triston Casas, in large part because of how he chokes up, runs plus contact rates. He whiffed a mere 23.8% of the time in 2021 while spending the year between AA and AAA as a twenty year old. The swing has some length to it but he still makes contact in spite of that in large part because of the elite bat control that choking up offers him.

The real standout attribute from Triston Casas isn’t the prolific potential of his raw power or the bat control. His best ability is his approach. Triston Casas makes elite swing decisions. His chase and z-swing rates are both in the top quartile of the minor leagues which is a rare pairing.

He never chases high fastballs and is perfectly fine waiting until he has two strikes to swing at pitches he can’t do damage against. He demolishes spin in the zone and won’t hesitate to watch it go by if it’s out of the strike zone. Even in those two-strike counts; he will make more of an effort to foul pitches off than drive them until he gets one in his spot- his spot is basically anything below the letters but in the zone. He’s a professional hitter who doesn’t make very many mistakes.

The BABIP skills weren’t there last year- or any year for that matter. Triston Casas does not hit very many line drives. He was in the 12th percentile in line drive rate last year. He hits slightly less popups than the average player but the launch angle optimization is clearly below-average. The steep VBA (~-39° on average regardless of pitch location), makes it easy to project improving as he gets more experience against competition his age but I’m not expecting him to be any more than average in that regard.

Triston Casas can hit. He’s a first baseman only but he hits tater tots often enough to find a spot in the everyday lineup. The floor here might be a totally replaceable 110 wRC+ first baseman which has not-insignificant value. The ceiling is the second coming of Joey Votto. A first baseman without one of hit or power being truly elite is too risky for me to slap a 60 on them but I could see an argument for such a lofty grade. He’s a stud who should be in the middle of the Red Sox lineup as early as next year.

54. SS Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore Orioles

Gunnar Henderson has all the tools one could ever desire. He pairs contact skills with launch angles and with plus power as a shortstop who will likely stick. There is only one element lacking- a coherent approach.

Usually, when you think of an approach problem you think of guys like Jairo Pomares (Whose approach is perfect for his skill set) who swing at everything and never draws walks. Gunnar Henderson has the opposite problem. Gunnar Handerson swings at nothing and while it might lead to plus walk rates, it also results in a lot of strikeouts looking.

Gunnar Henderson has plus chase rates. That is awesome but not with what it costs to run those plus chase rates. Gunnar Henderson if he sees strikes at an MLB average rate can be estimated to have a 58.8% Z-Swing% (Based on overall swing% and chase rate 20–80 scale established based on Low-A SE numbers). That would have been the second-lowest Z-Swing% in the MLB last year amongst all qualified batters.

Let’s not use something as crude as estimates, however. Gunnar Henderson had 208 swinging strikes last year. He had 256 batted balls. He saw 1151 strikes. That means he saw 687 called strikes + foul balls. That means that 36.6% of pitches to Gunnar Henderson result in either a called strike or foul ball. How does that compare to major leaguers? He would be in the 7th percentile of that with Tommy La Stella being the worst at 39.3% and Corey Seager was the best at 25.6% (Min 1000 pitches). Gunnar is to put it simply, giving away outs by being overly passive and watching strike three.

Gunnar Henderson actually has solid contact rates despite his ugly strikeout rates. Gunnar Henderson only whiffed 28.4% of the time across Low A all the way up to AA with the bulk of that time in High A+. He did that spending half the year as a 19 year old. The whiff rates were largely steady as he climbed the ladder. I’d actually bet the contact skills in his prime will be better than this.

Let’s ignore any projected improvements in whiff rate and do a thought experiment similar to the one we did with Jairo Pomares to prove the opposite point- that Gunnar Henderson’s approach is bad. The average player with his whiff rate would strikeout 25.6% of the time. For Gunnar Henderson’s wOBA to improve at that strikeout rate, you could subtract 9% of walks. That is a 1.7 BB/K ratio. I’d wager he could smash that ratio when he’s more aggressive.

The concept is the same with Gunnar Henderson as it is with Pomares, even if in reverse and to a much lesser extent. When you have elite contact quality, strikeouts matter infinitely more than walks. Those added batted balls from reducing both walks and strikeouts make a huge difference and can’t be understated. Gunnar needs to be more aggresive and stop wasting so many plate appearnaces by not leaning into his strength- crushing baseballs.

Gunnar Henderson was in the 90th percentile of wOBAcon last year at .480 despite a pitcher friendly home ballpark (As a whole, weighted average across all three levels). He was in the 84th percentile of @WillSugeStats xwOBAcon as well. This is a guy for whom balls in play matter a ton. He crushes the ball.

Gunnar Henderson has plus power with the raw still a tick above that. His exit velocities hit as high as 113 MPH while he was still a teenager. His average EV of 89 MPH is already above the big league average. He has plus bat speed and is an elite rotator with big time power in his hips and the physicality to consistently produce said power.

Gunnar Henderson also showcases plus feel to elevate (39% groundball rate) and plus launch angle optimization. There is some issues with pulling the ball that hurts the in game power but I’m not expecting that to be a long-term issue at all given his youth and the extension in his swing.

Gunnar Henderson also has BABIP skills in the form of plus launch angle optimization. He hits line drives at a slightly above-average rate and rarely pops out. It’s worth noting that it’s rare for someone as young as he to excel in that field at such a high level of the minors. Gunnar also shows a solid feel for adjusting the shape of his swing to fit the pitch type and location so it’s always flush contact. He’s going to continue to run monster wOBAcons and as a result, produce at a high level.

Gunnar Henderson is a surprisingly apt shortstop. He has a McMillan for an arm that makes snappy throws with deadly precision. The range is also great due to the lateral mobility of Gunnar Henderson. I don’t see much cause for concern in his infield actions either. There is some risk he outgrows the position but I actually think he will be an average major league shortstop. I’ve been told that’s a hot take but I’ll stand by it.

Gunnar Henderson is already a beast and he’s a simple approach adjustment from shooting up near the top of the list. Gunnar Henderson has star potential at the MLB level as a high offensive impact shortstop. There is considerable risk given his youth and some approach concerns but the sky is his limit.

55. SS/3B Trey Sweeney, New York Yankees

Hit tool is a 60 not a 55.

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either. I actually did rewrite like half of this one because I have new data though both from his college days and the early minors because he debuted in Low A SE.

Trey Sweeney went to a small school so he didn’t get a ton of hype going into the draft but he might wind up being the best college bat in the 2021 draft when all is said and done. His offensive production against vastly inferior competition has been nothing short of ethereal although that is largely to be expected. This past season he hit .382/.522/.712 in the Ohio Valley Conference. The process is incredible and it seems likely that his production will translate to higher quality competition.

Trey Sweeney has an above-average hit tool and that might be underselling it. He has had a 13% Whiff rate and a 13% chase rate since the start of the 2020 season. That is just stupid. His whiff rates and chase rates were again a plus in his 138 PA pro debut at 22% and 28.5% respectively in Low-A. He’s an absurdly patient hitter who has reached base via a free pass fifty-three times. He’s struck out less than half as often at only twenty-four in 226 plate appearances at the collegiate level.

There is more nuance to it than that too. He didn’t struggle against anything at all? Four-seam fastballs? Yeah, he only had a 4.7% swinging strike rate against those. That is in the 95th percentile relative to the MLB. Sliders? His 7.6% swinging-strike rate against them is on par with David Fletcher and Nick Madrigal who are in the 98th percentile of big leaguers? What about offspeed? Changeups, splitters, etc.? Finally a relative weakness with a 10.8% Swinging-strike rate! Keyword there is relative as that is still well above the MLB average 15.6% swinging-strike rate against changeups. Just look at this table. Sweeney is bonkers, man:

Low A in 2021

I wrongly presumed on draft day that the chase rates were in large part due to a lack of aggressiveness as a whole by Trey Sweeney. I thought he was taking more called strikes than the average hitter because he wasn’t being aggressive in the zone. I was wrong- or at least am now so. Sweeney swung at 68.9% of pitches in the zone in his pro debut. That is above-average aggressiveness and he still simultaneously runs above-average chase rates. What an exciting blend of skills, especially when you combine that with the ability to make contact as often as Sweeney does.

His swing is objectively loud. He has a lot of pre-pitch movement and a weird loading phase. His leg kick is particularly voracious. There is a sense of rhythm to those loud mechanics, however, and I’ve never seen him have any issue repeating his swing or getting disconnected. More importantly, if the length does become an issue and he needs to simplify things it can be pretty easily coached out as pretty much all of the noise is not at all integral to his operation. The hit tool has easy cosmetic improvements to likely see growth in his already great contact rates.

His bat speed is some of the best in the draft class and that isn’t something you can teach. He can turn on high velocity with ease and hit it with authority. His vertical bat angle is naturally steep which creates implicit loft for him while also putting backspin on batted balls. He doesn’t put the ball on the ground all that much and in general, doesn’t hit too many high flyballs either.

He tends to sit in the perfect line-drive range where all his contact has a really good chance of falling for a hit. His line-drive rate this season was close to 50% because of the swing path being so optimal and the feel for the barrel. He was in the 95th percentile after being drafted as well. He also shows the ability to hit the ball the opposite way and go against the defense.

The only reason this isn’t a plus hit tool and the best college hitter in the draft is because of the quality of competition concerns. However, he’s had a handful of matchups against actually good pitchers without struggling. He was good even if not quite spectacular in his first taste of Low A. He put his name on the map initially with a loud performance against probable first-round pick, Jordan Wicks. He only whiffed twice on twelve swings in that game and managed to hit two balls with a 105 MPH exit velo. I think there is a high likelihood that Trey Sweeney is an on-base threat at the game’s highest level. There just are still enough questions surrounding the competition quality to keep him stuffed on the bottom quartile of this list.

His power is likely also going to be a plus. He has already posted a 111 MPH exit velocity in College. He did 108.4 MPH after being drafted as well. His 95.6 MPH average exit velocity is fourth in all of college baseball from 2020–2021 behind only the Hispanic Titanic, Spencer Torkelson, and Austin Wells (Very small samples for the latter two).

On top of the aforementioned elite bat speed, his swing effectively utilizes the power upside he has as well. His leg kick effectively transfers his weight and he absolutely unleashes on the ball with good torque and barrels balls to all fields. His lower half is well designed and he has tremendous physicality. There is also considerable projection left in his frame. He’s listed at 6'4" 200 lbs and checks a number of markers in body projection. His shoulders are sloped and he has a high waist. This is the kind of power bat you can dream of.

Trey Sweeney is a below-average runner but there is still a solid shot he sticks at shortstop, if not I think he’ll be a possible plus defender at third base. His lateral agility really stands out in all my looks and he has steady hands. There are some range concerns but the actions are fine. He also has easy plus arm strength with good accuracy. He won’t ever wow you at shortstop and would probably be below-average but it’s not like he’s Eugenio Suárez or anything at the position. The profile is much better suited for third base, however.

The only real concern I have with Trey Sweeney is the competition quality which he has already answered half of in order to make this list. A strong 2022 and it won’t even be relevant anymore. This is a guy who has hit everyone he’s gotten the opportunity to face no matter which level and how good they are- Trey Sweeney is always better. The tools are loud and the offensive potential is massive. The offensive potential is as high as just about anyone and he’s going to provide some defensive value regardless of if he sticks at shortstop. This is the first Yankees first-round pick I might have ever loved at the time of the pick, and well obviously Volpe will be successful first, this is a sign that maybe their drafting woes are finally turning around.

56. 2B Nick Gonzales, Pittsburgh Pirates

In November I posed this hypothetical to Twitter:

That purely hypothetical player was actually not a hypothetical but Nick Gonzales, a player that most scouts agree has a plus hit tool. The responses I got to that question were more pessimistic. They had Gonzales with a 50 in the most optimistic outlook. I lean more towards the scouts and have Gonzales as a plus or better hitter.

The important differentiator here is why Nick Gonzales whiffs 35.4% of the time. My biggest question for Nick Gonzales coming out of the draft was if he would see his contact skills decline away from the altitude, where pitches moved less. Could he handle good competition? I leaned towards yes based on a strong Cape Cod League and the visual elements to his swing. He is short and direct with elite bat speed.

The reality was more complicated. Can Nick Gonzales hit away from the altitude? Absolutely. Did he whiff more? Absolutely. Did he whiff more because of not being in altitude? Not really. Did he whiff more because he can’t handle actual quality competition? Almost certainly not.

Before the season, I highlighted Nick Gonzales Troutian VBA’s, particularly on pitches up in the zone where he will average about 36° on pitches up and in. I assumed it was a good thing because you know, Mike Trout. In reality, I was highlighting Mike Trout’s sole weakness.

In his career, Mike Trout whiffs 33.7% of the time on fastballs up and in. Trout whiffs 14.6% of the time on pitches in any other location. He whiffs 26.8% of the time on all fastballs up in general. He whiffs 12% of the time on fastballs below the letters. Trout swings at only 23.7% of those fastballs up an in, and 28.5% of fastballs up in general to hide this weakness. Nick Gonzales has that same fatal flaw but magnified because he is not Mike Trout.

Bad angle but…

This problem wasn’t exposed at New Mexico State as in Collegiate Ball sinkers down are more prevalent; additionally, he was only facing 85 MPH heaters when he did see up and in which made it much easier to get the bat up and drive the high pitch. Nick Gonzales hasn’t figured out that he shouldn’t be swinging at any fastballs up yet. Once he does, I expect the whiff rates to go back to being above-average (As in lower than the MLB average 25.9%).

Nicky G doesn’t have issues catching up to velocity or with laying off of pitches out of the strike zone. There is not even an issue with vertical movement- although that does play into it. The next step in his evolution is simply to not swing at every strike. Accept that there are some pitches he can’t drive and take some called strikes on the high fastball. It’s hard to locate the fastball up that high three times in a row, anyways and he’ll drive it over the fence if they miss low. Alternatively, he could work to adapt his swing shape on pitches up and just start hitting fastballs but that’s more unlikely.

Nick Gonzales has all the other much-desired elements in his hit tool. The launch angle optimization is some of the best in the league. Nick Gonzales had a 27.9% line drive rate last year which is in the 98th percentile of all minor leaguers. He pairs that with a 5.5% infield flyball rate which would rank in the top third of qualified big leaguers. The pairing is one that very few prospects can match.

Just based on Gonzales’ batted ball bins, you are looking at a .357 xBAcon from a player with average power. I didn’t run the numbers this year since I have better metrics for the most part but that would have tied for the highest on my top 100 last year with Heriberto Hernandez. That .388 BABIP really is not a fluke. He also has plus spray charts from what I can tell.

Oh, and Nick Gonzales does not only have average power. Nick Gonzales might only have a max exit velocity of 108.4 MPH (56th percentile so still nothing to scoff at) but his acerage exit velocity is elite. Nick Gonzales averaged 91 MPH last year. He averaged 93.1 MPH in 2020 at the colleigate level. That first number is in the top twenty percent of the league. The second figure was in the top 10% of college baseball. He has above-average raw power no matter how you slice it with his consistent his hips are doing the heavy lifting of that.

Nick Gonzales also has plus feel to elevate. After running 90th percentile groundball rates in college, Nick Gonzales took a slight step back in that regard this year. He only hit balls on the ground 35.6% which is clearly atrocious as he dropped to only the 82nd percentile. The feel to elevate lets him hit extra base hits at an elite clip and play well above his raw power.

The plus hit/power combo is awesome and it probably has to be as Nick Gonzales, being a second baseman, does not have a lot of defensive value. I think he’s probably above-average at second base but any dreams of him at shortstop or even third base are a pipe dream.

Nick Gonzales has some similarities to Keston Hiura which I won’t pretend doesn’t scare me. He is an all bat second baseman with whiff problems. Both had power and BABIP skills that carried the profile but so far Hiura has been completely ruled by the whiffs. The cause of those whiffs is different, however, and Gonzales has a significantly better approach so I think he’s more likely to succeed. The upside of Gonzales hasn’t changed in the last year, just the likelihood of him reaching his ceiling. There is risk in the profile but the offensive potential is enormous.

57. SS Ezequiel Tovar, Colorado Rockies

Ezequiel Tovar fits into two different subspecies of prospects that I love more than I probably should. He is both a high floor player because of his defense at shortstop and has an offensive ceiling. The other subspecies is more exclusive and less conventional. Tovar makes contact at an elite rate while also being one of the most aggressive hitters in the minors. (He also fits a third more exclusive group of switch hitters who stopped because switch hitting is stupid and broke out as a result)

Ezequiel Tovar had a higher swing rate last year than every qualified major league player at 60.6%. He also had a higher swing% than every qualified player in High A where he spent half the season. He was only third in Low-A where he dwelled the other half of the year. Swinging that often is not a good thing to be clear, but it speaks volumes with Tovar in particular.

In spite of being arguably the least picky hitter in all of professional baseball, Ezequiel Tovar only whiffed 20.9% of the time. That is 13th in Low A amongst qualified batters. It is 20th in High A. In the majors it would place in the 74th percentile. This blend of skills is completely unheard of.

Deferring to the same spreadsheet of 20–80 grades from the Prospects Live Patreon, as I did in previous sections (See Herrera, Iván); Ezequiel Tovar has a 60 grade contact rate and a 30 grade chase rate. He is the only player with 60+ contact and 30- chase.

Ezequiel Tovar is also only one of three players (Tovar, José Rodríguez, and Gilberto Jiménez) with a 55 contact rate and a 30 grade chase rate. He is one of only two (Tovar and Jacob Young) with a 60 grade contact rate and a 40 grade chase rate. Ezequiel Tovar is a unicorn with his ability to make contact against junk and never whiff in the zone.

In the majors the club isn’t anymore inclusive. Using the precedent established by Low A Southeast, we can estimate that Tovar has a chase rate of at least 44%. There are only three major leaguers who chase that much (Min 250 PA): Salvador Pérez, Javier Báez, and Hanser Alberto. Alberto is the only one with plus contact rates and we’ll go back to why they’re not comparable later.

If we only look at qualified players, there are only two major leaguers with a swing rate>55% and a whiff rate<24%. That is ~5% worse in both fields but otherwise, any search returns zero names. Those two are Josh Harrison and Bo Bichette. The latter of which is a pretty realistic 90th percentile outcome for Tovar offensively.

The difference between Hanser Alberto and Ezequiel Tovar’s bats primarily comes down to one very crucial detail. Tovar has plus raw power and Alberto is a 30 at best. Ezequiel Tovar hit a ball 110.4 MPH in the AFL. Prospects live has him as a 60 Max EV which is more in the ~112 MPH range. (One of 14 players with 60 Contact% and Max EV btw; only one of those with a below-average chase%).

Ezequiel Tovar also puts the ball in the air at an above-average rate. His 37.8% groundball rate ranks in the 82nd percentile of minor leaguers. He has some issues with consistently tapping into his power (Sometimes will collapse back half to make contact and lose oomph as a result) but it should still play as above-average game power in his prime.

The BABIP skills are not all there. Tovar doesn’t hit a lot of line drives and does hit a lot of popups. He has good feel for adjusting the shape of his swing which should help him hit with backspin but it’s often to his detriment in launch angles. Tovar will play below his contact rates as a result of his contact quality. He’s not as bad as he looked in High-A+ last year in that regard but he’s not good or even average in BABIP. He’ll still be a plus hitter because he makes just that much contact and has good power.

This isn’t a Jairo Pomares situation where the approach is actually good; it’s terrible. Ezequiel Tovar needs to be less aggressive to be a star. The approach is a positive because of what it hints at for the future. Tovar is showing the ability to make contact no matter what. He can hit anything- there is no safe spot with him. He’s going to see his whiff rates plummet if he chases less. He’s going to see the power soar if he doesn’t swing at unhittable pitches that he can only weakly roll over. The potential of what he can be with a better approach is what makes him so enticing, not just what he is now.

That is not to say that Tovar is not enticing as he is. He doesn’t have to be a star bat to play everyday; even if he’s just Hanser Alberto offensively, he’s an everyday regular because he’s also a plus defensive shortstop.

Tovar checks every box for a shortstop. He has the range, arm, and athleticism to be a mainstay at the position for years and years. He’ll make plays where he is shifted slightly towards seconds second base and fly into the the third base hole, throw on the run, off balance, and still nail the runner. That is the kind of play that only a handful of shortstops can make and all of them except for Tatis are gold gloves because of it. Here’s a snazzy video of that play from the AFL.

Ezequiel Tovar also is statistically great at the games most premium of positions. He had +11 Davenport Runs in only 95 games last year. (Scaled to DRS). He also posted +8.1 FRAA in that same sample. Those numbers are nothing to scoff at. He has all the actions and mobility to be an anchor. He also has plus speed that plays both in the field and could lead to 20 steal seasons on the basepaths.

How many plus defensive shortstops are out there with 20/20 homer and steal potential? The answer is three (Story, Báez, and Mondesi). Even if you don’t believe in the hit tool because of the approach; that blend of skills should still get him an everyday gig. I happen to believe in the upside of his hit tool so he’s more than just a token 50 FV but a real impact player with superstar upside.

58. SS Brady House, Washington Nationals

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

Brady House has had a very up-and-down draft season. He struggled in one of the biggest scouting showcases last summer after the long layoff from the pandemic as it took him a while to refind his groove and slumped hard that weekend, whiffing often and not hitting with much authority. That singular bad showcase caused scouts to forget his track record of hitting as evidenced by a career 5.1% strikeout rate in a 6A school, and believe that he had serious whiff issues for some reason. He reiterated that he could make contact in his pro debut as he only struck out 19.7% of the time in 66 PA at the complex league.

He has reminded scouts just who he is this spring as he dominated everyone he faced with it all climaxing in one epic clash against Dylan Lesko. For those unaware, Dylan Lesko is pretty much the consensus top prep arm in the draft next year and according to some scouts, the best prep righty since the 2000s. Brady House owned him in a three-at-bat sample where he was aggressive and didn’t whiff even once in three at-bats against Lesko. Had he struggled that game, there is a decent chance that he would be closer to the back of the first as people continued to question his inability to perform against premier stuff. Fortunately, he excelled and then some.

He has an unorthodox high hand load that will rear its ugly head at the worse of times but he can grow out of that habit, and even if he doesn’t- he has enough bat speed to make it work. Carter Kieboom had the same mechanism in his swing and he has found no success at the big league level which is slightly alarming. Kieboom has other issues that are just as much at fault for that one failing that aren’t applicable to Brady House. It’s a small warning flag but a very small one and not some huge kryptonite that makes him not a top-five pick. He absolutely is one.

He tends to get a bit too aggressive at the plate when facing good pitchers. That aggressiveness can lead to some ugly chases. That aggressiveness can also lead to him ambushing hitters on the fastball and taking them deep just as often. His aggressiveness is born more out of a desire to not strike out against those high-quality arms than a lack of discipline from what I’ve seen. When he faces just the average high school starter, he’s a completely different hitter. He is patient and waits for his pitch and will ambush the fastball and take it the other way and over the fence. There are some issues with good secondaries but it’s not anything earth-moving.

Brady House is cool and all but wouldn’t you rather watch Chase Petty strike him out?

His power is what makes him a breadwinner. He has some of the best raw juice in the entire draft class. His rotational ability is impressive. His raw power is a 70-grade tool with extreme amounts of torque and plus bat speed but it more comes down to his physicality being so impressive. He has a stable front half which combined with one of the most powerful bases in the draft and explosive but controlled hips.

He has some launch angle issues and a flatter VBA which artificially increases EVs without helping how power output because working with gravity is easier than against it. Even still, it is very loud power and he has all the time in the world to learn to elevate frequently. Even if he doesn’t learn to elevate he has enough raw that it should still wind up as plus power and ~25 homers annually. He’s an explosive hitter who has hit balls near triple digits off of a tee and who shows incredible ability to contort his body when he swings and bends his arms in manners that look impossible to ensure quality contact. He’s going to hit and he’s one of the more advanced prep bats we’ve seen in some time.

His defense has had no shortage of critics but a lot of scouts are coming around on him as a shortstop now. He has the arm for the position, there is no doubt about that fact. He’s thrown 95 across the diamond and up to 97 on the mound. His arm is an elite tool grading out as a 70 on the 20–80 scale. The arm arguably makes up for any possible deficiencies in how quickly he covers ground because he also makes stronger and quicker throws than anyone to close the gap. He can throw from multiple platforms and has quick actions.

He also has surprising range and athleticism for a guy his size. He really worked on improving his mobility in the winter and it’s shown as he has looked really good defensively in games this spring from what I’ve seen. He might have randomly become an elite baserunner as well out of nowhere going 21/21 on steal attempts in 31 games this spring. It goes without saying that High School Stolen Base numbers mean diddly squat.

That newfound speed is playing in the field, however, where he has shown tremendous lateral agility. He’s an explosive fielder with a quick first step and has all the actions for the position mostly down pat. I’m not sure he retains his newfound athleticism but I don’t think he needs to. As a defender, he reminds me a fair bit of Carlos Correa. Correa has below-average speed but great lateral agility and a rocket arm which has led to him being one of the best defensive shortstops in the game. I only have House as average but it’s on the higher end of that grade.

Brady House like every prep shortstop I’ve listed so far appears to be a five-tool talent who can make an impact in every part of the game. He somehow fell out of the top 10 picks but he got the bat to potentially wind up as the best player in the draft. He’s been nitpicked as much as anyone in the class seeing as he was long considered the top prep hitter in the draft leading up to this year. Despite all the undue criticism simply because he is in the spotlight, he remains as a top 60 prospect in all of baseball. Brady House is a real impact player who should go very early on draft day.

59. C Henry Davis, Pittsburgh Pirates

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

I have fairly mixed feelings when it comes to Henry Davis. Despite him going #1, he’s not even close to the best player in the draft class. He went #1 because taking him there allowed the Pirates to get Bubba Chandler, Lonnie White Jr., and Anthony Solometo in the next three rounds. In general, I’ve never been an advocate for drafting catchers in the first round unless they are Adley Rutschman. Yet alone at #1 overall.

I just think there is far too much uncertainty surrounding the position and how they will translate both offensively and defensively that no one else in the draft has. On top of that, Davis has an unorthodox swing that has some length to it and has me slightly concerned about the ultimate upside just based on video. However, his production is just way too loud to ignore and he does enough things that I still think he’ll likely be an above-average regular despite my misgivings.

Henry Davis can hit. This season, his final with Louisville, he hit .370. He also only struck out 10.5% of the time and walked 18.4% of the time. Those are obviously very good numbers for the ACC. He rarely has swung and missed, is a heavy line drive hitter, and consistently sprays the ball to all fields with authority. All the ingredients are there in the results for a plus hit tool.

Aside from the obvious catcher fatigue catch, there is another thing that gives me pause. Henry Davis has a very lengthy swing with a long bat path and although he does do an excellent job hitting with the barrel and making small adjustments, I worry how he’ll handle high-velocity arms. His bat head is nearly completely flat which should let him feast on the high fastball so I don’t think it’ll have too much of a negative effect on contact frequency against high fastballs which is often an issue for long swing guys.

However, I do worry that Davis’s contact quality will greatly suffer on velocity in general even up in the zone and he needs to hit that high heat to thrive. His bat angle is very flat and that flat angle will cause him to swing over a lot of pitches down in the strike zone. If he can’t hit the high stuff that his swing is primarily engineered to hit then what can he hit?

Henry Davis’s pitch recognition is a plus skill that is possibly the primary reason I’m so optimistic about the hit tool. He walks more often than he strikes out by a wide margin and has the makings of a serious on-base threat. The lack of certainty in projecting catchers hit tools’ is as always a lingering concern here. (I actually was too high on this coming out of the draft, he chased 25% of the time in 2021 at Louisville).

Henry Davis has very loud raw power. There is at least plus raw in Davis and I think it’s more than that but it won’t play close to that way in games. He’s the most physical player in the draft and is built like an ox. His exit velocities are off the chart and he’s consistently posting 100+. There is some inflation in those numbers because of low his LAs are but his batted ball data is nothing short of elite. (Max of 110.9 MPH in 2021)

Henry Davis generates good separation in his swing and has the physicality to make the most of it. The problem aside from the very low elevation in his swing is the fact that his weight transfer is entirely dependent on his foot strike. If his foot strike is mistimed then he doesn’t hit with power. If his footstrike adds unnecessary length to his swing and causes swing and miss he won’t hit for power when he tries to cut it out. His long stride and foot plant are what generates his separation and the power he produces. It’s not just a timing mechanism but an intrinsic element of his power generation- the primary one and it could make him quite the very streaky hitter at the next level.

Especially when you combine that with his flat VBAs as that tends to lead to some inconsistent performance. I think his power and hit tools both have to be working in concert for either to function and that’s a risky road. His bat is every bit as good as any hitter in the class and the upside is absolutely there but there is a substantially higher chance of him bottoming out than most comparable talents in this range- even most of the top prepsters are just as low of risk if not lower. The upside might be Adley offensively even but it’s a much lower likely outcome.

Henry Davis will greatly benefit from the inevitable electronic strike zone as his only real wart defensively is his hands. He has the elite arm strength and the athleticism to contort his body and block pitches in the dirt. His receiving is rough and he sucks at framing but he’s lauded for his work with the pitching staff. Also, he might have an 80-grade arm although I only have it graded as a 70 for now. He’s posting sub-1.8-second pop times semi-regularly and from his knees has even hit 1.88 on a throw to second. It’s elite arm strength that will absolutely play and might be increasingly valuable in the world without pitch framing that we are quickly heading towards.

Henry Davis is weird. I think he might wind up going #1 overall (I was right) as maybe the only top-five talent who would sign for significantly under slot. His upside warrants that selection. He’s not that much worse than the other talents above him, he just is a bit riskier. There is a considerable amount of boom or bust to Davis. I think he’s worth that risk because the upside is so great but there are certainly causes for concern with him. The raw tools are as good as you’ll ever see from a catcher and that is a hard thing to pass up for anyone.

60. CF Evan Carter, Texas Rangers

Evan Carter was the most surprising draft pick in a long time when the Rangers took him in the second round of the 2020 draft. Baseball America did not even have him as a top 500 player in the draft. MLB Pipeline did not have him in the top 200, Prospects Live on their top 101, nor did Fangraphs have him on their board. Perfect Game had him as the #500 high school player in the draft class. He was a complete unknown and was thought to be the biggest reach we’ve seen in forever. He proved more than worth his draft slot immediately.

A very young for the class 18 year old draftee from a tiny school with no pedigree is not someone you would expect to put up historical numbers in their pro debut. Yet he did just that in his first ever taste of the minors at Low A as an 18 year old.

Evan Carter has the best approach at the plate in the entire minors- arguably ever if I want to be hyperbolic for narratives. Evan Carter walked 23.3% of the time in 146 Plate Appearances. That was the second highest walk rate by any minor league player to play stateside this year. The only person with a higher walk rate had literally twice as many strikeouts. More impressively, that is the tenth highest walk rate by a player in full season ball (Min 140 PA) in the history of the minor leagues (That we have stats for).

His 19.2% strikeout rate is lower than all of them. That is what separates Evan Carter from the pack. He’s not being overly passive and taking called strikeouts as a result of him never swinging. He rarely swings but actually outperforms his whiff rate in strikeout rate. These are genuinely amazing swing decisions.

Evan Carter has probably the best chase rate in all the minors but not only that, he also has what @ydouright estimates as a 77% z-swing%. That would have been in the 93rd percentile of big leaguers. For him to do that with a 100th percentile chase rate? Yeah, it’s never been done or even come close to being done at any level. I guess Brandon Belt has come close? At least in 2021- before then he wasn’t close to that level.

There is also his age to consider. Evan Carter is an 18 year old in Low A going from low tier high school pitching to good Low A pitchers. The only four players in the same stratosphere as him in strikeout and walk rate are all 21+ in Low A; usually not for the first time. His development is so advanced I don’t even have words.

I don’t usually care at all about walks in the low minors. They’re a noisy skill more based on pitchers having bad command or approaches that won’t fly at the higher levels. They are not sustainable and as such not valued highly. Evan Carter is the lone exception to that rule because he has completely broken the scale. He’s not just walking but not taking any called strikes. That is the difference-maker. He is making incredible swing decisions and regardless of the competition quality that is a massive positive.

As much as I rave about the walk rates of Evan Carter that is not all he is. Evan Carter also posted average contact rates last year at 26.3% whiffs. That number is missing the context of his age and the competition quality jump in his opponents but also it’s primarily a product of his approach; his zone-contact% is actually below-average from what I can tell- not a concern given his youth but you can’t project on the skill all that much.

Evan Carter has an interesting batted ball profile. He hits line drives 25.6% of the time which is in the 92nd percentile. He also offers plus feel to elevate with a mere 37.2% groundball rate which is in the 74th percentile of all minor leaguers. The catch that comes with those skills? A 15.4% popup rate which is uh bad.

Evan Carter has maybe the flattest bat angle in the world. I don’t have high speed camera at optimal angles to actually measure it but he’s so flat it’s ridiculous- I’d estimate sub -20° on most pitches. He has some flexibility and will get to down to like ~-30° on pitches down in the zone but most the time he’s very flat. As someone who consciously tries to elevate, that’s a dangerous thing and results in a lot of popups. I don’t think he’ll continue to pop out 15% of the time but I do think popups will always plague him and keep his BABIPs near the league average range.

Evan Carter is also makes contact deep over the plate to maximize his window for his swing decisions and as such hits a lot of balls the other way and not a lot to his pullside. He’s young enough that it’s not a concern but it’s why his HR/FB rates suck. Evan Carter has average raw power right now with a very rotational swing and plus bat speed.

Actually, I might be underselling the present day raw power as he averaged just over 91 MPH (Baseball America) as a skinny 18 year old in Low A. His max EV might only be ~108 MPH right now but I really like the swing and think that he’s better than that number. He also has easy projection left in his 6'4" frame and I think he’ll add twenty pounds of muscle without adversely affecting his athleticism. In his prime, I think he’ll hit for plus power in his prime.

Evan Carter is also a fine centerfielder. He has plus speed (Some scouts are much higher with 80 grades on it), that plays well in the outfield. He has quick acceleration and covers lots of ground out there. He has good tracking ability from what I’ve seen and should be an average defensive centerfielder. The arm strength is a plus at his best but sloppy footwork has it more often playing in the 45–50 range. There is room to improve but realistically, the arm is only going to be a 50–55.

None of Evan Carter’s conventional five tools stand out necessarily but all of them have the potential to be above-average; even if average is the most likely outcome. Most importantly, he has the god tier approach to tie it all together. If he posts similar production in High A this year then he’ll be in the top 25 next year. Evan Carter has very quickly become one of my favorite prospects in baseball and I’m expecting another big jump in his future providing he stays healthy this time.

61. SP Chase Petty, Cincinnati Reds

I know he’s a Red now but I’m not redoing the card.

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. I wrote him up again in my Mariners shadow draft so some of that is in here as well. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

Chase Petty draws fairly mixed reviews from scouts. A few years ago, Petty would have been a surefire top 10 pick since he throws 102 MPH in High School. However, in an age increasingly dominated by draft models, he is less highly valued. The track record of high school right-handed pitchers is sketchy at best. As I’ve already outlined at the beginning of this piece, I don’t place much value on the track record of a demographic because player development has evolved and every player is unique but lots of teams do value that. This model reliance further hurts Petty when you consider this:

The only four players to throw 101+ in High School are Tyler Kolek, Riley Pint, Hunter Greene, and now Chase Petty. Tyler Kolek recently retired without ever reaching the majors after being selected #2 overall. Riley Pint went #4 overall in 2016 and has failed to even make it out of A+ as he’s been constantly battered by injuries and completely ineffective when healthy. Hunter Greene went #2 in 2017 and has been fantastic but he’s also already had a Tommy John Surgery. That is an ugly track record of hard-throwing high schoolers and an irrelevant one. None of them are Chase Petty.

Aside from the velocity, there is almost nothing in common between those three and Chase Petty. Petty is 6'0" those three are all 6'5". That height difference says a lot. What also says a lot is the mechanics and there are no real similarities between those three and Petty. Here is a picture of the four of them at foot strike:

Greene (Top Left), Pint (Top Right), Kolek (Bottom Left), and Petty (Bottom Right) arm positioning at foot plant.

An actually good picture of Chase Petty and only Chase Petty

The picture is horrible but hopefully, you can pretty clearly see the difference in the arm action. The previous three flamethrowers out of the draft had a flat arm during the loading phase. Petty has the upright arm you typically see in the less injury-plagued starters as he completes his arm spiral in time. The angle of his elbow isn’t perfect but it’s a hell of a lot better than most guys who throw as hard as him with no command. This should theoretically mean he avoids that extra stress on the shoulder and elbow that results from an incomplete arm action or a rushed one. His arm action is long but he still completes his spiral so it’s not an issue. Length is only bad if it creates a timing issue. His very obviously doesn’t create a major one. Moving away from absolute gas, his mechanics are fairly similar to another top-five pick, Max Meyer. Here’s a side-by-side view of their deliveries:

Chase Petty has fine mechanics if not outright good ones, unlike his contemporaries who threw equally hard with sloppy mechanics that held them back. Chase Petty has fantastic biomechanical evals apparently and his mechanics are near perfect for velocity generation.

He is extremely lower half dominant when it comes to generating velocity which is extremely encouraging and even if he’s injured, it’s unlikely he loses much if any velo because of it. He drives hard off his back leg, getting deep into his glutes with a long stride coming down the mound and the block with the lead leg is as good as anyone does. This effectively completely stops his hips rotation which is part of what leads to effortless velocity with typically above-average command. He has unreal scap retraction. Like his hip hinge and maximum scap retraction in every throw that comes so naturally and consistently for him, isn’t something most humans have the flexibility to even replicate the position, let alone make it so linear and fluid repeatedly.

Chase Petty has been designed in a lab working with pitching specialists and physical therapists to limit wear and tear on his arm while maximizing velocity since he was in 8th grade and has yet to have any major injuries as far as I’m aware. I’m still somewhat hesitant with a hard-throwing prep arm with a long arm action since neither of those things has brilliant track records but his combination of stuff, and extremely efficient and optimal mechanics has me very high on him. He’s had no real issues throwing strikes in High School and I don’t actually expect that to change much as he climbs the ladder.

Apart from throwing it at 102 MPH, there is still quite a bit to like about his fastball. He gets probably close to seven feet of extension on the heater which lets his velocity play up even further and he rides very low to the ground. His average release height is a mere 5.1 feet on the heater and that’s just unfair as it gives him a very optimal VAA on the pitch.

His fastball is a turbo sinker most of the time but it’s an exceptional one. He averages ~18 inches of horizontal movement despite average spin rates due to a very lateral spin axis- roughly 2:00 and very high spin efficiency. Only five sinkers had that same spin axis in 2020 and all of them were good. Only Dustin May, Victor González, and Luis Castillo averaged 95+ with as much horizontal movement as him on the sinker. It’s a good sinker but it’s still just a sinker and its utility is limited in the modern game. He throws his sinker from the same low vertical release height as those three guys who all sit at about 5.3 feet (He is 5.1). However, he doesn’t have the same amount of sink on his sinker as they do so I don’t expect it to be quite as good as theirs. It’s a plus pitch because velo+horizontal movement will force weak contact but it’s not quite an elite one.

Chase Petty has been diagnosed with a somewhat rare medical condition known as depressed clavicles (Flat collarbones). Throwing from a higher arm slot with flat collarbones can cause serious shoulder damage in the long term and would be a huge red flag. Petty in response has dropped his arm slot to a low 3/4 where he is much more comfortable. With that arm slot, it is near impossible to add a true vertically moving four-seam fastball with Josh Hader basically being the only one. This is truly tragic for Petty as his release height would make a vertical four-seam fastball completely unhittable.

Except Chase Petty isn’t a silly mortal. He just decided one day in a bullpen that he wanted to be Josh Hader and adopted his fastball as his own. In a bullpen this March, he showcased a fastball with a 1:15 spin axis. His release height was a tick higher at 5.4 feet but only a tick and that is still incredible. He also was spinning it at and above 2600 RPMs. As a result, the fastball sat between 16–19 inches of induced vertical break. He used that fastball throughout the season this year and it was tremendously effective even if it was the secondary option to his sinker.

Why is that development so important? Josh Hader has the best non-deGrom fastball in the game. He throws from a low 3/4 slot like Petty and has an average release height of 5.3 feet. He throws the fastball with a 10:45 spin axis (Lefty version of 1:15) and 17.7 inches of induced vertical break. Hader averages 96.1 MPH with 6.7 feet of extension. All of those figures are nearly identical to Petty’s four-seam fastball. He’s not a lefty but that is still a lot of similar traits to the best non-deGrom heater in the game.

Actually, why not include deGrom? Jacob deGrom uses a more over-the-top arm slot but the raw data is still very comparable. He throws his fastball from a 5.5-foot vertical release height. He also has a 1:15 spin axis and averages 16.9 inches of induced vertical break. He has a very comparable spin rate. deGrom throws harder at 99.2 MPH on average but both have approximately 7 feet of extension. Petty isn’t deGrom and command is a huge element to the success of God’s fastball. However, when you can drop that many close comparisons on the two best fastballs in the game on Petty’s fastball, you know you have something truly special here. I have a 70 on Petty’s heater because I need to see more four-seamers first, but it is entirely possible this is a true 80-grade heater by the end of the year.

You can make a very convincing argument that the fastball isn’t even Chase Petty’s best pitch. His slider is equally as exceptional and a second 70-grade offering. Something that none of the other dudes throwing 102 in high school ever possessed. He’ll throw it 85–87 MPH in most games from a 9:00 spin axis with a high degree of gyro spin. In 2020, seven sliders had the same spin axis as that. Tanner Rainey’s, Nate Pearson’s, Jake Newberry’s, Scott Barlow’s, Sergio Romo’s, Taylor Williams’s, and Ryan Thompson’s. Those sliders averaged an absolutely ludicrous 45.8% Whiff rate and .258 wOBA against across just over a thousand pitches.

The heavy sidespin from that axis leads to an absurd 20 inches of horizontal movement on average on the pitch with minimal dropoff vertically. That number was only topped by Chaz Roe and Kyle Crick in 2020, both of them throw more than 5 MPH slower. The most movement on a slider 85 plus is Dillon Maples at 14.9 inches. The slider is truly special and if he can learn to command it then it could be the best slider in the game full stop. There are consistency issues with the pitch to work out. The slider will likely sacrifice some movement for control as he grows and it won’t be quite so historic. Still, this is a hell of a starting point for a slider and an easy 70-grade offering.

Chase Petty also has an above-average changeup although he uses it very infrequently. His arm slot is ideal for generating heavy horizontal movement on his changeup and while it is inconsistent it does flash that plus break. He can struggle to kill spin on the changeup as it’ll sit at about 2000 RPMs which isn’t too far below the sinker which typically sits at around 2300 RPMs.

He throws it at about 87–90 MPH so it’s a hard variant but it still has the highly coveted velocity separation from the heater. When it’s on it really works off o of the heater and misses bats but it often isn’t on. His feel is well below-average and his command is lackluster of it but it’s a developable pitch that in a good organization could definitely get to a plus or even more. In a bullpen this winter he was sitting at 5 inches of IVB and 18 inches of horizontal break.

Chase Petty is an incredible athlete with elite stuff. He has a complete three-pitch mix and two elite pitches that could carry him to greatness. The mechanics aren’t perfect but they are plenty enough to not be a major detriment in his development. He has big-time movement on all his stuff which might cause some command struggles in the future. However, he also has enough life on his pitches that he could take the down the middle and let the movement carry it to the edge approach that so many players take nowadays.

There is some relief risk with his arm slot (Low arm slots often see their effectiveness greatly deteriorate in multiple looks) and the changeup stalling would be a bummer but in that case, he has the makings of a likely high leverage reliever with Ace level upside in the rotation. Petty is an incredible package who was a steal late in round one.

62. 2B Curtis Mead, Tampa Bay Rays

Curtis Mead is probably too low on this list. From an offensive only, purely data based outlook, Curtis Mead likely belongs in the top 20 position player prospects. Of course, context matters; Mead is a nobody with no track record, and there are some visual quirks that have scouts less optimistic than data. Also, the whole defense thing exists. Still, there s a high likelihood that this ranking is too low as is.

Curtis Mead’s power can not be understated. He had an average exit velocity of 90.3 MPH in 2021. That ranks in the 72nd percentile of big leaguers and is his least impressive power metric. His 90th percentile exit velocity of 106.5 MPH is a smidgeon better as that sits in the 73rd percentile.

Mead’s hard-hit rate laps the competition with a 50.3% clip. That ranks in the 91st percentile of all major leaguers for comparison. The Max EV is north of 114 MPH which is at worst in the 92nd percentile. His minor league barrel equivalent (Balls hit 95 MPH+ with a LA between 10°-30°) is 23.7%. The only major leaguers to hit more balls with those specifications (Min 200 BBE) were Joey Votto, Nick Castellanos, Yordan Álvarez, and both of the reigning MVPs. That is a pretty exclusive club.

Curtis Mead also has a plus hit tool. He only whiffed 21.7% of the time last year which in the 77th percentile of all major leaguers. That is pretty good but it undersells his contact skills because he chases too often. On pitches in the strike zone, Mead makes contact 88% of the time. That is in the 85th percentile of all major league baseball players. He is also swinging at 81.4% of pitches down the heart of the plate. That is in the 88th percentile relative to the majors. He’s not just making contact but at a high quality and in the strike zone.

Here’s some fun trivia for you? How many major league players had more barrels* and a low in-zone whiff% than Curtis Mead? That would be nobody. How many had a higher hard-hit rate and a lower in-zone whiff%? Again, zero. How many with a higher Max EV and a lower in-zone whiff%?

How many players do you think had a higher 90th percentile EV and a lower in-zone whiff%? You guessed it! The answer is not zero, but one. Ketel Marte stands alone. I would be mildly disappointed that it wasn’t no one but this just proves that Ketel is a goat.

Mead’s combination of ability to make contact and drive the ball with authority is some of the best in the entire minor leagues. The other skills are less great but not necessarily bad. Mead has subpar feel for elevation. His groundball rate was only in the 39th percentile so the power plays down a tad. He chases quite a bit. The BABIP skills are only a 55 because of power.

Curtis Mead is also a very fringy fit at third base. He has an average arm and his actions and range both leave quite a bit to be desired. He probably profiles at first or second base long term more so than third. He’ll hit though with that plus hit/power combination that will guarantee him a big league role.

63. C Tyler Soderstrom, Oakland Athletics

Tyler Soderstrom is weird. I realize this is a lot lower than most people have him but I just don’t see it. I also don’t see any major reason to doubt him, I just don’t see anything that is worth falling in love with either. He looks more like an all around good player than a star with a carrying skill to me.

Tyler Soderstrom has plus power. I know some scouts have bumped him to a 70 after he posted an average EV of 91 MPH to support a .261 ISO. I remain pessimistic and focus more so, on the ~110 Max EV I was given and on the 80th percentile bat speed he had in the PG showcases just a year prior. Watching him he is consistently making quality contact to inflate his EVs but that seems to more so be because he’s squaring the ball up than an innate strength we didn’ know he possessed. The swing is aesthetically awesome but it’s not transcendent amounts of torque or anything.

Tyler Soderstrom does not participate in the elevate and celebrate mentality of most players. He hit a whopping 47.8% of all his contact on the ground last year. That is in the 31st percentile of all minor leaguers. The pull rates are only average too. This isn’t necessarily a skill set that translates to a large quantity of home runs. His feel for flush contact, and the consistency of which he swings with authority still let this play to a high 55/low 60 but it does play down from what it could be.

The BABIP profile is weird. Tyler Soderstrom had an incomprehensibly low line drive rate last year which was in the 12th percentile of all minor leaguers. He doesn’t pop out much but that’s not enough to even bring him back to average. The thing that carries Soderstrom’s BABIPs is the ability to adjust his swing, make flush contact, and drive the ball with backspin, all the while, reducing sidespin. That ability to adjust drives his BABIP and lets him square everything up; I’m unsure of how much to project on that or how to necessarily value it but I tentatively have Soderstrom as an above-average BABIP guy.

Tyler Soderstrom has a bit of a whiff problem. The 19 year old backstop whiffed 29.7% of the time he swung in Low A last year. I am very skeptical that those whiff rates are illustrative of who Soderstrom really is as a player, he has plus contact skills as far as I am concerned.

I, as does every sane person love Soderstrom’s picturesque swing that covers all of the plate and gets to the ball early and often. What’s really impressive though is his ability to drive breaking balls. He’s over-aggressive in pursuing them even when unhittable and that is what drives his whiff rates. He’s an elite breaking ball hitter who whiffs against fastballs surprisingly often and over pursues.

Watching Soderstrom hit kind of reminds me of (A much younger obviously) Ty France. He’s an elite breaking ball hitter who whiffs against fastballs surprisingly often and over pursues breaking balls below the zone. Once France stopped overpursuing breaking balls he became a 130 wRC+ hitter. Ty France similarly posted elite Average EVs in the minors but only maxed out at ~111. His EVs dropped off against MLB pitching because he has below-average bat speed.

That is the key difference between the two of them. Soderstrom is a good athlete with plus bat speed. Soderstrom probably won’t be hit by 20+ pitches in a year so the differences probably balance out but I think in the end, Soderstrom is a 125 wRC+ bat who plays somewhere. There is just a lot of risk baked into that projection because Soderstrom is still whiffing a ton right now and has yet to show that the expected can be reality.

Tyler Soderstrom technically plays catcher, I pray nightly that the Athletics will wisen up and get him out from behind the plate before he breaks. Okay, so that is a lie, screw the Athletics, them being dumb is to my direct benefit. Still, you get the sentiment right?

A lot of scouts; myself included thought Tyler Soderstrom profiled best at third base going into the 2020 draft. Soderstrom has an above-average arm for a catcher which means at least a plus from the infield. He has good lateral mobility and solid speed that should translate to range. This is all projection but I think he can be somewhere around average there. Even if third base is not viable, I still think he’d provide more value at first base or in the corner outfield then from behind the plate where you risk crippling the bat and limiting his playing time.

Tyler Soderstrom is a good player. He has a real shot at being a plus hit and plus power hitter. He has an above-average approach as well and the breaking ball feel makes it easy to project on. The defensive home is a question mark but he projects to really hit. My concerns with Soderstrom simply boil down to just how much you have to project to see a star. There are no major leaguers who whiff as much and hit as many groundballs with an above-average xwOBA (Only Arozarena by wRC+). As currently constituted, he’s not a good player. He’ll probably get there but he’s still a year from the top half of this ranking.

64. SP Yoendrys Gómez, New York Yankees

Yoendrys Gómez is maybe my favorite pitching prospect in baseball. His pitch data jumps off the page and I can not fathom why he has so little hype. The Yankees hype up everyone except for him for some reason. He only has two minor league options left which hurts his value considerably; seeing as how he has yet to make it out of Low-A. There is real relief risk, not because of him, but because of the fact, his development will have to be rushed because soon he has to be in the majors.

Yoendrys Gómez spent the entire year in the southeast division of Low-A so we have statcast data for every pitch he threw. The fastball sits 94–96 MPH most nights, averaging 94.9 MPH and touching as high as 99 MPH. He throws said fastball with a spin rate of 2546 RPMs. That spin rate would rank in the 97th percentile of all major leaguers. That combination of plus velocity and elite spin is highly envious.

Yoendrys Gómez throws his fastball from an 12:45 spin axis. His spin efficiency isn’t perfect yet, but even still, Yoendrys has a great movement profile. The fastball averages 12 inches of drop, which is roughly two inches less drop than the average fastball at his velocity. His ~17% more rise than average ranks in the 95th percentile of big leaguers. His eight inches of horizontal break is also just above league-average. The pitch has room to grow with improved (More consistent) efficiency as well. At his best, Yoendrys Gómez is touching eight inches of drop and sitting at ten.

The fastball angle is also spectacular even independent of pitch movement. The fastball is thrown from a 5.6 foot release height. That gives him a natural advantage in VAA and when you combine the low release with his elite vertical movement you have one of the flattest zone-neutral vertical approach angles in the game. Yoendrys pairs that ridiculous VAA with plus velocity. The pitch is a step below elite because he struggles with elevation oftentimes, but the pitch has that kind of upside.

Gómez’s slider is nasty. He throws it at 84 MPH with equal parts sweep and drop. The pitch has spin rates north of 2600 and it plays in the form of movement. He averages 39 inches of drop and 10 inches of sweep on the pitch. That is in the 65th percentile of vertical drop, 41st percentile of velocity, and 82nd percentile of horizontal movement. Only 4 sliders have more in all three elements. He had a 46% whiff rate and 39% CSW against it last year. This is a plus pitch albeit a fringier one.

The curveball is only deployed 6% of the time because his feel for the pitch is subpar but the stuff is better than the slider. He averaged 80.3 MPH- sitting anywhere from 77–82.5 MPH throughout the year. The pitch has spin rates north of 2700 RPMs which means that he pairs that plus power breaking ball with exquisite movement. The pitch averages 53 inches of drop and 9 inches of sweep.

The curveballs velocity would be in the 66th percentile and the drop is only in the 45th percentile. The combination of movement and velocity is what makes the underwhelming individual elements pop. Here is a complete list of curveballs at 80 MPH+ with as much drop: Dillon Maples, Tyler Glasnow, Clay Holmes, Mark Melancon, Joe Musgrove, Ryan Pressly, Josh Staumont, Génesis Cabrera, Jameson Taillon, Wil Crowe, Mike Minor, Jordan Lyles, Sam Hentges, Trent Thornton, Matt Andriese, and Walker Buehler.

That is a lot more names than I expected at the start of that. Now, what happens when we consider horizontal movement? That list shrinks to five names, just Dillon Maples, Joe Musgrove, Ryan Pressly, Jameson Taillon, and Walker Buehler. All of those pitches are coincidentally elite. He’s throwing his curveball from the same slot with comparable arm speed and it misses bats as a result. It’s also worth noting that Yoendrys added vertical depth to the pitch throughout the year. The pitch has plus or better upside but I can’t expect more than above-average with the lack of feel and usage right now.

This is p(fx) movement so it’s slightly harder to read but it’s still clearly dropping more

Yoendrys Gómez also technically throws a changeup. His sits at 90.5 MPH which is putrid velocity separation from the fastball. The pitch is thrown just over 400 RPMs lower. The ensuing pitch drops 10 inches more than the fastball with 6 inches more run. That is not a very good pitch.

How he uses the changeup gives me more hope. Gómez doesn’t deploy it as a conventional changeup with the purpose of being a bat missing offering against left handed bats. He uses his changeup as a pitch to contact pitch as what is basically a slow sinker. The pitch performs admirably in that role as he held opponents to an 8.3% hard-hit rate last year and had an average launch angle against the changeup of -14.4°.

That is a small sample and to be taken with a grain of salt but the pitch has more viability in that role than the traits suggest. Would the pitch be better if he just added power to it and turned it into a real sinker? Probably yeah. This is very loosely a 45 grade pitch.

The batted ball profile is robust. He gets groundballs off the changeup at close to a league average rate. His fastball movement profile leads to a lot of popups as well. He even avoids line drives at an above-average rate thanks to the horizontal action his fastball has. There is room for growth in every area. The one concern is that he gets no groundballs against right handed batters because he doesn’t use the sinker/changeup hybrid against them ever. This can leave him vulnerable to the long ball in same handed matchups. He balances that by just missing a bunch of bats but that is something to watch moving forward.

I have the command projected as average but I know a number of people are more optimistic about that skill. Yoendrys Gómeez is an amazing athlete with a well balanced delivery that looks repeatable. I’m leaning into the track record of strike throwing, and the lack of feel for spotting the curve which I think will play a bigger role in the future to only call him average.

Yoendrys Gómez will likely never reach his ceiling because of the accelerated developmental timeline he has been forced onto. This is the stuff of a top half of the rotation arm. I think there’s a decent chance that he’s forced into relief because of his timeline but even in relief, I think he could earn a role 55 designation. He is going to outright dominate hitters.

65. 1B Nick Pratto, Kansas City Royals

I had a 35 FV on Nick Pratto after 2019 and I don’t think I even bothered to update his report before 2020. I couldn’t actually tell you why that is since I didn’t have anything in my notes on him. I had him diagnosed as 45 hit/50 power/50 eye and on a first baseman that is a death sentence. I know his 2019 was abysmal but how I was ever that low on a first-round pick from only two years ago I will never know. Regardless, he’s not close to the same player he was in 2019 anymore. His 2021 season was nothing short of spectacular in every way and he’s now one of the best first base prospects in all the minors.

The swing and miss element is still a part of Nick Pratto’s game. The 22 year old whiffed 33.8% of the time last year while splitting time between AA and AAA. That would have been in the 5th percentile of major leaguers. That is not very good. I’m not expecting big gains in contact rate either, he is what he is.

The BABIP skill is significantly more impressive. The feel for producing flush contact instantly stands out. Nick Pratto has inhuman hip flexion and core strength that allows him to run an average VBA of ~-47° on pitches down in the zone. He homered on a pitch with a -51° VBA so it’s clearly somehow not hurting his power output at all. He averages -28° on pitches at the top of the zone which is slightly below-average but the variation is still absurd and a testament to his ability to adjust.

This is actually partially what causes Pratto’s whiff issues and why I don’t think they’re all that fixable without breaking the other parts of his game. The problem with such a vertical bat is that it leaves you with a very thin target horizontally speaking. He has to guess the location almost perfectly in that lateral dimension on breaking balls that have sidespin or he misses completely with how vertical his swing can get. There is probably a limit to how extreme you want a player’s VBA to be on pitches down and Pratto might be bumping up against that limit.

The other problem is the high fastball. Pratto still has some struggles with the high heat because -28° isn’t quite flat enough to consistently hit plus vertical movement up in the zone. There is also the possibility that the relative bat speed might be insufficient for hitting the high-end velocity ranges that MLB arms throw.

The good news is that Pratto also has plus launch angle optimization. Nick Pratto has a 75th percentile line drive rate and posted below-average popup rates (Good) last year. He also hits the ball obscenely hard which also inflates his BABIPs.

The approach is fantabulous and why you might choose to take the over on the hit tool. He’s not an aggressive hitter who isn’t just willing to take obvious balls but any borderline pitch that he’s not confident he can drive. He might only be extremely deadly in certain parts of the zone but him knowing that and planning around it is what makes him special. He isn’t afraid to take called strikes if it’s not a pitch he can drive. It’s maybe going to boost the strikeout rate some but most of the time it’s a better decision in that it’s more likely to be a ball or likely helps his contact quality.

The power is interesting. He had a 70-grade max EV in 2021and he averaged 90 MPH. This is in spite of only average bat speed. That sounds unusual and like one of those numbers must be a fluke but neither is true. Nick Pratto’s power doesn’t come from elite bat speed but having outlandish core strength and just being strong in general. He accelerates through contact rather than before and throws his entire weight at the ball.

This is a profile I have to be familiar with as a Mariners fan. Cal Raleigh is the same way with 70 grade Max EV and average bat speed. So is Ty France albeit with 60 raw; and Dylan Moore with 55. And Tom Murphy. And Kyle Seager, and, and, and… The point is that despite average bat speed, Pratto can still have elite power.

That core strength-derived power usually plays in the form of power to all fields and makes it so he suffers less going the other way than most power hitters- not that it matters much as Pratto pulls just under 47% of his batted balls. Nick Pratto pairs his absurd 70-grade max EV with a 96th percentile groundball rate. The result? A quadrillion homers. Okay, so like only 40ish.

Pratto is also a fantastic defensive first baseman with above-average speed and athleticism. He is no Evan White but he’s a plus defender at the cold corner who can be even better in time.

There is a risk that the lack of bat speed causes Pratto’s hit tool to bottom out. But the upside here is the bat of Aaron Judge with gold glove caliber defense at first base. He’s only a 55, in the end, because ultimately I think Nick Pratto is more advanced than elite. He’s an MLB ready bat toiling away in a level he is so far beyond. I think that realistically he’s only a 120 wRC+ first baseman which would have him as a role 55 type player rather than a true superstar.

66. SP Hunter Brown, Houston Astros

Hunter Brown has amazing stuff. He has command questions but the stuff is top notch and he has a good batted ball profile. That pairing of stuff + batted ball largely renders the command questions irrelevant. This is also a profile that the Astros routinely maximize in the majors so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he outperforms this aggressive ranking.

Hunter Brown has amazing stuff. He has command questions but the stuff is top notch and he has a good batted ball profile. That pairing of stuff + batted ball largely renders the command questions irrelevant. This is also a profile that the Astros routinely maximize in the majors so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he outperforms this aggressive ranking.

The curveball is the bread and butter pitch of Hunter Brown, and arguably the best curveball on my top 100 entirely. The curveball has plus velocity as it sits 81–84 MPH most nights. More importantly, he has some of the best vertical depth in the world. His curveball averaged 59 inches of drop in 2021 when pitching in front of statcast.

59 inches of drop is out of this world. That is in the top quartile of vertical drop on a curveball and that’s not considering velocity. When you consider velocity? The only pitcher in the same zip code as Brown with their curve is Tyler Glasnow. Tyler Glasnow who throws probably the best curveball in the majors, yeah, that one! They also have a nearly exactly identical vertical release point somehow at ~6 feet.

The slider is also a plus pitch. He throws it very hard sitting in the 86–89 MPH range in the majority of his outings. That hard slider has movement too. The pitch drops an average of 35 inches with 6 inches of sweep to it. That combination of movement and velocity lines up pretty closely with Corbin Burnes slider. You know, the pitch that has the highest swinging-strike rate in the statcast era? (Across all years combined). That one! The pitch command is bad and there are other issues with the slider I don’t want to get into but it has incredible upside, the realistic, is only a plus, however.

The fastball doesn’t exactly jump off the page. The velocity is a premium skill with the Astros top prospect sitting 94–98 and touching as high as 100 MPH but that’s the only standout element. The vertical movement is a tick above-average but he often cuts the ball so it doesn’t miss as many bats as you might like. His VAAs are only average because of struggles with consistently elevating. The pitch is a plus but only just.

The changeup is very firm. He sits close to ~90 MPH which gives him almost no deceptive elements to the pitch. The pitch has awesome vertical movement and has missed bats in small sample usage in the minors but I’m pessimistic about the pitch translating, I think it’s pretty clearly a below-average offering.

The batted ball profile is robust. The cutting fastball and lack of ability to locate up in the zone lead to Hunter Brown getting a lot of groundballs- as in his rates are in the 90th percentile. He also has above-average linedrive avoidance. The batted ball profile isn’t elite but it is enough to keep him in the rotation when paired with the elite strikeout stuff. There will be walks but there is a comparably low chance of them actually scoring because of how he manages risk in the batted ball elements.

Hunter Brown is risky. There is a high likelihood that he ends up in relief. There is also a good chance that things just click and he’s literally Tyler Glasnow. The stuff is as good as anyone so even if it’s in relief, he’s going to be dominant and highly cherished by his club. If the command improves then yowzers.

67. LF George Valera, Cleveland Guardians

George Valera has to walk a thin tightrope as a left-field primary guy without much in the way of in-zone contact skills. I think he can maintain that balance but there is a serious risk that he goes teetering off the edge into oblivion if he stumbles at all. There are a number of similarities to Nick Pratto in the overall profile even if how they get there is completely inverted.

George Valera has a bit of a whiff problem. He whiffed 29.8% of the time between A+ and AA as a 20-year-old last season. That isn’t that bad, even if below-average but you’re missing context with that number as always. George Valera is doing that with one of the lowest chase rates in the league, he’s whiffing in the zone a ton and just working around it with discipline to keep the overall rates in check ala Aaron Judge.

The swing is reminiscent of Robinson Canó’s but without the god tier bat control to make it work. This flat of a bat path leaves him with major holes down in the zone- particularly against the hard stuff which he regularly swings through. He decimates the high fastball meta that is prevalent in the big leagues right now but he’s still just too easy to beat downstairs. He also can get stiff when trying to slow things down to catch up to offspeed which leads to more whiffs.

The plate discipline is his saving grace and why I still think he could be an above-average regular. George Valera has one of the lowest chase rates in the minors with prospects live placing him at a 70. He’s not one to ever chase breaking balls off the plate or even fastballs. He’s patient but not passive as he still manages to keep his called strike rates in check by being aggressive with pitches in the top half of the strike zone- and doing damage on those picks. His walk rates have been elite and I doubt that changes anytime soon.

The power is loud and even with Valera’s struggles to consistently put the ball in the air, plays as a plus in games. George Valera had an average exit velocity of 90 MPH last year and a max that sits around ~110 MPH. More impressively he hit an opposite field home runs with an EV of 108 MPH. That would translate to a Max EV of ~113 MPH when pulled if he had an average power distribution by field.

Not only that but we can reverse engineer the launch angle based on exit velocity and hit distance. His launch angle is ~39° on that home run. Guess how many players have hit a ball that hard at that steep of an angle to the opposite field last year? Just Ohtani. In the statcast era? Only Judge, Teoscar, Gallo, and Peter O’Brien. Valera has crazy raw juice that plays in games.

For all the time I just spent oozing praise over an opposite field hit, one of the key elements of Valera’s game power is how often he pulls the ball. Like most Cleveland stars of the previous eras, Valera is a master of pulling his aerial contact to let it play above what expected stats would expect of him. He does the most damage possible by abusing the pullside whenever possible.

His consistent rotation and ability to square balls up plays in way of a lot of hard contact. The consistency of his power and the pullside talent is why I’m optimistic that he’ll greatly outperform his 33rd percentile groundball rate and play closer to the level of his raw power.

The BABIP skills are not fantastic to say the least. His line drive rates were in the bottom quartile last year and his pull heavy ways could lead him vulnerable to the shift if that still exists. The power should at least keep the BABIPs respectable and he doesn’t pop out but I wouldn’t hold out hope on this being a great skill.

Valera will either have to keep his strikeout rates in check (Doable) or make other changes to tap into BABIP because otherwise, he’s not going to hit for much of an average. Even if he doesn’t run a high average, the extra base hits + walk profile is still exceptional so he would still be a huge offensive presence. The defensive value of a left fielder without a ton of speed or arm strength is limited but he’ll hit and that is what will matter most.

68. SS Ronny Mauricio, New York Mets

I hate Ronny Mauricio. I’ve gone back and forth on his ranking a thousand times. He was my #64 before 2020. He dropped out of my top 100 before 2021. He was supposed to be twenty spots higher on this list initially. I dropped him 30 spots when trying to write his blurb. I then brought him back up ten spots to eventually settle here. There is no prospect more conflicting for me than Ronny Mauricio.

Ronny Mauricio just doesn’t make any sense. He finally filled in his uber projectable frame and as you would expect… had the worst season of his career offensively as he posted a 97 wRC+ (To be fair that is 119 PF wRC+), and the best defensively???? See what I mean? He makes zero goddamm sense.

Mauricio didn’t lose his defensive acumen at shortstop with the bulk increase, he actually had a career year statistically as he posted +13 DR and +10.9 FRAA in 87 games after previously consistently being in the negatives. His arm strength is a plus that plays fantastically from shortstop. He also has good lateral mobility and he cleaned up his actions a bit this year. As weird as it sounds, despite adding nearly 50 pounds in the last two years, I’m bumping his glove up to a 50. I think he will stick at shortstop and be just fine there.

Ronny Mauricio is a switch hitter who really shouldn’t be a switch hitter but instead commit to hitting from one side full time. Blog on why in general here. Mauricio in particular, however, is different. Ronny Mauricio makes contact 3.9% more as a right handed batter than a left handed batter. With the dominance of top hand strength in determining bat speed, you would expect that to work in Mauricio’s favor as a right handed thrower.

Mauricio goes against the grain for whatever reason and makes everyone’s lives more difficult. Ronny Mauricio has significantly more power from the left handed side. As in, his max EV as a left handed bat is 113 MPH. He’s also done 112.2 MPH, in case you thought that first number was a fluke. From the right handed side, his hardest hit ball I can find is 107 MPH.

This is the conundrum with Ronny Mauricio (One of like a dozen, the is the wrong word but it sounds more dramatic). His being a switch hitter is ineffectual. He needs to commit to either hitting for contact and going fully right handed or hitting for power and hitting exclusively left handed. Shape his identity around whatever side he chooses and mold the rest of his game around whatever he chooses to profile as.

Ronny Mauricio has premium raw power in his bat so I lean towards hitting him exclusively left handed. Mauricio averages 91 MPH off the bat which is elite stuff and his max is obviously very impressive. The feel to elevate is not very impressive. It’s consistent stinging contact. He hasn’t found holes but I don’t actually think that will persist. The HR/FB rate was exceptional, especially for a guy playing in one of the most pitcher friendly parks at his level where he was 5th min 400 PA. He’s young enough to feel comfortable projecting but only so much, it’ll play a tick below the raw even as a left handed hitter.

Ronny Mauricio also checks a lot of boxes from a BABIP standpoint even if it hasn’t played in games yet. The swing is fluid. He’s not overly pull-heavy and has above-average line drive rates paired with below-average popup rates. He’s gotten a lot better at steepening his swing down in the zone and is starting to regularly produce flush contact. All of these skills are more 55s for the level than anything right now but he’s so young that you can project further growth.

Ronny Mauricio’s approach is dogshit. It’s probably slightly less dogshit from the right-handed side-well if by dogshit you mean less aggressive; he swung 5% less from that side and still sat at 52%. Using the same principles as in earlier blurbs (Primarily Pomares), I’d probably argue more aggressive is better given the fact that he never walks and his contact quality is high.

So what is Ronny Mauricio offensively? I have zero clue. What I do know is that Mauricio checks quite a few boxes of key skills that I look for. Maybe he never learns to mesh them all together and actually turn them into production but also if he does he would be one of the best hitters on this list. He also plays an apt shortstop and that high variance bat from a shortstop is enough for me to maybe buy-in? As I said, I have no clue. I hate Ronny Mauricio.

69. 2B/3B Nolan Gorman, St. Louis Cardinals

Nolan Gorman did not look or perform like Nolan Gorman in 2021. The shape of the offensive profile completely morphed and I’m unsure what to think of that. Gorman previously had the best feel for elevation in all of minor league baseball. He had a major strikeout issue and walked at an above-average rate. He now has flipped the script with average feel to elevate, average strikeout rates, and walks at a below-average clip. So who is Gorman really?

The raw power is the one thing that both 2019 Gorman and 2021 Gorman have in common. Gorman has posted a maximum exit velocity of just over 113 MPH and his average exit velocity has been consistently over the MLB average exit velocities every year since he was drafted. He had 90th percentile bat speed in his prep days and I’m all but certain he hasn’t regressed in that regard. He’s an extremely effective rotator with absurd amounts of torque that he unleashes on the baseball.

Nolan Gorman’s game power is very hard to gauge. He elevated a lot less last year which should be counterproductive. I say should be because he saw his HR/FB rate skyrocket and as such even with a lot fewer flyballs, his home runs rates improved as did his ISO. This is also happening with him pulling the ball slightly less and having a slightly lower average EV. I think I was initially too optimistic on the game power (last year) because Gorman was hitting too many towering shots with no chance of doing damage. I have Gorman at 60 game/raw power and zero confidence in that assessment.

Nolan Gorman’s hit tool improved immensely last season. He cut his whiff rates down to a much more respectable 28.4%. This is as a 21 year old splitting time between AA and AAA. The primary reason for those gains is the improved flexibility in his swing which had other benefits than just more frequent contact.

Nolan Gorman has become a flush contact savant in the last year. He used to have one of the steepest VBA’s in all the minors without much variance dependent on pitch location. He now adjusts his swing constantly and while it hurt the flyball rates, it seems like his overall contact quality is probably higher now.

Gorman has a VBA of ~41° on pitches down in the zone; that is about what it was last year. What is different now is that Gorman averages ~26° on pitches up in the zone. The adjusting swing shape has made him not useless against the high fastball and has added backspin to his batted balls. More contact and more BABIP is an obvious win even if you could argue it cost him slightly in the power department.

Nolan Gorman actually saw a decrease in his BABIP this year but I will still reiterate that the skill has improved in the past year. His BABIP dip is largely driven by one really bad 41 PA stretch when he was first promoted to AAA. Outside of that, he has a .340 BABIP. He’s still an above-average line drive rate guy who has more backspin now, and rarely pops up. He also hits the ball stupid hard which doesn’t hurt at all. This is an above-average hit tool with the combination of power, contact, and launch angle optimization.

This is a controversial take but Nolan Gorman’s approach improved this past season. Nolan Gorman swung at ~53% of pitches in 2021. His chase rates were only a half grade below league average. His xZ-Swing is 71.3% if he sees an average amount of strikes. That is well above the MLB average. His chase rates are less of a byproduct of subpar pitch recognition (Also demonstrated by his ability to adjust his swing based on pitch location) and more of a byproduct of a hyper aggressive approach. His swing decisions are fine relatively, and it’s easier to project becoming less aggressive than learning to recognize and track pitches. If you wanted to project above-average walk rates then I wouldn’t protest much.

I also think his new approach is outright better than the old one. For the sake of simplicity, let’s pretend that the improved contact rates are directly correlated to the more aggressive approach and you cannot have one without the other. The break even point for Gorman to be better off with a 7.3% BB% and a 22% K% than a 10.1% BB% and a 29% K% is a .196 wOBAcon. That is not a typo.

He could do the least amount of damage on contact ever and still be better off than the old Gorman. Walks don’t hold a candle to the strikeout reduction that comes with being more aggressive. I honestly don’t know why I liked Gorman so much in hindsight. He’s good but not exactly generational and never was even close. I think he improved his stock over the last year but I was so ridiculously high on him before that he still dropped forty spots.

Nolan Gorman moved to second base last year and was fine there. He’s not the most athletic defender but he has a good arm and his actions appear to be sufficient. His range is plenty for either second or third base. I think I prefer him ever so slightly at third base but either spot is fine but only that.

Nolan Gorman should be in the MLB very soon. He’s the planned long term answer at second base for the Cardinals and considering they did nothing to add to the offense this offseason he might be the short term one as well. The skillset is weird and the shape of it has morphed considerably but I still believe in his impact potential. The combination of power and xBAcon skills to go along with solid strikeout rates are easy to get excited about. I think Gorman is more dependable than a prospective star but that still has value and the proximity only enhances that value.

70. C/CF Harry Ford, Seattle Mariners

Really should have used that teal for all Mariners, looks so perfect but I’m too lazy to change the old ones.

The entirety of this writeup is copied and pasted directly from my Mariners Top 30 Prospects list. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

Harry Ford was my #5 player in the entire draft last year so I am understandably ecstatic that he fell to the Mariners last year, even if we foolishly passed on Kahlil Watson in order to draft him. Harry Ford proved my aggressive ranking was warranted as the teenage catcher hit .291/.400/.582 for a 150 wRC+ in 65 PA at the complex level. A small sample but an encouraging one.

Harry Ford has premium raw power and the fact that some places only have it as average because he’s 5’10” hurts my brain. He hit a ball in excess of 114 MPH in 2021 and has 99th percentile bat speed. There is no planet where that combination shouldn’t lead to at least plus raw power.

Harry Ford has a lot of rotational velocity to his swing. His hips explode forward at foot strike and he delays his torso rotation significantly to generate elite torque out of his somewhat stocky frame. He controls his hips well and has an ideal hitting posture that lets him get every newton of force out of his frame.

Harry Ford has tremendous feel to elevate to boot. Harry Ford has a naturally inclined bat path with his average VBA of ~34° which is particularly steep for a high schooler. He also has naturally steep attack angles so there is an element of explicit loft to go with the implicit swing path that leads to play feel to elevate.

The power doesn’t quite play up to it’s raw potential in games, however, despite the feel to elevate. Harry Ford typically will make contact deep over the plate and the result is an all fields approach. In the summer showcase circuit he hit the ball to the opposite field nearly 40% of the time. He doesn’t pull the ball often and non-pulled flyballs rarely wind up in the bleachers.

It feels worth noting that in his 41 BBE sample after being drafted, Harry Ford had a 51.2% pull rate even if it’s too small of a sample for me to move anything. It’s worth noting that pulling the ball is easy to learn how to do so it’s not as major of a hurdle for him as the negative impact on his performance because of that issue.

Harry Ford is a really good athlete who showcases tremendous plate coverage. He shows awesome flexibility and has the hip flexion to lunge for balls in tough spots. He has premium bat speed to catch up to velocity. While he doesn’t make flush contact so there is some issues with fastballs up due to his swing shape, he’s not so steep that he can’t hit them at all. He’s direct to the ball and makes contact at an above-average rate as a whole. There is violence to his very rotational swing but it’s beautiful and efficient controlled violence that helps in the power department significantly.

Harry Ford rarely chases but I’m still operating under the assumption that is a byproduct of his uber-passive approach at the plate. He had plus chase rates all throughout the summer circuit and again in rookie ball after he was drafted but he’s also probably too willing to watch strikes go by him as he waits for his pitch. That approach is fine in theory, but it only works if you actually have elite pitch selection and it’s too early to say that about Ford. I still only have him as an average eye until I have swing rate data and he proves this works at a higher level.

Harry Ford is a freakish athlete and I mean that in the best way possible. He’s presently an elite runner who posted a 6.42 second 60-yard dash in this final trip through the showcase circuit. That is a 75–80 grade run time. He’ll obviously lose speed with his build, especially if he catches. That being said, I grade prospects as if my goal is to develop them into the best player possible and not what the team will do so he’s still a 70 runner for me.

I think Harry Ford could be a solid defensive catcher, he’s a great athlete with good hands and a rocket arm. He had a 1.81 second pop time and a max throw velo of 85 MPH from the crouch at the perfect game showcase events which ranked in the 99th percentile of all participants. I just don’t want him to be a catcher.

It’s not even about the fatigue of the position possibly breaking the bat anymore, that’s always a concern but even if you think the bat will hold up while catching everyday, I still don’t want him back there anymore. Electronic strike zones are inevitable. When they come, catchers defensive value will plummet.

The difference between the best and worst catcher defensively is maybe 15 passed balls in a season- especially once no one is using a one knee stance for the framing benefits. Stolen bases are largely irrelevant in today’s games. Teams are better off having well educated coaches and pitchers gameplan rather than throwing all of pitch calling on the head of one player. Even an idiot can call games with the right support system.

A catcher will impact fewer plays defensively than even a left fielder with electronic strike zones and every error by a catcher is a one-base one not multiple like missing a double in the gap is. What irreplaceable defensive value does a catcher have with electronic strike zones? I’d be fine starting Kyle Schwarber and his ilk back there with electronic strike zones.

The problem with catchers is that even the best ones only play ~120 games a year. If Harry Ford has the athleticism to be awesome in CF or even in the infield- which he does; then why would you cut back on his workload to put him at a less valuable defensive position? Ideally, I want to see Harry Ford as a primary Centerfielder who also serves as a third catcher and gets twenty or so games a year there while more often keeping his bat in the lineup.

Harry Ford has less polished footwork at spots other than catcher, obviously. However, the upside of his arm should theoretically be the same elsewhere, if not even higher when he’s not throwing out of the crouch. His speed should also play in centerfield with the elite acceleration that gives him great burst and plays in the form of plus range.

Harry Ford is a potential five tool freak who can do it all. There’s a chance that leaving him at catcher makes him JT Realmuto but there’s also a chance he fizzles out and becomes nothing if left behind the plate. There’s also a good argument that Realmuto isn’t really absurdly valuable with electronic zones like Ford will have most if not all of his career. I’d rather take the better route and make him an electric centerfielder with versatility and a fantastic bat.

71. 2B/3B/LF Jose Miranda, Minnesota Twins

Jose Miranda is so good at baseball. He doesn’t have a track record of success and in 2019 he badly struggled at High A but that was his age 20–21 season. He was young for the level and still was making contact at a pretty high rate. With a slightly more respectable BABIP, he would have still been an above-average bat. Maybe, we should have always had loftier expectations for Miranda than we did. Regardless, two years later and Miranda looks like a complete monster. He tore up AA and AAA and if the Twins had less offensive depth he would be in their opening day lineup in 2022.

Jose Miranda is a 2B/3B/LF hybrid player who isn’t particularly good anywhere. I like him best at second base where the shift can hide his range issues and the only average arm is less relevant but he’s not in the lineup for his glove. He’s in the lineup for his potent bat that could play at any spot.

The contact skills are elite. In his age 22 season, Miranda only whiffed 19% (flat) of the time and he actually whiffed less at AAA than AA. Those contact rates are born of both a direct swing path a very flat bat path that doesn’t sacrifice coverage at the bottom of the zone.

Jose Miranda punishes the high fastball with reckless abandon. His swing plane is one of the flattest in all of baseball as he has an average VBA of ~-23° on both pitches up and pitches down in the strike zone. This approach obviously, has its drawbacks but it works for players like Juan Soto, and Randy Arozarena- both of whom are consistently productive because they have the flexibility to maintain their swing even on pitches down. Miranda has that same flexibility. Most of his damage comes against high heat but he can and does hit breaking stuff down as well as sinkers.

Jose Miranda should also do great things in terms of BABIP. He pairs a 95th percentile line drive rate with average popup rates. He also hits with a lot of backspin because of how flat his swing is, and the fact that even on pitches down, he’s still squaring balls up instead of topping them like most flat VBA down guys.

The power is very much present- especially to his pullside where his strong snappy wrists do a good job of yanking the ball over the fence. His max exit velocity is 110 MPH (which he has done twice) and he’s also done 109 MPH before. He averaged 90 MPH last year which is pretty good. He mostly just gets away with big bat speed + strong rotational ability that leads to lots of homers. I think he’s more above-average than plus at the next level but he doesn’t need to be more than that to thrive.

Jose Miranda has a hyper-aggressive approach but he falls in the boat of an aggressive approach being the correct one with his contact frequency and contact quality being where they are. The line for a fringy defensive value like Miranda is a thin one to be a star. I’m also wary of the lack of track record. I think Miranda is probably too low on this list but I have to respect the risk of the fringier profile, no matter how much I love the bat.

72. SP Cole Wilcox, Tampa Bay Rays

Cole Wilcox through 44.1 innings last year before his elbow popped and he got shut down in order to undergo Tommy John Surgery. In those 44.1 innings, Wilcox shattered every single one of my expectations and completely remade his identity as a player.

Cole Wilcox struggled with walks all throughout college. In his 90.2 career innings at the collegiate level, he walked 11.9% of batters. He also threw 17 wild pitches and hit 7 batters. None of those numbers are at all good. In his 44.1 innings as a Ray, he walked 2.9% of batters. He hit 2 with a pitch and only allowed 2 wild pitches. Talk about a role reversal. Even his called strike rate was right at league average for his level. I’m not going crazy on command there but you can actually call it league average now which is a massive development for Wilcox.

Cole Wilcox is a groundball master. He had above-average rates in college but nothing exceptional. That changed this year as he soared to a 61.1% groundball rate which is in the 98th percentile for his league and level. The groundball rate was backed by an elite line drive for the first time as he got that down to 16.7% which is in the 92nd percentile of his league. He had never been above-average prior to this year. What was once a one dimensional stuff arm now looks the part of a well rounded top of the rotation starter.

The fastball is primarily a sinker which was a problem back when he was extremely one dimensional, now it is a huge perk. The sinker does not miss a lot of bats. The pitch has heavy tailing action from a low release (~5.7 I’d eyeball- not measure, don’t have the angle for that) point because of his lower arm slot that also gives the pitch a fantastic horizontal approach angle. The pitch gets groundballs in spades and is infinitely better than the mediocre fours-seamer he used to employ more often. The fastball has premium velocity too, sitting 94–97 MPH and touching 99 MPH most nights. This is a plus pitch.

The slider is his go to strikeout pitch, particularly against righties. The pitch is truly hellacious. He has premium slider velocity as he’ll typically sit in the high eighties. somewhere in the 86–89 MPH range but he does throw a handful of them in the nineties. The pitch has ridiculous length for something thrown that hard- not quite at Meyer levels but not far off. The combination of plus horizontal break and velocity is an incredibly potent and equally rare of one. There is also solid vertical depth and feel to manipulate the pitch into a shorter cutting slider.

The changeup gets the most mixed reviews but I have it as his third plus pitch. The pitch had the highest whiff rate of anything he threw last year and the movement is promising with heavy fade to it. He doesn’t kill the most spin but it still has good tumbling action with decent enough velocity separation. What really separates the pitch for me is his arm action and arm speed that sell the pitch. Again, the results are fantastic, and I think even if it’s rightfully used less than the slider, it can dominate left handed bats and be good enough against righties to warrant a plus grade and make him a lock for the rotation.

The concern with Cole Wilcox is his delivery that was a culprit in him already having undergone Tommy John Surgery. He has some crossfire action as his left leg lands crossed over in front of his right leg and that leads to his pelvis flying open early. He cleaned some of that up this year but it’s still a concern. He also has flat arm syndrome where the arm never gets up but he accelerates just from his plunge into his slot. That can lead to a lot of elbow fatigue. I also think it probably enhances the stuff so I’m not sure it’s worth tinkering with.

There is injury risk with Wilcox, I’m not that worried about him being the same playing coming back from Tommy John. Most players return successfully these days. The worry is that his elbow will bark at him again. And again. If Wilcox is healthy, I think he has the stuff and well-roundedness to sit near the top of a rotation. He ranks highly because of that upside, even if the floor is much lower.

73. RP/SP Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds

Hunter Greene throws harder than just about anyone on the planet. His four-seam fastball averaged 99 MPH last year. He hit as high as 105 MPH with the fastball. You can count the number of players to do that on one hand. This is undoubtedly 80 grade velocity.

The pitch aside from velocity is fairly mediocre. He gets 17 inches of induced vertical break. League average is 15.6 inches so it’s above-average vertical movement with god tier velocity. His release height is ~6.2 feet. League average is ~5.9 feet, that is less good. Those two features together lead to him having almost an exactly league average zone-neutral VAA. The fastball averages 9 inches of horizontal break which is right around league average as well. The pitch movement is only average.

So how much is velocity worth? It’s not entirely empty velocity because average is better than a negative but there is nothing to enhance that velocity. In between AA and AAA this year, Greene posted a whiff rate that Prospects Live has a 55 on the 20–80 scale. That is only half a standard deviation above average relative to other fastballs against not great competition. In AAA, of his eleven homers allowed, nine of them were against the fastball. The pitch is just very hittable for whatever reason despite the velocity

To be fair, he’s throwing his fastball just over 65% of the time so there is some overusage that deflates his whiff rates, however, at the same time, a guy like JP Sears sits 7 MPH slower and misses more bats at the same level. There are more important things than velocity.

You also have to respect the upside of that fastball because of velocity, however. His velocity can’t be taught, that is a skill that is unique to him and could make the pitch truly special. You can improve his spin efficiency and even spin rates. You can tweak the spin axis. You can teach velocity but not this potentially record breaking stuff. The ceiling of the pitch is an 80 simply because he throws so damm hard. I think the pitch only plays as a 60 in all likelihood but it’s graded as a 65 in respect to the upside of throwing that hard.

The slider is his best pitch in my honest opinion. He uses it just under a third of the time and it dominates. He throws it obscenely hard- sitting at 88 MPH and topping out at as high as 94 MPH. There were only four starting pitchers (10 pitchers) to throw a single slider at 94 MPH+ last year. Only six starting pitchers average higher than that.

Of those six, Hunter Greene has more horizontal movement then all of them as he averages seven inches of it. If we expand to include reliever, only Kittredge and Graterol beat him out in both fields. The slider has elite bat missing potential and posted a 46% whiff rate last year. However, I have concerns over the slider command and his slot is slightly lower on it than the fastball which cause it to play down a bit. I think it still plays like a 65 pitch but the traits on it are comparable to a 70+.

The changeup was thrown ~4% of the time last year. I would be lying if I said I thought it was a good pitch. The changeup is all velo separation as it has ~15 MPH of velocity difference from the fastball with the same arm speed and slot. That is all it has going for it. The movement is bland and he throws it for a strike less than 50% of the time. That strike% would be in the bottom 12% of major leaguers. That is not very good. There is projection here by nature of the arm speed and velocity separation but I can’t treat a pitch used so little and used so ineffectively as even close to average projection.

Hunter Greene has average control but don’t mistake that for good command. He very much does not have that. He can’t get his changeup over the plate, and his fastball strategy is to chuck it over the plate and blow them away with velocity. The slider command is more advanced but it still isn’t a precision pitch. ideally, he transitions away from prioritizing strikes and trades more walks for better results elsewhere. There are also injury concerns stemming from his flat arm and his hips firing somewhat prematurely. He also has already undergoneTommy John Surgery which does him zero favors.

The batted ball profile is below-average. Greene has a very average batted ball profile. His groundball rates are right around league average with the popup rates in the same range. There is some vulnerability to line drives and extra-base hits in general with the fastball command being where he is. He’s a fantastic athlete and some people like to think that points to future command gains but the evidence of that being true is entirely anecdotal.

Hunter Greene is a weird prospect to evaluate. The 90th percentile outcome is as high as just about anyone. The median outcome is at least a good reliever. The floor with an intact elbow is a long career as at least an above-average reliever. He’s on the doorstep to the majors. I don’t love the two pitch profile and unlike a number of those players I do love, he doesn’t have strong results outside of strikeouts in any area. There is serious one dimensional K arm risk and possibly that comes as a reliever.

The stuff is great and you can dream on it, the proximity is awesome, but proximity doesn’t equal floor and I have a hard time seeing Greene reach his 90th percentile outcome. However, despite his proximity and that upside; I’ll still take the similarly built prospect and his teammate now, with better stuff in Chase Petty over Hunter Greene.

74. CF Benny Montgomery, Colorado Rockies

Parts of this writeup are copied and pasted directly from my MLB Draft Top 50. Feel free to skip the section if you don’t want to reread what you already read. I don’t want to rewrite it either.

Benny Montgomery was the highest upside hitter in this past year’s draft in all likelihood. His raw tools are unbelievable- like borderline Elijah Greene and what Jasson Dominguez was supposed to be levels. There are very legitimate reasons to be concerned with the swing and hit tool but the other four are so absurd he still belongs in the top ten in my opinion.

Benny Montgomery is a freak athlete that will likely make him a gold glove contender in centerfield in his prime. He is an 80-grade athlete without question and that isn’t something you can teach. His 60 yard dash time is 6.32 seconds. An 80-grade time. He’s also absurdly explosive with a 1.55 seconds ten-yard split on that 60-yard dash as he can accelerate in an instant and reach top speed. This explosiveness gives him an elite first step in centerfield and very good jumps on the basepaths. 80-grade speed and 80-grade explosiveness will play and is incredibly exciting.

His jumping ability should be lauded just as highly. He has an 11'7" Broad Jump at the Baseball Factory showcase events. Which is the second farthest broad jump ever by a 17 year old at one of those showcases. His one-legged broad jump laterally is 7'9" off both legs which are plus measurements as well. He might be spiderman in centerfield, climbing walls and leaping to bring back home runs.

His arm is against something that is just absurd in how impressive it is. His max throw velocity is 97 MPH from centerfield. That is in the 100th percentile. The highest ever at a showcase event is 101. His throw velocity is the highest in this year’s draft from an outfielder. He has 70-grade arm strength and maybe more with good footwork to boot. He’s going to be a freak defensively.

His bat is nearly as outlandish. His power is at least. He has a max exit velocity of 103 MPH off of a tee. That is not only tied for the best exit velocity off of a tee in the class, it is the 11th best in the history of perfect game showcases. That is obviously elite power.

He pairs blinding exit velocities with arguably even more blinding bat speed. His max barrel speed is 84.8 MPH. That is again not only the second-best in this year’s draft, it is the 21st best ever at a perfect game showcase. His impact momentum (Bat speed relative to bat weight basically) is 33. That is not only the best in this year’s draft, it’s also the seventh-best ever in a perfect game showcase event. His max acceleration is 49 G’s which isn’t the best in the draft for once, but it is still in the 99th percentile. His trigger to impact of 157 milliseconds, is again elite. Suffice to say, he has bat speed in spades.

Benny Montgomery also has a very projectable frame. He’s a lanky kid in the present day, weighing in at 200lbs in a 6'4" frame. He has sloped shoulders and a narrow waist that makes it very easy to project him adding 10–20lbs of good healthy weight and becoming even stronger. This is probably the easiest 70-grade raw power in the entire draft. His game power is another story altogether.

I feel generous putting a 55 on his game power despite 70-grade raw juice. He doesn’t understand how to be a power hitter. His swing is flat with a flat bat and a flat plane. His attack angles are awful averaging -4° which leads to a lot of balls hit straight down into the ground. He has questionable barrel accuracy from what I’ve seen and can’t put the ball in the air. That is not a recipe for success. There’s a reason he only had 6 extra-base hits in 91 career high school plate appearances tracked by Maxpreps despite him playing at a 4A school. He had one extra base hit (a triple) in 52 plate appearances after being drafted. There is a reason for that. That reason is elevation and attack angles.

His swing looks like Frankenstein’s monster. He strides and lands with his knee rotated inwards from the pitcher standing on his front toe. He twists his foot down and around as he boxes out his hips to kind of create a hinge. He then opens up his hips as his hands drop to create separation. Finally, he slams forward with a very loopy bat path that seemingly goes around the baseball and often results in him getting over the ball and pounding it into the ground as there appears to be an attack angle issue and a major one at that. His swing is impossible to describe. Just watch the video frame by frame yourself.

The swing is going to result in a lot of suboptimal contact quality, kill his game power and probably lead to swing and miss. I say probably because he only has an 8.7% K% in his high school career although some of that is born of hyper aggressiveness. After being drafted he made 52 plate appearances at the complex level and only struck out 17.3% of the time. Prospects Live has him with 55-grade contact rates in his pro-debut.

The swing really doesn’t look like it should work with that hitch and loop and his lower half looks very uncomfortable but we said some of the same things about the loopiness of Mike Trout’s swing. That isn’t a comp to be clear just saying we’ve been wrong on what works before and we could be here. He’s also from the Pennsylvania area and only a 4A school for the little it’s worth and that demographic typically gets underrated on draft day due to the difficulties of seeing them which is especially true this year.

There are some major positives with his swing and things he does tremendously well that give me some optimism that he won’t have to completely rebuild himself. His plate coverage is elite as he’ll cover 37 inches in the zone according to Baseball Factory. His hands are elite and despite his long arms, he gets them into optimal positions to make contact. Hunter Pence had some similar mechanisms and had no trouble making contact at the big league level. Perhaps, it just works for Montgomery with his athleticism and bat speed minimizing the cost of his inefficiencies.

There is certainly work to be done on Benny Montgomery to get his bat up to snuff. You can debate if his inability to make quality contact is a philosophical issues, a small mechanical tweak to get better attack angles, or in need of a complete swing overhaul to resolve but there is likely some fix. The team that believes it’s a simple one will take him very early.

You are taking a risk on the bat with Benny Montgomery but as a whole, he’s not that risky of a player because of how elite the supplementary skills are. An elite defense and elite speed centerfielder only needs an ~85 wRC+ to play every day in theory.

Benny Montgomery could make no contact and flame out before he even reaches AA, but it is also entirely possible that he just hits and is a top ten prospect by year’s end. This is a high reward talent with unreal tools. A patient team with an elite development system should have taken him without hesitation. Instead the Rockies took him for some reason. I love the player but I really don’t trust this team to develop him. I don’t factor team into rankings but I also don’t really expect him to be on this list next year because he went to the wrong team and I doubt they can make this work. Maybe he’s actually just perfect as is? Please?

75. SP Joe Ryan, Minnesota Twins

Is this too low for Joe Ryan? Probably yeah. He’s already thrown 27 very high quality innings at the major league level. I stand by my reasoning for this ranking- the probable lack of top end upside, but I’m probably underselling the value of his floor.

Joe Ryan is not your conventional starting pitcher. He throws his fastball over two thirds of the time. Said fastball averages 91.2 MPH with below-average vertical movement. Even the spin rates are well below-average as his 2175 RPMs sits in the 34th percentile. That fastball is also a borderline 70 grade pitch.

How is that even possible? He throws his fastball from an average release height of 5.06 feet. That is tied with Freddy Peralta for the lowest vertical release point of any fastball by a starting pitcher in 2021 at the major league level. That combined with the slightly higher than average fastball height gives him what was tied for the second flattest fastball VAA by a starting pitcher in the majors at -4.1°. Only Freddy Peralta is ahead of him and that is -0.1° lead.

Jon Ryan offers a unique look from even a Freddy Peralta type who throws from the same release height. Joe Ryan achieves his freakishly low fastball release by having abnormally short arms instead of riding so low to the ground. His arm slot is abnormally vertical for the profile as well (Still only .03 feet off of Freddy horizontally though). As Yusmeiro Petit does, he leads with his elbow when he throws it- essentially the ball appears at foot strike and then folds back behind his elbow until right before release. This mechanic makes his already flat VAA fastball impossible to time. There is a distinct possibility that it helps his secondary development too.

In spite of spamming the fastball, the pitch had plus in-zone whiff rates and swinging strike rates. I’d like to see him elevate a tad more but the pitch even without velocity or vertical movement should miss bats at a high rate. The low release is a bigger difference maker than we often realize. This is a foundational pitch that could in theory, with a slight spin tweak play identically to Freddy Peralta’s fastball. I often call Freddy’s fastball the best non-deGrom heater by a starting pitcher so I’m not making such a comparison likely.

The secondaries are not the best admittedly. There is a more than reasonable argument that zero of them grade out as average. Me? The only one I have graded as even average is the slider at exactly that. The good news is the fastball is spammable enough he might not need any of his secondaries to be more than passable.

The slider is your traditional gyro slider. He throws it from a 10:45 spin axis with a mere 21% spin efficiency. The pitch has very little movement but the heavy gyrocentric profile lets the breaking ball miss bats inside the strike zone. The spin efficiency and axis are on par with a Tanner Rainey esque breaking ball but he lacks power to it as only averages 80.7 MPH so it plays down closer to average even if the shape is quite good.

The curveball has the same issue. He has good shape- albeit less so. The pitch’s spin axis is nearly exactly 6 hours apart from the fastball which would make it close to the perfect spin mirror. He has above-average vertical depth on the curve and averages 12 inches of sweep. The catch is again no power as he sits at 72.7 MPH on average and that makes it play as a below-average pitch; maybe even worse when you consider his lack of curveball command.

The changeup is also below-average. The cambio is ~8 MPH slower than the high heat but the rest of the characteristics leave a bit to be desired. Joe Ryan kills almost no spin on the pitch with his average spin rate on it sitting a mere 100 RPMs lower on the pitch compared to the fastball. As such, it should come as no surprise that the difference in vertical movement is a mere 12 inches more (And 7 of tail). The changeup bleeds into the fastball and doesn’t have very promising of bat missing traits in general. This is a below-average pitch but there might be untapped potential in the form of his unorthodox delivery that could let the pitch maybe play up?

The control is a plus. Joe Ryan has never faced any command issues. He puts the ball where he wants it to be with regularity. The fastball command is particularly great. The slider command is also above-average. The other secondary pitches lag behind. I like the delivery and would be fairly shocked if he was not a starting pitcher long term.

In 2019, Joe Ryan had a 4th percentile Groundball rate. He had only above-average line-drive avoidance but with elite popup rates for obvious reasons. (VAA + plus horizontal movement). The concern was that as he climbed the ladder and faced guys with more power, more flyballs would find the bleachers. When he’s not elite at limiting line drives or getting groundballs at all whatsoever, there is a good chance that those home runs aren’t solo shots but crippling multi-run blasts.

Last year Joe Ryan flipped the script. His groundball rate is up 5.5% to 39.3%. Still not great but progress. His popup rate which was always exceptional remains so at 13.6% percent (100th percentile). The biggest change, however, has undoubtedly been what is now a line drive rate of 12.9%. That is in the 99th percentile of all minor leaguers. In his small sample at the MLB level, he ranked in the 78th percentile according to FaBIO. I’m 99.99% sure he’s the only pitcher with this 200 BF+ to allow more popups than line drives in a season ever at any level. It’s not a feat I ever dreamed was even possible in my head.

The batted ball profile as a whole might now be a lot better than just above-average, even with the lack of track record that keeps it down at a 55 for now. I also have some concern over the lack of velocity translating to more longballs when hitters aren’t fooled so I’m not sure even if he’d been like this every year, I would call him more than a 60 ever until he has done it in the majors for a full season; maybe even two.

There is undoubtedly some minor relief risk with Joe Ryan. He only throws one pitch. If he does wind up in the bullpen then he’ll be a high leverage arm so I don’t consider that a negative though. I do believe his most likely outcome, however, is to be a starter. He might lack elite repertoire depth but he has the command and batted ball profile to start along with the ability to beat batters of both handedness. On the strength of the well-roundedness, I’ll defy conventional wisdom and the one pitch pony to name him a sure starter. If he pulls out even one plus secondary at any point in time then he could quickly slot in closer to the top half of the rotation. The likely outcome here is still a #3/4 starter which is a highly valued contributor.

Thanks for reading part one! There is still another 45K words to go! Make sure to check out part two when you get the chance by clicking HERE. In that part we finish off the top 107, and look at every top 100 prospect on a major publication and why I left them off the list. We then finish up the book with three scouting reports on 50 FVs I like for 2022.