I updated the Top 100 Prospects list late last week; you can find the accompanying piece I wrote, which has a little more detail on the farm system rankings, recent draftees and the trade deadline, here. I also wrote about all the pitchers on the Top 100. This piece goes through the hitters and why they stack the way they do.
Basically every top position player prospect you’ll read about here is an unfinished product. The very top of the list currently lacks a flawless elite prospect; even the most talented players in the minors right now have adjustments to make or blemishes that might become more of an issue against big league pitching. As with the piece on pitchers, you’ll probably want the list open in a separate tab to follow along with my notes; I’ve got that here, with hitters isolated away from the arms.
Jackson Holliday and James Wood
Orioles infielder Jackson Holliday has begun playing defense again coming off his IL stint for elbow inflammation. He looks rather rusty and uncomfortable, if not still compromised to some extent. He’s making a lot of routine plays look harder than they need to be, and the quality of his hands has backed up. He also doesn’t look great on offense. He’s less explosive than last year and often late to the contact point. Holliday is inside-outing pitches on the inner third that he was pulling last year; this was the case before the IL stint and has remained so since he has returned.
I’m inclined to give Holliday lots of room to breathe on this stuff (I didn’t give a dinged-up Marcelo Mayer much leeway last year, which looks like the wrong decision now), and he is still performing in a superlative way at Triple-A Norfolk, where he has a 144 wRC+ and nearly 50% hard-hit rate at age 20. But he does look like a 20-year-old lost in a sea of adults, and it’s become tough to make a strong argument for Holliday over James Wood right now. Wood is freakier and is keeping his head above water in the big leagues, and if Holliday’s issues on defense are lasting, then the once large gap between their defensive projections has closed. I don’t suddenly think Holliday is at risk of busting or anything like that, but I can’t have a 70 on him right now. He slides a spot.
There’s been no change for Wood since my last update. Big league pitchers are attacking him down and away with greater frequency, and Wood, whose front side often stays too high throughout his swing to reach these pitches, is swinging over the top of a lot of them and striking out 34.7% of the time. He’s shown flashes of being able to bend deeper into his lower half so that his barrel can dive to this location, but he’s not doing so consistently yet. Changes to the composition of Wood’s lower body and how he uses it in his swing are key things to look for when he gets going in camp next spring.
The Rays Kids
The Rays have three impact prospects in infielder Junior Caminero (no. 3), shortstop Carson Williams (no. 5), and first baseman Xavier Isaac (no. 9). The Rays have begun to play Caminero at second and third base in Durham. Aside from the “feast or famine” dynamic created by Cami’s youthful approach on defense (at times spectacular, at others reckless), he looks pretty good at both spots fresh off a Grade-2 quad strain.
Williams and Isaac both have strikeout issues and will probably require a prolonged adjustment to big league pitching before they peak as offensive performers, especially Williams. Think of Williams as the current iteration of Pete Crow-Armstrong: His elite defense at a premium position is going to be immediately evident but strikeouts will undermine his offense. Eventually, I think Williams will get to big power (he already has a lot for a 21-year-old and still has room for more) and be an impact player. He has pretty terrible breaking ball recognition right now and, like PCA, the start of his career on offense will probably be rocky. But over time, Williams’ output should end up being similar to what Willy Adames has done.
Issac’s swing-and-miss issues are also kind of scary; his contact rates (around 61%) are at the bottom of what we see from impact big league sluggers. He is struggling to cover the outer third of the zone right now. Still, like Wood, Issac shows glimpses of not only being able to cover that part of the zone but of being dangerous out there. He’s most successful in doing this when he’s bent at the waist over the zone. His power is so enormous that I think Isaac could be a well-below-average contact hitter and still be an impact player. He has a 60% hard-hit rate so far this year. To contextualize that, Aaron Judge’s career mark is 57% and there isn’t a cluster around him; Judge is in a tier on his own. If at any point Isaac starts to understand how easy it is for him to hit for power with his hands alone, he’s going to have that power and something more like an average hit tool, resulting in years where he hits 40 home runs.
Williams and Isaac are probably still a couple of years away. Williams is a potential September 2025 debut, whereas Isaac is tracking a year behind him. In the meantime, players like Curtis Mead and Jonathan Aranda (once he’s healthy) should finally get a prolonged opportunity to establish themselves, perhaps immediately if the Rays continue to make trades.
The Rest of the 60 FV Prospects
This tier is mostly occupied by players projected to bring impact offense while also playing an up-the-middle position. With few exceptions, you want players like this rather than their corner position counterparts. Orioles catcher Samuel Basallo hasn’t caught back-to-back games since mid-June and has struggled on offense for the last couple of weeks. He looked absolutely enormous compared to the other kids at the Futures Game, and he isn’t an athletic mover, but his arm is too good to move him out from behind the plate. I’m not going to raise a fuss about a teenage catcher (Basallo turns 20 in mid-August) having a so-so July at Double-A; he’s been good for most of the season. There’s been no change to his report — he still has a lefty-hitting Gary Sánchez-type skill set:
I’ll admit to being swayed by Marcelo Mayer’s hit data so far this season, which includes a really impressive 50% hard-hit rate. I also revisited his defense on tape, and since it has continued to trend in a positive direction, he moved up in this update.
Dylan Crews looks okay in center field. His routes are often circuitous and he projects as an average defender rather than an impact one. He’d play a corner on most teams; if you look at who has played a lot of center field in the big leagues this year, only 10 or so of those guys are at or below the level Crews is out there. Even though he’s cut his strikeout rates a bit at Triple-A, Crews’ swing path is going to leave him vulnerable to big league velo around his hands and he’ll probably always strike out a fair bit. But he’s so explosive and powerful that he’ll run into plenty of extra-base hits despite less-than-great barrel feel.
Jordan Lawlar (torn thumb ligament, multiple hamstring strains) has been injured pretty much all year. There’s been no change to his report.
I wrote about Ethan Salas very recently.
The 55 FV Tier
This grouping starts with the cluster of well-rounded corner outfield bats who are poised to be heart-of-the-order forces. They’re essentially stacked based on their proximity to the big leagues, except I slid Heston Kjerstad a tad because of his tendency to chase. The names in this group have been clumped together in this part of the rankings for a while now.
Colson Montgomery is still just too big and slow for me to feel comfortable projecting him as an average shortstop defender, but with Bryan Ramos (who has struggled on offense this year, but is still playing acrobatic defense that I think will be plus at maturity) around, it makes sense to let Montgomery play shortstop in the big leagues while the Sox are still rebuilding. If Ramos turns into the defender I think he will, then the two of them might be okay as a left-side combo even if I’m right about Colson being a 40 glove.
Wrapping up the 55 FV hitters are two prospects with huge power potential for up-the-middle players: Yankees outfielder Spencer Jones and Rangers shortstop Sebastian Walcott. Jones is really struggling; he looks totally uncomfortable at the dish and isn’t even accessing his power amidst all the whiffs. He has a sub-.400 xSLG on the year and is poised to slide within the 100 this winter unless he turns things around between now and the end of the season. He looks better in center field than he does on offense.
Meanwhile, Walcott is too freaky to have ranked lower than this. If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know I tend to put the extreme risk/upside guys toward the back of the 55 FV tier while they’re in the lower minors. That applies to Walcott, who I think has a better shot to stick at shortstop for while than I did on my last update. His power ceiling is in the Fernando Tatis Jr. area.
The 50 FV Tier
To avoid this post getting too long, from here on out I’ll only go into detail on the players who have moved. I have power-hitting up-the-middle hitters at the top of the 50 FV tier. Twins center fielder Emmanuel Rodriguez, Yankees center fielder Jasson Domínguez and Cubs center fielder Kevin Alcántara stack next to one another again. Rodriguez is a more stable offensive player than Spencer Jones (who is two spots in front of him), but my preseason justification for Jones over Rodriguez and Domínguez was that his frame has positive long-term projection whereas the other two are already maxed in their early 20s, and likely to thicken and slow.
After the power-hitting center fielders is a big group (from about 32nd to 55th overall) of contact-oriented, up-the-middle everyday players who are lined up mostly based on their proximity to the big leagues. Braves catcher Drake Baldwin is the new name in this group. His minor league Statcast data jives with the impressive BP and in-game performance he had at the Futures Game. There’s enough power here for this guy to be a primary catcher.
There are a couple of corner guys who have enough power to merit inclusion in this up-the-middle group: recent draftees Jac Caglianone and Charlie Condon, and Cubs infielder Matt Shaw, who lacks a true position. Trickling in among and just behind those guys are up-the-middle players with well-rounded but less exceptional skill sets, guys like Kyle Teel and Drew Gilbert, who should be solid everyday players but lack a superlative attribute. Nacho Alvarez Jr. moves into the Top 100 because the early returns on him playing non-shortstop positions are very favorable. He looks like a plus or better third base defender, which we just didn’t know until now because he had only been playing a mediocre shortstop.
After Nacho, we get into the group of hitters with extreme upside and variance, starting with Colt Emerson and Termarr Johnson (who both look more like second basemen than shortstops to me, which is part of why they’re down here) and ending with Brady House. After House, I’ve got flawed players with real question marks. Bryan Ramos’ bat speed is middling, but he can really pick it and he has posted above-average contact rates his entire career. The group of catchers who are probably first basemen (at least most of the time) comes after Ramos, and the first base or bad corner defender hitters with strikeout issues (Jace Jung, Owen Caissie, etc.) bring up the rear.
Between them I sandwiched a few more up-the-middle guys with precocious bat-to-ball skills. Brewers shortstop Cooper Pratt enters the 100 after looking not only surprisingly viable at shortstop, but pretty good there. Guardians middle infielder Welbyn Francisca and Dodgers center fielder Eduardo Quintero have shown enough on both sides of the ball to join this group, too. Those guys aren’t in Sebastian Walcott territory in terms of their power potential (none of the hitters in this contingent are), but I feel like they’re the best of this year’s complex-level contingent. I also considered Diamondbacks third baseman Yassel Soler, who has raked all year, but ultimately he’s a corner guy whose plate discipline I want to see tested by full-season pitching.
