Innholdsfortegnelse for March/April 2025 i Baseball America

Baseball America has ranked the Top 100 prospects in baseball for 36 seasons, and this year’s edition is a notable one for pitchers. Six pitchers rank among the top 10 overall prospects. This has happened just four times in 36 seasons. Position prospects tend to be favored on prospect rankings. Not only do they carry less injury risk, but the most talented ones contribute both offensively and defensively to team success. But this year, a combination of pitchers who are more talented than usual—and position players who are less bountiful than usual—created an environment for pitching prospects to stand tall among the Top 100. Here are the four Top 100 Prospects classes to feature six pitchers ranked inside the top 10. Pitchers are listed with career Baseball-Reference WAR totals through…

Looking ahead is what we do best at Baseball America. Our Top 100 Prospects ranking for 2025 spells out which players we think have the most long-term major league potential, but as top prospects graduate to MLB, a new class of minor leaguers waits to take their place. We think the following six players have the best odds to climb all the way to No. 1 on the 2026 Top 100 Prospects ranking. Walker Jenkins, OF, Twins If Jenkins has a healthy 2025 season, he has the talent to become the No. 1 prospect in baseball. He’s strong, physical and athletic. His efficient, powerful lefthanded swing lends itself to both contact and impact. In 2024, you saw the bat control and strike-zone discipline that enabled him to barrel the ball…

Through the years, Baseball America has evaluated the potential for thousands of prospects. Now for the third year in a row, we are carrying that exercise through to major league players. This year, we sorted all MLB players by their role grades on the 20-80 scale and ranked the top 100. Players are ranked in terms of their projected 2025 impact only. No value beyond this season is factored into the grades presented here. Explaining Role Grades BA grades translate to the following major league roles. All MLB 100 players are graded 55 or higher. Baseball America graded every big league regular during spring training for our MLB Preview. In building the MLB 100, we remained faithful to those grades and resulting rankings as much as possible. The MLB 100…

Spring training this year has given fans a reason to think about the strike zone in more detail than ever before. The experimental use of the automated ball-strike challenge system has led to a lot of fans wondering why the strike zone being used by robot umpires doesn’t match the one they’ve seen in the rule book. This is the part of baseball that has usually bubbled beneath the surface. You might know what should be a strike and what should be a ball. But if asked to define the two, things get complicated quickly. If you have ever used the term “hollow beneath the kneecap,” you’ve definitely read the official MLB rule book. If you’ve ever given thought to where the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and…

Dodgers righthander Roki Sasaki is the No. 1 prospect in baseball. This is a rare occurrence for a rare talent like the 23-year-old Japanese ace. A pitcher has ranked as the No. 1 overall prospect for Baseball America just seven times in 36 years of the Top 100 Prospects exercise. Here is a look at the six pitchers who preceded Sasaki as No. 1 overall prospects. 1990: Steve Avery, LHP, Braves Drafted third overall out of a Michigan high school in 1988, Avery shot to the top of the inaugural Top 100 in 1990. He made his MLB debut that season as a 20-year-old and quickly ascended to staff workhorse for Atlanta before shoulder issues cut short his career. Avery went 96-83, 4.19 in 11 MLB seasons, was MVP of…

The defending World Series champion Dodgers officially signed Japanese righthander Roki Sasaki on Jan. 22, providing an extreme example of the rich getting richer. But there’s also another way signing Sasaki could benefit the Dodgers. He could earn them a valuable draft pick as well. Because he does not meet the Collective Bargaining Agreement definition of a “foreign professional,” Sasaki is eligible for the Prospect Performance Incentive program. The PPI initiative was introduced in 2022 as a means of incentivizing teams to carry their best prospects on Opening Day rosters rather then sending them to the minors to manipulate service time. To meet PPI eligibility standards, a player must be a rookie with fewer than 60 days of MLB service time, including time on the injured list. He must accrue…

Hard Work Delivers Thomas To Cusp Of MLB It doesn’t take long to notice Colby Thomas’ competitive edge on defense. His football background plays a big part. The 24-year-old corner outfielder is perhaps a little too aggressive in certain aspects. He admits to being undefeated making contact against the outfield wall as he makes plays. When others describe Thomas, his play-hard mentality is the characteristic that comes up most often. Across Double-A Midland and Triple-A Las Vegas last season, he made an impression at the plate. He wanted to improve his power after being doubles-heavy in 2023. In a 2024 season that culminated with recognition as the organization’s minor league player of the year, Thomas hit .277/.342/.563 with 31 homers and 15 steals. Coming out of spring a year ago,…

About the Top 100 Prospects ■ Players qualify for the ranking if they have 130 or fewer major league at-bats or 50 or fewer major league innings in their career. Major league service time is not considered. ■ Each player’s listed age is his baseball age—as of June 30—in 2025. ■ The estimated time of arrival, or ETA, is the season when the player is projected to reach the big leagues, if only for a few games. ■ The scouting grades are projected future grades on the 20-80 scale, where 50 is average. Position players are assessed for their ability to hit for average, as well as their power, speed, fielding and throwing arm. Pitchers are graded on the quality of their pitches and their control. 1. ROKI SASAKI DODGERS,…

We rank prospects to 100 because it’s a nice, round number with resonance. But we consider far more than 100 prospects for our Top 100, making the preseason ranking both malleable and volatile. Plenty of players will graduate during the course of the season, and others will see their stock drop because of injuries or underperformance. When those changes happen, prospects will enter the list to take their place. Here are 15 of the top contenders to make their way onto the list when it needs to be altered. Ronny Mauricio, 2B/SS, Mets When healthy, Mauricio has shown the ability to hit the ball as hard as anyone currently employed by the Mets. Problem is, he missed all of the 2024 season recovering from knee surgery. Mauricio’s status for the…

Baseball is a game rooted in tradition. Yet over the years, it has seen its fair share of evolution. On the field, the shortstop position is evolving faster than any other. But we don’t get where we are today without first going back in time more than a quarter century. In the late 1990s, the trio of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and Nomar Garciaparra defined the shortstop position through their brilliance on both sides of the ball. Collectively, they set the standard for what a shortstop could be. Baseball America tabbed Jeter, Rodriguez and Garciaparra the “Holy Trinity.” In an August 1999 issue, BA surveyed 50 players, general managers and assistant GMs at that year’s All-Star Game in Boston about the trio’s best tools and skills. Jeter led the way…

Rookies and other young players are the lifeblood of an MLB organization. It’s just hard to know which ones will click right away—and which ones will require additional lessons while learning on the job against MLB competition. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to forecast this year’s top rookies. Here, we rank our top 20 based on how we think they’ll perform in the 2025 season. Last year, we led off our rookie ranking with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Evan Carter and Jackson Chourio. The Dodgers’ Yamamoto pitched effectively for 90 innings but missed time to injury, while the Rangers’ Carter missed most of the season with a back strain. The Brewers’ Chourio was an unqualified success who went 20-20 as a 20-year-old and finished third in National League Rookie of…

D-backs Weigh Options For Lawlar’s Path The D-backs’ Jordan Lawlar entered spring training without a clear path to a big league job but with the expectation that he will force his way into a permanent role at some point this year. There is a reason that might sound familiar. Lawlar came into camp in the same position last year. Things did not go as planned. Lawlar needed surgery on his thumb late in spring training. Shortly after returning, he strained his hamstring. And just as he was nearing a return from that injury, he injured the hamstring again. All told, Lawlar played in just 25 games in 2024, accumulating just 104 plate appearances, none of them in the majors. Nothing much has changed. Evaluators see a player with a chance…