And we come to our end. Sneaking onto the prospect list is last year’s 55th overall pick, Ryan Mitchell. Good decision guys. As you will see on my list, I’m pretty high on the guy. Here’s the final list in all its glory. I don’t think you guys pick a clear dud this time! As in a player who seems like an obviously bad pick at the time (to me at least) who then doesn’t have a particularly good season. (With apologies to Moises Gomez and Matt Koperniak)
JJ Wetherholt (2B)Liam Doyle (LHP)Rainiel Rodriguez (C)Quinn Mathews (LHP)Jurrangelo Cjintje (RHP)Joshua Baez (OF)Leonardo Bernal (C)Jimmy Crooks (C)Brandon Clarke (LHP)Tink Hence (RHP)Tekoah Roby (RHP)Tanner Franklin (RHP)Brycen Mautz (LHP)Nathan Church (OF)Cooper Hjerpe (LHP)Ixan Henderson (LHP)Yairo Padilla (SS)Deniel Ortiz (1B/3B)Yhoiker Fajardo (RHP)Ryan Mitchell (OF)
If you guys are curious, if you go by the percentages of the final vote, the 21st best prospect is Luis Gastelum, although I kind of suspect someone behind him would have jumped ahead of him just because I feel like a decent percentage will not vote for a reliever over a seemingly deserving top 20 position player prospect. Who that player would be though is anyone’s guess. Jesus Baez was next, with 27 votes, followed by Tai Peete, with 24, and then Blaze Jordan at 23. Literally any one of those guys could have been voted as the 21st best prospect in my opinion. My gut says Baez though.
This was an extremely difficult top 20 for me to construct. The reason is almost entirely due to the fact that the Cardinals have an incredible amount of high upside, yet probable relievers in their system. In theory, a reliever does not belong in the top 20 of a system as strong as the Cardinals, but technically most of those guys do not have a 0% chance to start, so what percentage chance am I looking for? I don’t really have a great answer to that question.
One way to understand my rankings: I value my belief in them starting quite a bit. If I don’t really believe they’re going to start, they’re not going to be that high on my list. Gordon Graceffo, who ranked 12th on last year’s list by the VEB voters, was not in my top 20. But compared to the decisions I have to make for this year’s list, that was an easy for decision me. Graceffo’s upside pales in comparison to some of the names this year who I think are probably ending up in the bullpen. (LYR is my ranking of this player on last year’s list)
JJ Wetherholt (LYR: #2)Raniel Rodriguez (LYR: not in top 20)Liam Doyle (LYR: not in organization)
Last year I put Wetherholt as my second best prospect mainly because him dominating Low A did not really tell us anything and he didn’t really have any power there. I went out on a limb for my #1 pick as you will later see, which was a very bad decision, but it was basically nitpicking. No such issues this year. He hit better at AAA than he did at AA and he hit better at AA than he did at Low A. Also, his power sure showed up. MLB-ready on Day One of the MLB season. Super easy decision.
As far as Doyle versus Rodriguez, I just came up with too many reasons to pick Rodriguez. Rodriguez will be 19 in High A, Doyle is likely to be 22 in AA. Doyle has some reliever risk, injury concerns, and a little bit of a one-season wonder concerns, and just in general, betting on a position player is typically the better bet. The main argument against Rodriguez is that he’s farther away, but he honestly might not be that much farther away than Doyle and he’s three years younger. I’ll quote Baseball Prospectus here:
“As one of the youngest hitters in the league, he was in the top quarter of 2025 Florida State League hitters on basically every meaningful batted ball metric, including average exit velocity, 90th-percentile exit velocity, maximum exit velocity, hard-hit rate, and pulled fly-ball rate. His contact rates and overall bat-to-ball skills trend around average, and average contact with this type of power at this age portend huge offensive outcomes. (It all looks right, too.) Combine all of this with a selectively aggressive zone presence, and you have about as elite a skill grouping as you can get from a catcher this young. Had Rodriguez remained in Philadelphia instead of returning to the Dominican Republic before signing, he very well could’ve been the first pick in last summer’s amateur draft.”
4. Jurrangelo Cjintje (LYR: Not in organization)
5. Joshua Baez (LYR: Not in top 20)
6. Quinn Mathews (LYR: #3)
I am ranking these three in this order because of upside. I think Cjintje might even be underrated because his numbers as a left-handed pitcher really dragged down his numbers, they were really that bad. On the flipside, he really was that good as a right-handed pitcher, throwing nearly 100 mph with a strong breaking pitch and improving change. He was drafted as a project and has made more progress faster than expected, so I think that’s a very good sign.
As for Joshua Baez, yeah I’m a believer. The fact that he’s only done it for one season is just enough to get him placed 5th, and I think if he had a better history, it’d be difficult to not put him above Cjintje, because position player over pitcher. So I’m hedging a tiny bit. As for Mathews, I just don’t think he’s competing, upside-wise, with the guys ahead of him. It’s not that I’m low on him, I’m just that high on the first five guys.
7. Leonardo Bernal (LYR: #5)
9. Yhoiker Fajardo (LYR: Not in organization)
This is where I lose 90 percent of you. Remember what I said above. I place a lot of emphasis on my belief in a guy sticking at starter. I have a probably irrational belief that Roby will stick at starter. If you ask me to explain what distinguishes him from the other guys who I mostly don’t think will start, I don’t think I have a good answer for you. But he’s been consistently pretty good when healthy with the exception of 2024. He was truly excellent in AA last season and then pretty solid at Memphis, good enough that had he not gotten injured, we’d place him in the same bucket as Quinn Mathews, wanting to know when and not if he’ll get chances to start this year. Believe it or not, me ranking him 8th is me taking into account his Tommy John surgery, because he’d probably be higher if he were healthy.
As far as Fajardo, I will point out that Baseball Prospectus also has him ranked 9th, so I’m not completely off my rocker here. His performance coupled with the fact that he was 18 was hard for me to ignore. He’s already built up his workload up to 72 innings and will be primed to throw 100 this upcoming season, which puts him in a much better spot than the comparable 19-year-olds who got drafted last season. BP notes that he just started throwing a kick change last year and it immediately flashed above average. He already has a fairly strong slider and a mid-90s fastball, and given his age there may be room for even more growth. I’ve mentioned he is in a good position to enter a top 100 list next season, and I don’t think it would make sense to rank him much lower than this if I truly believed that.
10. Jimmy Crooks (LYR: #6)
11. Jesus Baez (LYR: not in organization)
Yeah I’m just straight up ignoring the “character concerns.” I’m not going to say it’s just a Keith Law thing, but nothing remotely centering around work ethic or maturity was mentioned on either Baseball Prospectus or MLB Pipeline. He was also 20 when Law saw whatever he saw that made him go nuclear on him. I’d take it a little more seriously if he were 24, but he just started to be able to legally drink in the US about 20 days ago. Ignoring that, he’s a 21-year-old who has earned his way to start the season in AA who is not expected to stay at SS, but who is still playing games at SS (14 after the trade) which makes me think he shouldn’t really be bad at 2B or 3B and maybe even good. This is an age pick.
In terms of Crooks, his drop may seem harsh, but I really did not like that his K% and BB% both went way in the wrong direction. And I mean AAA. His performance in the majors did not help. I liked his offensive profile in the past because he walked about 10-11% of the time and struck out around 21-22%. Those numbers went to 8% and 26% in AAA and with his MLB performance, ZiPS dropped his projected BB% to below 7% and his K% to above 27%. Yes, he has great defense (though I’m skeptical of the 70 grade FG gives him), but in my internal calculus, most outcomes result in him being a defensive-oriented backup.
13. Cooper Hjerpe (LYR: #9)
14. Ryan Mitchell (LYR: not in organization)
I don’t really expect either Hence or Hjerpe to start at this point. But they’re in very similar spots, both needing their innings managed to such an extent that they are somewhat likely to end up in the MLB bullpen by the end of this season assuming health. Hence is higher simply because he’s 23, and thus I think they’ll always wonder if they can move him back to starting for the next 3-4 years whereas with Hjerpe, I kind of feel like he’s either starting next season or he’ll just be relegated to the bullpen for good.
I like Ryan Mitchell a lot and I’m taking a chance here. I’m just noticing that he got spring training chances, only three of them, but I’d venture to guess most high school draft picks do not get an at-bat in spring training the year after they’re drafted. So there is a chance he’s sent to Palm Beach and not rookie league. In addition, from what I’ve read, his hit tool and approach seem less risky than your typical high school prospect to bank on.
15. Brandon Clarke (LYR: not in organization)
16. Brycen Mautz (LYR: Not in top 20)
17. Ixan Henderson (LYR: Not in top 20, but was in my honorable mentions)
Okay, so I think Clarke being this low might get the most attention. I don’t particularly care how high your potential is if I don’t believe you’ll start. And boy, Clarke makes Cooper Hjerpe look like Mark Buerhle. Hjerpe at least threw 77 and 103 innings back in college. Clarke had Tommy John surgery at 16 in 2019, missed his freshman season at Alabama from thoracic outlet syndrome, causing him to transfer to a junior college. He had a stress fracture in his shoulder that caused him to miss most of his first season there, throwing just 3.2 innings. He finally stayed healthy enough to throw 74 innings in 2024, which led to him being drafted
I’m actually surprised how highly Clarke is ranking everywhere given his injury history. This is about as bad of an injury history as you can get. And now we’re throwing some weird injuries into the mix, with blisters and an aneurysm causing him to miss at least the first two months of this season. I mean look at this picture, this looks like a guy whose arm is a ticking time bomb and we’re losing valuable “healthy” time to blisters and aneurysm in his throwing arm?
PORT CHARLOTTE, FL – MARCH 13: Brandon Clarke of the Boston Red Sox pitches during the game between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays at Charlotte Sports Park on Thursday, March 13, 2025 in Port Charlotte, Florida. (Photo by Kelly Gavin/MLB Photos via Getty Images) MLB Photos via Getty Images
The consensus seems to be that Ixan Henderson is the better scouted starting pitcher, but Mautz had a better K%, better BB% and got more groundballs, so I struggle to put Henderson above him.
18. Nathan Church (LYR: Not in top 20)
19. Deniel Ortiz (LYR: Hadn’t debuted)
20. Braden Davis (LYR: Hadn’t debuted)
Church was three days away from not being considered a prospect and I really wish he wasn’t considered one honestly, because I don’t know what to do with him on a prospect list. I would probably be considered the low man on his offense, just because his combination of probably not walking (6.3 BB% projection) and very little power (.096 ISO) is a tough profile to make into a good hitter or even an average one. Here’s hoping his increased bat speed means more power. There is a potential downside though and that’s more strikeouts, and you just got to hope it doesn’t cancel out his power gains cause that’s his main offensive talent right now.
Ortiz isn’t higher primarily because from what I can tell, he’s very limited defensively, which is putting all the onus on his bat to work out. Look at Alec Burleson. Defense at 1B pending, but if he’s a 120 wRC+ hitter, he’s probably an average player. That’s just a high bar to expect from a prospect. I was very surprised how quickly Braden Davis was dismissed by this group, but I won’t do the same. He posted some absurd strikeout numbers and I know he has some control issues as far as walks go, but I’m kind of banking on the theory that a pitcher who comes to camp with increased stuff will initially struggle with command. He has a 50 command potential on Fangraphs and I can’t ignore that he struck out a third of batters if that’s in the cards.
I realized at the back half of my list that I was going to be excluding people who I just assumed were going to be in my top 20. But I made that assumption for something like 25 guys, because I realized no matter who I added, someone wasn’t being added who I took for granted would be on the list.
Tanner Franklin is not on the list just because of how far he has to go to start games. I don’t know his game logs in college, but he maxed out last year at 2.1 innings pitched. I would be surprised if he pitched more than that in college because he averaged 1.4 innings per appearance. So I don’t really think he’ll even be asked to go 5 innings this year, or at least not very often. And I could handle his numbers in college better if he wasn’t a pure reliever. I’m not NOT a believer, but I think I’m just going to need to see some evidence that he can start in the future.
I didn’t expect to leave Yairo Padilla off my list, but to be frank, I did not realize scouts were not particularly high on his defense at SS. He’s basically a prospect because he has a lot of power potential, but he’s shown zero so far. There is value in him still performing more or less the same as when he was in the DSL so we can trust him a little more, but not enough for my top 20.
I actually wrote out a whole section about Cade Crossland, but I realized he did not have a good case over Braden Davis. But he had strong K/BB numbers in the SEC, which is close enough to Low A in quality that I trust he’s more or less ready for High A even though I don’t expect him to start there. I also kind of thought I’d find an excuse to put Won-Bin Cho on the list, but I couldn’t justify that one. I think he’s been written off too soon though. I also thought I would include Tai Peete, but whenever you pair him head-to-head to a player, it’s like “well no I think I need to choose Nathan Church over him.”
I didn’t think I would include him, but I certainly want to believe in Blaze Jordan. I want to believe in Chase Davis. Hell, I want to believe in Colton Ledbetter. But they all have enough question marks to rather easily leave them off this list. Chen-Wei Lin wasn’t ever really considered when I actually made my list, but while the voting happened, I was thinking he might slip in later on, but yeah just way too many names.
Couple other shout-outs are to Andrew Dutkanych, mostly for you guys. Every year, there’s a player who I think I’m high on and then your guys voting habits tell me you are much higher. That happened to Victor Scott back in the day, when I put him on the top 20 first and you guys didn’t and then the next year you placed him 3rd. I kept expecting Dutkanych to lose votes and aside from the final vote for #20, he didn’t. Also Luis Gastelum, you came at the wrong time, you’d be in the top 20 a couple years ago for sure.