Top 101 Prospects. by Jeffrey Paternostro and Jarrett Seidler. 1. Ronald Acuña, OF, Atlanta Braves. 4. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 3B, Toronto Blue Jays

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1 Top 101 Prospects by Jeffrey Paternostro and Jarrett Seidler 1. Ronald Acuña, OF, Atlanta Braves Acuña checked in at no. 31 on our 2017 list. This is not to take a victory lap for reasons that will become obvious in a moment but rather to make a point about the scouting scale. We graded him out as an Overall Future Potential (OFP) 70 albeit a high-risk one coming into the season. He promptly smashed three levels of the minors to the tune of.325/.374/.522. And Acuña s best performance came at Triple-A as a 19-year-old. The underlying loud tools haven t changed, but now he looks like a plus hitter to go with his 7 raw power and ability to stick in center field. In short, he s better. He s also almost major-league ready. The scale only works if you use all of it. Acuña deserves his spot in the rarified air at the top of the scouting scale and the top of our Top 101 list. He s a potential franchise-altering talent. 2. Victor Robles, OF, Washington Nationals One could certainly argue that Acuña and Robles should properly be listed as 1a and 1b. That sounds like a needless hedge, but they are both potential role 8 players, although they get there in very different ways. Robles is a speed/ defense center fielder, grading out as plus-plus in both categories. He s a better bet to hit.300, and it s not impossible that he develops average game power. He already has major-league per diems under his belt, and the realistic floor here is something like a right-handed Ender Inciarte. You can t really go wrong picking either as the best prospect in baseball. The upside of Acuña s offensive tools gets him the nod from us, but don t be shocked if Robles ends up the better player, even if his top-line counting stats aren t as shiny. 3. Gleyber Torres, SS, New York Yankees It s easy to forget that players really do develop and grow over the course of their prospectdom, and even beyond. Torres had never hit for significant game power entering 2017, and we were starting to get questions about why a player we were projecting to hit for serious MLB power couldn t put much over the fence in A-ball. We weren t too worried about it, because the markers for future over-thefence power growth were present: bat speed, batting practice power, adequate doubles power in game. Sure enough, the game power came in 2017, with some monstrous in-game shots leaving little doubt about the projection, and it would ve launched him through both levels of the high-minors to the majors in just a half-season were it not for a season-ending UCL tear in his non-throwing elbow. Without the injury, Torres likely would ve either graduated or been even higher on this list, but the lost half-season of development and minor uncertainty around a peculiar injury drop him just a couple spots. Remember to look at the nice 2016 World Series Champions banner before you scream too loud, Cubs fans. 4. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., 3B, Toronto Blue Jays Vladito is one of the reasons we are minimizing our victory laps from the 2017 list in this space. We could tell you that he was literally no. 102 it was him or Sixto Sanchez, we swear or that he was on various earlier iterations of the list in the 90s. But regardless of how we might try to weasel out of it, we missed. So, a mea culpa: We tend to underrate first-base prospects due to the pressure on their bat. And as Vladito looks like his father reflected in a concave carnival mirror, he s likely to move across the diamond by the time he reaches the majors (or in his twenties, whichever comes first). As for the bat, it s only good news here. The swing is a carbon copy of senior s, no fun-house distortion here. If he s a.300 hitter with 30 bombs, no one will care where he stands on the diamond. And at the rate he s progressing through the minors, Vladito may soon be reenacting the music video for I Just Don t Know What to Do With Myself at major-league third-base bags. 5. Francisco Mejia, C, Cleveland Indians Catchers are weird is a mantra for the BP prospect team. They can be tricky evaluations due to their extensive defensive responsibilities, many of which aren t visible from the usual scouting vantage points. However, Mejia is not a tricky prospect. He s a potential plus-plus switch-hitter, and the swing works from both sides of the plate. Despite his short and squat stature, he stings the ball hard enough to project 15 home runs a year even with truncated catcher playing time. Mejia has improved his receiving behind the plate and has always had a plus arm. The only lingering question is whether that short and squat frame will hold up over a full year s load of, well, squatting. He has never caught more than 87 games in a season, and Cleveland started 363

2 FUTURES GUIDE 2018 getting him reps at third base in the Arizona Fall League. If we were more confident that he s a 120-game-per-year catcher, he d have his own case for no. 1 on this list. Until then, remember: Catchers are weird. 6. Eloy Jimenez, OF, Chicago White Sox Here he is now going to the South Side. Say what you will about the Cubs, but they re never afraid to deal good prospects for good MLB players even to their crosstown rivals. The top prize in this past summer s Jose Quintana deal kept chugging along in 2017, through two organizations and two levels, continuing to hit for average and power. About the worst thing we can say for him is that he s defensively limited to a corner, although if you saw his catch in the 2016 Futures Game you re probably not all that concerned that he won t be able to stay on the grass. In a world where we don t appreciate dudes who just freakin hit as much as we used to, Jimenez is one to appreciate. 7. Nick Senzel, 3B, Cincinnati Reds Third base has been a generally underrated position for decades now. Bill James first noted some 25 or 30 years ago it was chronically underrepresented in the Hall of Fame, and it still is to this day. It s the position in the middle of the defensive spectrum, and often the stars here are wellrounded players who do everything well but nothing at the top of the league. Senzel, the no. 2 overall pick in the 2016 draft, fits this profile like his above-average glove. He projects as a very good regular who is very good at everything but not the best in the world at any one thing. He makes so little noise, even when doing things like hitting.340 with power over a half-season at Double-A, that he s easy to forget about. He ll show up as part of Cincinnati s young core sooner than you d think. 8. Alex Reyes, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals Last year s no. 1 prospect was blurbed via a blackjack metaphor in last year s Annual. Appropriately, he busted literally one day after we posted the list on the website. The culprit was very much a usual suspect, a torn UCL necessitating Tommy John surgery. Reyes missed all of 2017, and the standard recovery time would keep him off a mound until a few months into the 2018 season. Nevertheless, Reyes holds serve as the best pitching prospect in the game. These risks are just baked in to pitching prospects nowadays, but if Reyes comes back with all of his stuff intact, you can drop his 100-mph fastball and two plus secondaries right onto a major-league mound. If it doesn t come all the way back, he s still likely a good starter or a shutdown reliever. And he s used the time off to get in the best shape of his life. Yes, ITBSOHL has become a running joke in baseball circles, but there were some body questions with Reyes before. That s one question answered, at least. The rest remain outstanding for a bit longer. 9. Fernando Tatis Jr., SS, San Diego Padres Fernando, Son of Fernando, might end up with a skill set that looks a heck of a lot like his pop s. Read through the scouting reports and you can see the outlines of a star power/speed third baseman here, and his father really was that for a few years in the late 90s. The strange thing about Fernando the Elder s career was how bifurcated it was: He was basically done in his mid-twenties, only to have a brief resurgence as a bench player nearly a decade later. There s no reason to think Fernando the Younger will have such an early and short peak, but it s a reminder that career trajectories of star players come in all shapes and sizes, often without a neat upswing, peak at 27 or 28 and slow decline like we imagine in our heads and projections. 10. Forrest Whitley, RHP, Houston Astros We may not have had greater internal debate about any top prospect this year than Whitley. Taken one way, Whitley may have had the single most impressive season of any player in the minors. Considered a generic first-round Texas prep arm with the usual caveats like work needed on his secondaries and general reliever risk coming into the year, Whitley instead blitzed through Low-A, High-A and Double-A with a polished four-pitch mix and peripherals that looked more like recent vintage Andrew Miller than a typical starting prospect. Yet, it s a four-pitch mix that includes a bunch of above-average or plus pitches, but perhaps none that will truly dominate. He s probably going to be good and he s probably coming fast, but it might only be a no. 2 starter profile. 11. Brent Honeywell, RHP, Tampa Bay Rays Dr. Mike Marshall s nephew has more than a bit of his iconoclastic uncle in him, in both personality and approach to the game, yet as an overall pitching prospect he s almost boringly hypercompetent. Honeywell has been on a steady march up the minor-league chain and our rankings for three seasons now, without major performance hurdles, showing a full repertoire of plus-or-better offerings. Sure, that repertoire includes a screwball, but that s the only hint of oddness in the pitching report. On merit Honeywell was probably ready for the bigs by late 2017, but the Rays have rarely met a prospect they haven t let marinate in the minors a little extra, which often has the fun side effect of delaying arbitration and free agency. February 2018 Tommy John surgery delays his arrival by a year or so. 12. Brendan Rodgers, SS, Colorado Rockies The backbone of this list is our staff s live looks. In the California League, Rodgers looked like a potential All-Star with plus hit and power tools and a steady hand at shortstop. Across the country in the Eastern League, the look was more anonymous, as he never drove the ball and his aggressive approach got worked out by more advanced arms. He still Top 101 Prospects

3 looked capable, if not spectacular, at the six. Double-A can be a test for even top-tier prospects like Rodgers, and he was only 20 and spent much of the second half of the year banged up, but if we re lower on Rodgers than the rest of our listmaking compatriots, the Eastern League looks will be why. 13. Sixto Sanchez, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies If you re looking for the highest of crazy upsides in your pitching prospects, come get your mans. He touches 102 mph and is typically effortless in the high-90s with command and manipulation. Depending on when you see him, he ll give you a lot of different looks with his off-speed stuff, and it s all good. There s great natural feel for spin here, and his better curveballs are jaw-dropping in depth and break. The changeup has a pretty wide velocity band it s arguably two distinct pitches and rates as a significant party piece, too. We expect he ll narrow down what he throws to concentrate on honing two or three specific off-speeds later, although a small group of special pitchers like Zack Greinke never bother to narrow the selection. Sanchez has only been pitching for about two years and has the great athleticism you d associate with a recently converted shortstop. Of course, the birdie on the other shoulder forces me to remind you that he has thrown a grand total of 95 innings above the complex leagues, all in A-ball, and that there has probably never been a player listed at six feet who was anywhere close to that height. Suffice it to say, he s not necessarily immune to the generic durability concerns that envelope nearly the entire field of pitching prospects these days. Good scouts don t comp Pedro, but we ve heard good scouts comp Pedro here. 14. J.P. Crawford, SS, Philadelphia Phillies Two things we don t like to do as prospect rankers are selfinsert into the prospect s developmental story and pay attention to other rankings, but it s impossible to discuss the last year of Crawford without discussing his response to Baseball America dumping on him as part of their midseason ranking process. After years of high rankings and abundant praise from all sources, BA dropped Crawford to 92nd in their midseason list and said they no longer saw him as an impact player. Crawford responded by tweeting All it is is motivation the same day, and later admitted BA s criticism lit a fire under him. Whatever got into him, Crawford hit.268/.377/.457 spread between Triple-A and MLB from July 13 through the end of the season, a marked improvement on his performance at any level in the previous few years, all while playing stellar defense at three infield positions. He should settle in as a long-term regular at shortstop out of camp in 2018, and we never lost faith that there may yet be an impact player lurking if the power ultimately comes. 15. Willy Adames, SS, Tampa Bay Rays Adames and Crawford make an obvious matched pair. Both are shortstops without a surfeit of tools and with more steady than eye-popping performance in leagues where they were a few years younger than the average farmhand. This is the type of profile that tends to get underrated, but it does have its pitfalls. Adames has the better hit tool at present, but he doesn t have Crawford s strong approach at the plate or plus glove at shortstop to buoy the profile if he doesn t hit.280. We think he s a plus hitter, but the hardest thing to evaluate is how this type of profile will fare against the best pitchers in the world. That uncertainty is why he slots in behind Crawford, rather than ahead of him. Adames showed a bit more game power in 2017, so that s worth keeping an eye on, since this profile has been known to inexplicably hit 20 home runs in the majors in recent seasons. 16. Mitch Keller, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates We haven t gotten to this year s bumper crop of potential mid-rotation starters yet Keller has top-of-the-rotation upside but we would like to make a point about el cambio here. Usually we chide our projected mid-rotation arms for their deficiencies of command and changeup. The former isn t an issue with Keller. He has plus command of his mid-90s fastball and can adeptly manipulate his potential 70 curveball as well. With our mid-rotation types the changeup will be wildly inconsistent flash good fade to one batter, then be firm or well off the plate armside to another. Keller doesn t even flash the good one most nights. Most nights it won t matter. We can get prescriptive with what we look for in our top pitching prospects. It becomes a checklist. Keller is missing one of the boxes. We don t know whether it matters. Reports were better on the pitch out of fall ball, and sometimes guys just learn a new grip that works. Normally we d note that he just needs a good enough changeup to keep lefties honest, but there s a very good chance southpaws won t hit his fastball or curve even if they know they re coming. 17. Michael Kopech, RHP, Chicago White Sox Kopech is probably most famous for being the hardest thrower in baseball, and yet based on 2017 reports he might not even be the hardest thrower on this list anymore. Despite preseason reports that he was throwing as high as 110 mph never mind that he was doing so in workout drills with a non-regulation baseball and a running start that would be illegal in a real game Kopech actually dialed it back last season, to the extent that you can call sitting in the high-90s and touching 102 dialing it back. He brought a hard-running two-seam fastball back into the mix, further sacrificing a tick or two for movement and command, and all things considered he breezed through Double-A much easier than expected. Even better, Kopech s only off-field drama in 2017 Top 101 Prospects - 365

4 FUTURES GUIDE 2018 was of the semi-scripted variety, on his girlfriend s television shows, Don t Be Tardy and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Risks and rewards both remain super high on this one. 18. Lewis Brinson, OF, Miami Marlins We re not immune to the occasional bout of prospect fatigue. Brinson is the source of this year s septicemia. You d think his.331/.400/.562 line at Triple-A would offer sufficient inoculation, but those numbers came in Colorado Springs, an offensive environment akin to the Elaysian homeworld. Hold on, surely we can t ignore his potential five-tool centerfield profile? Yes, there is still All-Star upside here, which is why he slots in as one of the 20 best prospects in baseball. The nagging issue for us is that he struggled in the majors in exactly the way he would if it wasn t going to come together for him. Brinson has had swing-and-miss issues going back to his days on the Rangers star-studded 2013 Hickory Crawdads roster there s another symptom, we ve been writing about him for five years and he struck out 17 times in his first 55 major-league plate appearances. That s well within the vagaries of Voros law, and Brinson has needed adjustment time at every level, but those types of prospects often struggle to make that final adjustment. 19. Bo Bichette, SS, Toronto Blue Jays What s in a name? Bichette is the third player on this list who s the son of a prominent star of our youth. In the cases of Vladito and Tatis the Second, sons of well-liked, wellrounded players who had long careers, it s clear that the bloodlines are considered a huge positive. It s not so clear in Bo s case. For starters, papa Dante Sr. was a one-dimensional slugger of ill repute who took enormous advantage of Coors Field. He was regularly maligned by our BP forefathers as one of baseball s most overrated in these very pages (though we should note that overrated is not the same as bad: dad hit.299 with 274 homers and 152 stolen bases over 18 bigleague seasons). Bo s brother Dante Jr. was a prominent prospect himself, a 2011 Yankees first-rounder, who is realistically a straight-up bust and minor-league journeyman at this point. Bo Bichette stands well apart from his brother and father in his profile, a middle infielder who might bump to third base instead of a corner butcher, a player carried by a potentially elite hit tool instead of a Blake Street Bomber. But consciously or not, he s still associated with them, and surely it s not to his benefit. 20. Kyle Tucker, OF, Houston Astros The rebuild is done in Houston, and given the ultimate result, no one will care that Tucker is one of only two prospects of note remaining on the farm. He was also the second-best prospect in the system before the 2017 season. Of that preseason top 10, two graduated, two were dealt for Justin Verlander and another left town for Francisco Liriano. Astros fans won t be scrutinizing their team s prospect list as closely nowadays, but Tucker is a fine player to have near the top of it. You might not be aware of that yet since we ve spent the first two-thirds of this blurb not actually talking about Tucker as a prospect, so now we ll briefly summarize: Preston s brother, polished corner-outfield profile, patient approach, potential plus power, some stiffness in the swing, high probability above-average regular. 21. Walker Buehler, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers Buehler s September call-up may have been a little too aggressive, but hey, when you ve got an impact arm that can t stay on the mound, try to get as many outs as possible while he s healthy, right? The 2015 first-rounder somehow only needed a little over two years in the minors despite having Tommy John surgery shortly after the draft, which shows just how much talent is in his prized right arm. It remains unclear whether he has starter-level durability, and he struggled some in late promotions to both Triple-A and the majors, so the Dodgers might be wise to let him consolidate things in a high-minors starting role for the first part of But the temptation to roster Buehler as a potentially dominant relief arm will remain until he establishes himself as an above-average starter. If he ends up short of a full-load starter, he s in the right organization, as the current Dodgers administration has recently found great use of starters who need extra rest or bullpen time. 22. Juan Soto, OF, Washington Nationals Soto s full-season debut was off to a splendid start, as the precocious teenager mashed the ball like crazy for a month playing at age 18, living up to some lofty scouting reports we d been seeing since spring Unfortunately, the injuries came and came hard, with an ankle injury robbing him of a few months and then a season-ending hamate injury; he never made it back out of the complex after May 2. On talent, we d have Soto much higher he was 12th on the midseason list, which came down in the five minutes between injuries but hamate injuries can linger and we simply haven t seen him stay on the field enough quite yet. If you want cause for wild optimism, his profile, age and performance all track surprisingly closely to those of Ronald Acuña entering 2017, and such a jump is certainly within Soto s massive abilities. 23. Brendan McKay, LHP/1B, Tampa Bay Rays We decided not to rank Shohei Ohtani as a prospect this year, partially because we re not participating in MLB s farce that a guy with five years in NPB is a prospect, and partially because it wouldn t have been interesting. This doesn t mean we didn t have to grapple with the implications of a serious twoway prospect. Enter McKay, arguably the best hitter and pitcher in last year s college draft class. It was expected coming into the draft that, like his spiritual forerunners John van Benschoten and Brooks Kieschnick, McKay would be picked as either a pitcher or a hitter and that he d be developed only on one side, at least initially. Yet the Rays Top 101 Prospects

5 took him fourth overall with the intention of developing his abilities both ways, at least for now. His usage pattern at short-season Hudson Valley was far more interesting than his performance: He made six starts on the mound and didn t hit in those games, typically DH d the day before and the day after his pitching appearances and played something of a regular first base when he was further into his pitching rest cycle. We ve basically placed him around where we would if he were just a high-end polished lefty college pitching prospect, with a small bonus for his hitting. Were McKay purely a first-base prospect, we d probably have him a few dozen spots lower. There s simply no precedent for what this is going to look like, so hold on and have some fun. 24. Kolby Allard, LHP, Atlanta Braves Allard was one of three lefties with back issues to end up clustered together on the second half of our 2017 list. He broke out as the best of the bunch last year, skipping right to Double-A as a 19-year-old, and more than held his own against much older competition on the strength of his plus curveball and advanced fastball command. Allard is a greater than the sum of his stuff arm. He s more polish than projection, on the shorter side, and the fastball is low 90s in an era when even short-season staffs have multiple guys touching 98. Still, calling him a crafty lefty is unnecessarily pejorative. The polish is impressive, and the stuff isn t bad either. Another plus: The back issues are firmly in his rearview mirror, and he threw 150 innings in 2017 an unusually high number for a teenage pitching prospect. Allard s size and stuff limitations make the profile more future midrotation than ace, but he s well on his way to handling the innings-eating portion of that assignment. 25. Alex Verdugo, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers In an era when swinging hard and trying to lift the ball has led to a panoply of Three True Outcome sluggers, Verdugo is a delightful throwback. He posts strikeouts rates straight of the 1980s, culminating in his walking more than whiffing as a 21-year-old in Triple-A. So, yeah, it s a potential 7 hit tool. Now it may have to be, as his swing is geared more to drive the ball to the opposite field than yank it over the fence. That was fine in the 1980s, and it would be fine in 2018 if he were a lock to stay in center field, but with only average foot speed he s likely to slide over to right field. At least his top-of-the-scale arm he hit 97 mph off the mound as a high schooler will be a weapon there. And frankly, the fact that a high school lefty touching 97 got developed as an outfielder at all might be the best endorsement of his bat we could come up with. 26. Estevan Florial, OF, New York Yankees There s been something of a renaissance in significant prospects of Haitian descent, led by Miguel Sano, the only player in the majors who identifies as Haitian. In large part due to MLB s own initiatives following the agegate scandals of years ago and increased identity verification protocols in the wake of 9/11, Dominican prospects usually have their birth and identity paperwork in order now. Haitian players often do not; Sano s signing was marred and delayed by questions over his true name and age. The man now playing as Estevan Florial originally planned to sign with the Yankees for a seven-figure deal as a Dominican international prospect under the name Haniel d Oleo. His true identity was uncovered shortly before he signed, although in this case it wasn t a matter of maliciously changing his age Haniel d Oleo was just a name his school had registered him under and after a year s suspension he was allowed to sign under his real name and identity. The Yankees still gave him a $200,000 bonus, and they ve been rewarded with a five-tool athletic specimen with unusually advanced feel for the game given his background and age. He made the Futures Game and reached Double-A for the Eastern League playoffs as a teenager, and only his ability to control the swing-and-miss in his game puts a limit on his upside. 27. Royce Lewis, SS, Minnesota Twins The Twins reportedly selected Lewis over Brendan McKay in large part for his signability a nice euphemism for his decision to take a lower bonus. (McKay signed for several hundred thousand dollars more as the fourth pick than Lewis did as the first pick.) We aren t ranking them far enough apart to have a strong opinion on the matter quite yet, and these things can go in many different directions; rumors abounded at the time of the 2012 draft that Carlos Correa was selected for similar reasons??he s obviously on a far greater trajectory than the other 1.1 options that year and the savings from that pick also allowed the Astros to give playoff hero Lance McCullers an extreme over-slot bonus later on. It ll be years before we know whether the Twins made the right call, and it might rely as much on $2 million third-round pick Blayne Enlow s future as Lewis or McKay. 28. Leody Taveras, OF, Texas Rangers Don t scout the stat line has gone from keen advice, to prospect writer shibboleth, to hoary cliché in recent years. Of course good production beats bad production, but all varietals of statistical performance have to be explained by the evaluators. Taveras had the worst offensive performance of any of the bats in our top 30, and we don t have a good explanation for it. The easy hand-wave is that he was 18 for the entire season and his triple-slash line wasn t even that bad. But he looked like he should hit Sally League pitching more than he did. Taveras has one of the better baseball bodies you ll see, as well as premium bat speed and an advanced approach from both sides of the plate. He s a potential five-tool outfielder who can already go get it in center field. You can dream on plus game power as his upper body fills out, too. So do you really care about his.672 OPS in A-ball? Still, if we had a better explanation for his struggles he d be higher on this list. Top 101 Prospects - 367

6 FUTURES GUIDE MacKenzie Gore, LHP, San Diego Padres So you want to take a high school arm toward the top of the first round? You aren t close to the first, and you won t be the last. Let s just run down the checklist before you do something unwise: 1. How s the fastball? Mid-90s: Go ahead and put him at the top of your draft board. Low-90s: Proceed to Question Is he projectable? Listed at 6-foot-3, 180 pounds. This bio data can be wildly inaccurate, but it looks about right. So check that box. 3. How s the breaking ball? Potential plus Potential plus or better (curve) All right, getting closer. (Optional) 4. Which scouty sounding hedge best describes his present changeup? Flashes plus Advanced pitch for his age Some feel for the change Clear third pitch Never really needed it 5. Oh, we almost forgot: Is he left-handed? Yep. Okay, we re good here. Open the checkbook. 30. A.J. Puk, LHP, Oakland Athletics Puk can remind one an enormous amount of Andrew Miller as a prospect. Both were considered by many to be the top player in their draft class as long, sometimes shaggy-haired 6-foot-7 lefties after dominant college careers. Both went with the sixth pick in the draft. Both have a little slingy sidearm in their delivery that limits what could be extraordinary plane from that kind of size but causes the slider to play up from an unusual angle. Miller was rushed to the majors despite some command and durability problems for Detroit, was dealt to the Marlins in the Miguel Cabrera trade and never put it together in years in the wilderness as a starter. You probably know the next part, where he then became one of the game s great relievers in his late twenties. The A s have taken it easier with Puk. He split his first full season half-and-half between High-A and Double-A, beating up both levels in ways Miller was never allowed to, but Puk still hints at some of the same command issues. Although Miller s arc is only one of many that Puk may emulate, it serves to remind us that even if the beginning is rough, you can t teach this kind of stuff from a tall lefty with a tough arm slot. 31. Scott Kingery, 2B, Philadelphia Phillies The fly-ball revolution wasn t just for major leaguers. Kingery hit eight combined home runs in his first two pro seasons. Two of our prospect team members filed scouting reports on him in 2016, with power projections at 30 and 20 grade. But then Kingery started hitting a lot of homers, 26 in all split between Double-A and Triple-A. He credited some mechanical changes that caused him to stay back on the ball, along with some additional upper-body mass. There are caveats to this massive improvement much of it was in the home-run paradise of Reading, for example but even bumping Kingery up to average power fortifies the other standout tools, like hit and run, into a fine player, perhaps even a star. 32. Keston Hiura, 2B/DH, Milwaukee Brewers We prefer not to be in thrall to June draft big boards, but Hiura went ninth overall this past summer and signed under slot to boot. We have him fourth among 2017 draftees on this list. So where s the disconnect? Well, the main reason Hiura dropped in the draft was an elbow injury that kept him from playing the field for his junior season. As good as the bat is, it s not special if he s a designated hitter. He was able to play some second base as a pro, and by all reports his throwing looked fine there. It s also second base so fine is, well, fine. Now you dream on the best pure hitter in the draft sticking at an up-the-middle position. That gets our attention, as does Hiura s advanced approach and potentially average game power. He s not as fast as Scott Kingery, but the overall profile may not be all that different now. 33. Mike Soroka, RHP, Atlanta Braves Soroka is not easily reduced to 150 words of plaudits commensurate with his spot on this list. Phrases like steady diet of well-located low-90s fastballs are not the type that will inspire the reader to a flight of fancy. Nor does built to log innings jump off the page. Potential plus slider is better, but hardly a marker of future greatness. There s a curveball and a changeup, too, and he mixes everything well. Oh, and his numbers were better than Kolby Allard s as a 19-year-old in Double-A. We have the inverse of the Leody Taveras problem here. We can t tell you exactly why Soroka was so good in We can use words like command and pitchability, and it isn t like he has bad stuff. The scouting report is just full of more 55s than 60s. That doesn t always work in the majors, especially without an obvious out pitch, so things are still murky here. What is clear is this list has now officially entered the mid-rotation starter tier. Buckle up Top 101 Prospects

7 34. Austin Meadows, OF, Pittsburgh Pirates This is around where the list has a lot of similar profiles and similar concerns: the toolsy bat-speed guys with pitch recognition problems, the well-rounded shortstops in the maybe bucket on staying at shortstop, the different ways we try to describe third starter projections, and so on. It s more interesting to write about guys with oddball arcs, and Meadows is putting together quite an oddball arc. In four full pro seasons, he has only played anything close to a full season once, yet he has somehow avoided the injury-prone tag. We never had any real doubts about whether he d hit, but if you start drilling down, he has never dominated a level for more than six weeks, and he has struggled a lot between those short periods of domination. He s now just a career.239/.306/.390 hitter at Triple-A over 109 games. He has drifted into the outfield corners as expected, but without the sort of physical growth you might ve hoped would lead to a big power spike. The Pirates may not know what to make of him either; after attempting to clear a spot for Meadows before the 2017 season, they passed him over later when playing time opened up due to injuries. We d suspect this is his last appearance on this list unless weird things happen, because he s closing in on the inflection point where he either puts it together and gets promoted or his stock is going to start to resemble Fannie Mae. 35. Nick Gordon, SS, Minnesota Twins Prospect fatigue is a real thing, part two. Gordon has advanced one league per season since being drafted fifth overall in 2014, putting up perfectly acceptable numbers and making small gains in the profile every year. This is the fourth year in a row he has made an appropriate, if small, rise in our 101, since each time he repeats the trick he gets closer to doing it in the majors. Yet you hear virtually nothing about him, even as he s on the doorstep to the majors as a toolsladen shortstop who keeps performing, because we don t have much new to say. He even gets a shorter comment here because of it! 36. Jorge Alfaro, C, Philadelphia Phillies Speaking of prospect fatigue, this is Alfaro s seventh appearance on the 101. We ve basically run out of things to say about him, so instead we ll just play the hits from previous Annuals: 2012: Alfaro has an 80-grade arm and 70-grade power potential. 2013: [Alfaro] has a sky-high ceiling. 2014: His aggressiveness at the plate will be exploited as he climbs the ladder. 2015: Alfaro offers upside rarely seen at the position, but his flaws are equally real. 2016: If Alfaro can shore up his defensive game, he stands a decent chance of becoming a star. 2017: Although it may not have showed up in the stat line, 2016 was a big step forward for Alfaro in that he showed that he has the defensive chops to stick behind the plate in the majors. Of course nobody likes clip shows, but as much as we d like to offer something new, everything above still applies. 37. Triston McKenzie, RHP, Cleveland Indians McKenzie was 2015 s projectable prep arm, and two years later he s still a string bean. Although the physical projection hasn t come and the fastball remains around 90 mph, it hasn t mattered so far. McKenzie gets extra deception and plane from his long, lanky body and high arm slot, and he pairs the fastball with a potentially plus curve. He spent most of the season still a teenager, and even if he doesn t get any bigger, he handled 143 Carolina League innings without a problem, notching 186 strikeouts in the process. We ll remind you again not to scout the stat line, but that s a pretty nice stat line. You re still dreaming on more to come with McKenzie, but the grass isn t that much greener on the other side right now. 38. Jordon Adell, OF, Los Angeles Angels Rumor has it that the Angels never have any prospects of note, but Adell is part of a crop percolating in the low minors that has California dreaming about setting fire to that notion. It s tough to find someone like Adell when you never pick high in the draft he was the Angels first top-10 pick since they took Joe Torres 10th in 2000 but they ve also just let the sky fall on most everyone except Mike Trout. Granting that it s early, they may have hit big here; at the very least, they swung big on a huge talent with five-tool potential. Adell won t turn 19 until a few weeks into the 2018 season, so be patient, because they could have it all here, even if he s chasing curves near the pavement for a bit. 39. Hunter Greene, RHP, Cincinnati Reds Is it just a meaningless fun fact that a right-handed prep pitcher has never been drafted no. 1 overall, or are teams legitimately scared off from them? We would posit it s just a fun fact, mostly because arms like Josh Beckett and Dylan Bundy certainly could have gone first in their draft year. Lucas Giolito very well might have had he remained healthy. And enough lefties have gone 1.1 to dispel the notion that teams would be scared off prep pitching in general. Greene was the latest iteration of the there s no real reason he didn t club, ranking as the draft s top prospect for most of the process, working out impressively for the Twins at Target Field just a few days before the draft and signing for the highest bonus of the cycle. Like Brendan McKay, Greene was also a significant prospect as a position player, but after seven games at designated hitter in rookie ball, the Reds determined Greene would focus on pitching, as was always expected. On the mound, his fastball matches up with that of anyone on this Top 101 Prospects - 369

8 FUTURES GUIDE 2018 list, even Michael Kopech, and his slider has the potential but not the consistency to be quite nasty. Your typical concerns about changeup and command are here, too. 40. Alec Hansen, RHP, Chicago White Sox How much higher would Hansen s stock be if his junior season at Oklahoma had never happened? Entering the 2016 draft cycle, he was the consensus top player in the country. As a pro, he has been right up there in both scouting reports and performance with any 2016 college player short of Nick Senzel. Yet we still know that things can go sideways for Hansen in a way that we just speculate they might go sideways for, say, A.J. Puk. We ve seen it with our own eyes. We don t know whether that makes it more likely that Hansen will lose his feel and command again, but it seems more likely, and that costs him a chunk of spots every time we do one of these. Over time, the chunk grows smaller and smaller, because when you write what you see now, it s pretty freaking impressive. Eventually, we ll shake the negative feeling entirely if he keeps pitching like this. 41. Yadier Alvarez, RHP, Los Angeles Dodgers The prospect writer s brain is similar to that of most higherorder primates. We look for patterns in development and prefer it when prospects progress on something akin to a y=x type slope year-over-year. It s easy enough to handle breakouts, the reasons for such usually being obvious to the naked eye. Stagnation can be a bit of a problem. Alvarez s strikes got hit harder in 2017 and he threw fewer strikes in general. That makes it easy enough to drop him 20 spots, as we did, while still holding out hope that he figures out enough command and control for the triple-digit heat and plus slider to bend bats to his will. Ah, but now the pattern becomes clear. Big fastball? Plus slider? Questions about the command and change? Potential high-leverage relief future? Every ink blot looks like a mid-rotation starter or good closer projection to us now. 42. Kyle Wright, RHP, Atlanta Braves Nashville is fast becoming known more for pumping out pitching prospects than country music. Wright is the latest Vanderbilt alum to feature prominently on our version of the Billboard charts. Last year s fifth overall pick doesn t have much of a pro track record yet but comes with the Vanderbilt version of the 10-gallon hat and debut LP about drinking, trucks, and women. Wright is a polished, four-pitch guy, with a potential plus fastball and slider, but the changeup lags behind and we wonder about the ultimate command projection given his somewhat unorthodox arm action. So to paraphrase another of Music City s famous sons: Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything's OK, but I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, 'till things are brighter, I'm the Third Starter In Black. 43. Willie Calhoun, 2B/LF, Texas Rangers If he were actually a second baseman and a half-foot taller, he d be the best prospect in baseball. But Calhoun isn t a second baseman in any sense other than that it was the chosen position for him to stand at in his first two-and-ahalf pro seasons while he hit the crap out of the ball. The Rangers converted him to left field on a near-full-time basis after picking him up for Yu Darvish, and all of his MLB playing time in the field came there. While he s probably not going to win any awards for stellar outfield play, he should be a lot less harmful to the team standing out there than by a base. If it comes down to it, he does play in the Junior Circuit with their newfangled designated hitter. 44. Carson Kelly, C, St. Louis Cardinals Kelly is in one of the best and worst spots for his chosen career path. You could seek out no better tutor on the art of catching than Yadier Molina. On the other hand, this apprenticeship may last for a while, as Molina has three years and $60 million remaining on his contract extension with the Redbirds. Molina s late-twenties offensive peak is well in his rear-view mirror now, but he s still a very good everyday backstop and an average hitter. Kelly might be that as well. Heck, he might be that right now, but we re unlikely to find out while he s wearing Cardinal red. What we can say for sure is that he has nothing left to prove in the minors. 45. Joey Wentz, LHP, Atlanta Braves Far too much has been made of what Wentz isn t. No, he doesn t throw in the high-90s, and if he ever did it was just showcase pops. Yes, he s lost a tick or two transitioning from an amateur schedule to a pro schedule. Should we care if he s still effective? He was one of the best pitchers in the Sally League, pitching the entire season at 19, a total badass all year, disposing of both lefties and righties without regard. When did we decide a lefty peppering the low-90s didn t throw hard enough, anyway? He has the command, the secondary stuff, the pedigree, and the performance to be considered a real prospect. And if he does get that extra few percent back on the fastball, look out. 46. Adonis Medina, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies The Phillies have had phenomenal success turning small-ball international signings into significant pitching assets up and down the system. Medina signed for $70,000 out of the Dominican Republic in 2014, and he s out of Central Casting with a projectable frame that s already supporting velocity bumps into and above the mid-90s. He added a slider in 2017 that could be the out pitch down the line, and he has feel on the mound and command that belies his youth. Most of the rest of the usual caveats apply, of course, but if you can produce enough of these prospects, you re bound to hit on one Top 101 Prospects

9 47. Dylan Cease, RHP, Chicago White Sox Speaking of organizational risk mitigation in pitching prospects, the White Sox have acquired so many extremeupside arms including ones that didn t make this list that someone has to turn into an ace unless they get hideously unlucky. Cease is the highest-upside, highest-risk play of them all; he can throw a hundred and spin a mean curve. He s also entering his fifth pro season with a Tommy John surgery already on the résumé, and he hasn t thrown a hundred innings or made it out of Low-A yet. Obviously, there s a big shot for a late-inning reliever fallback here. 48. Cal Quantrill, RHP, San Diego Padres This list is littered with pitchers who could have gone first overall in their draft year. That shouldn t be surprising amateur scouts have that job based on their ability to pick the winners. Quantrill ended up falling out of conversation for the top pick in 2016 due to the usual reasons a Tommy John surgery that limited teams looks at him. He has been stellar as a pro reminding everyone why he was a 1.1 candidate and while he s in our midrotation starter tier, it isn t for the usual reasons. He has three MLB-quality pitches, including a plus changeup, and can throw strikes with all of them. The outstanding questions here are short-term consistency he can end up searching for his delivery at times after his long layoff from pitching and long-term durability. As we get further from his surgery, those questions may weigh less on our mind, but for now we must remain cautiously optimistic. 49. Monte Harrison, OF, Miami Marlins As we wrote earlier, we know how to handle breakouts, and we aren t all that surprised Harrison broke out in He fits in the aforementioned toolsy guys with bat speed and pitchrecognition problems category, but it s big tools and big bat speed. It finally clicked on the field, as Harrison mashed 20 home runs between two A-ball levels. He has always had premium athletic tools check out his high school basketball mixtape but 2017 was his first full, healthy season. Sometimes it can be as simple as that. There s still a fair bit of rawness here, both in center field and at the plate, but with plus run, plus arm, and plus raw in his tool shed, the overall profile isn t all that different from prospects like Lewis Brinson and Leody Taveras. 50. Adrian Morejon, RHP, San Diego Padres What does one do with another arm Of fastball big and curve that breaks His changeup leads to easy takes Yet still a credit to one s farm There is no need to cry alarm Because his body s no great shakes Perhaps he s had a few cupcakes Ugh that was likely needless smarm But a verdict must be rendered now So our patrons may plan their draft But must we dabble in poetry A pretense that is so highbrow In particular form of Petrarchan craft To tell you he s a number three 51. Chance Adams, RHP, New York Yankees The Yankees have treated Adams very carefully, as befits a power college reliever they ve been converting into a starter. Well, they ve tried to, but he keeps forcing the issue by waltzing through the minors and not showing any of the typical issues of young pitchers being stretched out. Even still, Adams probably could have helped the Yankees down the stretch in 2017, but between 40-man considerations and developmental concerns, he never got the call. The fastball/ slider combo is already there, and the changeup and curve aren t far behind, so his chance to be a mid-rotation stalwart can t be far out. 52. Michel Baez, RHP, San Diego Padres San Diego spent $3 million over the holidays last year to sign Baez out of Cuba, and he has turned into more than just a stocking stuffer for a system that already has everything. With his 6-foot-8 frame, his mid-90s fastball looks like an avalanche coming down the side of K2, while his changeup looks like a cliff diver in Acapulco (your author may have been cooped up for a while writing these). Baez keeps the delivery on line well for a guy who could play center in Golden State s small-ball lineup, but until he develops an average breaking ball in his arsenal, the more conservative in our industry will peg him as a late-inning reliever. He could move quickly in that role, and San Diego sounds nice as we look out our window. 53. Franklin Perez, RHP, Detroit Tigers Perez will forever be linked with Justin Verlander, as the top prospect sent to Detroit in the August 31 deal that sent the playoff hero to Houston. It s no slight to Perez to suggest that the odds of his matching Verlander s career under the Olde English D are statistically insignificant. Perez is a very good prospect, but there are far more of those than future Hall of Fame arms. The trade made a sort of sabermetric sense, as the Tigers are entering a rebuild and Verlander is old and owed lots of future dollars. If Perez turns into a costcontrolled mid-rotation arm, that will be a lot of surplus value for the Tigers in his pre-arbitration years. It s just hard for me not to look askance at a formula that makes Perez more valuable to Detroit than Verlander has already been to the Astros. 54. Keibert Ruiz, C, Los Angeles Dodgers Every year there s a prospect who gets bumped up this list after we chat with people inside the game. For this edition, the popular refrain was you re too low on Ruiz. Not that Top 101 Prospects - 371

10 FUTURES GUIDE 2018 Ruiz is hard to love: He s a switch-hitting catcher with an.800 OPS between two A-ball levels as a 19-year-old. That got our attention for sure. His defense is a work in progress his receiving skills are good, the throwing and blocking not so much yet. But the overall package here looks like a plus regular behind the plate. So why did we need the extra nudge from the folks in the room where it happens to place him on the cusp of the top 50? Catchers are weird, but they aren t that weird. 55. Luis Robert, OF, Chicago White Sox Enough of the same reasons that we re not ranking Shohei Ohtani also apply to Robert, who has played extensively as a professional in a top foreign league. We actually passed on ranking Robert in our midseason top 50. But while they may have been comparable leagues before all of the Cuban talent left the island, the NPB and Serie Nacional are no longer comparable. It has also become clear that, unlike Ohtani, Robert will have a significant period as a stateside prospect. So we ve begun ranking him, although we remain initially conservative due to a lack of relevant looks or information. We ll get the looks we need this season, and he could be literally anywhere on the list (or off it) in a year s time. 56. Magneuris Sierra, OF, Miami Marlins For a few hours, the Marcell Ozuna trade was reported as being for Sandy Alcantara and unnamed lesser prospects. It was ultimately revealed that one of the lesser prospects was Sierra, and at least from our point of view, Magneuris actually has more prospect sheen on him than Sandy right now. Sierra had a weird season, mixing in mere competence at High-A and Double-A with excellence in several brief MLB call-ups. Magneuris is a name that should conjure feelings of great power, but the reality is he s a slap-and-dash sort who hit just a single homer all season between three levels, and his glove may end up being the carrying tool to the profile. He ll certainly have a lot of opportunity to show his wares amidst Miami s rebuild. 57. Justus Sheffield, LHP, New York Yankees When Sheffield is right, like he was at the end of 2017 and into the Arizona Fall League, he s as nasty as any lefty in the minors, pumping electric mid-90s gas with a plus slider and a useful changeup. He s just not fully healthy and throwing strikes all that much, and we ve seen Sheffield s lesser self too often. He missed a chunk of last season with an oblique injury after his velocity and command wavered early. He could be a lot of fun if he ever finds the right role, but command, durability, and size are all still enemies. 58. Anthony Alford, OF, Toronto Blue Jays He can never stay healthy is a concern applied more often to pitching prospects than position players, but Alford probably qualifies as injury-prone by now. An abridged list of his maladies includes concussion, dislocated knee, and broken hamate; at the time of this writing, he had just tweaked his ankle in the Mexican Winter League. It s too bad he has everything you d want in an everyday center fielder. Alford was a top recruit as a high school quarterback, signing with Ole Miss as a dual-threat under center while spending his summer vacations in Dunedin and Bluefield. He s built like a spread option QB and is a potential aboveaverage defender in center. When he has played, he has hit, and you d think there would be more game power to come if and when he figures out how to pull the ball more. Alford s a top-50 prospect on talent, and the only thing stopping him is what Will Carroll once coined the sixth tool health. 59. Taylor Trammell, OF, Cincinnati Reds The many-worlds theory of the multiverse is a controversial topic within quantum mechanics. This is not the forum to litigate the scientific merits, but it provides a useful jumping off point for Trammell. There must be a universe in which Anthony Alford stayed healthy as a prospect, and Trammell might chart that hypothetical course in coming years. Trammell was a pretty good high school football player himself as a running back. Unsurprisingly, he s a plus-plus runner with a good shot to stick in center field. Like Alford, he has yet to show as much power as you d think, but the Midwest League is an unfriendly clime for all species of dingers. He s also as raw as you d expect when the comp is Alford, but two years ago. We re intrigued to see how both the experimental and the control group play out. 60. Jesus Sanchez, OF, Tampa Bay Rays If you play anywhere on the grass in the minors, we list you here as OF. We will then explain further as needed. As a broad rule, minor-league center fielders don t always turn into major-league center fielders. As one of my predecessors in these pages once opined: Playing a major-league center field is f***ing hard. But there is a chance that your A-ball center fielder is a major-league center fielder. Sanchez is an A-ball left fielder. It s likely that the only time he ll spend in a major-league center field is during the walk to left field from the home dugout. So he s going to have to hit. He s going to have to hit for average, and he s going to have to hit for power. So far, so good, and the underlying tools are there for a plus-hit/plus-power left fielder. We tend to underrate corner prospects, and we might still be doing it with Sanchez. 61. Heliot Ramos, OF, San Francisco Giants The Giants are capable of making some strange-looking picks early in the draft, and Ramos generally wasn t ranked as highly as his 19th overall selection tipped. But Heliot had some helium coming into the draft, and it didn t stop after he was popped. He was only 17 on draft day but looked like a man among boys in the complex league, showing huge power, speed, bat speed, pitch recognition, and overall hitting polish while playing a competent center field. He suffered a season-ending concussion on a hit-by-pitch to the Top 101 Prospects