Now its time to unveil the entire Top 100, in chart form. Pitchers tend to be volatile and subject to heightened injury risk, plus their usage is being spread out among more pitchers in the majors, reducing the impact of individuals. Mauricio has developed as well as could have been rationally hoped when he signed. Williams was a two-way high school player who was talented enough to be considered a prospect as both a shortstop and a pitcher. He has a loose arm, a frame built for eating innings, and a repeatable delivery. 20AuburnSEC9AL1-5254962 INF Dustin Dickerson Dickerson is part of another experienced lineup for Southern Miss, who have put themselves on the map as a premier mid-major in college baseball. Davis has huge, plus-plus raw power, and will be a star if he can stay behind the plate or a solid everyday first baseman if he cant. Hes not a great defender right now, and probably wont ever be better than a 40-grade glove, but Davis frames high strikes well and has plus raw arm strength. The transfer outfielder will look to anchor this NC State lineup that lost key pieces over the offseason. If Eder is wild upon his initial return to affiliated ball, it will be tough to know if hes regressed to his career command mean or if its just rust from being 17 months post-op. Its possible he was gassed at that point, but his late-2021 and early-2022 backfield defensive look was similar, and its rare for shortstops to be this size. He sometimes sets up to block breaking balls too quickly, tipping off baserunners and peeking hitters to whats coming. Busch has continued his long track record of excellent offensive performance so far in pro ball. Collegiate Baseball and the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association rank the top 30 teams nationally. Previous ranking: No. Stone was an athletic small-school prospect with a powerful drop-and-drive delivery and short, vertically-oriented arm action who the Dodgers selected late in the shortened 2020 draft. Volpes uppercut swing will allow him to get to impact power for a middle infielder. His right-handed swing is pretty grooved, but still powerful, while his lefty swing is more skillful and dynamic, giving him a potent contact/power blend. His fantastic bat-to-ball skill has enabled him to rake in the minors, but he has a tendency to offer at pitches that are way, way off the plate, pitches most hitters instantly know arent competitive. The Aggies were nearly swept, needing a three-run, ninth-inning rally Sunday to salvage a game against the Pilots. The biggest hope for the list is that by the time the end of the season rolls around, these 150 players will be something close to being the 150 players who were most impactful in the sport in . Perhaps as an adjustment to deal with this issue, Priester now mixes in plenty of fastballs for which he pronates on release, giving the pitch screwball-like spin. Hes a good hitter who will stabilize an infield spot in Cincinnati for the next half decade or so. Hes a plus rotational athlete, his hands are exceptionally strong, he can drive his top hand through contact to punish pitches at the top of the zone and he sometimes alters his footwork and the bend in his lower half to dip down and barrel low pitches. The bumps and bruises suffered from catching can sometimes level players for whole seasons, and Davis had a lot of them in 2022. Others that made big jumps into the Top 100 include Central Michigan (No. The staff of Baseball America determines the Top 25 rankings. His powerful lower half and flexibility drive the production of this velocity, while McGarrys long arm action makes it tough for him to have a consistent release. All major league baseball data including pitch type, velocity, batted ball location, HISTORY: Longest games| Longest winning streaks| Longest half inning Initially considered a contact-first prospect, the effort level in Chourios swing ratcheted up in 2022 and he now takes a monster hack, whipping the bat through the zone with all his might, often needing the dirt of the batters box behind him to stop his rotation. After a College Baseball Classic with glowing reviews, Taylor ended the week with a 1.401 OPS and nine hits. Waldichuks command is better than his small 2022 big league sample and he should stabilize as a mid-rotation piece. A few factoids: (you might need to use the scrollbar at the bottom of the table, depending on your device), Teams1-5 He has lost some range as his compact, ovular frame has filled out and matured, and shockingly his hands and arm accuracy (even from second base) were both concerningly bad in Venezuela. He struggles with softer stuff in the bottom of the strike zone, and his in-zone and overall contact rates in 2022 were 78% and 70% respectively, an area similar to Nolan Gorman, Franchy Cordero, Bobby Dalbec and others who have tantalizing power but have sometimes been frustrating big league hitters. We can safely put to bed any notion that Pages (pronounced p-hz) might stay in center field, and as such, his projection has narrowed as he shifts to being an average everyday corner outfield prospect by virtue of his ability to get to power, which he does via his combination of raw strength and the extreme lift in his swing. You can do some thought exercises around where hed go were Noelvi a 21-year-old draft prospect, or play would you rather with the names of other prospects to try to triangulate where he should fall on the FV scale, and all of that went into placing him here. After hitting .278/.373/.556 with San Jose, he was promoted to High-A and struck out at a 37% clip during the final month of the season. FILED UNDER Alabama, Arkansas, East Carolina, Florida, Florida State, Louisville, LSU, Maryland, Miami, NC State, North Carolina, Oklahoma State, Ole Miss, Oregon, South Carolina, Southern Miss, Stanford, TCU, Tennessee, Texas Tech, UCLA, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, This category can only be viewed by members. Ideally hell play a few different positions based on the game situation. Casas is capable of hitting huge tanks to all parts of the ballpark; his hard-hit rate in 2022 was a whopping 50%, which would have been top 15 among qualified big league hitters. Hitters in general seemed unphased by Jobes fastball/breaking ball combo and were comfortable parsing them from one another, even in A-ball. This is not to denigrate Vargas skill as a hitter, as he has incredible hand-eye coordination, terrific breaking ball recognition, and a great idea of the strike zone, the complement of skills that drive his profile. This projection is a little more bullish about him staying at short, at least for a while, largely based on Lees feel for the position. Opinions on Tiedemann vary depending on how much stock is put in his early professional performance: He sat 96 mph at instructs in 2021, but skeptics questioned whether that was a short-term effect of him airing things out in short stints, or if receiving higher-quality development and instruction than he got in his amateur environment had actually unlocked something. Because hes a bit stiff, its possible the grind of a full-season will impact his defensive mobility and even his offense if he has to catch 80-plus games. Weve concluded he does. He was throwing all of his pitches in bullpens and had started facing live hitters just a couple weeks before list completion. 93MinnesotaBig Ten8MN1-444972100 Parada was the rare high-profile California high schooler who left the state for college, traveling all the way to Atlanta for two years at Georgia Tech. Eder was a tantalizing but inconsistent high school prospect who at times would sit 94-97 mph, but often with scattershot control. He has a surprisingly authoritative left-handed cut for a player of his stature and shows you lovely all-fields ability to hit, snatching hanging breaking balls and inner-third fastballs to his pull side and spraying lots of middle-away fastballs to the opposite field. Its not typical for a prospect who was just put on a 40-man roster to have this much perceived volatility or create this level of polarization. Davis plate crowding helps enable his pull-heavy approach. Hes similar to DJ LeMahieu and Vinnie Pasquantino from a skill set standpoint and should provide a long-term answer at first base for the Rays within the next couple of years. Theres an All-Star-caliber hit and power combination here, and while a bigger pro data sample might reveal some approach-related issues, Johnson has been one of the best hitters his age for going on a half decade and feels like a relatively high-probability high school hitting prospect. The components of Hernandezs swing push and pull against one another, as his cut is pretty long but he also has very advanced barrel control. In his first full season, Mayer slashed .280/.399/.489, hit 30 doubles and 13 homers, and was 17-for-17 on stolen base attempts as he continued the track record of premium offensive performance that hes displayed since he was a high school underclassman. He has a mid-80s cutter/slider that doesnt often have vertical depth, but it does have great length for how hard it is. His feel for contact and for the zone already gave him a high floor. Davis skills and offensive style are tailored like those of Evan Gattis. It seemed as though he had potential landing spots in the 2022 drafts top 10 picks, but he ended up parachuting to 18, and signing for an over-slot $5 million. 45BaylorBig 126TX6-11346259 Hell work six or more innings and never throw a fastball below 95 mph, sitting 96-98 for the bulk of the outing. RHP Seth Keener Keener got the nod on opening day, lasting five innings and striking out eight without allowing a run. He covers the inner two-thirds of the zone quite well (his in-zone contact rates are actually about as good as Miguel Vargas), but his desire to pull and lift everything leaves him vulnerable on the outer edge and often impacts the quality of his contact. After he went second overall in the 2021 draft, Leiter rested for the remainder of that season, having racked up 110 innings on the mound for Vanderbilt. His time on the Twins roster was too short-lived to put much stake in, but was just as brilliant more so, given his ability to translate those above-average across-the-board numbers to the highest level. Dallas Baptist; 33. His amateur look was that of a slash-and-dash leadoff man with doubles power and a great idea of the strike zone. Wood was a divisive amateur prospect, with some scouts seeing him as a center fielder with 70 raw power projection and others seeing him as an eventual first baseman with hit tool risk. For the purpose of this exercise, we dont care what happened in the 1970s or 80s, or even the 90s thats ancient history to a potential recruit in 2022. The fluctuations in velocity, Nelsons mechanical look, and his end-of-year scapula injury in 2022 wrap his profile in long-term relief risk, but thats pretty standard among big stuff pitchers toward the back of the top 100. His traditional crouch can be a little high and make it tough for him to get to the ground to block balls, which he often tries to do with his hands rather than his whole body, and hell cost you a base now and then because of this. Jobes stuff has more spin than the 24-hour news networks, but he had a rough first season in pro ball. Tech. RHP Joseph Gonzalez Gonzalez was terrific for the Tigers in 2022, starting 14 games with a 3.22 ERA. He now sits 96 mph and will touch as high as 102, though he typically tops out at 99 in any given start. He had a .318/.379/.550 slash line with 20 doubles and nine home runs and more of the same should be expected in 2022. Instead, just a few days before Top 100 list publication, it was revealed that he still has a tear in his shoulder and will miss the first few months of the year. OF Braden Montgomery Remember this guys name. There will probably be a consistent hole against fastballs up and away for Domnguez. Fall Nuggets: Mississippi State, Illinois, Nebraska, UConn, Iowa, Troy, Illinois St., HPU, Indiana St. 2022 Top 100 College Baseball Programs: Top Five, Updated February 28, 2023 | More on the Top 25, Mid-Major Madness: Surging Oral Roberts, Woffords Galanie Headline Notebook, ECUs Parker Byrd Keeps Chasing Baseball Dream After Leg Amputation, Midwest Connection: Statement Wins For the Big Ten, Round Rock, Rumble In The Jungle, and The Rest of Week Two The D1Baseball Podcast, Rogers Rewind: Everything That Caught My Attention In Week Two, Stat Roundup: How The Top 100 Prospects Performed In Week Two, Auburns Irish Came In Hitting, Hasnt Stopped, SEC Midweek Game Primer Feb. 28, March 1, SEC Player and Pitcher of the Week Week 2, SEC Baseball Weekend Two Recap Highway To Hoover, Mississippi State Gets Back on Track Behind Yntema. SP. Its fair to consider him a high-floor, low-variance prospect because Romos defensive ability and rocket arm make him very likely to be a plus defender at maturity, and even a one-note style of offense (Romo both lacks power and is relatively impatient) tends to profile at catcher. There were reasons to be skeptical or apprehensive about declaring Chourio one of the games top prospects, especially at the onset of his breakout. 17TennesseeSEC8TN25269NRNR With Martn Maldonado and Korey Lee around, Diaz will be able to ease into the everyday waters and start some games at 1B/DH to get his bat into the lineup. Lesko hasnt thrown a pro pitch yet due to TJ rehab, but his changeup and pre-injury velocity and fastball playability demand he be one here toward the back. He also appears to have reshaped his body somewhat, which may have contributed to the uptick in arm strength. During his 2022 spring break, Holliday came to Arizona to work out and take BP with his high school team at some of the big league teams complexes, and he (and his younger brother, Ethan) put balls out of backfields into the teeth of the wind with ease. The top five is unchanged this week, as Florida, Stanford, Louisville and Vanderbilt again follow LSU. The amount of power here is sensational. The Big East, MAC, SoCon and Southland placed three teams apiece on the list. Frelicks style of hitting should enable doubles (and some triples) pop, but there isnt likely to be any kind of over-the-fence power here, so little that one could argue Frelick belongs south of the 50 FV tier even if he were a lock to stay in center field. Teams not listed above are: 31. RHP AJ Hutcheson The true freshman was lights-out from the bullpen this past week, appearing two times and striking out seven without allowing a hit. There was a stretch as an amateur when Frelick was viewed as a potential second baseman, an experiment that didnt really go anywhere. 1 In Volatile Rankings", "D1Baseball Top 25: Four Teams Enter Rankings After Tumultuous Week", "D1Baseball Top 25: Vols Top, Texas A&M, Wofford Enter Rankings", "D1Baseball Top 25: Jackets, Noles, Gauchos Enter Rankings", "D1Baseball Top 25: Tennessee Clings To No. Theres still risk Rafaela walks the Cristian Pache path, as his issues are similar to the ones that have apparently undone the young Athletic, but more likely hes akin to Kevin Pillar, and there are scouts who think Rafaelas frame will continue to add strength such that he hits for more power than Pillar was able to. More striking than his velocity itself is the ease with which Espino generates it. The Cavaliers bats stayed hot and theyre averaging 12.7 runs per game in the early going. In 2021, he moved into the Aggies rotation, and while his fastball would peak at 95-98 mph, hed typically settle in at 92-94 as a starter and still had issues with walks. A downward cutting swing and middling rotational athleticism limit Carters offensive impact to the doubles variety, and even though hes young and has a huge, rectangular frame, Carters lack of explosiveness tempers long-term raw power projection here, and we consider him more of a high-floor prospect than a future star. 40/50. Millers arm swing is long and he has again been somewhat walk-prone in pro ball. ECU hosts the Keith LeClair Classic this weekend. It comes out of his hand from a high arm slot that looks like the kind optimized for data-friendly ride, but the pitchs downhill angle makes it less of a weapon at the letters and actually makes it very vulnerable within the strike zone. Holliday is a sweet-swinging shortstop with above-average feel for contact and burgeoning power. As a fourth-year junior in 2021, he was still sitting 88-92 mph, with his fastball velocity sometimes drifting as low as 86 mph in a given start. His power on contact is exceptional, and even though his hit tool has looked more average than above as hes traversed the minors, the combination of power and patience here belongs in the heart of a big league order. He lacks a traditionally projectable frame, but Amador has still gotten stronger over the last year and he flashed more power than expected. Its possible hell be so good upon return that he kicks down the door, but its more likely from a roster timeline standpoint that Miami gives him all of 2023 in the minors so his innings can be manicured with his health and development in mind. We can quibble over whether A-ball dynamics have changed due to the elimination of the short season leagues in a way that might invalidate historical precedents like this, but its reasonable to have some pause about Williams long-term prospectdom when you realize the closest 2022 comp for his contact data (66% contact%, 78% z-contact) was Paul DeJong. 28MichiganBig Ten1MI13315367 39Arizona StatePac-126AZ2-9302916 It isnt pretty, but some of the proof is in the data. Heres the full conference-by-conference breakdown: ACC (12 of 14 teams landed in the Top 100), Pac-12 (8 of 11), Big Ten (8 of 13), Big 12 (7 of 9), Sun Belt (7 of 14), American (5 of 8), Big West (4 of 9), Conference USA (4 of 8). Wood compares to a young Adam Dunn as a power-hitting outfielder of considerable size. OF JonJon Vaughns The junior Vaughns struggled in his first two seasons for the Bruins but played himself to a starting job this fall. Of course, Nolan Arenados presence through 2027 dictates a move regardless of how Walker looks over there. Previous ranking: No. This level of athleticism might be an indication that Rodriguez will find a way to mature into more raw power despite not having a traditionally projectable frame. Lee has fantastic breaking ball recognition, and he can let pitches travel deep before deciding whether to swing. Because the White Sox had so many good prospects in Birmingham toward the end of the season, it was extremely efficient to source scouts and conduct film study from that time period. With just under a month remaining until opening weekend of the 2022 college baseball season, D1Baseball's Kendall Rogers and Aaron Fitt sat down with us to break down their preseason top 25. A stretch as an amateur when Frelick was viewed as a power-hitting outfielder of considerable size track of. Loose arm, a frame built for eating innings, and he should as. 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