How the legend of the Four Horsemen was born — and why it lives on 100 years later
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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
“Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again.
In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.”
IT WAS A century ago today, in the early evening of Oct. 18, that Grantland Rice, the greatest sportswriter of his time or perhaps any time, rat-a-tat-tatted those words out from his typewriter high above the Polo Grounds. Barely one week earlier, the old ballpark had hosted the World Series between the New York Giants and the visiting Washington Senators. That’s why the red, white and blue bunting was still hanging from the rafters, flapping in the autumn breeze as the 44-year-old Rice pulled the final pages from the scroll of his instrument, having just authored what is still considered to be the greatest opening paragraph ever penned by an American sportswriter.
Even he, at the height of his powers, with a newspaper column that reached an astonishing 10 million readers per day, had no idea what he was about to unleash once those words began rolling off the printing presses of the New York Herald Tribune and beyond. The Tennessean-turned-New Yorker they called “Granny” was too preoccupied with processing what he had just witnessed, Knute Rockne’s Notre Dame foursome of running backs unleashing a ballet of shifts, blocks, rushes and passes upon the era’s golden college football standard, the Black Knights of West Point.
By morning, that quartet would be the United States’ most famous college athletes, with an overnight popularity that went on to rival even the most recognized faces of the 1920s, the decade that birthed the very idea of American celebrity, from Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey to Charles Lindbergh and Rudolph Valentino, with a sizable accidental assist from that last guy.
“I have often wondered what would have happened, how would I have spent all these years, had those words not been written about us,” confessed Four Horseman Elmer Layden during an interview in 1947, after retiring as the first commissioner of the NFL. “Do any of us become the coaches that we did? Do the four of us remain the great friends that we are? Does our beloved Notre Dame become the football team that it is and does Rock become the legend he was? I don’t know. And I am thankful to not know. All because of those words.”
Before they were Horsemen
OUTLINED AGAINST A very dark, aurora borealis-tinted sky, those who love the Four Horsemen rode again, in SUVs and Ubers to the Brown County Library in downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin. There, in an auditorium packed with, well, Packers, on Tuesday night, Oct. 8, 2024, the people of Titletown were learning about one of their own.
“Before he was Sleepy Jim Crowley, as Knute Rockne called him in jest, or a Four Horseman of Notre Dame, he was just Jimmy from Green Bay,” writer Jim Lefebvre, author of “Loyal Sons,” a book with a cover adorned with the famous Four Horsemen photograph, told the theater full of enthusiasts. Like Lefebvre himself, the room was mostly town natives. “Crowley learned the game of football in a city park that we all know, only a few blocks from where we are sitting right now.”
Crowley — he of the good looks, sharp wit and 162-pound frame — starred in every sport but was indoctrinated into the finer points of carrying the pigskin out of the T formation by his coach at Green Bay East High, Curly Lambeau. Yes, that Curly Lambeau, who in the early 1920s was holding down the dual head-coaching jobs at East and for a city-based semipro team he’d founded in 1919 and persuaded his meat-packing boss to sponsor. He called them the Green Bay Packers.
Lambeau learned the ways of the shifty Notre Dame Box offense from its originator, having played one season in the Fighting Irish backfield in 1918, Rockne’s first year at the helm in South Bend. Curly shared that backfield with George Gipp before health issues and homesickness sent Lambeau back home to Green Bay. When it was time for Crowley, a good Wisconsin Catholic boy, to attend college, Lambeau called his former coach and told him to give the kid a chance.
A similar call had come in from Davenport, Iowa. Walter Halas, brother of Chicago Bears godfather George, was Rockne’s top talent scout, joining the Notre Dame staff from Davenport Central High, and he told Rockne they had to bring in his star fullback, Elmer Layden. Layden stayed on at Notre Dame despite homesickness so awful that when Rockne said, “Don’t worry. I’ve never had a freshman quit,” teenage Layden replied, “Then I’m about to help you break another football record.”
He was joined by another bulldog of a back, but one who required no convincing to matriculate into northern Indiana. Don Miller’s three older brothers had already played for the Irish, including Harry “Red” Miller, Notre Dame’s first All-American. “I didn’t even know there were other places to go to college,” Miller joked years later.
The final future Horseman was also their anchor, athletically and spiritually. Harry Stuhldreher wasn’t big physically. During a Rockne-demanded weigh-in, Stuhldreher said of the smallish four-man backfield, “I don’t know who is more embarrassed, us or the scales.” He hailed from the only corner of the nation more football-crazy than Green Bay, having grown up watching and then playing on the vicious football field-turned-fighting rings of northeastern Ohio. That’s where the town teams of Canton and Stuhldreher’s hometown of Massillon held contests so infamously violent that Rice himself came from New York to cover them, writing: “But no fight ever fought before beneath the shining sun, will be like that when Canton’s team lines up with Massillon.”
In 1915, Rockne, fresh out of Notre Dame as a player, signed with the Massillon Tigers as an end. Over the next two seasons he went head to head with Jim Thorpe and his Canton Bulldogs. A local teenager took to Rockne and helped him carry his gear to and from the stadium. It was Harry Stuhldreher. A few years later, he was Rockne’s QB at Notre Dame.
As freshmen in 1921, the foursome never played together. As sophomores in 1922, Miller broke into the lineup, but the other three had to wait another year to become regulars. As juniors, they became a shape-shifting yardage machine. They lined up in the T formation, and, when the signal was given, they moved into the Notre Dame Shift. To the right, Crowley was left half (tailback), Miller was right (wingback), Stuhldreher would tuck in behind the guard and tackle, while Layden lined up behind the tackle. To the left, they’d do the same but to the other side. The snap could go directly to any of them, and they might run, pitch or pass, all while blocking to perfection.
“We don’t need big backs,” the always-clever Rockne would say, “because we don’t make big holes.”
They lost only two games together in two years, both to Nebraska, as they ran into 1924.
The fifth Horseman
OUTLINED AGAINST A perfectly cloudless Southern California blue sky, the Hollywood Forever Cemetery seems to go on indeed forever. There’s a statue of Johnny Ramone, a pyramid, a granite couch covered with bronze likenesses of the departed’s beloved dogs, and headstones for Cecil B. DeMille and Mickey Rooney. Hidden deep within a mausoleum is the crypt — No. 1,205 to be exact — of Rudolph Valentino, one of the biggest stars of silent film.
On a flawless day this past August, a religious tract was stuffed into one of the flower holders. It is a story taken from the Book of Revelation, Chapter 6, and had been the inspiration behind the million-dollar film that turned Valentino into a megastar, 1921’s “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
George Strickler, a devotee of that film, did not play football. He was also not raised in some Midwestern semipro-powered gridiron hotbed. He was from South Bend, having spent his entire life on the Notre Dame campus, where his father ran the college slaughterhouse. This feels like a good spot to illustrate exactly what that college was like at the time, and it wasn’t much.
The school was founded in 1842 by a 28-year-old French priest who had come into 524 frozen acres in the middle of what was known as the Indiana mission fields. Eight decades later, as the soon-to-be Four Horsemen ran their drills ahead of the 1924 season, literally beneath the shadow of the Golden Dome, the student body was around 2,500 and the campus was little more than a handful of buildings surrounded by farms and bordered by 15,000-seat Cartier Field.
The school continued to grow despite a seething national resistance to all things Irish Catholic. That very spring, on May 17, 1924, thousands of white-hooded Ku Klux Klansman had marched on tiny South Bend with the intent of sending a streak of fear through the de facto geographic center of the American Catholic church, particularly the young men being educated as future leaders of government and industry.
Rockne and his boss, Notre Dame president Father Matthew Walsh, worked together to keep the campus and town from coming unglued. They knew their community and Catholics in America as a whole needed a rallying point, some sort of inspiration. And they both knew their 1924 football team could be great enough to step into that role.
Rockne’s football mind was outmatched only by his promotional talents. And he realized early on that his little school with the little stadium in the little town in the Indiana wilderness would never have the press coverage of the big-city teams. So he took his players on the road to those big cities, and when they got there, he charmed those metropolitan writers and reporters, chief among them Grantland Rice.
As part of that push, Rockne invented what is now known as the sports information department. Each season he would hire a student publicist, a kid who would write for the local newspaper but also get stories and ideas about the Fighting Irish sent out over Western Union and Postal Telegraph lines. It was a sweet gig. It paid good money (but only per amazing story) and it included a coveted traveling spot with the team as it jumped on trains for Chicago; Pittsburgh; Princeton, New Jersey; Madison, Wisconsin; and New York.
In 1924, that job belonged to the 20-year-old Strickler. On Wednesday, Oct. 15, on the eve of a train ride to New York, where 2-0 Notre Dame would play 2-0 Army at the Polo Grounds, Strickler and a handful of Irish players slipped into Washington Hall, where the college would show second-run movies. On this night, the feature was Rudolph Valentino in “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
The 2½-hour film concluded with a mourning father standing graveside and looking to the sky, where he witnessed famine, pestilence, destruction and death ride off into the heavens. As he sees this, a man speaks to him, “Peace has come. But the Four Horsemen will still ravage humanity, stirring unrest in the world, until all hatred is dead and only love reigns in the heart of mankind.”
Strickler was flabbergasted. The next day, the college student thought about the film nonstop, throughout the entire 21-hour, 700-mile train ride to New York.
The power of suggestion
OUTLINED AGAINST A sunburst orange sky as day breaks through the Polo Grounds Towers, all that remains of the ballpark that a century ago had just been expanded is a rusted plaque affixed to the northwestern corner of the apartment buildings that overlook the Harlem River. It is the location of the home plate that was trotted upon by Giants, Yankees and Mets. There is no mention of the Oct. 18, 1924, football game between Notre Dame and Army. Only baseball.
And yet it must be noted that during that week, Rice chose not to travel to Washington, D.C., for Game 7 of the World Series. He was too excited for the upcoming football game. So was the entire city of New York, egged on by Rice and his fellow press box hype experts, and coverage of the game on the still-new commercial radio, which was a couple of weeks shy of its fourth birthday. By game day, 55,000 tickets were sold, thanks to the thousands of New Yorker Notre Dame devotees known as the “Subway Alumni,” Catholics who had latched onto the little college from Indiana as their flagship football team … exactly as Rockne and Father Walsh had hoped.
On the Army sideline stood head coach Cap McEwan, who had played against Rockne when the Knights faced off with Notre Dame in 1913, the first of the schools’ 51 meetings. Alongside McEwan was assistant coach Robert Neyland, aka the Legend Tennessee’s Stadium is Named For.
The game was a brawl. Notre Dame center Adam Walsh broke both hands but kept playing. Army failed to gain a first down in the first half. The Irish managed only one touchdown, a 1-yard dive from Layden, but Stuhldreher missed the PAT. Though they led only 6-0 at halftime, the Fighting Irish had thrilled the crowd with their running precision, routinely breaking off long runs that seemed to launch the ball carrier spring-loaded from out of a rugby scrum of bodies.
During the halftime break, the sportswriters of New York gathered in a corner to smoke, sip and discuss. As always, the center of gravity was Rice, who sang in his Murfreesboro, Tennessee, lilt about the scalpel precision of the Notre Dame Box and the four young men at the corners of that box. (Oh, by the way, these same young men were immediately turning around and playing the stonewall defense that had Army completely befuddled. Remember, platoon football and player substitutions were still two decades away.)
Eavesdropping on the beat writer breakdowns was George Strickler, doing just what Rockne had instructed. He listened, he took the temperature of the press box and then, if the moment seemed right, he would perhaps nudge that temperature up or down in the Irish’s favor.
“Yeah,” Strickler interjected after hearing yet another Grantland Rice mention of Notre Dame’s backfield foursome. “They’re just like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!”
‘Dad, I need four horses …’
OUTLINED AGAINST A very gray October Indiana sky, four ice truck tow horses had no idea they were about to become famous. But not nearly as famous as the kids climbing atop their bulky backs.
Notre Dame had won the day, beating Army by a score of 13-7, and won over a city in the process. Back in South Bend, where there was no radio coverage, thousands of fans packed gymnasiums to watch scoreboard operators move a light bulb along a “football field” as they tracked the game by newswire. The contest swallowed up so much energy that a second threatened Klan march scheduled to take place that day had fizzled out.
By the time their train made it back to Indiana to a greeting party of thousands complete with a marching band, the Fighting Irish were also winning over an increasingly celebrity-obsessed nation. Early Sunday morning, as the bandaged-up victors were headed for the train station, Strickler had stopped at a newsstand and snatched up copies of all the New York newspapers. There, on the very front page of the New York Herald Tribune, he saw the byline of Grantland Rice. Then he read the first paragraph. “Outlined against a blue, gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. …”
He did it! Granny actually did it!
Moments before the Irish train churned west, Strickler found a telegraph station and excitedly sent a message ahead to his father in South Bend. He needed four horses, with saddles, on the Notre Dame campus that Monday. Stop.
“I wasn’t so sure about that and none of us were,” Don Miller admitted in 1949, at a 25th anniversary celebration of the 1924 season. “George came and pulled us out of practice, Rock came with us, and there were four horses lined up next to the practice field. They were no thoroughbreds, either. These were workhorses and we weren’t so sure they wanted anyone on them, let alone four football players in helmets and pads.”
But there they were. College kids without any equestrian experience to speak of, except for Stuhldreher, who had handled a bridle while doing deliveries for his father’s store, all understandably nervous. A head coach who was all about publicity but was also all about not having his starting backfield suddenly on their backs, thrown off their mounts. The helmets. The chunky outfits. Holding onto footballs instead of holding onto the reins. The whole moment was so uneasy. That’s why it lasted only a few seconds, just long enough for a local commercial photographer to snap a couple of shots, before the Four Horsemen got the hell off their horses.
As they returned to practice, Strickler went to work sending his photo out onto the wires, eager to see if any papers might pick it up. Every pic published meant a little pocket money for the kid. He had no idea he had just conjured up perhaps the most famous publicity photograph in the history of college football.
When the team returned east the following weekend to face powerhouse Princeton, they immediately noticed a change in chatter whenever the train stopped for coal, water and passengers. Now there were people waiting at every station. And they weren’t asking, “Are you the Notre Dame football team?” They wanted to know where they could see the Four Horsemen.
Notre Dame beat the Tigers 12-0. Then they drubbed Georgia Tech, Wisconsin and finally exorcized their Nebraska demons. Everywhere they went, they won. And everywhere they went, different versions of the Subway Alumni were waiting. They finished the season undefeated, earning an invitation to the 1925 Rose Bowl, only the third edition of the game played in the still-new-at-the-time stadium that bears its name, to face Stanford.
Rockne, always promoting, took the Irish on the long route to Pasadena. Like, really, really long. The team traveled south to New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; Houston; El Paso, Texas; Tucson, Arizona; and, finally, Los Angeles. At every stop, people clamored to see the Horsemen, holding up newspapers featuring Strickler’s photo. Part joke, part tribute, the other members of Notre Dame’s 11 first-stringers began referring to themselves as the Seven Mules.
On New Year’s Day, the Irish ran past Pop Warner’s Stanford team 27-10. It was a big moment for a program that had been unable to schedule any California teams to that point. The official reason was “low academic standards.” To Rockne that was code for “We don’t play Catholics.”
In 1926, the rivalry with USC began.
The train ride home for Notre Dame’s first national championship team made the trip out west seem like a walk to the store. From Hollywood and San Francisco to Salt Lake City and Cheyenne, Wyoming, revelers in every city shouted cheers about the Four Horsemen, sang songs about the Four Horsemen and asked whether their favorite local college might one day play against the alma mater of the Four Horsemen. The team was gone so long, practically the entire month of January, that angry administrators declared Notre Dame would no longer participate in bowl games because it kept the players out of too many classes. That self-imposed ban lasted until 1970. But the team added seven more national titles during that span.
“As much as I wondered about how different life would have been without Mr. Rice’s story,” Layden continued in that 1947 radio interview, “I have also wondered what would have happened had we not held up our end of the bargain and won all of our games. Even one loss, and I wonder, would anyone know who the Four Horsemen are today?”
‘But the Four Horsemen will still ravage humanity…’
OUTLINED AGAINST A hard winter white sky, American GIs were pinned down somewhere in the forests of Western Europe. It was early 1945, and the troops were in particular danger because the Nazis had deciphered their latest codes and were infiltrating the confused U.S. platoons one at a time. So the officers devised a foolproof plan of friendly identification, a question that every single true-blooded American would be able to answer, even if they hadn’t been told of the new protocol.
What team did the Four Horsemen play for?
The story was told this summer in South Bend, where a Stuhldreher was once again quarterbacking activities at Notre Dame. But it wasn’t Harry. It was Mike, great-nephew of the Fighting Irish great and member of Notre Dame’s Class of 1991, bellied up to the bar at the Morris Inn, the on-campus hotel. He was in town with other parents of Notre Dame students as part of the annual family volunteer camp. Every year, the university bookstore sells an item titled “The Shirt” and every Irish fan scrambles to get one. This year it featured the Four Horsemen.
Mike’s time as a student coincided with the resurgence of modern Irish football success. Lou Holtz was the head coach. Tim Brown won the school’s seventh Heisman Trophy. Catholics vs. Convicts. A natty. Rudy. The nation was digging back into the echoes.
“I suppose there are a lot of Crowleys and Laydens who can claim they are related to a Four Horseman. If you’re a Miller, they may or may not believe you. But there’s no faking it when your name is Stuhldreher,” he said, laughing. “When people know, they know. When I was a student, people knew, and when I am on campus, like this summer, I get Four Horsemen questions. I love it. As the years go on, you get it less and less. But now, with the 100th anniversary, there’s definitely been an uptick.”
The descendants of Jim Crowley can be spotted frequently strolling through the freshly refurbished Crowley Park in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which features a monument and plaque commemorating its football ace namesake. Scranton is where Jim ultimately landed as a television station manager, following a long coaching career that included time as head coach at Michigan State and Fordham, where he and his right-hand assistant — and future Notre Dame head coach — Frank Leahy coached the legendary “Seven Blocks of Granite” line that included a youngster named Vince Lombardi. Crowley died in 1986.
Don Miller served as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech and Ohio State before practicing law in Cleveland. In 1925, his first year as a coach and first year out of South Bend, his Ramblin’ Wreck hosted Notre Dame in Atlanta and lost to Rockne’s team 13-0 at Grant Field. This Friday, only 1 mile away, the College Football Hall of Fame, into which all Four Horsemen were inducted, will host a ceremony commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Notre Dame-Army game. (On Saturday, the Irish play Tech in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.) Miller died in 1979.
Elmer Layden was head coach at three schools, including Notre Dame, where he posted 47 wins in seven seasons. He was asked to serve as the first NFL commissioner in 1941, and among his first hires was a publicity director for the burgeoning league, George Strickler. Among his challenges was navigating the formation of a rival professional football organization, the All-American Football League. The AAFL’s commissioner? Sleepy Jim Crowley. Layden died in 1973.
The Four Horsemen gathered whenever they could over the years. In 1926, Stuhldreher and Layden were teammates on the short-lived Brooklyn Horsemen of the American Football League. All four played together one last time on Dec. 14, 1930, at the Polo Grounds, as part of a Notre Dame alumni team organized to play a charity exhibition against the New York Giants. More than 50,000 tickets were sold, with newspaper ads declaring: SEE THE FOUR HORSEMEN RIDE AGAIN.
They were back together only four months later, at Rockne’s funeral after he was killed in a Kansas plane crash, and they also served as honorary pallbearers for Grantland Rice in 1954. They reunited for anniversaries of the 1924 season, various speaking engagements and private dinners. In 1965, when Harry Stuhldreher became the first of them to die, it was Layden who wrote that the Horsemen had been “left without a quarterback in every sense of the word.”
Next month, the families of the Four Horsemen will ride again, into New York and into another ballpark. On Nov. 23, Notre Dame and Army will square off at Yankee Stadium, just over the Harlem River and within view of the Polo Grounds site. The Black Knights are currently undefeated. The Irish and their lone loss are knocking on the door of the top 10. That means their late-season contest might not merely be for bragging rights or Horsemen nostalgia but for a spot in the College Football Playoff.
“The Stuhldrehers will be there, coming into town 39 strong, multiple generations,” reports Mike, quarterback of the invasion. He’s hoping his family can meet up with the extended families of the other three Horsemen. “It’s always amazing to watch the Irish play, to see what the program has become. But it will be particularly emotional to see them in New York that night, in a huge game, thinking about how it all started. Not just Notre Dame or football, but Catholics in America. I can’t speak to whether or not people will always remember the Four Horsemen. But it’s been 100 years and here we are talking about them. But what they started? I don’t think that’s ever stopping.”
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Kiley McDaniel
Much has changed since we ranked all 30 MLB farm systems before the 2025 season. A big part of that shift has come in the past few weeks as the most recent prospects joined their new teams via the MLB draft and then front offices added — or subtracted — young players at the MLB trade deadline.
With two of the most impactful periods for any farm system in the rearview, it’s time to see how all 30 organizations stack up and what has changed most since Opening Day.
These dollar figures are a little lower (roughly 5% on average) than they’ll be in the winter, basically because when I do the deep dive on each system, it will reveal/upgrade more lower-tier prospects for each team, but it mostly won’t affect the higher-tier prospects.
This is a pretty objective process (each prospect has a dollar value based on their rank). Obviously, there’s some subjectivity in the process, too (how the players are ranked), and roughly the top-50 prospects in the sport have an empirical, but to most fans disproportionate, value. Having the most players in the top half of the Top 100 is the best way to be the top-ranked team in this exercise. On that note, let’s get to that first team.
Preseason rank: 9
The Mets have hovered in the middle third of my farm rankings for years — until the beginning of this season, when they moved up to ninth. They’re now on top, at the peak valuation of this crest of young talent, with a top-heavy system featuring prospects who are largely in the Top 100 and either in Triple-A or the big leagues.
This also isn’t a random occurrence or glut of players who are about to graduate from being prospects at once. Ronny Mauricio and Luisangel Acuna already graduated this year, Christian Scott graduated last year, Brett Baty and Mark Vientos the year before that, Francisco Alvarez before that — and there have also been several midlevel prospects traded out of the system over the past two deadlines: Jesus Baez, Drew Gilbert, and Kade Morris lead the way.
At this time next year, I’d expect six of New York’s top eight prospects, if not more, to have either graduated or be up in the big leagues to stay, so this ranking won’t last very long, but that’s also because the Mets will have a roster teeming with useful big leaguers: the whole reason this list exists.
Preseason rank: 1
If you’re a regular reader of my rankings, the Dodgers have fared well for a while; they’ve been in my top-10 farm systems the past five rankings, dating back to after the 2021 season.
They have graduated Dalton Rushing, Justin Wrobleski, Ben Casparius and Jack Dreyer this year, with Alex Freeland possibly joining that group before the end of the year. The top of the system mostly position players in A-ball, so the Dodgers are likely to rank high for many years.
Preseason rank: 7
The Mariners have quietly put together a great system built on solid scouting and development while not trading their top-tier prospects. Instead, Seattle has dipped into its second tier when needed, such as moving first baseman Tyler Locklear and pitcher Brandyn Garcia to upgrade the lineup at the trade deadline
The Mariners’ draft focus a few years ago was heavily on prep position players, but that has shifted a bit to include pitchers, with potential frontline starters Ryan Sloan and Kade Anderson added over the past two summers.
Preseason rank: 20
A huge part of this ranking is that the Pirates have the No. 1 prospect in the sport in Konnor Griffin. They would be ninth on this list if he were the second prospect in baseball because there’s a premium in being the best prospect.
Bubba Chandler, Hunter Barco, Rafael Flores, Thomas Harrington, and Nick Yorke are expected to be important players for next year’s team. Griffin will likely move into that conversation by the second half. I don’t know if this group will be enough to propel the big league team into contention, but the prospects will give Pittsburgh a chance to make that kind of move up the standings.
Preseason rank: 6
The deadline teardown wasn’t designed primarily to boost the Twins’ farm rankings, but obviously, it did that, too. The addition of young talent in trades that cut the MLB payroll, coupled with Minnesota having no major prospects graduate from eligibility this year (though Luke Keaschall is close), helped the Twins move up. Minnesota has been in the top 10 farm systems since the end of the 2023 season.
The talent is largely in the upper minors and will be relevant to the big league team next year. There’s also quality depth here, with the third-most prospects above 40 FV of any system.
Preseason rank: 8
The Brewers are bordering on the “Breaking Bad” “He can’t keep getting away with this” meme as they continually field a competitive (if not excellent) big league team on a shoestring budget but also have young players regularly appearing in the big leagues and have a strong farm system. The Brewers might have four players get votes for Rookie of the Year this season: Jacob Misiorowski, Isaac Collins, Caleb Durbin, and Chad Patrick. It should be no surprise that Milwaukee also leads the league in quality depth in its farm system, too.
Preseason rank: 11
The Brewers and Rays lead the “How do they keep doing this?” teams, but the Guardians are quietly in third by being competitive, if not good, almost every year. 2B Travis Bazzana, the No. 1 pick in 2024, is tracking like another impact-type talent as soon as next season, while deadline acquisition RHP Khal Stephen might be the next standout pitcher who wasn’t a high pick.
There’s depth to the system and lots of solid contributors, but keep an eye on outfielders Chase DeLauter (can he stay healthy?) and Jace LaViolette (can he make enough contact?), who both have star potential if it all clicks.
Preseason rank: 3
The Tigers might have the best top of the system in baseball, with two of the top six prospects and five of the top 60, but their depth has been reduced because of several graduations and some deadline deals.
Shortstop Kevin McGonigle and center fielder Max Clark have star potential and will be on the verge of the big leagues next season, but I could see them either not getting a chance to debut or getting a taste late in the season to preserve their 2027 Rookie of the Year/Prospect Promotion Incentive possibilities.
I’m also intrigued by the Tigers’ high-variance draft approach this summer as they took the two top high school position players with the shortest track record of facing high-end pitching: Jordan Yost and Michael Oliveto.
Preseason rank: 19
As Chaim Bloom takes the reins from John Mozeliak as president of baseball operations after this season, the Cards’ system is in the best shape it has been in years (they ranked 10th after the 2022 season).
JJ Wetherholt and Liam Doyle are the most recent first-round picks and are also potentially impactful rookies for the 2026 club. There are more questions regarding the other top prospects. Quinn Mathews and Tink Hence had up-and-down seasons, Cooper Hjerpe and Tekoah Roby had/have serious arm injuries, and Rainiel Rodriguez and Joshua Baez came out of nowhere.
Overall, there is solid depth in the system and with the young talent in the big leagues, so I’m intrigued to see how Bloom handles the team-building challenge.
Preseason rank: 15
The Marlins continue to trend up as they add young players. Miami’s farm system was ranked 29th before the 2024 season, No. 19 at this time last year, and No. 15 entering this season.
LHP Thomas White has emerged as a potential ace, and LHP Robby Snelling and CF Jakob Marsee led the charge of arrow-up prospects. SS Aiva Arquette and CF Cam Cannarella were the top players added in the draft.
I think the peak ranking for this wave of talent probably comes at some point next year (maybe postdraft, White is still considered a prospect), meaning many of Miami’s top prospects will be on the big league team at some point next season.
Preseason rank: 14
The O’s had the top farm system in the game through the 2024 trade deadline and then dropped to 14th before this season as their best young players continued to graduate to the majors.
They seem to have stabilized with this next wave of talent, and it looks like C Samuel Basallo and OF Dylan Beavers will narrowly keep their prospect status for this winter. The group behind those two emerged this season, with RHP Trey Gibson, CF Nate George and RHP Esteban Mejia all taking a big step forward. Meanwhile, having the largest 2025 draft pool led to a big incoming group of prospects led by C/RF Ike Irish, SS Wehiwa Aloy, CF Slater de Brun, and C Caden Bodine.
Preseason rank: 24
The Jays hit a home run with their top three picks in the 2024 draft: First-rounder RHP Trey Yesavage is the 35th-ranked prospect in the sport, second-rounder RHP Khal Stephen (now with the Guardians after a deadline deal) is the 59th-ranked prospect, and third-rounder LHP Johnny King is inside the top 150 prospects.
The Jays proved they can replicate that success with position players by drafting shortstop Arjun Nimmala in 2023, and they’ll look to do it again with 2025 first-rounder JoJo Parker.
Preseason rank: 25
The D-backs added young talent at the trade deadline, with 1B Tyler Locklear, LHP Kohl Drake, LHP Brandyn Garcia, LHP Mitch Bratt, RHP Juan Burgos, RHP Ashton Izzi, RHP David Hagaman, and RHP Andrew Hoffmann all ranking as 40 FV or better. Their returns on their top three picks in the 2024 draft (CF Slade Caldwell, LF Ryan Waldschmidt and 2B JD Dix) all look strong early as well.
There’s some real depth here (Arizona is tied for third in quality depth), and there’s a lot of talent that should be showing up in the big leagues and/or graduating next season.
Preseason rank: 4
It has been a busy year for the Red Sox system. The club graduated three top-tier position player prospects in Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer and Kristian Campbell. Those three leave a giant hole in terms of prospect value, but SS Franklin Arias and LHP Payton Tolle led the charge of arrow-up prospects trying to fill it. Righties Kyson Witherspoon, Marcus Phillips and Anthony Eyanson headlined a pitcher-heavy 2025 draft haul.
15. Athletics ($182 million)
Preseason rank: 23
The headline here is in giant letters: They added No. 5 prospect SS Leo De Vries at the trade deadline to this current wave of talent moving through the minors that includes Gage Jump and Jamie Arnold. They are all potentially joining an incredibly deep group already in the big leagues as soon as next season: Nick Kurtz, Tyler Soderstrom, Jacob Wilson, Lawrence Butler, Denzel Clarke, Luis Morales, J.T. Ginn, and Jack Perkins.
Preseason rank: 5
This is the first time the Rays have been out of the top seven in at least three years, and it’s for numerous reasons. First, they graduated some talent this year in CF Chandler Simpson, LHP Mason Montgomery, Jake Mangum, along with star 3B Junior Caminero last year. Secondly, it wasn’t a great year for development as Carson Williams and Xavier Isaac continued to plateau due to contact issues, leaving Theo Gillen as the one clear arrow-up player at the top of the system.
The players they got at the deadline were also mostly second-tier types, but the draft haul was deep with upside high school players who give hope for upward mobility next season.
Preseason rank: 16
The Rangers have held their position, graduating Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter this season but also having those holes filled by rising prospects like Devin Fitz-Gerald and Caden Scarborough, along with the recent draft class led by Gavin Fien, Josh Owens, and AJ Russell.
They have injured players (Alejandro Rosario and Winston Santos) who should return to the field and an intriguing international-signee position-player group (Yolfran Castillo, Yeremy Cabrera, and Elorky Rodriguez), giving this system some upward mobility next season, though it’s unclear when Rosario will return to the mound.
Preseason rank: 13
The Reds are in a bit of a farm system down cycle (they’ve ranged from fifth to 19th over the past four years), with Chase Burns graduating after the electric class of Elly De La Cruz, Andrew Abbott, and Matt McLain lost eligibility.
Some of their current top prospects — 3B Sal Stewart, RHP Rhett Lowder, and RHP Chase Petty — should graduate early next season, which would then clear the way for the system to be defined by some potential impact players in the lower levels: C Alfredo Duno, 1B Cam Collier, SS Steele Hall, SS Tyson Lewis, and RHP Aaron Watson.
Preseason rank: 10
The Cubs graduated Matt Shaw and Cade Horton this year after Pete Crow-Armstrong, Michael Busch, Jordan Wicks, Ben Brown, and Daniel Palencia last season.
This current prospect crop is headlined by players who have already debuted (Moises Ballesteros, Owen Caissie, Kevin Alcantara) or are in the upper levels of the minors (Jefferson Rojas, Jaxon Wiggins, Jonathon Long, Brandon Birdsell). I liked their recent draft crop, led by RF Ethan Conrad, LF Josiah Hartshorn, CF Kane Kepley, and RHP Kaleb Wing, and think there’s enough talent at the lower levels to make a next wave of talent.
Preseason rank: 2
The White Sox had some tough timing: SS Colson Montgomery lost his prospect eligibility after the top 100 was posted but before the farm rankings went up, moving them down from 13th to here.
They originally fell from second on the preseason list to 13th because of the graduations of Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero, Grant Taylor, Chase Meidroth, Shane Smith and Mike Vasil in addition to control issues on the mound for top pitching prospects Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith. The top two picks in the 2025 draft crop (Billy Carlson and Jaden Fauske) have upward mobility in 2026.
Preseason rank: 17
SS Aidan Miller, RHP Andrew Painter, and CF Justin Crawford are all in the upper minors and seem like they were off-limits for trades the past couple of trade deadlines. They could be the homegrown infusion of potential impact talent as the major league roster ages.
I liked the 2025 draft crop, with RHP Gage Wood and LHP Cade Obermueller as potential quick movers and RHP Matthew Fisher as a great value. CF Dante Nori and 2B Aroon Escobar are also notable arrow-up prospects this season.
Preseason rank: 12
The Nats are in a short downcycle in prospect value as James Wood, Dylan Crews, Daylen Lile, Brady House, Robert Hassell III, Brad Lord, and Cole Henry all graduated this year. They supplemented them with a big draft class, which was helped by going underslot at the No. 1 pick: SS Eli Willits, 1B Ethan Petry, SS Coy James, RHP Landon Harmon, and RHP Miguel Sime Jr. RHP Jarlin Susana needs to lower his walks to shoot up in the Top 100, and RHP Travis Sykora could do it if he stays healthy. I see the Nats rising up this list again next season.
Preseason rank: 18
Adding a potential star in SS Ethan Holliday, the fourth pick in the draft, is the headline for the Rockies’ farm system this year. I also liked the next few picks, landing RHP JB Middleton and RF Max Belyeu.
Another infielder with big league bloodlines, 3B Kyle Karros, has been the main arrow-up player in the system this year, and I liked the two headliner returns from both deadline-trade deals with the Yankees, getting 2B Roc Riggio and LHP Griffin Herring. LF Sterlin Thompson got hot after a slow start, but the top roughly dozen returning prospects have been mostly moving sideways this season.
Preseason rank: 29
1B Bryce Eldridge is the Giants’ top prospect and will likely play a big part for the big league team next season, while LHP Carson Whisenhunt and CF Drew Gilbert are in the big leagues. These are the next hopes for a homegrown star, following Logan Webb and Patrick Bailey (despite his down season). SS Josuar De Jesus Gonzalez, 17, is more likely than Whisenhunt or Gilbert, but will take a while to get to the big leagues. SS Jhonny Level, RHP Keyner Martinez, and RHP Argenis Cayama are all rising from the international department along with Gonzalez.
Preseason rank: 21
The Yankees traded 16 prospects at this year’s trade deadline after dealing away six at last year’s deadline — along with four more in non-deadline deals the past two seasons. Oh, and one more notable prospect loss from yet another scenario.
To Brian Cashman’s credit, this exodus didn’t include any of the best handful of prospects in the organization: SS George Lombard Jr., RHP Cam Schlittler, CF Spencer Jones and RHP Carlos Lagrange. But these moves have cleared out much of the system’s depth and some potentially impactful young players, such as C Agustin Ramirez and 2B Caleb Durbin, and even a few solid veterans like RHP Michael King.
The past two draft and international signing classes have helped backfill the organization with young talent that could have the Yankees soon climbing this list again and reversing a trend that has seen New York go from the sixth-best farm system before the 2024 season to No. 15 after last year’s deadline, No. 21 entering this season and No. 25 in this edition.
Preseason rank: 27
The Braves have a fresh group of pitchers to supplement the current shortage at the major league level, led by LHP Cam Caminiti, RHP Didier Fuentes, and RHP JR Ritchie. As fans might be thinking, these pitchers are not solutions this year, but Fuentes could be next year and soon-to-graduate RHP Hurston Waldrep might have turned the corner with his strong major league debut.
This year’s draft haul, led by SS Tate Southisene and LHP Briggs McKenzie, has some of that high-upside prep formula that has worked for the Braves in the past, so I’d expect this ranking to continue to rise.
Preseason rank: 22
The Royals graduated Jac Caglianone and Noah Cameron as potential core players, with John Rave, Ryan Bergert, Jonathan Bowlan and Steven Cruz joining them as role players who have or soon will graduate.
Of the remaining prospects, C Carter Jensen is in Triple-A and could be a core player, and I like the draft haul (3B Josh Hammond, CF Sean Gamble and RHP Michael Lombardi were the first three picks).
Meanwhile, RHP Kendry Chourio has emerged as arguably the top pitcher in the system. Hammond and Gamble could be the high-end prospects needed to pull this system out of the bottom third of the league, like they were before the 2022 season.
Preseason rank: 28
The Angels have been between 25th and 30th in these rankings since the end of the 2021 season, as they’ve been focused on moving prospects quickly to the majors while trying to make the most of having Mike Trout in the organization.
A solid group of players is getting close to the big leagues from the past two draft classes, last year’s trade deadline return and the international department’s signings.
Righties Tyler Bremner, George Klassen, and Trey Gregory-Alford have the potential to be impact-type arms with some further development, but I don’t see star potential in the position player group.
Preseason rank: 30
The Astros have been between 27th and 30th in every list since the end of the 2021 season, as they’ve focused on keeping the big league team competitive.
2B Brice Matthews and OF Jacob Melton are the top two prospects in the system, but are both in the big leagues with everyday-player upside. After those two graduate, the Astros will need the past two draft classes, headlined by 3B Xavier Neyens and C Walker Janek, to pick up the slack.
Preseason rank: 26
You could probably see this coming after the Padres dealt away 20 prospects over the past two trade deadlines, and seven more in spring 2024 to acquire Luis Arraez and Dylan Cease.
The Padres had the fourth-best farm system before the 2024 season, and since then, essentially, a pretty good top 30 of prospects has been shipped out of San Diego’s system. It’s impressive that there’s still some talent here, and the Padres are still among the best teams in baseball at finding prospects anywhere they can.
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Kiley McDaniel
A lot has changed since the last time we ranked the top MLB prospects.
The MLB draft and breakout seasons have added new names to our list, replacing players who have graduated or regressed in 2025 — and some of the prospects in our ranking are in different places after a busy trade deadline in the majors.
All of that movement makes this the perfect time for an updated ranking of the top players in the sport — along with some of the biggest risers of the season — heading into the final weeks of the minor league season.
This is my ranking of these players for the long term, considering their upside, risk and proximity to the big leagues, in consultation with scouts and execs around the league. Here’s more on the grading tiers and lingo I use. Players in the big leagues are eligible for this update (MLB rookie eligibility rules apply here — 130 at-bats, 50 innings pitched or 45 days on the active roster) so you will see some recently called up major leaguers.
Now let’s get to my final 2025 ranking of the best young prospects in baseball.
60 FV tier
1. Konnor Griffin, SS, Pittsburgh Pirates
It has been an improbable rise for the No. 9 pick in the 2024 MLB draft, going from being a high school hitter with big questions about his swing to ranking as the top prospect in the game in roughly 12 months.
I compared Griffin’s upside to Fernando Tatis Jr. at draft time and he’s following that plan, but with even better early reports on his shortstop defense and patience. Griffin is a plus-plus runner and thrower who can be average to above defensively almost anywhere on the field and has 30-homer upside, especially if he can lift the ball a bit more.
With some performance in Double-A (he was just promoted to the level), he will move into the hallowed 65 FV prospect tier, which doesn’t always have a player in it.
2. Kevin McGonigle, SS, Detroit Tigers
I was the guy in the media high on McGonigle when he was part of a very deep prep position-player crop in the 2023 draft — and my belief in him has paid off better than I could’ve expected so far.
The concerns at draft time were that his power/speed combo and odds to stick at shortstop weren’t strong enough to warrant going higher than 37th overall (where Detroit took him). He has been at least a passable shortstop as a pro and has a real shot to stick long-term. His power (by literally any measure) is now above average, if not plus.
McGonigle’s feel and on-base skills were never in question, so now he looks like he could be above average at everything in the batter’s box and closer to average on the bases and in the field.
3. Jesus Made, SS, Milwaukee Brewers
Made leapt onto the prospect scene last summer into the middle of the top 100 amid one of the best DSL performances we’ve ever seen. He has continued to deliver with an .801 OPS across both Single-A levels as a 17- and 18-year-old this season.
Made is an above-average contact/patience threat with at least plus power, though his flatter swing plane is keeping his homer totals down at the moment.
4. Samuel Basallo, C, Baltimore Orioles
Basallo has legit 40-homer potential and might be an every-day catcher. He is a good enough framer and blocker, and he has a plus arm, though his exchange and accuracy are lacking a bit.
The reasons I have him just behind Made are because of the rocky development path catchers typically take and the fact that Basallo still tends to chase pitches out of the strike zone, which could undermine both his on-base and power potential against big league pitching.
That said, Basallo has to be ranked high because he’s a 21-year-old catcher who just got called up to the majors and could lead the league in homers in a few years.
5. Leo De Vries, SS, Athletics
In the most A.J. Preller trade to date, the Padres sent De Vries to the A’s at the deadline in a package for reliever Mason Miller.
Though he is playing shortstop now, De Vries is a below-average runner and it’s looking more likely that he’ll need to slide over to third base.
The negatives end there as De Vries has a plus arm, above-average-to-plus power, great feel to pull and lift to get to that power in games, average-to-above contact/patience and all of that from an 18-year-old switch-hitter who is already playing in High-A.
There is some thought that he looks a little more like a very good player than a potential star, but either way De Vries is a very high probability, strong, every-day infielder with a shot to be an impact player.
6. Max Clark, CF, Detroit Tigers
Clark was the No. 3 pick in the 2023 draft, and everything has basically gone to plan since Detroit selected him.
He is a plus runner who fits in center field defensively, and he has plus contact skills and plus pitch selection at the plate. He’ll probably hit 20 homers in his best seasons but should hover around 15 on an annual basis with lots of doubles and triples.
7. Colt Emerson, SS, Seattle Mariners
Emerson was the 22nd pick in that same 2023 draft as Clark, and it quickly became apparent that he was underrated.
He is now in Double-A and looks like he can be an every-day lefty-hitting MLB shortstop with above-average on-base percentages and 20ish homers.
8. Sebastian Walcott, SS, Texas Rangers
The sales pitch is easy here: Walcott is a 6-foot-4 potential long-term shortstop with big power.
That length to his frame creates plus-plus power potential — but also some swing-and-miss in the zone. His pitch selection is solid, but the main issue right now is that his flat swing plane is keeping him from posting homer totals that match his raw power.
9. Travis Bazzana, 2B, Cleveland Guardians
Bazzana was the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft but doesn’t have the conventional superstar upside you might associate with that.
He is a plus runner and fine second-base defender whose best offensive traits are his patience and pull/lift ability. His bat-to-ball and raw power are close to average, but he should post plus on-base percentages and hit 20ish homers annually.
10. Aidan Miller, SS, Philadelphia Phillies
Miller was another 2023 draft prep position player from the deep group that produced McGonigle, Clark and Emerson ranked above on this list.
He is on the shortstop/third base defensive spectrum but has improved defensively (and seems quicker on the basepaths, too) to the point that I think he can be an average defensive option at shortstop — though some teams would likely move him if they have a superior option.
Miller has above-average-to-plus raw power right now but still has some work to do to fully tap into it in games, though he has been productive with 21 homers and 70 stolen bases in 196 games the past two seasons.
11. Walker Jenkins, CF, Minnesota Twins
Jenkins has played only 163 regular-season professional games since going No. 5 in the 2023 draft because of various injuries. His .301/.405/.471 line with 16 homers and 34 stolen bases in those games while playing almost exclusively center field shows his power/speed combo and advanced feel to hit.
He is above average at basically everything on a baseball field, but durability has been an issue and that cost him a few spots on this list.
12. Josue De Paula, LF, Los Angeles Dodgers
I can’t shake the comp a scout gave me on De Paula a few years ago: Yordan Alvarez.
De Paula is a better runner and defender — he’s fine in left field — than the Astros slugger, but I don’t think he’ll be quite as elite at the plate. That said, De Paula should post plus on-base percentages buoyed by big walk rates and should grow into 25-30 homer seasons as he taps into his power.
13. Bubba Chandler, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
The first pitcher on this list didn’t crack the top dozen spots because of both the risks of pitching prospects in general and also a bit of a dip in who is still eligible as Chase Burns and Jacob Misiorowski recently graduated.
Chandler’s past nine starts in Triple-A have been just OK — 42 innings, 50 hits, 5 home runs, 24 walks, 47 strikeouts, 4.93 ERA. So, while he seemed ready for a big league look before this stretch, it’s now harder for the Pirates to make the move — but Pittsburgh did decide to call up Chandler for his debut coming later this week.
He still has front-line potential though, with a repertoire headlined by a plus fastball that sits 96-100 and hits 102 mph.
55 FV tier
14. JJ Wetherholt, SS, St. Louis Cardinals
15. Thomas White, LHP, Miami Marlins
16. Kade Anderson, LHP, Seattle Mariners
17. Ethan Holliday, SS, Colorado Rockies
18. Jett Williams, SS, New York Mets
19. Nolan McLean, RHP, New York Mets
20. Eli Willits, SS, Washington Nationals
21. Jonah Tong, RHP, New York Mets
22. Andrew Painter, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies
23. Jordan Lawlar, SS, Arizona Diamondbacks
Lawlar is a sure shortstop in Triple-A and has grown into plus raw power, but has had some health, contact and consistency issues over the past few years. Wetherholt and Williams are also Triple-A shortstops but might move off the position depending on what their big league teams need.
The top three players on my 2025 MLB draft board went in the top four picks and fall into this tier: Anderson, Holliday and Willits.
White, McLean and Tong are all arrow-up prospects this season, joining Painter on the verge of the big leagues as potential front-line starters. I go back and forth on Tong vs. McLean: Tong has more command and a better changeup while McLean has multiple standout breaking pitches.
50 FV tier
24. Carson Williams, SS, Tampa Bay Rays
25. Franklin Arias, SS, Boston Red Sox
26. Eduardo Tait, C, Minnesota Twins
27. Carson Benge, CF, New York Mets
28. Luis Pena, SS, Milwaukee Brewers
29. Bryce Eldridge, 1B, San Francisco Giants
30. Luke Keaschall, 2B, Minnesota Twins
31. Sal Stewart, 3B, Cincinnati Reds
32. Seth Hernandez, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates
33. Payton Tolle, LHP, Boston Red Sox
34. Arjun Nimmala, SS, Toronto Blue Jays
35. Trey Yesavage, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays
36. Bryce Rainer, SS, Detroit Tigers
37. Rainiel Rodriguez, C, St. Louis Cardinals
38. Chase DeLauter, RF, Cleveland Guardians
39. Colson Montgomery, SS, Chicago White Sox
40. Liam Doyle, LHP, St. Louis Cardinals
41. Moises Ballesteros, C, Chicago Cubs
42. Angel Genao, SS, Cleveland Guardians
43. Ryan Sloan, RHP, Seattle Mariners
44. Eduardo Quintero, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
45. George Lombard Jr., SS, New York Yankees
46. Zyhir Hope, RF, Los Angeles Dodgers
47. Gage Jump, LHP, Athletics
48. Rhett Lowder, RHP, Cincinnati Reds
49. Owen Caissie, RF, Chicago Cubs
50. Josuar Gonzalez, SS, San Francisco Giants
The 55 FV tier tends to be shallower at this time of year because there has been so much movement and the top end of the list is hollowed out by graduations; over the winter another dozen or so prospects will slide up a tier.
Keaschall and Montgomery (whose season has been a roller coaster, but he is now red-hot) should graduate soon and the majority of these players will be in the big leagues at some point next season.
Arias is a standout defender and contact hitter who needs to tap into more power but is just 19 years old. Tait was the headliner of the Jhoan Duran trade and could hit 25-30 homers as an every-day catcher.
On the pitching side, Hernandez was the No. 5 pick in July and could move up a tier with a hot start next season, while Tolle and Yesavage are arrow-up college arms from the 2024 draft who should be in the big leagues next season.
Rodriguez and Gonzalez are two of the risers from the previous list; Rodriguez has a real shot to stick behind the plate and hit 25 homers, while Gonzalez was the top signee from the January international class and has had a hot debut in the DSL. He could stick at shortstop, hit 20 homers and post plus on-base percentages but obviously has a long way to go. I won’t project the same rise for Gonzalez as Jesus Made and Luis Pena, but those were the two standout names from the DSL at this time last year.
51. JoJo Parker, SS, Toronto Blue Jays
52. Aiva Arquette, SS, Miami Marlins
53. Slade Caldwell, CF, Arizona Diamondbacks
54. Josue Briceno, C, Detroit Tigers
55. Theo Gillen, CF, Tampa Bay Rays
56. Mike Sirota, CF, Los Angeles Dodgers
57. Emmanuel Rodriguez, CF, Minnesota Twins
58. Jamie Arnold, LHP, Athletics
59. Robby Snelling, LHP, Miami Marlins
60. Khal Stephen, RHP, Cleveland Guardians
61. Troy Melton, RHP, Detroit Tigers
62. Logan Henderson, RHP, Milwaukee Brewers
63. Jonny Farmelo, CF, Seattle Mariners
64. Ethan Salas, C, San Diego Padres
65. Harry Ford, C, Seattle Mariners
66. Noah Schultz, LHP, Chicago White Sox
67. Michael Arroyo, 2B, Seattle Mariners
68. Carter Jensen, C, Kansas City Royals
69. Cam Schlittler, RHP, New York Yankees
70. Luis Morales, RHP, Athletics
71. Travis Sykora, RHP, Washington Nationals
72. Ricky Tiedemann, LHP, Toronto Blue Jays
73. Alex Freeland, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers
74. A.J. Ewing, CF, New York Mets
75. Cooper Pratt, SS, Milwaukee Brewers
Parker and Arquette (and Carlson just below) were the top position players in the 2025 draft outside of that top tier of Holliday and Willits. Caldwell and Gillen are arrow-up prep position players from the 2024 first-round group. Arnold was a borderline shocking drop to the No. 11 pick in the 2025 draft, largely tied to how hard his fastball was hit in college, but I think he still has mid-rotation upside.
Snelling, Stephen and Henderson have all been arrow-up this year mostly due to command and execution rather than a jump in raw stuff, though Snelling’s raw stuff has been a bit better. Schlittler and Morales are in the big leagues while Tiedemann is almost back from elbow surgery and Sykora is about to undergo surgery. Schultz and Salas have had tough seasons, but the tools are still there.
76. Caleb Bonemer, SS, Chicago White Sox
77. Billy Carlson, SS, Chicago White Sox
78. Cam Caminiti, LHP, Atlanta Braves
79. Hagen Smith, LHP, Chicago White Sox
80. Didier Fuentes, RHP, Atlanta Braves
81. Spencer Jones, CF, New York Yankees
82. Connor Prielipp, LHP, Minnesota Twins
83. Brandon Sproat, RHP, New York Mets
84. Tink Hence, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals
85. Emil Morales, SS, Los Angeles Dodgers
86. Lazaro Montes, RF, Seattle Mariners
87. Jarlin Susana, RHP, Washington Nationals
88. Jakob Marsee, CF, Miami Marlins
89. Jefferson Rojas, SS, Chicago Cubs
90. Luke Adams, 1B, Milwaukee Brewers
91. Joe Mack, C, Miami Marlins
92. Ryan Waldschmidt, LF, Arizona Diamondbacks
93. Jeferson Quero, C, Milwaukee Brewers
94. Dylan Beavers, RF, Baltimore Orioles
95. Trey Gibson, RHP, Baltimore Orioles
96. Jurrangelo Cijntje, RHP/LHP, Seattle Mariners
97. Leonardo Bernal, C, St. Louis Cardinals
98. Charlee Soto, RHP, Minnesota Twins
99. Jackson Ferris, LHP, Los Angeles Dodgers
100. Jaxon Wiggins, RHP, Chicago Cubs
The White Sox and Braves make up the top of this section of the list. Fuentes had a tough big league debut, while Caminiti’s slider/arm speed taking one more step forward could vault him up this list. Smith, like Schultz, has had trouble throwing strikes this year, but the potential is still there. Bonemer had a loud pro debut while Carlson’s early returns will be watched closely as his age and offensive outlook put him just behind Parker and Arquette for some teams.
Jones has been red-hot of late but still has an uncertain outlook due to his long track record of contact issues and not hitting 20 homers in a season until his age-24 season. Speaking of red-hot, Marsee’s improved center-field defense, solid Triple-A showing and shocking MLB look allowed him to sneak onto the list before graduating.
Prielipp was on the shelf with elbow issues for years (30 total innings pitched in 2023-24), but now looks like a potential impact arm, likely in shorter stints. Sproat and Gibson could impact their teams early next season. Montes could hit 30 homers if it all clicks in the big leagues. Morales could be a 6-3 every-day shortstop who hits 25 homers annually.
10 players in contention who weren’t in the preseason top 200
Luke Dickerson, SS, Washington Nationals
Kyle Karros, 3B, Colorado Rockies
Caden Scarborough, RHP, Texas Rangers
Edward Florentino, 1B, Pittsburgh Pirates
Johnny King, LHP, Toronto Blue Jays
Jacob Reimer, 3B, New York Mets
Jhonny Level, SS, San Francisco Giants
C.J. Kayfus, 1B, Cleveland Guardians
Josh Adamczewski, 2B, Milwaukee Brewers
Juneiker Caceres, RF, Cleveland Guardians
Dickerson probably isn’t a shortstop and needs to lift the ball more, but he has impact tools. Karros and Kayfus are in the big leagues, so they probably aren’t secrets. Florentino is a surprisingly polished pull-and-lift left-handed power hitter but needs to prove it at three more levels of the minors, and some scouts are still dubious.
King and Scarborough could be No. 2/No. 3 starters if their command continues to improve. Caceres is showing signs of developing into a strong every-day player with 25-homer upside. Adamczewski, Level and Reimer are not long-term shortstops, but they can all stick in the infield, they can hit and they all have above-average power potential with strong performances this season.
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