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Three Nats Make Keith Law’s Top 100 Prospects

Top 100 season, formerly known as the Hot Stove, resumed yesterday with the release of Keith Law’s Top 100 Prospects for 2025($), which included three Washington Nationals prospects… just not the same three as Baseball America and MLB Pipeline, as Keith Law’s Top 100 prospects were released yesterday.

Dylan Crews – 7
Law acknowledges the gap between the hype and the production, but points to the “hard-hit” rates (presumably the StatCast definition of 95mph+ exit velocity) Crews put up in AAA (43.3%) and MLB (44.7%) as indicators that some of this may be just bad luck. Perhaps more salient:

He’s closed off some of the trouble he had in 2023 with fastballs up in the zone, and missed just 10 percent of the fastballs he swung at in the majors. He hit lefties fine in his brief sample in the big leagues as well, struggling mostly against breaking stuff from righties, especially down and away. Even with the tepid performance in the high minors, he still shows the underlying characteristics of an above-average hitter in the big leagues, and that coupled with what is probably grade 55 defense in center — or plus if he moves to a corner at any point — would still make him at least a consistent 3-4 WAR player right now.

Seaver King – 80
Here’s the newcomer to these lists, which may please some folks by his inclusion and probably irritate others by the slot. King, who had played 3B and OF in his single season at Wake Forest, was shifted to SS. Law seems to think he’ll stick:

He’s a 55 defender there now and could still improve given his lack of experience and limited instruction there. He’s got a quick bat and is very aggressive at the plate, especially early in counts, because he can put so many pitches in play, even ones out of the zone — for now, at least, as that doesn’t always work as you get further up the ladder. He’s got sneaky pop, maybe good for 15 homers a year, but his game is going to be much more about hitting for contact and average, since his current swing doesn’t get a ton of lift on the ball. His 55/60 speed makes him a solid defender in center if shortstop doesn’t work out, but he’s most valuable at short and I think he’s going to hit more than enough to be a very good regular there.

Travis Sykora – 85
As did the previous two Top 100’ers, Law acknowledges Sykora’s sheer size, velocity, and production. However, he’s concerned about Sykora’s unwillingness to work down in the zone:

he arm is still kind of late relative to his front leg, and all the moving parts in the delivery make me suspect it’ll always be more control than command for him. He also doesn’t seem to pitch down with his four-seamer at all, which might not be an issue but just strikes me as unusual. Sykora pitched like a future ace last year, and he has two pitches that could get him there. He may have simply out-stuffed Low-A hitters, however, and I would like to see him do it against more advanced hitters before buying in completely.



Today, Law is expected to release this “old maid” follow-up—the near misses (*rimshot!*)—so we may get an explanation for Susana missing when MLB and BA said yea. Or not.

It’s worth noting that Law believes that MLB’s coup d’état has diminished the talent pool in MiLB overall because teams are basically forced to move guys up a level before they’re ready because there’s someone else behind them that needs the spot… like King and Armando Cruz this past summer.

8 Commments

  1. Just re-pasting some comments from KW and myself from a few posts ago, since they’re relevant to the points Law was making:

    KW says:
    January 23, 2025 at 5:42 pm

    I really want Crews to be a superstar. The Nats desperately NEED for him to be a superstar. But I’ll remain a little on edge about that until he actually hits pro pitching like he is one. In 100 MiLB games last year (AA/AAA) he was above average, but not off the charts: .270/.342/.451/.792. He had a 115 wRC+, 21 doubles, 6 triples, 13 homers, and stole 25 bases. He had a 20.5% K rate that he maintained at the MLB level (19.7%), as did the 8.0% walk rate (8.3% at MLB). His MLB slash line wasn’t great, but at this point I’m just glad to see that he wasn’t striking out too badly. He got his feet wet at the MLB level, which was most of the point.

    Sometimes it takes time to click. That was the case with the guy Crews gets compared to, the #3 pick Wyatt Langford. Langford ended up with 16 homers in the majors in 2024, but eight of them came in the last month of the season.

    Will says:
    January 24, 2025 at 6:44 am

    KW, I too have been underwhelmed with Crews’ performance to date. He was billed as a generational talent, and in comparison to even just his draft class peers (Langford even Jacob Wilson), his production feels pedestrian. However, an above average RF with a 115 wRC+ is a surprisingly valuable player.

    Jackson Chourio basically had this season in 2024. He posted a 117 wRC+ (6.8BB%/21.1K%), and split his time between RF and LF, playing good defense there. That season was worth 3.9 WAR!

    It doesn’t take Soto-esque batting lines to accrue significant value, especially when you’re well above average at the other things, like defense and baserunning, which Crews is. I have to keep reminding myself this.

    1. A small nitpick: Law refers to Harrisburg as a “good hitters’ park”, when discussing Crews’ mediocre line there. But is that actually true? It seems that the park factors in Hburg are generally average or slightly pitcher friendly, but I also recall posters here commenting on how the humidity by the river can dampen the ball’s ability to carry. Am I remembering this right?

      On Susana, I’m very curious if Law has anything more to say on him, given he likely saw him first hand, being based in Wilmington.

      Consider me surprised to see King so high, from Law of all people. He was another who was relatively low on King pre-draft (rated him 17th in the 2024 draft class). So I wonder what caused him to have King leapfrog a number of ’24ers.

  2. With all these prospect lists coming out, it is really discouraging to see how far House has fallen.

    I honestly don’t know what to make of him anymore

    1. I’m not gonna say he’s a can’t miss, but a 21-year old barely keeping up in AAA is still pretty good. If he’s a perfectly average MLB regular after another year of development, I’d be fine with that. They’ve been looking for someone to be that good since Rendon left.

    2. To some degree, many of us are overrating him significantly, expecting him to contribute in DC imminently, just debating whether it’ll be this year or next. Never count your prospects before they hatch.

      However, the prospect watchers are perhaps guilty in the opposite way. As I pointed out in BA’s list a few days ago, House has basically gone from #50 to unranked to #50 to unranked over the past 4 years. That’s also a bit foolish to be so swayed by short term results. House either has top 50 potential or he doesn’t, and that doesn’t change because he hit .250 as a 21 year old in AAA.

      House is anything but a sure thing, but he’s a surer thing than all but 3 or 4 guys in our system. And there’s a bonus: House only hits well in odd years, so we should see him catapult back up the list this year.

    3. The primary purpose of House is to serve as the Nats’ reason not to spend big on an MLB third baseman, like Alex Bregman. The Nats don’t wanna block their future superstar! However, House is 21 and has a ways to go to even put up pretty good minor league numbers. I hope he makes it but he’s far from a sure thing. If House starts banging on the door, then let him. Either move him or someone else to put House into a position he is suited for.

  4. Keith Law listed House under his “just missed the top 100” list with this to say:

    I’ve been a Brady House believer since his pro debut, more or less, but his Triple-A debut last year was scary because it confirmed all of the concerns I’d had and heard about him before: in 236 PA at that level, he struck out 68 times and walked (Count von Count voice) one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times. That’s a walk rate under 3 percent, with a strikeout rate of almost 29 percent.

    House was young for the level at 21 and spent less than a full year in Double A — he only had 641 pro PA before 2024 — so there are reasons to dismiss or at least deprecate what he did in Triple A, but his propensity to chase pitches out of the zone was always there; he got away with it at lower levels because he’s so strong and his bat is so quick. House swung at fastballs out of the zone 50 percent of the time in Triple A, and his overall chase rate of 43 percent is just unsustainable. His exit velocities at the level were strong, but not elite, and he still played solid defense at third. He has to calm way the heck down at the plate to be the Nats’ third baseman of the future.

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