Baseball America Releases Its Top 30 Prospects for Washington
Yesterday, Baseball America officially released its Top 30 Prospect List, as prospect-ranking season continues…
As a system, Washington has fallen to #15 and will likely fall further once BA releases its next update (i.e., once Dylan Crews graduates). This despite including a Rule 5 pickup for the third straight year. This is logically consistent given that Roki Sasaki is ranked #1 for the Dodgers (I’m with Keith Law, including an NPB player is extremely specious).
Unfortunately, despite the shift toward drafting college juniors (instead of seniors, natch) and high schoolers for the past three drafts, the list STILL skews old – one 27-y.o., one 26-y.o. (who turns 27 in August), three 25-y.o.’s (two of which will turn 26 by July), and four 24-y.o.’s (two turn 25 by August).
Maybe that’ll change next year, but I’ll believe it when I see it…
What happened to last year’s Top 30?
| GRADUATED | James Wood, Trey Lipscomb, DJ Herz, Jacob Young, Mitchell Parker |
| TRADED | None |
| RELEASED | None |
| RULE 5 DRAFT | None |
| DROPPED OUT | Victor Hurtado, Israel Pineda, Cole Henry, Jeremy De La Rosa, Armando Cruz, Darren Baker. T.J. White, Kevin Made |
There were fewer dropouts this year than last, though it’s a bit surprising that neither Hurtado nor Cruz stayed on the list; BA usually likes to reward big spending tacitly.
Five graduations seem like a good thing until you realize that’s more a function of Washington being an also-ran. The odds of someone other than James Wood being an everyday player (or in the rotation) two years from now are not very good.
And now, after a word from our sponsors… the list:
| 1. OF Dylan Crews (1) | 11. SS Luke Dickerson | 21. RHP Zach Brzykcy (20) |
| 2. RHP Travis Sykora (14 | 12. OF Robert Hassell (7) | 22. 1B Yohandy Morales (5) |
| 3. RHP Jarlin Susana (10) | 13. LHP Jake Bennett (13) | 23. OF Elijah Green (9) |
| 4. 3B Brady House (3) | 14. C Kevin Bazzell | 24. RHP Robert Cranz |
| 5. SS Seaver King | 15. SS Angel Feliz (24) | 25. RHP Tyler Stuart |
| 6. LHP Alex Clemmey | 16. OF Andrew Pinckney (19) | 26. C Daniel Hernandez |
| 7. RHP Cade Cavalli (4) | 17. SS Brayan Cortesia | 27. SS Nasim Nunez (17) |
| 8. C Caleb Lomavita | 18. C Drew Millas (22) | 28. SS Christian Vaquero (8) |
| 9. 3B Cayden Wallace | 19. RHP Andry Lara | 29. RHP Brad Lord |
| 10. OF Daylen Lile (11) | 20. RHP Jackson Rutledge (6) | 30. SS (25) |
One thing that’s hard not to notice is that three of the top ten came to the Nats via the trade. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it certainly does little to dispute the assessment that GM Mike Rizzo is much better at trading for talent than drafting it.
UPDATE
Todd caught that I had been working from the book instead of the post, so (H/T) to him and a raspberry to my morning coffee because I didn’t notice that the list had been updated since to include the two biggest January 15 signs (in italics). Evan Reifert and Kevin Made fell victim (sort of).
Bringing forward something else brought up in the comments, Nasim Nunez and Drew Millas are beneficiaries of BA’s policy of ignoring service time, which some of the old-timers may remember from 2016 when Wilmer Difo was ranked in the Top 10 despite exceeding the 45-day service time threshold.
Once Crews graduates, this is a pretty bleak list.
In FanGraphs’ farm rankings (based on mid way thru the 2024 season), they put financial values on each prospect to quantify precisely where each org ranks. A 60 FV prospect, like Crews is, is worth $55m. The rest of the Nats farm is worth $119m combined (total value of $174m or 14th best, very close to BA’s assessment). But Crews is worth a full third of the Nats system. So when he graduates off the list, which he should around game 3 of the 2025 season, the Nats farm system will fall to 25th best.
That’s not where you want to find yourself in the middle of a rebuild.
To compound matters, very few of the guys on the list are close to ready. Sykora, Susana, King and Clemmey are still 2+ years off. It’s only House and Cavalli, who stand any real chance of contributing in 2025 among the top 10, and even then there’s some big question marks.
Looking back on recent drafts, since Rizzo realized he needed to take drafting and player development seriously, it’s not looking all that much better than the lost decade of drafts preceding it.
2021 – 1: House, 2: Lile, 3: Boissiere
2022 – 1: Green, 2: Bennett, 3: Lipscomb
2023 – 1: Crews, 2: Morales, 3: Sykora (which is looking extremely impressive, but seems to be more of an outlier than a shift in philosophy, but I hope our ’24 can also surprise us)
If the Lerners’ new approach to ownership is austerity, I’m not sure that plays to Mike Rizzo’s strengths as a GM
Hey Luke, the BA list i’m looking at from yesterday has added two 2025 IFA players and pushed Reiferd and Made off the list.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/teams/2013-washington-nationals/prospects/?season=2025&ranking=preseason
I wonder if your list was from the handbook, done prior to Jan 15th signings?
I didn’t realize they were different. Will have to fix tomorrow.
Shocked nunez hasn’t graduated yet. He played that little last year?
Incredibly, he wasn’t even close to the playing time threshold, which is 130 ABs (Nunez only got 61!) to exceed rookie eligibility.
But I don’t see why he wouldn’t exceed the active days on the roster threshold (45). Same for Millas. But I seem to recall someone correcting me a while ago about this on some other technicality.
BA doesn’t use service time. That may be easier to track but it leads to s#%^ like this.