Prospects have become increasingly important to winning re-draft fantasy leagues. Of course, they have always been major in-season acquisitions, but now they’re making their presence felt at the draft table, too. With more fantasy managers aware of the prospects who are likely to have an impact in a given season, the battle for their services has become much more fevered, leading some managers to stash desirable prospects for a month or two rather than try to pluck them off the wire once they are called up and risk missing out.

These guys aren’t draftable in every format, but I cast a wide net so that the list has utility across many formats and can be revisited when those players who don’t break camp on a big league roster are called up. All of them should be in the majors for a substantial portion of the 2026 season. It is worth familiarizing yourself with them now so that you’re ready to bid on the ones who aren’t draftable in your particular league.

You can find these players ranked on the 2026 Fantasy Rankings tab of The Board, along with my Top 200 Dynasty Rankings! Read the rest of this entry »

Rich Storry-Imagn Images

In my latest Mining the News, I referenced MLB.com’s Rookie of the Year Poll. MLB.com polled team executives to find who they think will win each league’s Rookie of the Year award. I figured it would be a prospect list for fantasy managers to become familiar with. The narrative would be that these inside sources would know the players who would be productive and play enough to win the award. Production and playing time are the two traits needed to be a solid fantasy option. Since this is the poll’s fourth year, I examined previous editions to determine how these executives performed.

The information in the polls is scarce, so all the small sample caveats apply. The results have been collected over the past three seasons (2023, 2024, 2025). In each one, a percentage of executive votes is included. The full list of previous players is at the end of the article.

To each player, I included our Fantasy Player Rater 12-team end-of-season dollar value. Then, I began grouping away. First, here is a plot of all the values.

Besides the four players polled at 50% or higher, the values seem to be fairly random. I grouped the values into four groups based on their polled percentage. Also, I combined the three low-polled groups.

That top group (n=4) seems to be productive, with the rest of the values being a complete crap shoot. The final line is the most useful. There is a 25% chance of these players contributing more than $5 and a 40% chance of being positive.

With the historical results, here are this year’s lists.

None of the players meet the 50% threshold, so no one is on the must-target list.

Fantasy managers should spend a few minutes on each of those players and track their results. Who knows which one will stand out? Nick Kurtz received just one vote last year and was a league winner.

With the season nearly complete, this article takes a final look at OOPSY’s projections-based top 60 prospects in an effort to give readers a jump start on the offseason.

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The Mid-Season Prospect episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: Tim McLeod

First Pitch Arizona

• XFL Auction

Strategy Section

• Prospects
  • When do you activate prospects on your roster?
    • Hitter vs. Pitcher prospects
  • What do you do with prospects on your roster that are not performing (redraft leagues)?
  • When should you pick up prospects off of the waiver wire?
    • What statistics shluld you look at for minor league player prospects?
    • Do you construct your roster differently if you are often picking up prospect speculations?

Injury Guru’s Trivia of the Week

Buy/Sell/Hold

• Hitter Prospects
  • Agustín Ramírez
  • Chase Meidroth
  • Roman Anthony
  • Jac Caglianone
• Pitcher Prospects
  • Andrew Painter
  • Joe Boyle
  • Brandon Sproat
  • Jonah Tong
  • Michael McGreevy

Board Bet !

Prospects

• Prospects for rest of season 2025
• Prospects for 2026 fantasy drafts

Waiver Wire / Pitcher Preview

Injury Update

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This article takes a look at baseball’s top 30 pitching prospects from a projections-based perspective now that half of the 2025 season is in the books. Jump to the bottom for the updated list!

The projections capture prospect performance across the minor and major leagues in recent years, making use of aging curves, major league equivalencies, league environment adjustments, park factors, and regression to project peak (late-20s) prospect performance. They also capture Stuff+ courtesy of Eno Sarris (only for arms with MLB experience), and, starting this season, velocity (for all minor and major leaguers). They do not capture scouting or amateur performance. For comparison and more methodological detail, you can find the preseason list here, last year’s midseason list here, and an introduction to the projections here.

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Now that almost 50% of the season is in the books, it’s a good time to check in on baseball’s top hitting prospects from a projections-based perspective. You can see the preseason list here and last year’s midseason list here. Those articles also feature more methodological detail if you want to read more about the projections process. Briefly, the projections capture prospect performance across the (non-DSL) minor and major leagues in recent years, making use of aging curves, major league equivalencies, league environment adjustments, park factors, regression, and more, to project peak (late-20s) prospect performance in the majors. They do not capture scouting, defense, or amateur performance. Starting this offseason, they also capture bat speed, which was made available for a decent handful of prospects this spring training.

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It’s prospect time! The Royals organization heard their fans and Jac Caglianone fantasy owners clamoring for his call-up, and finally, they acted. We could see more top minor league performers and high-end prospects getting the call in the coming weeks as well. So let’s review the wRC+ leaders that currently play at Triple-A, with their mark aggregated between all minor league stops this year. Is a callup imminent? If so, how might we expect them to perform? Let’s try to answer those questions.

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The 2025 Prospects episode of the Beat the Shift Podcast – a baseball podcast for fantasy baseball players.

Guest: James Anderson

Strategy Section

• Valuing Prospects
  • Disconnect between projections and prospect evaluation
  • How to value prospects in fantasy drafts?
  • What skills are most translatable from the minors to the majors?
  • How to determine if and when a prospect will make the majors?
  • Does the organization matter in valuing prospects?
  • How to value dynasty rankings?

Prospects to Know

• Impact prospects for early 2025
• Impact prospects for mid 2025
• Impact prospects for 2026

Injury Update

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Podcast (beat-the-shift): Play in new window | Download

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Prospects have become increasingly important to winning re-draft fantasy leagues. Of course, they have always been major in-season acquisitions, but now they’re making their presence felt at the draft table, too. With more fantasy managers aware of the prospects who are likely to have an impact in a given season, the battle for their services has become much more fevered, leading some managers to stash desirable prospects for a month or two rather than try to pluck them off the wire once they are called up and risk missing out.

These guys aren’t draftable in every format, but I cast a wide net so that the list has utility across many formats and can be revisited when those players who don’t break camp on a big league roster are called up. All of them should be in the majors for a substantial portion of the 2025 season. It is worth familiarizing yourself with them so that you’re ready to bid on the ones who aren’t draftable in your particular league.

These rankings are now available on the 2025 Fantasy Rankings tab of The Board, where you can also see the Top 150 Dynasty Rankings! Read the rest of this entry »

This article ranks the top 25 hitting prospects by peak projected MLB wRC+ heading into 2025, continuing an annual tradition (skip to the bottom for the ranking!). It is a counterpart to the top 25 pitching prospects piece I published last month.

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