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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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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Continuing an annual tradition, this article ranks the top 25 starting pitching prospects by peak projected MLB ERA heading into 2025 (skip to the bottom for the ranking!)

Like the other projection systems at FanGraphs, my projections capture the usual ingredients: past performance weighted by recenecy, regression to the mean that accounts for a player’s probability of making the major leagues, major league equivalencies to adjust for minor league difficulty, aging, park effects, and league scoring environment. The peak projections make use of aging curves to translate a player’s forecast to a late-20s peak forecast. Regardless of where the “true” peak age is, there is broad consensus that most growth happens in the teen years and early-20s, however.

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We just passed roster expansion day, which means a slew of minor leaguers have been called up. Aside from those most recent promotions, there were some names that got the call a bit before roster sizes grew. Let’s discuss the recent callups, whether before or after roster expansion, that should matter in the vast majority of fantasy leagues.

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How can Statcast improve hitting prospect valuations? This article examines the predictive power of prominent Statcast metrics at the Triple-A level.

With Statcast data now publicly available for every Triple-A game since 2023, I wanted to look at how much it helps us evaluate hitting prospects compared to more traditional data. Specifically, this article considers how well several Triple-A metrics from the full 2023 season — wOBAcon (wOBA on contact), xwOBAcon, barrel rate per batted ball event, and 90th percentile exit velocity — predict MLB wOBAcon in 2024 (MLB wOBAcon through the games of July 26th, as I have been working on this piece for a little while now).

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Let’s continue diving into some recent prospect call-ups to determine whether any deserve to join your fantasy squad. In addition to three prospect names, I included a bonus in light of the Austin Riley injury.

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Yesterday, I discussed the Triple-A hitter HR/FB rate leaders, and uncovered a few names that might be worthwhile pickups if they get recalled. In that post, I mentioned that I pivoted away from reviewing the wOBA leaders because many of those marks are driven by unsustainably high BABIPs. I have decided to run that list anyway since overall performance ultimately is what leads to a callup, and the first step to accruing fantasy value is getting to the Majors to begin with! So let’s review the Triple-A wOBA leaders who have recorded at least 200 PAs at the level and are not currently in the Majors.

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With the trade deadline only a couple of weeks away, we’re likely to see a slew of minor leaguers get their opportunity to ascend to the Major Leagues. Since the timing of these promotions are unpredictable and heavily depend on a roster slot opening up, it’s never too early to gather a list of names to monitor so you’re the team that picks them up before having to spend lots of FAAB while competing with your leaguemates.

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Not every top prospect immediately plays at an all-star level during their rookie campaign. Not every former top prospect improves each and every year in lockstep until their big breakout. Sometimes prospects take at least a season or two before it all clicks. Sometimes it clicks, but then pitchers or hitters adjust, and they regress before rebounding. Sometimes prospects simply need some additional time in the minor leagues to iron out their kinks before returning with a bang. Every player is different, so it would be silly to write off former top prospects just because they didn’t meet expectations immediately.

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