OOPSY’s Top 60 Prospects, Final 2025 Update

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.

The top prospects are ranked by their OOPSY peak projections, with hitters ranked by wRC+, and pitchers ranked by ERA assuming five innings per game. 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. A peak projection is the same as a context-neutral OOPSY projection, except additional aging growth is added in to project a prospect forward into the future. The projections do not capture scouting, defense, or amateur performance.

For minor league hitters, I have added in 90th percentile exit velocity (EV90) since the last update. I take EV90 from the indispensable Duke Hill’s leaderboards (follow him @ProspectSavant). You can read more about my methodology here and here. This will be the final in-season update of 2025. The offseason lists will likely end up looking pretty similar to these, but I typically make more substantial methodological tweaks in the offseason so there could still be a decent amount of movement.

All projections assume a neutral park in the 2024 MLB environment.  The hitting projections are scaled to 600 PA. An 80% reliability means that 80% of a player’s projection comes from their own performance and 20% is comprised of regression to the mean. The projections capture data through the games of September 10th. The 130 MLB AB and 50 MLB IP thresholds are used to determine prospect eligibility.

Without further ado, OOPSY’s top 30 hitting prospects:

Konnor Griffin has zoomed up the list in recent months as his performance has improved with every promotion. For fantasy purposes, he looks like the clear #1 prospect as the 43 SB/600 distinguishes him from the other names at the top. He’s a case where scouts were earlier than projections on him, but the projections have now caught up — better late than never! He’s also a guy who benefited from the incorporation of EV90 into the projections.

Samuel Basallo, Kevin McGonigle, and Josue Briceño are still holding strong in the top five after ranking in the top five in the midseason list. Roman Anthony and Thayron Liranzo were the other two names in the top five of the midseason list. Since that list was published, Anthony has broken out at the major league level, while Liranzo has gone ice cold, falling out of the top 30. Liranzo has posted a 62 wRC+ in Double-A since June 22nd, compared to a 123 wRC+ before June 22nd. Liranzo still projects well with a 115 wRC+ at peak, but the cold streak has sobered OOPSY up a good amount.

Rainiel Rodriguez was one of the bigger surprises on the midseason list. Since then, he has doubled down on a breakout, raising his Class A wRC+ to 162, with slightly less walks than strikeouts and a whopping 20 home runs across 368 PA. His stellar age-relative-to-league performance has vaulted him to the #2 spot by wRC+. He’s already up to 46th on the updated FanGraphs list and 30th on James Anderson’s RotoWire list; he’ll likely be a staple early feature on offseason top 100s throughout the industry.

Owen Caissie struggled in his 25 PA MLB debut before being optioned to Triple-A. OOPSY likes his 75 MPH average bat speed and is not worried about him long-term in the least. Alfred Duno’s projections back up the scouting reports: he slots in at 15th here and is ranked 1oth best bat on the updated FanGraphs list. Like Duno, Edward Florentino has had a breakout season in Class A that has begun to land him on industry top 100s. JJ Wetherholt looks the part of an early first rounder on the cusp of his MLB debut. He has crushed baseballs at every level and now has a 154 wRC+ at Triple-A. Nate George and Nelson Rada are two underrated speedsters who have thrived this year. Rada stands out as comfortably the youngest player in Triple-A as he just turned 20, plus he’s a good centerfielder. He won’t need much home run power to emerge as a difference maker.

Honorable mentions Jesús Made, Josue De Paula, Xavier Isaac, Jett Williams, and Aron Estrada all barely missed the list, with strong peak wRC+ projections in the 115-ish range. It wouldn’t surprise me if their projections continued to improve until they caught up with the scouting reports, especially in the case of Made and De Paula.

Now, onto OOPSY’s top 30 pitching prospects:

Chase Burns is now recovered from a grade 1 flexor strain. He can be expected to pick up where he left off, albeit in a bullpen role for the short-term. His sub-3 MLB xFIP is more indicative of his talent level than his 5-plus ERA. Jonah Tong was already 5th on the midseason list. He hasn’t missed a beat upon promotion to the majors, with a 17 K% minus BB% across his first two starts. Trey Yesavage has been promoted from Class A to Triple-A this year; his performance has held up with each promotion and he looks on the cusp of an MLB debut.

Nolan McLean is perhaps the biggest riser compared to in the midseason list, when he missed the top 30. The reasons for this are twofold: first, he has massively improved in the metrics that matter most in projections, moving from a 14 K% minus BB% across Double-A and Triple-A before June 26th, to a 21 K% minus BB% afterward across Triple-A and the majors; second, players with good Stuff+, like McLean and Payton Tolle, tend to get a good bump upon their promotion to the majors, as I don’t typically capture their Stuff+ before then. For example, McLean’s ERA projection would jump to 3.83 if Stuff+ wasn’t accounted for. In the offseason, I make use of Triple-A Stuff+, but in-season I am generally scrambling and don’t incorporate Stuff+ until a guy is promoted to the majors. I like this version of the list better than the midseason version though, in large part because many of the names have made their debut and therefore have Stuff+ included in their projection now.

Injuries aren’t accounted for here so make a mental note to ding Travis Sykora (UCL reconstruction) and Jarlin Susana (lat strain).

To reiterate, the pitchers are ranked by their ERA projection assuming 5 IP/G. This makes it easier to compare pitchers with different usage patterns. Among the top 30, two pitchers stand out as having reliever usage patterns: Grant Taylor and Edgardo Henriquez. OOPSY thinks Henriquez would be pretty good as a starter, too, but that probably isn’t true as Henriquez hasn’t been used as a starter since 2022. He does look like a great relief prospect, however. On the other hand, I do think the White Sox will give Taylor a chance to start again in 2026. They only shifted him to a relief role this year temporarily, to help preserve his health.