Projections-Fueled Top 25 Hitting Prospects Entering 2025

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.

My projections are similar to the other projection systems published at FanGraphs, except the peak projections make use of aging curves to translate a player’s forecast to a late-20s peak forecast (similar to ZiPS three-year forecasts). They capture all of the usual ingredients (past performance weighted by recency, regression to the mean, major league equivalencies to adjust for minor league difficulty, aging, park effects, and adjustments for league scoring environment). You can read more about the methodology in last year’s piece.

Like my pitching projections, my hitting projections hold their own when faced up against more established systems. Last year they performed comparably to Steamer in terms of forecast accuracy. They are an improvement on MARCEL, which uses a naive approach that assumes every rookie is MLB average. From 2022-2024, my rookie forecasts have a 32.2 root mean square error (RMSE, forecast error, lower is better) when projecting wRC+ for rookies, vs. a 35.5 wRC+ RMSE for MARCEL. Still, there are always plenty of big misses when projecting rookies–a group of players with a significantly higher RMSE than veterans. Jackson Merrill comes to mind: he improved his peak wRC+ projection from 110 entering last year to 140 entering 2025.

I have made several methodological tweaks this offseason in  hopes to strengthen the forecasts. Like for my pitching projections, I weigh recency more heavily now, and I switched to an additive rather than a multiplicative method of rescaling metrics to the same league average (e.g., K% minus league average K% plus new league average K% you are rescaling to, instead of K% divided by league average K% multiplied by new league average K% you are rescaling to). I have also added in two new variables at the MLB level: barrel rate (per batted ball event) and average swing speed. I will add these in at the MILB level too when they are more widely available (right now barrel rate is available for Triple-A and the Florida State League). I also made the routine updates I make every offseason, updating the translations, aging curves, park factors, etc., to incorporate the additional year of data.

Incorporating bat speed helps improve the forecasts, with a modest impact on most of the projections, and a larger impact at the extremes. To take two examples from opposite ends of the spectrum: Jacob Wilson‘s slower 64 MPH average bat speed drops his peak wRC+ projection from 122 to 116, while Jasson Domínguez’s quick 75 MPH average bat speed improves his peak wRC+ projection from 124 to 134. Swing speed is ultra-sticky, requiring almost no regression to the mean at all, the hitter equivalent of velocity for pitchers–this makes it ideal for quickly capturing changes in talent. Similarly, incorporating barrel rate impacts the forecasts, particularly for certain players.

Take Isaac Paredes, everyone’s favorite Statcast outlier: I have his HR/600 projection dropping by about 3 home runs after incorporating barrels. On the other end of the spectrum, incorporating barrel rate improves Aaron Judge’s HR/600 projecion by about 3 home runs. Barrel rate is a more reliable indicator of talent than home runs, requiring less regression to the mean than home run rate (about half as much!). When projecting home runs, however, the best model (when analyzing all historical data from the Statcast era) captures both home run rate and barrel rate.

Back to the matter at hand: the top 25 hitting prospects (using the old <130 career MLB AB eligibility threshold) by peak MLB wRC+ are listed below. These projections assume a neutral MLB park in the 2024 MLB environment.

Like with pitchers, I am pleased to see the triangulation between my projections-fueled system, and scouting-based lists. My system does not cover everything that scouts might consider, e.g. college performance, raw power, and swing speed for minor leaguers, to name just a few examples. Nonetheless, eight of my top twelve made the latest FanGraphs Top 100 (see The Board 2024 Updated, as the 2025 list is not out yet). The names that didn’t yet make the FanGraphs Top 100, McGonigle, Arroyo, Campbell, and Montes, have been regular features on other industry top 100s.

As a bonus for readers who have made it this far, here are my top 10 rookies by wRC+ for 2025 only, in descending order: Kristian Campbell, Johnathan Rodriguez, Coby Mayo, Jasson Domínguez, Dalton Rushing, Emmanuel Rodriguez, Matt Shaw, Payton Eeles, Cam Smith, Luken Baker, and Nick Kurtz. Additionally, here are my top 23-and-under bats by peak projected MLB wRC+, also in descending order: Junior Caminero, Jackson Chourio, James Wood, Wyatt Langford, Jackson Merrill, Elly De La Cruz, Jackson Holliday, Francisco Alvarez, Jasson Domínguez, and Samuel Basallo. You will soon be able to find a full set of redraft projections here at FanGraphs, and you can now find peak projections for every professional player here.