Baseball America is always one of the first (if not the first) shops to put out an early top 10 for teams In November. They then follow it up with their more comprehensive Handbook and top 30 towards the end of January. But, it’s good to get a read on where they think things are at the top. For what its worth, last year BA did not change its top 10 rankings from Nov 2024 to its eventual release in Jan 2025, so it seems likely this is their top 10 for us.
Here’s their top 10 for 2026, and where BA had these players ranked in Mid August, after all the trades and drafting had settled.
| Current Rank | 8/13/25 Rank | First Name | Last Name | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Eli | Willits | SS |
| 2 | 2 | Jarlin | Susana | RHP (Starter) |
| 3 | 3 | Travis | Sykora | RHP (Starter) |
| 4 | 4 | Alex | Clemmey | LHP (Starter) |
| 5 | 9 | Seaver | King | SS |
| 6 | 15 | Jake | Bennett | LHP (Starter) |
| 7 | 5 | Luke | Dickerson | SS/CF |
| 8 | 7 | Coy | James | SS |
| 9 | 16 | Angel | Feliz | 3B/SS |
| 10 | 11 | Landon | Harmon | RHP (Starter) |
Here’s some quick observations of this top 10.
- This seems like a very “conservative” top 10, one that’s mostly based on youth, ceiling, and promise. Four of these 10 guys didn’t play above rookie ball, if at all, in 2025.
- A reminder: doing a top 10 is easy. Doing a top 30 is harder.
- BA has no changes to its top four players from mid August, despite a year gone for Sykora and a likely delay in the start of his 2026 season for Susana. I’m not sure I agree with this honestly, especially since Susana was hurt more than once in 2025.
- They elevated Seaver King to #5, despite his season-long malaise, but perhaps with the benefit of seeing his performance in Arizona. Interesting. Is it fair to just “throw out” his entire 2026 at this point thanks to some ill-advised piece of advice from an unnamed Nats player development staffer? My ranking him at #16 just after the season is looking like a take that won’t age well, and I will be putting him back into the top 10 with my own pre-2026 ranking at some point next spring.
- Bennett gets the expected bump well back into the top 10.
- Despite major struggles, Dickerson only drops a couple spots. His ranking is going to be a point of discussion with all these shops this off-season: i’ve seen him as high as #3, and as low as #27, on lists so far this off-season.
- Our two 2025 draft $2M+ bonus prep kids James and Harmon are 8 and 10
- Feliz continues to march up the boards, now inside the top 10 of a major ranking for the first time.
Five shortstops and five starting pitchers. That will make for an interesting lineup, LOL. And yes, a very heavy lean toward youth.
Frankly, with at least half of these guys, between youth and injuries, you’d need a Magic 8-Ball as much as a scouting report. Some will click, some won’t, and it’d be wild guesses at this point about who is who.
Sykora, Susana, Clemmey, and Bennett are a strong quartet of pitching prospects, but arm health is a significant issue for the first two. Bennett is probably the only one with a good shot at an MLB debut in 2026.
With the young hitters, who knows? PLEASE get us a better developmental staff. King has made encouraging strides in AZ, albeit in a league where the quality of pitching is in question. For my money, I’d have Morales in the top 10 for sure, and maybe Petry, over some of these lottery tickets.
I say that as someone who has good hopes for Dickerson, James, and Feliz, but we’ve been burned by so many high school and Latin hitters recently that it’s hard to get too excited at this stage.
Also, if they’re essentially giving Dickerson a pass, what about Vaquero? He’s only 11 months older and had an OPS more than 100 points higher at the same level. I’m not arguing that Vaquero should be in the top 10, more that similar prospect fatigue will catch up with some of these others sooner or later.
KW
7 Nov 25 at 1:10 pm
Not a bad list, I think.
Seeing Angel Feliz that high is pretty exciting. I have him a fair bit lower than that (around 17th), but he’s exactly the kind of player where I’m open to being convinced by scouting reports and industry projections. I know that I don’t have much visibility into the rookie league performance, and with physical projection so important for players this young, there’s just a lot that I know I don’t know. With him beginning to show some decent results in full season ball (adjusted for age and position), I could pretty willing to buy in on him if he starts seeing helium around the industry.
Also, I think that’s a very optimistic ranking for King. If he runs a 120 wRC+ in AA through May, then sure, that would start to look reasonable. But as of now, I think Todd’s 16th is closer to my thinking than 5th.
Finally, we’ve discussed both of these extensively, but I’ll just mention that I’m with KW on Morales and that, unlike seemingly everyone, I don’t have Willits over the injured future aces yet.
SMS
7 Nov 25 at 3:16 pm
Also, I saw that the minor league FAs went through, and we’ve lost about a dozen of Todd’s top 125. The highest ranked ones I saw were Nick Schnell (32nd), Jose Atencio (47th), Daison Acosta (51th), and Hyun-Il Choi (59th).
I’ll be curious to see where those guys land and whether they ever make it on an active roster, but I do think this datapoint is relevant to the discussion around how we should be valuing the deep fringe / borderline prospects, especially as they age into their prime years.
And I think it supports the idea that these older, lower variance guys just don’t have much value, even if they’ve performed decently well at AA or AAA. Which means that, if we’re trying to rank our prospects based on something like “expected future surplus value”, rather than simply recognizing the better performers on the field, we need to prefer guys like Daniel Hernandez and Elijah Green over guys like Nick Schnell.
SMS
7 Nov 25 at 4:01 pm
SMS, I share the belief that the ceilings of Sykora and Susana as potential 1-2 starters are higher than that of Willits. But I also don’t want to spend the whole winter doubting Willits. In the grand scheme of things, I hope he advances rapidly and that he makes it. But with limited power, he’s going to have to be spectacular at the other four tools to make a significant impact.
King has more shown power than Willits (16 homers/14 doubles in 60 games at Wake) and could still have an interesting ceiling if he puts things together.
For raters who like the age + level formula, Clemmey is all one could hope for. He reached AA in his age-19 season, which is pretty crazy, and except for some issues with walks, he was dominant at A+. There does seem to be some skepticism about him because he doesn’t throw 100. He’s also still working on a third pitch. But there’s a lot to dream on.
As for the MiLB free agents, Schnell was the only one who had sort of flashed (21 homers at AA). But as we’ve discussed, they’re pretty loaded with OFs at the margins, including Pinckney and Franklin at AAA and Young and Hassell at the MLB level. Franklin will be a Rule 5 decision.
KW
7 Nov 25 at 7:21 pm
Schnell — 21 homers at AAA
KW
7 Nov 25 at 7:24 pm
11/6 was moving day for sure: when the dust settles i’ll put up a summary post. I’ve got lots of artifact updating to do.
Todd Boss
7 Nov 25 at 9:57 pm
Keith Law on the managerial hiring:
Talked to some Rays people who absolutely raved about Butera. Everyone said don’t let the age fool you, as he’s extremely sharp and has the right personality for the job – plus he’s managed several years in the minors. And putting a player development guy in charge of a young roster with a couple of players who’ve failed to launch so far is a great idea.
FredMd
8 Nov 25 at 8:12 am
Keith Law when asked if Nats might be in on higher priced free agents:
Zero chance. That cheap ownership group just slashed all kinds of staff without regard to who was good or essential, just to save a few bucks.
FredMD
8 Nov 25 at 8:21 am
@FredMD: so … per Law, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”
Todd Boss
8 Nov 25 at 9:53 am
@KW – I hear you on not wanting to be overly negative on Willits, but I’m just not sure that believing that he’s the, say, 65th best prospect in the sport is being overly negative. Especially if we’re more than willing to move him up if he shows either moderate power (ISO > .125?) or excellent production (wRC+ > 130?) next season.
I mean, hell, I think he’s already a stronger prospect than Brady House ever was. Is that being negative?
@FredMD – Those are both interesting quotes. And I fully believe Law is sourced well enough for there to have been a lot of indiscriminate firings (though let’s see who other teams think are “good” or “essential” enough to bring on board). But, even so, wouldn’t the simplest explanation for that be that they are clearing house so that the new team can hire? I’d be very curious to know why Law thinks it was primarily pinching pennines. Unless his source is one of the newly hired guys in charge – which seems pretty implausible to me – I don’t know who would have visibility in to whether the moves were cost related.
SMS
8 Nov 25 at 10:41 am
I don’t know KL’s sources, but I didn’t read the firings as being Lerner penny pinching but as Toboni fashioning his own organization. Given the organization that he came from (Red Sox), I’d be shocked if Toboni hadn’t been given assurances about the level of support that he would receive to make the organization that he envisions.
Given that, suffice it to say that “slashed all kinds of staff without regard to who was good or essential, just to save a few bucks” seems unlikely to me. Not impossible, but unlikely. I think that it’s as likely that a couple of friends/sources of KL’s got the axe.
John C.
8 Nov 25 at 7:15 pm
Yes. “Slashing” was sorta the whole point of started over after the Rizzo gang. I got no sense that it was to pinch pennies. Seemed a lot more like getting rid of the guys who haven’t been able to draft and develop anyone.
SMS, I’ve got 50 cents that says that House ends up with more career WAR than Willits does. Get back to me in 20 years and we’ll settle up.
KW
8 Nov 25 at 8:40 pm
Sure, I’ll take that bet.
And with House currently sitting below 0, I’m pretty sure I have the edge!
SMS
9 Nov 25 at 10:02 am
Late to the thread, and repeating some of my comments over at NatsProspects.
I agree with KW and SMS on Willits. I’m pretty comfortable with the Xander Bogaerts comp on Willits, which is an extremely good player (2-5 WAR), but I think both Sykora and Susana have ace potential (5-7 WAR), so I’d have them ahead of Willits.
Petry’s exlcusion is also super weird, because BA just a couple months ago had them ranked the following: Petry 36, James 49, Harmon 65
That they can be unsure of their rankings that they need to change them quite significantly after 24 games by Petry and none by James or Harmon is not a sign of confidence in their scouting.
I’m also really down on Dickerson after the season he’s had. Dickerson is not your typical first year HS pick. He turned 20 before the season ended. I’d expect more refinement from him, and hold him to a higher standard than Angel Feliz, who at almost 1.5 years younger, just outhit Dickerson in Fredericksburg at the same position. Speaking of which, did BA really call Dickerson a CF? Where’s that coming from? He’s never played outside the infield.
On Toboni cleaning house, I don’t understand Law’s criticism either. Can one penny pinch anymore in regards to minor league staff than Rizzo already was? As came up recently in another thread at NatsProspects, the Nats had 7 staff for their complex team. The Dodgers had 19. The Rays 21!! This is how you get rotten player development. I don’t think the Nationals could genuinely operate with a smaller coaching staff than they were, so I don’t think there’s any savings to be had here.
Perhaps Toboni could have eased this transition over the course of a season or two. Keep institutional knowledge and learn which guys are talented and who aren’t. But I don’t blame him one bit for cleaning house and starting over. Cut out the rot.
But it’s going to be HUGE task basically recruiting a hundred new people for really mundane/technical roles like clubhouse manager or biomechanist in A ball, which are a lot less sexy and appealing than an assistant GM role. Hope they’re able to actually recruit really good people for these roles with a relatively short timeframe.
Will
10 Nov 25 at 10:26 am