Honestly, just giving a top 10 for a system is almost like taking a remedial course in college just so you can get an A on your transcript. In year’s past McDaniel has gone much deeper (22 prospects in 2024, 28 in 2023, 32 or more in 2022), so maybe we’ll get a more comprehensive list eventually, but for now, here’s his top 10 for the Nats system.
Quick thoughts.
- Four of these players are in his top 100, a high mark for any of the overall top 100 lists.
- He retains confidence in House, unlike Law, BA, and MLBPipeline.
- Interestingly he has Sykora below Susana, also a first in this off-season.
- King at #5 is now pretty standard after the top 4 names.
- Clemmey and Cavalli remain on his top 200, though one has to think Cavalli’s last year of being a prospect is 2025. He’s either going to produce in the majors or become our most high profile 1st round failure since Romero
- This is the highest we’ve seen either Lile or Lomavita.
- Wallace at #10 means he’s creeping up, and it’ll be super interesting to see how the organization handles/juggles playing time for both Wallace and House if they’re both in AAA. One has to make way for the other, especially since House is the better bet to be a longer-term 3B in the majors.
Not making the top 10, but who are top 10 calibre on other lists:
(This is not criticism of this top 10, which is pretty solid honestly, but here’s some players who have made top 10 lists on other shops so far this year):
- Hassell
- Morales
- Lara
- Dickerson
- Chapparo (which was on a fantasy-focused list, so that’s an outlier)
I’m not sure you’re making an argument for any of these five over Lile or Wallace. Ok, maybe if it was ME i’d make an argument over Lile, but i’m low-man on Lile and high-man on Hassell.
One last thing: McDaniel’s callout for prospect ot watch is Dickerson, which we’ve heard a couple times already. Super excited to see what he can do in 2025.
I find Morales such an interesting case. He was a draft darling and all the scouts were raving at what a coup it was that he fell to our 2nd pick. He then crushes A ball in a small sample, and he’s a borderline top 100 guy going into the 2024 season. I remember that after some April graduations, but before the mid-season reranking, he was actually in Pipeline’s top 100. And the other evaluators had him almost that high too. BP, BA and P1500 had him 5th in our system. Law had him 6th. ESPN was the low man with him 8th. (FG didn’t publish their list until midseason.)
Morales then struggles to a below-league-average line over a month and half in AA, and he breaks his thumb. At which point, all the midseason evaluations just murder him.
He comes back from injury and bloody rakes for a month. 147 wRC+. No one seems to care.
I look at that season as a whole and it feels barely worse than median expectation. I could see dropping him a couple of places, but he was dinged like two full grades. By everyone. That makes no sense from a results-on-the-field standpoint and only could make sense if there’s a scouting take like a swing issue that means he’ll never be able to develop game power. Which is fair enough, I guess, but it feels pretty weird that all the evaluators are moving in lock step on it. Honestly, if only one or two of them saw something extreme enough to shift their priors so drastically, I’d be more inclined to believe it.
And now these same folks are raving about King, Loma and Dickerson. I get those three all project to more impactful defensive positions, but it’s just draft hype at this point, and if the evaluators can be so incredibly wrong about Morales’s bat (despite its decent and young-for-the-level production in AA), how much weight should we give their scouting on the new guys?
SMS
4 Feb 25 at 1:02 pm
Morales; was ranked as high as #86 in the entire minors by MLBpipeline prior to July 2024.
https://www.mlb.com/nationals/news/updated-top-100-prospects-list-for-july-2024
That’s amazing. Can’t disagree with any of this.
Maybe its positional. I don’t think anyone thinks he can play 3B so he’s stuck at 1B, which means he has to be that much better a bat to move forward.
Todd Boss
4 Feb 25 at 3:14 pm
Todd on Cavalli: “He’s either going to produce in the majors or become our most high profile 1st round failure since Romero.” Man, how quickly we forget Denaburg and Rutledge! Of course there are different levels of “failure.” Rutledge seems destined to kick around the fringes of the majors until he’s out of options, and I suspect that’s Cavalli’s floor, unless his arm truly never recovers.
I seem to be one of the few on the planet who still holds out some hope that Cavalli still could become a front-line starter, or a dominant reliever at worst. If Rutledge had been a 5th-round pick, he likely would have been converted to relief long ago.
KW
4 Feb 25 at 6:58 pm
@SMS, I completely agree about Morales and am still high on him. That said, the power bar for him to make it as an MLB starter at 1B will be pretty high.
I keep bringing up a similar case among the pitchers with Lara. He was hyped for a couple of years but “under-performed” expectations while “playing up” both years. This past summer, at age 21, he had a strong season across A+/AA and is still “young for the level.”
In the later comments on the last post, Todd mentioned “prospect fatigue” in reference to House, and I think it’s also the case with Lara. Most players are going to have hiccups in their advancement, particularly the younger players. The Harpers and Sotos of the world who reach the majors at 19 and excel are exceedingly rare creatures. We just got a bit spoiled by seeing two such HOF-caliber comets.
KW
4 Feb 25 at 7:21 pm
Susana over Sykora: Susana is only a month older than Sykora and has already pitched at a higher level. Both will turn 21 in the spring. Susana sustains 100+ for five innings and has a 90 mph slurve. He’s basically Skenes heading into his draft summer at LSU; indeed, McDaniel is the one who said on his top 100 list that Susana “would be the first pick in the 2025 MLB draft if he were doing this in college rather than in pro ball.” (Yet he only ranked him #53.)
Law is more skeptical of Susana, saying that he questions his command and that he needs an out pitch for LH hitters.
So we’ll see. Maybe both are ace potential, maybe neither fulfills the promise. Right now either one would have extremely high trade value, so I hope they’re right about them if they keep them.
KW
4 Feb 25 at 7:37 pm
I started thinking about the general talent level in the organization after seeing Law’s system rank of the Nats at #17. It’s actually a weird dichotomy in that I think the Nats are deeper right now in the number of players with a legit shot at being decent in the majors than I can ever remember — maybe 20 to 25 or so — but on the extreme flip side, there’s only one who seems like a sure thing (Crews).
I’m much more enamored at the moment with the starting pitching depth than I am with the field position players. House still has a high potential ceiling but also significant bust risk. And beyond Crews and House, it’s hard to point to any other position guy and say with some certainty, “He’s got a great shot at being a pretty decent MLB regular.” Several COULD be, but there’s almost no pro track record yet that would point in that direction. And there’s only a small handful who have that higher-level feel even if they do click.
Meanwhile, there are a number of starting pitching prospects who have higher-level potential and some actual track record: Cavalli, Lara, Susana, Sykora, Bennett, and Clemmey. And Lord and Stuart have that Irvin/Parker/Herz vibe that they could sneak in the back door. Not all of them will make it of course. But your odds are good when you have that many with a real chance, and/or that could also develop into a deep and potent bullpen. It would be pretty intimidating to open that bullpen door and trot out one 6-6 monster after another.
KW
4 Feb 25 at 8:03 pm
@KW – I hear you on Susana being at least a half season farther along in his development than Sykora at basically the same age. And I don’t see how you can still be on his case about control and command issues given that he made huge strides on that last season. He’s obviously focussing on it and it’s working.
That said, Law’s point about left handed hitters does feel real to me. I’m hoping that’s a dev step that Susana can focus on this year but his WHIP against lefties was almost 2. That’s not going to cut it. And that’s why I have Sykora slightly ahead of him, as of now. But they’re close, and I could see it either way.Also,
Also, I 100% agree with you about the pitching pipeline. It’s incredibly robust, and that’s not something I’m used to. I know you really can’t have too much starting pitching, but depending on how Cavalli, Bennett and Gray come back from their injuries, it could get kind of ridiculous. Which is why I expect Rizzo will swing a trade or two to use some of our pitching depth to solve other problems.
SMS
5 Feb 25 at 2:26 am
Susana vs Sykora: yes Susana seems like he’s a “half season” further along … but I think we all can agree that the team seems to have purposely kept Sykora in Low-A once it became apparent they’d be in the playoffs.
the Nats MO with pitchers seems to be, “start in one level, prove you can dominate there for a month or two, then get moved up mid-season.” Here’s Sykora’s quick splits for 2024:
– April: wasn’t assigned to Low-A until 4/25 so no April stats
– May: 5 starts, 4.32 ERA, but a 23/6 K/BB in 16 innings.
– June: 4 starts, 2.41 ERA, .177 BAA
– July 4 starts, 2.12 ERA, getting more dominant: 31/8 K/BB and a ridiculous .136 BAA
Ok, so at this point, an aggressive team would push him. He’s proven over two months/8 starts he’s got really nothing left to prove in Low-A. Even though they’re severely limiting his innings, there seems no reason not to push him up. But now its Aug 1st, and I think they made a conscious decision to leave him in Low-A for the playoffs
– Aug: 6 starts, 0.88 ERA, .116 BAA, and a laughable 48/4 K/BB ratio in 30 innings.
that’s just crazy that he stayed in low-A from a development perspective.
Todd Boss
5 Feb 25 at 8:56 am
one thought on Sykora, they did scrap his funky delivery sometime after late June. maybe they felt a change in scenery as well might be too much
FredMD
5 Feb 25 at 9:46 am
Ugh… it seems the site ate my comment after submitting it. Can’t be bothered to re-write it entirely, but the gist was that Morales has had exactly one bad month in his relatively short minor league career. His OPS per month is: 1.003, .731, .583 (note league average OPS in AA is .689), .748, .879, .842. That he’s been banished from prospect lists for one bad month is ridiculous. Why does he drop when other guys can post consecutive .640 OPS SEASONS and not see the same drop in rating as Morales did for one bad month.
Also, we’re living in a different era of 1Bs. This isn’t the era where every 1B slugs .600.
MLB AVERAGE at 1B in 2024 was: .247/.322/.414, 107 wRC+
Meanwhile, in Morales’ “disastrous” 2024, he posted a slash of .283/.368/.416, 129 wRC+, so claims that Morales’ bat doesn’t profile at 1B are a bit misguided.
Maybe he’s not going to mash 30 HR regularly, but only 2 1B in all of the majors hit 30 or more HR last season, so, again, that’s not exactly a problem these days. His plate discipline looks very good, regularly posting 10%+ BB%, so whatever extra HRs he may lack, he’ll seemingly more than make up for in on base skills.
Consider me high on Morales too. We can all pat ourselves on the back for pushing back on Morales’ weird down turn, just as many of us were also much more attuned to Young, Herz and Parker’s breakout seasons.
Will
5 Feb 25 at 11:15 am
Thinking a bit more about it, I wonder if the asymmetry that we’re all feeling between our arms and bats has less to do with the absolute quality of the prospects and more to do with recent successes and failures in the majors.
First of all, (after Crews gets 3 or 4 more games) I have our top bats as House, King, Morales, Lile, Wallace, and Hassell. Our top arms are Sykora, Susana, Cavalli, Clemmey and Lara. Now, you can like the second list better than the first but I don’t think you can argue that they are extremely lopsided in aggregate. King is the only one of the six bats still in A ball, which is where you’ll find three of the five arms. And one of the two remaining arms is coming off an irregular rehab to a major surgery. Risks abound. The arms have more upside, but they also have a higher chance of failure.
But who is the last bat that we’ve had graduate and outperform expectations? I guess Jacob Young, but he’s all defense and that’s fluky. No one is claiming he’s the tip of the spear in terms of an org-wide shift in development. Other than him, I think you have to go back to Soto. Even Garcia’s recent improvement only really meets our original expectations from when he first graduated from prospect status.
With arms, however, we have the very recent examples of Irvin, Parker and Herz. And with the last two in particular, there’s an overarching story of improved command that also fits with the development we saw YoY from Susana – and that all makes it easy to dream on Clemmey. I think that’s the abundance that’s making the system feel so lopsided.
SMS
5 Feb 25 at 1:22 pm
SMS, I would absolutely argue that there is higher ceiling potential for the top six pitchers than there is the hitters once you get past Crews and House. Beyond those two, what hitters do you think have near-star-level ceilings? It would be a very short list.
As much as I appreciate the general guru enthusiasm for King, when they max out his HR potential at around 15, that already puts him behind where Abrams and Garcia are now. Maybe he’s secretly Mookie in disguise, but that would be a big ask. Maybe Morales and Lomavita reach the majors and show big power, but that’s a substantial “maybe.” Same with Dickerson, who doesn’t even have a college track record.
As of now, all of the top six pitchers — Cavalli, Lara, Susana, Bennett, Sykora, and Clemmey — have a shot at being a #3 starters or better. Not all of them will make it, and I know that some wouldn’t put Bennett in that class. But I would bet on the ceilings of those guys collectively a lot more than I would on the ceilings of the hitters besides Crews and House.
YMMV.
KW
5 Feb 25 at 5:35 pm
Remember the saying, There is No Such Thing as a Pitching Prospect (TINSTAAPP), has been in existence for decades now because pitchers are uniquely prone to career-derailing injuries and otherwise mechanic breakdowns on a scale incomparable to batters. I just googled the term to figure out if it was coined in the 80s or 90s (it was the 90s), and found this article written in 2019 about TINSTAAPP: https://www.theringer.com/2019/02/15/mlb/pitching-prospect-list-fangraphs-baseball-america-prospectus
It has links to a bunch of articles showing that batters are less risky than pitching prospects. But what I found most striking was the examples of elite pitching prospects in 2019 they named dropped: Forrest Whitley, Brendan McKay, Alex Reyes, Brent Honeywell, Hunter Greene, Casey Mize, Jesus Luzardo, Michael Kopech, Dylan Cease, Mike Soroka, Sixto Sanchez (that’s literally all of the pitching prospects listed in the article). Yikes!!!
Only 6 of those 11 have thrown in their careers more than 200 innings. And only one of them (Cease) has posted more than one season with 3 or more WAR! That’s a nightmare of a list for what was reputed to be a list of elite pitching prospects. Meanwhile, the hitters they mentioned from 2019 were Vlad Guerrero Jr, Fernando Tatis Jr and Eloy Jimenez.
All that to say, yes, there’s potentially higher upside to our arms, but the risk factor among them is wildly higher than the bats, which needs to be baked into the assessment here. I expect last year you’d likely have included Cole Henry in the elite upside arm list too, along with Cavalli, who don’t forget hasn’t pitched competitively in 2 entire seasons, and Bennett, who also due to injury only has 63 professional innings to his name despite being drafted 2.5 years ago.
There’s indeed a lot of risk, but it’s why you need volume with pitching prospects that you, comparatively, don’t with the bats.
Will
6 Feb 25 at 7:56 am
@will. Definitely agree on the TINSTAAPP logic ….
… which is why its CRAZY to me that prospects like Alvarez, Lord, Stuart, or even guys like Herz and Parker, guys who have made it to AAA or the majors and have done reasonably well there … are pooh-poohed as prospects.
Not everyone throws 100. Some pitchers get guys out with sinkers and movement. Its the Tanner Roark conundrum: i’d rather have a guy who threw low 90s but his fastball moved around like a whiffleball than a guy who maxed out at 95 but threw straight as an arrow. But scouting struggles to identify the value in these guys. Even spin rate analysis isn’t ideal; you can have too much or not enough spin for your velocity.
I suppose its also why I over-rate guys like Hassell as compared to, i dunno, hitters who are in Low-A but with a big signing bonus. Achievement should count. If Hassell was still in AA, and was left there all 2024 (where he was slashing .271/.357.371) as a 23yr old, as opposed to have been pushed up to AAA for a few weeks, are we having a different conversation about him right now?
Law talked about how aggressive the Nats are with prospects, to their detriment from a ranking perspective … but to their benefit as a player? I’d rather see what Hassell can do against 4-A arms in AAA versus over-throwing prospects in AA because … well guys in AAA have MLB time, guys in AA don’t.
Todd Boss
6 Feb 25 at 9:34 am
FYI Keith Law’s top 20 just dropped, will do a reaction post later today.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6095944/2025/02/06/nationals-2025-top-20-prospects-keith-law/
if you have an Athletic sub.
Todd Boss
6 Feb 25 at 9:50 am
@Todd, I think a clever front office could really exploit the counter-market inefficiency of buying a bunch of cheap, innings eaters over flashy guys with elite spin rates.
I think we’ve past the point at which there’s further value to be gained through spin rates and velocity upticks that isn’t directly offset through increased injury. The 2024 Dodgers rotation is the perfect example of this. They spent over a billion dollars on a rotation of Ohtani, Kershaw, Buehler, River Ryan, Yamamoto, and Flaherty (among others), and received collectively about 4 WAR out of all 6 of those SPs, mostly because injuries have ravaged their ability to generate positive value through pitching (they combined for about 230 IP altogether). The Dodgers’ pitching staff, including Glasnow, Paxton, Stone, Miller and more, combined to be worth a total of 10.1 WAR, almost all of whom throw 95+.
Meanwhile, the Nats’ workhorse rotation, which was surprisingly robust and healthy, is kind of the antithesis of the Dodgers’ approach. Only Gore throws over 95 MPH, next is Irvin who sat just under 94, positively tame in this era! They blew the Dodgers’ rotation away with 13.1 fWAR, which was unbelievably the 7th most valuable in the majors!
I wonder if this is an intentional approach from the Nats? It doesn’t feel like it, because we seem to have the same attraction to triple digits on the radar guns in our prospects (Susana, Sykora and Clemmey are all capable of that). Or is this just survivorship bias? Parker, Irvin and Herz reached the majors because they’re not overpowering, maximum-effort pitchers, unlike Cavalli, Bennett and Henry, for example, who’ve themselves been derailed by the pursuit of velocity.
And I think this is a real market inefficiency to exploit, if that’s not what we’re already doing. It feels like the Royals may have struck gold with this approach. They brought in “junk ballers” Lugo and Wacha, and Singer and Marsh aren’t blowing any one away either (though Ragans does have some good velocity). And they were both the healthiest and 2nd most effective rotation in MLB last season.
Clearly not any guy who doesn’t throw 97 will work, but there’s clearly value in just having competent innings eaters on the mound for 150+ IP than elite flamethrowers, who only last 50 IP before breaking down and getting replaced by even wilder AAA flamethrowers (again, see Dodgers’ 2024). And perhaps best for the Nats, it could be a CHEAP solution too (Mark Lerner, I see your eyes lighting up)
Will
6 Feb 25 at 10:19 am
Will, I was just going to note the Dodgers, who, despite unlimited resources and a great farm system, used SEVENTEEN starters in 2024 (plus had a Cy Young winner DHing). In stark contrast, the Nats used only six pitchers to cover 158 of their 162 starts.
Nevertheless, the larger point about the need for a critical mass of pitching prospects is definitely true. It’s all a part of an epidemic that has been afflicting all of baseball and that no one seems to know how to address. I agree with you and Todd that there does seem to be a market inefficiency that no one seems to know how to scout for or develop, but the emergence of guys like Parker and Herz from the Nats’ system is encouraging. Lord and Stuart may be similar guys, and maybe Alavarez as well, which would even extend my list of higher quality arms.
KW
6 Feb 25 at 10:35 am
The issue I raised above about Nat hitter vs. pitcher prospects is not just about quantity, but higher-ceiling quality. You and I have both brought up here and on Luke’s site the concerning lack of power across the system.
You yourself have been, with justification, a big critic of guys like Hassell, Green, and Vaquero, who every guru two years ago told us would be stars. We’ve discussed the Lile and Pinckney limitations. Some of us still have good hopes for Morales, but the gurus don’t. Wallace showed some power in college but only has 18 homers in 226 pro games. Most write-ups of King project him peaking at around 15 homers. At the time of the draft, there was significantly divided opinion on Lomavita, and he struggled in his very SSS pro debut. (I haven’t read Law’s new critique yet.)
The talent gap among field players is a key issue. Everyone seems to think that the Nats have a gaping hole at 3B as they wait and hope that House will be ready, although it currently looks like later rather than sooner. They had to trade for a stopgap at 1B and sign a somewhat diminished DH. There are reasons to doubt whether Young, Ruiz, and Abrams are the long-term solutions at their positions. That’s a lot of the lineup in doubt, and really only House on the fairly near horizon as a possibly higher-ceiling internal replacement. That’s the point I’m making.
Things can change, though. At this time last year, I was concerned about the starter depth, never imagining that Parker and Herz would be reasonably effective MLB starters, that Lara would bounce back to above-average prospect status, that Lord would surge, that they’d acquire guys like Clemmey and Stuart.
KW
6 Feb 25 at 10:42 am
A lot of very interesting takes on Law’s list, but I’ll wait until Todd’s post to jump in. He makes me laugh with his stubborn insistence that Kevin Made is still a prospect, though.
KW
6 Feb 25 at 10:48 am
#KW: anyone who states definitively that “[prospect] is going to be a star” is hunting clicks, not rating a prospect. “Incredibly high ceiling?” Sure. “Potential All-Star?” Absolutely. Even #1/#1 prospects fail (hello, Spencer Torkelson).
As fans we tend to read in the ceiling as the expected outcome, because fandom is a hope-based operation.
John C.
6 Feb 25 at 2:23 pm
@Will: do I think this is the Nats purposeful approach, to find non-hard throwers? No i don’t. I think their ideal rotation in 2025 was going to be Cavalli, Henry, Bennett, Grey and Gore, which if healthy/on paper/living up to scouting reports woudl have been solid. I think they have found gold in Parker and Irvin to a certain extent, certainly Parker, a 5th round covid draft steal.
Todd Boss
6 Feb 25 at 2:41 pm