Nationals Arm Race

Here’s Part 2 of My end of 2025 look at our system; the prospects ranked 61-125. Thanks for the feedback on the first 60 (Part 1 was here) … I’ve highlighted a few players that I may have too low (Glasser,Bazzell, Vaquero) and/or too high (Schnell, Lao) and that’ll help make this list next spring a lot tighter.

So here’s part 2: the guys ranked 61st to 125th. Yes I realize ranking prospects outside a certain threshold (top 50?) becomes kind of ridiculous. Certainly you’re splitting hairs as to whether a 23yr old hitting .210 in Low-A is even a “prospect” or not. But, with just 160 or so players in the whole domestic system, you’re getting dangerously close to attempting to just rank every single player we have under contract. Maybe I’ll get there at some point, but for now, I’ve gone from ranking 100 or so in March to 125 now, basically by just pushing down everyone who had a ranking earlier this year who got “layered” by one of the 15-20 or so guys we drafted or acquired in June and July. It probably wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to literally add all the AAA org guys, all the bullpen arms in A-ball, and the DSL guys to the bottom of this list and have a completely comprehensive ranking of every minor leaguer.

That being said, I’m super curious to hear from those who might think I’m way off on some of these 60+ guys and why. And, am I completely missing someone at this point? Still possible; there’s probably a couple of DSL guys or FCL players who had better than I noticed numbers who should be here. Looking forward to a crowd-sourced improvement on this data.

Key links guiding this:

• Big Board: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?hl=en&gid=1488309175#gid=1488309175
• Draft Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?gid=0#gid=0
• IFA Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing
• This full ranking in a Google Sheet online: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

---

OK here we go. We’ll go groupings of 10 players at a time:

61 (nr) Murphy Stehly 3B
62 (nr) Garrett Davila RHP (Reliever)
63 (nr) Jake Eder LHP (Starter)
64 (101) Branden Boissiere OF (Corner)
65 (25) Kevin Made SS
66 (41) Marquis Grissom RHP (Reliever)
67 (46) Brayan Romero RHP (Starter)
68 (94) Elijah Nunez OF (CF)
69 (48) Tyler Schoff RHP (Reliever)
70 (nr) Enmanuel Carela RHP (Starter)

Discussion: I threw some more relievers in here; Davila is a 28yr old AAA reliever MLFA who probably “shouldn’t” be a “prospect” but who had good enough numbers this year to possibly warrant a late season call-up. I wonder if he re-ups with the team for2026. Marquis Grissom slots in here, having a bit of tarnish on his previous rank despite getting to AAA. Lastly Schoff is here despite previously better rankings on account of having season-ending back muscle surgery in May.

We’ve also got some interesting starters in this group; We got Eder in the same deal as the aforementioned Sam Brown; he’s on the 40-man and has been a starter his whole career; not great career minor league numbers but as a lefty he seems like a future reliever. Romero spent nearly the whole season in the Low-A rotation with middling numbers. Carela was a mid-season rotation replacement in the DSL and had a 2.01 ERA for the season across 12 appearances and a slew of starts; he’s a 2025 IFA for the minimum bonus amount, the kind of “found gold” guy who would be amazing if he developed into anything of use.

There’s four positional players in here: Kevin Made takes a huge tumble from being a top-30 guy to this mid 60-s range: guy just can’t hit. Stehly meanwhile gets plopped into the rankings despite being a 2022 10th round senior sign, a 5th year senior out of Texas who nobody thought would go anywhere. Instead, he was the starting 3B in AA this year, with an OPS north of .900 and moving a top-10 prospect Wallace to 2B before getting a season-ending injury. Bravo; he’s the kind of prospect you root for. Lastly we have Boissiere, who was one step from a release in spring training but instead found some power this year and slugged his way to be the starting 1B in Harrisburg, holding a .810 OPS there. Lastly there’s Nunez, who didn’t necessarily merit a move to High-A but who hit decently once he got there: .808 OPS with speed and the ability to play center. He may still be too high, but once you get to the 60s it’s splitting hairs.

---

71 (nr) Darrel Lunar RHP (Starter)
72 (nr) Adam Bloebaum RHP (Reliever)
73 (nr) Erick Mejia RHP (Reliever)
74 (61) Schultz Thomas RHP (Reliever)
75 (100) Gabriel Agostini LHP (Reliever)
76 (nr) Travis Sthele RHP (Starter)
77 (nr) Alexander Meckley RHP (Starter)
78 (89) Liam Sullivan LHP (Starter)
79 (nr) Austin Amaral RHP (Reliever)
80 (nr) Merritt Beeker LHP (Reliever)

Here’s the section where I threw in a bunch of relievers with solid numbers. Bloebaum was an Indy league signing last May; he had a 0.67 ERA this season; you read that right. He gave up just 2 earned runs in 27 IP across low and high-A, and one of them was on a solo HR he gave up in his last appearance in June before hitting the season-ending DL trip. I can’t find any injury announcement, even on his twitter, but interestingly Bloebaum is a big Driveline pitching guy, which I didn’t necessarily know before. Is a 30yr old converted infielder a “prospect?” If you can answer that, then you have Erick Mejia here. He got a ton of work this year, and moved all the way up to AAA but is a MLFA this off-season unless he re-ups with teh team. Schultz was a multi-role guy for Harrisburg all year with solid numbers, getting several “opening” starts while the AA rotation was in flux mid season. Agostini has made it back from a major arm issue last year and is here based on potential he showed in 2022 as a starter. Amaral had sneaky good numbers for a 2023 16th rounder in AA all year and could be a big find for the team. Beeker absolutely dominated Low-A this year, to the point where I have little understanding why he wasn’t promoted up; 1.85 ERA and 78 Ks in 63 relief innings.

This also seemed like a great area to put some of our remaining full-season rotation guys, namely Sthele, Meckley, and Sullivan. Sthele has become something of a punchline at Luke’s site; he just keeps on throwing. Two straight seasons where he’s been in the rotation the entire season despite middling ERA and ancillary numbers. You know who else that sounds like? Riley Cornelio. Meckley was a relatively unheralded starter picked up in the 12th round of the 2024 draft out of Coastal Carolina; he was a mainstay in the High-A rotation all year alongside Sthele. Lastly we have Sullivan, who was dominant in Low-A but was too old for the level, being on the comeback trail from injury. I like Sullivan’s chances the best of these three going forward.

Lunar is one of just three 2024 IFAs to make it stateside so far (along with previously mentioned Feliz and backup outfielder Tavarez); he pitched in the rotation for the FCL the entire season with middling results, but is mentioned here basically because he’s here ahead of the rest of his IFA class. If you wanted to argue he should be lower, i’d probably not argue.

---

81 (nr) Bryan Polanco RHP (Starter)
82 (49) Carlos Tavares 1B/OF (Corner)
83 (nr) Greyson Gimenez RHP (Reliever)
84 (nr) Victor Farias RHP (Starter)
85 (57) Kyle Luckham RHP (Starter)
86 (83) Michael Cuevas RHP (Starter)
87 (51) Brenner Cox OF (CF)
88 (nr) Luke Johnson RHP (Starter)
89 (56) Chase Solesky RHP (Starter)
90 (nr) Erik Tolman LHP (Starter)

Here’s another section where we threw a bunch of starters in with various levels of success this year. Polanco somehow survived an entire year in the Low-A rotation despite turning 24 at the end of the season. Farias spent time in the FCL rotation and was moved up to be a Long Reliever in Low-A. Luckham probably has shown himself to be a AA-ceiling starter, now having two straight years of solid AA numbers but getting hit hard when moved to AAA. He doesn’t have the K/9 right now to be an effective reliever either, so I’m not sure what to do with him. Luke Johnson had great numbers as a way-too-old FCL and Low-A starter, as a 2024 senior sign for almost no money; hopefully he gets a shot in Wilmington next year. Solesky drops down after an excellent 2024 that even saw him sent to the AFL; in 2025 he was a starter for the entire year in AAA with a 5.00 ERA and perhaps has hit a plateau in terms of his progression. Tolman looked great coming off the loss of the entire 2024 season to injury, dominating High-A .. as she should have as someone who turned 26 this year. He needs more AA time to see if he’s a player we use going forward at the higher levels. He is lefty, which goes to his benefit, and perhaps his 2025 should have him slightly higher, but he’s in this range b/c he did it against kids 3-4 years younger.

Greyson Gimenez had fantastic numbers in the DSL … as a 21yr old. So, he needs to come stateside in 2026 to see if this was for real. Cuevas finally was taken out of the rotation this year and was a decent AA setup guy; can he do more?

We have a couple of outfielders in here on different trajectories: Brenner Cox was socially promoted to High-A, couldn’t hit there, went back to Low-A, still couldn’t hit, and ended the year with a .156 BA across the two levels. That’s not good. Luckily for Cox he got a massive bonus so he’ll get more time to work things out. Tavares hit really well in FCL last year; not so much this year in Low-A, hitting just .153. He signed for almost nothing as a 2023 IFA, so he’s in jeopardy already of an off-season release.

---

91 (76) Jeremy De La Rosa OF (Corner)
92 (105) Holden Powell RHP (Reliever)
93 (58) Angel Roman LHP (Reliever)
94 (106) Jackson Cluff SS
95 (62) T.J. White OF (Corner)
96 (50) Max Romero Jr. C
97 (nr) Chance Huff RHP (Reliever)
98 (103) Juan Obispo OF (CF)
99 (63) Marcus Brown SS/2B
100 (66) Rony Bello 2B/3B

We’ve finally moved past arms, and now have a slew of positional players in this range. Lets talk about them, because they include a bunch of names who used to be higher.

De La Rosa has slowly fallen off, and further down, prospect lists; he was as high as #13 on Fangraphs list in mid 2024, believe it or not. After another middling season at the plate (hitting .200 in High-A), he’s now basically a non prospect. Cluff improved his slash line this year as a fill-in AAA shortstop, but is now 28, was drafted in 2019, and may be hitting MLFA. White repeated High-A for the third successive year, losing some of the power he found last year but not really improving on his .650 OPS. Romero is the classic “hanging around catcher who can barely hit but keeps moving up the ranks because every team needs a twice-a-week backup to their actual catching prospect” guy, spending this year in AA. Obispo is a $600k IFA signing in Jan 2023 who repeated the DSL for the third time this year with marked improvement. Which is good … and bad. Why did it take him 3 turns in the DR? Marcus Brown looks like Troy Tulowitzki … but hits like Troy’s 2nd cousin Bubba. I suppose he has a chance to be the next Jackson Cluff; a pure SS who can barely hit but who plays the dirt as needed. Bello got a decent chunk of bonus money in jan 2025 but was relegated to the bench in his first DSL season primarily by two guys we’ve already talked about in Marconi and Cortesia, but his investment guarantees more time.

I’ve got three arms in here: Angel Roman got 13 starts this year in low-A before mercifully getting sent to the bullpen. Unfortunately he was even worse as a reliever than he was as a starter. He’s only even listed on this page because he’s a Lefty, and may have a future as a lefty reliever. Speaking of relievers, Holden Powell solved AA this year and got a bit roughed up in AAA as a middle relief->setup guy. He’s here because he made it to AAA, even if that might be his ceiling. Lastly we have Chance Huff, who was used kind of like a utility knife in AA this year, getting a few spot starts along with longer relief. He held his own; not amazing, but enough that he might have some future.

---

101 (52) Manuel Cabrera 1B/3B
102 (78) Leuris Portorreal RHP (Starter)
103 (54) Nick Peoples OF (Corner)
104 (80) Mikey Tepper RHP (Starter)
105 (71) Dustin Saenz LHP (Starter)
106 (75) Seth Shuman RHP (Starter)
107 (79) Gavin Dugas 2B
108 (85) Brandon Pimentel 1B
109 (nr) Vasquez Samuel RHP (Reliever)
110 (93) Andy Acevedo OF (CF)

So, in the 100+ range, we’re mostly talking about guys who used to be more highly ranked who have fallen due to declining performance. Fittingly, 9 of the 10 guys in this section were ranked higher last year but struggled this year.

On the “Starter” front, Saenz was in and out of the AA rotation this year and had passable ERA, but his swing and miss is lacking, and a 26yr old undersized RHP reliever seems like the first one to go. Shuman posted a 6.24 ERA as a 27-yr old this year and seems like a release candidate. He was in and out of the AAA rotation, but between pending veteran MLFA signings and rising Arms from AA (like Bennett, Susana, Tolman) who need to get to AAA sooner than later, I’d imagine his spot is in serious jeopardy. Tepper made just 2 starts and hit the season-long DL: it may be unfair to drop him 20-something spots, but that’s life. Portorreal gets credit for being part of the 2023 IFA crew that’s made it state-side, pitching in the FCL all season, but with little success.

I threw Vasquez in here with his solid AA relief numbers, but recognizing that he’s a Rule5 pick who was left available for a reason; he may be considered a dime a dozen in terms of capabilities and ceiling.

Cabrera has been moved completely off the 2B/SS and played almost entirely 1B and 3B this season; a .592 OPS isn’t going to cut it like that. Dugas was already super old upon his drafting; now he’s a 25yr old finishing up a .181 season in High-A and may be done for. Pimentel hit just .194 this year and as a NDFA with almost no investment, he’s in danger of an imminent release. With all due respect to Peoples, he’s now finished his 3rd pro season and his career minor league BA is .192. Acevedo is basically here on the back of his $1.3M signing bonus in 2023; he hit just .188 in the FCL this year.

---

111 (86) Joe Naranjo 1B
112 (65) Luke Young RHP (Reliever)
113 (60) Jack Sinclair RHP (Reliever)
114 (107) J.T. Arruda 2B
115 (92) Viandel Pena 2B
116 (99) Johnathan Thomas OF (CF)
117 (82) Jared McKenzie OF (CF)
118 (81) Elian Soto 1B/OF (Corner)
119 (98) Carlos Batista OF (Corner)
120 (84) Leodarlyn Colon RHP (Reliever)
121 (64) Everett Cooper 2B/LF
122 (68) Lucas Knowles LHP (Reliever)
123 (90) Yoander Rivero 2B
124 (95) Matt Suggs C
125 (104) Nathan Ochoa Leyva OF (Corner)

Every one of the rest of these guys is here because I managed to put them in my top 100 list back in March. Some have fallen significantly. I can’t really see any of these guys being actual “prospects” anymore, but instead of deleting them off the list they’re in the 100+ section.

We’ll talk about them in groups.

Relievers: Young earned a promotion this year but was just kind of a meh RHP middle reliever in AA. Same with Sinclair; i suppose Young’s numbers were slightly better than Sinclair’s so perhaps they should be reversed. Colon was a starter in FCL last year but now is full time relief. Knowles seems like one of those lefty rubber armed multi-role types that every team needs in the minors; he’s 27, in AA, still hanging around.

Infielders: Naranjo was a super-young MLFA last year, having signed internationally at age 16. He’s a sub 6-foot 1B who slugged less than .300; i wonder if he signed for more than one year. Arruda is kind of like Cluff-lite, in AAA but with no real pathway to the majors. Pena ended the year in AAA for some reason; as a backup 2B in AA he hit .201 this year and is basically Arruda with 2 more years of control. Cooper hit just .140 this year repeating Low-A. Rivero got moved to 2B, where he backed up our better players in Low-A while hitting .201 and ending the year on the 60-day DL.

Backup Catchers: I guess I could have also included all our backup catchers here instead of just Suggs. Basically every one of these guys is in the same boat: Lindsley and Stubbs in AAA, Suggs and Farmer in AA, Colmenares in High-A, or Fagnant/Hollified in Low-A: generally speaking these guys have batting averages in the .180-.200 range, play once a week backing up the starter, and are there more for defensive skills than prospect status.

Outfielders: Thomas actually earned a promotion to AA this year, but his primary skill seems to be stealing bases, not actually getting on base. McKenzie took a big step back while repeating High-A, hitting just .167 there this year. Juan’s brother Soto hit just .139 playing 1B/LF combo. Batista wasn’t much better, hitting .140 in FCL this year. Both Soto and Batista were decent-money 2023 IFAs who are getting socially promoted based on their bonus as opposed to their talent, but that’s going to run out at some point. Lastly we have the 125th ranked Ochoa Leyva, who had just a .493 OPS this season as he covered 2B/LF for Low-A.

---

Phew. Hope you’ve enjoyed this. I’d say, “did I forget anyone” but … man when ranking 125 of the players in our system, we’re getting a massive percentage of the total rosters of all our domestic teams (147 active players plus another 18-20 on the 60-Day DL), not to mention the 30 or so guys we have in the DSL. Maybe in the future we’ll rank all the way to 200.

It occurred to me … you know when the right time to do prospect evaluation is? It isn’t in March or April ahead of the next season, its right now. Well, at least until we see off-season churn, add new signings in January, add prospects in trade, etc. But for now, we’ve just finished the last of the minor league seasons, 2025 performance is fresh in our minds, we’ve added a slew of new prospects via the trade deadline and the Draft, and now’s a great time to pass judgement on the seasons we just saw.

So, here’s my top 125 Prospect Ranks for the National system, right now. I’ll list these in groups of 10, list where I had them ranked in Mid-March before the season started. I ended up writing so much that I broke this into two posts: Part 1 will be the top 60, then we’ll dive into the 61-125th ranked guys.

We’ve had a ton of prospect churn this season; we’ve graduated 10 prospects from my top 100+ list in March, including four of our top 10. Crews, House, Cavalli (who as of this exact writing needs one more start to officially graduate via IP, even though he graduated via Service time a year ago), Hassell, Lile, Lord, Nunez (another Service time vs Plate appearance guy), Rutledge, Henry, and Millas all hit MLB rookie eligibility limits this year (150 PAs or 50IP). We released another 10 guys who I had ranked in March, which mostly goes to the folly of trying to rank anyone above the top 50 or so.

Key links guiding this:

• Big Board: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/186nm-v5F-zTCoR2Be7TFYM3e2cZ-gYi2WVqJLEkHdmc/edit?hl=en&gid=1488309175#gid=1488309175
• Draft Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qd5DS9GlmkQOEh_zGhOvlhHK0EegqY1uJB4mLGmRBaY/edit?gid=0#gid=0
• IFA Tracker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ksPorXhEHhtkNAGqxrJWqUFkvioMgoWhBU50uaZstc8/edit?usp=sharing
• This full ranking in a Google Sheet online: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Xs9fmb-dctE90hTS3bdozznETS-Oc3GsMuGzRo2faUc/edit?usp=sharing

---

The blocks will be in the form Current Rank (March 2025 Rank) Name position

Here’s my current top 10 for the system:

1 (nr) Eli Willits SS
2 (4) Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter)
3 (9) Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter)
4 (17) Jake Bennett LHP (Starter)
5 (2) Travis Sykora RHP (Starter)
6 (6) Yohandy Morales 3B
7 (nr) Ethan Petry 1B/OF (Corner)
8 (11) Caleb Lomavita C
9 (nr) Coy James SS
10 (nr) Landon Harmon RHP (Starter)

Discussion: So, I (like many shops) have Willits immediately going top. This is partly due to the injuries that Susana and Sykora suffered, and partly buying into the hype. Pretty much every other major shop has put Willits as #1 in our system upon his drafting too. In fact, the only shop that didn’t immediately have him #1 in our system was Fangraphs, and I’d bet they’d reconsider with Susana’s Lat surgery.

I kept Susana #2 once we found out it wasn’t Shoulder/Elbow. I know he’s still missing time in 2026, but it could be worse. I’ve dropped Sykora from a close #2 to 5th on the list behind our BA player of the year Clemmey and Bennett on the back of his outstanding season.

I remain baffled why Morales is so low on other rankings (#17 in BA, #20 MLBpipeline). I might be bullish on him, but I can’t see dropping him much below this. Petry’s inclusion to the AFL speaks volumes for the 2025 draftee; something tells me he’s going to be a pretty fast moving bat in this system. Lomavita looks like he could push Kiebert Ruiz for a job sooner than later, hitting for solid numbers in a pitcher’s park for most of 2025. I’ve filled out my top 10 with two speculative picks in the two highest profile prep players we overpaid for in the 2025 draft. These ranks could look pretty embarrassing in a year’s time, but are in line with BA/MLBPipeline’s initial rankings, so I’m happy with them.

Four of our top 10 were 2025 draft picks, an indication of just how important the 2025 draft will be to this organization going forward.

---

11 (nr) Sean Paul Linan RHP (Starter)
12 (nr) Eriq Swan RHP (Starter)
13 (19) Angel Feliz 3B/SS
14 (nr) Cornelio Riley RHP (Starter)
15 (nr) Christian Franklin OF (CF)
16 (5) Seaver King SS
17 (12) Luke Dickerson SS/CF
18 (26) Jackson Kent LHP (Starter)
19 (39) Sam Peterson OF (CF)
20 (nr) Davian Garcia RHP (Starter)

Discussion: Linan and Swan seem like they’re going to be the crown jewels of the 2025 trade deadline, but finishing the year in High-A with solid 2025 numbers. Feliz is our highest performing 2024 IFA class member so far, being one of only 3 guys from that class to get off the island so far, and the only one to really make an impression state-side. He’s going to likely get pushed to 3B as he rises alongside more pure middle infielder prospects like Willits and Dickerson.

Cornelio Riley deservedly was just named the Nats 2025 Minor league Pitcher of the Year and has exploded onto the prospect radar: I did not even rank him in my top 100 last year, having held his first two seasons in relative disdain for his mediocre numbers and social promotion. How wrong do I look based on his 3-level rise this year? Franklin is an interesting one, arriving as a AAA level corner OF in a system full of OF prospects and raked. I’ve dropped Dickerson five slots from March, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but he’s probably lucky to remain this high based on a .208 hitting season. Kent ended the year in AA in his first pro season, tiring at the end but looking promising. Peterson nearly had a .300/.400/.500 season in High-A as a 2024 8th rounder from a little-regarded baseball school (Iowa). Maybe he should be higher, closer to Franklin. Garcia may be a little high here as a 2024 draftee who struggled a bit in High-A once he got there, but his Low-A debut was really promising.

Lastly, i’ve dumped King from #5 to #16. Is that fair given that he was in AA most of the time? Probably not, but it’s a good representation of how disappointing his season was in retrospect given his draft slot and bonus. I’ll bet most shops don’t dump him much past the early teens, and perhaps #16 is harsh, but there’s some serious concerns here.

As with our top 10, half this group wasn’t even ranked in March, with trade acquisitions and fantastic performances from two guys not on the prospect radar pushing their way in here. Unfortunately, that’s tempered by the plummeting of the two biggest names from the 2024 draft in King and Dickerson.

---

21 (nr) Marconi German SS
22 (nr) Miguel Sime Jr. RHP (Starter)
23 (nr) Ronny Cruz SS
24 (67) Yoel Tejeda Jr.  RHP (Starter)
25 (28) Andrew Alvarez LHP (Starter)
26 (14) Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter)
27 (20) Andrew Pinckney OF (Corner)
28 (7) Cayden Wallace 2B/3B
29 (29) Brayan Cortesia SS
30 (nr) Randall Josh RHP (Starter)

Discussion: German is looking like the jewel of the 2025 IFA class so far, with a stellar DSL season where he slashed .283/.479/.513 and made the DSL All Star team. Cortesia at #29 was a bigger bonus guy and had a better average in the DSL, but had just 4 XBH (0 homers) in 40 DSL games. Both show promise.

Sime is the fourth of our four big bonus Prep 2025 draftees; he got a bit less than James and Harmon, and is a bit lower regarded from a potential perspective, but still projects as a flame-throwing starter. Cruz came over with Franklin in the Soroka trade a couple months ago and joins a slew of 18-19 yr old SS prospects (Willits, Dickerson, Feliz, James all ranked above him) competing for playing time. Tejeda was great all year but was shelved w/o notice with about a month to go in Low-A; hopefully nothing wrong there.

I’m definitely high-man on Alvarez, even given the fact that he’s made his MLB debut. For whatever reason, none of these shops rate a lefty starter who has held his own in AAA for two years then has a completely respectable debut stint in the majors. Call me crazy, but isn’t the point of prospects to get to the majors and contribute?

I’ve dropped Stuart 10 spots due to his TJ, which likely means we won’t see him til 2027. Should I have Pinckney higher? He’s a CF-capable 20-homer AAA hitter who’s a year younger than Franklin, who i’ve got 10 spots higher. Perhaps … but something just seems to be holding him up. Randall was the third of three High-A starters we nabbed in the trade deadline this year (alongside Swan and Linan) but had the roughest go of it in Wilmington (6.44 ERA). I keep him in the top 30 … for now.

Lastly, a word on perhaps my biggest “miss” of my May rankings: Cayden Wallace. I had him at #7 in the spring, thinking honestly that he might actually push House for his AAA third-base job. I was not alone in this regard, with other major shops generally having him in the 10-12 range. He punted the 2025 season; hitting .242/.310/.376 (with much of that production in one hot month). I can’t see him moving up to AAA next season (not with both Tena and Lipscomb as 3B capable players currently on the roster), at least not to open the season. Furthermore, there’s already three 2B on the AAA roster now (Baker, Arruda, Pena), so he’d struggle with playing time there as well.

---

31 (44) Jose Feliz RHP (Starter)
32 (nr) Nick Schnell OF (Corner)
33 (nr) Sauryn Lao RHP (Starter)
34 (nr) R.J. Sales RHP (Starter)
35 (45) Dashyll Tejeda OF (CF)
36 (72) Sir Jamison Jones C
37 (21) Cristian Vaquero OF (CF)
38 (22) Victor Hurtado OF (Corner)
39 (87) Jorgelys Mota SS
40 (nr) Nauris De La Cruz OF (Corner)

Discussion: This group heavy on youngsters who may be moving further up soon. (Feliz, Tejeda, Jones, Mota, De la Cruz). It’s also notable how quickly our farm system thins.

Feliz is looking like the best arm out of the 2023 IFA class, having dominated the FCL this year. I look forward to seeing what he can do in full-season ball next year. Schnell may seem like an odd pick for a “prospect,” but the MLFA is still only 25 and bashed his way to AAA this year. The Rochester outfield (Schnell, Pinckney, Franklin) must have looked pretty harsh to opposing pitchers during the last half of the season.

Lao is an interesting one. He was DFA’d by Seattle a few weeks ago despite spending the entire season in their AAA rotation in Tacoma with a 3.19 ERA. He’s only 25. I think he might be a sneaky good contender for the AAA rotation to start next season, with an eye on covering in the majors quickly. He got called up to pitch out of the bullpen for the homestretch, but he’s no 4-A reliever.

Sales was probably the least heralded starter we got at the 2025 trade deadline, but he had some of the best numbers, with a 2.85 ERA in 22 low-A starts this year. He’s a college starter from UNC-Wilmington who will clearly be in our High-A rotation to start next season.

Both Tejeda and Jones are 19yr olds who may be ranked a bit high based on their 2025 performance, but who are promising. Jones is being brought along as a Catcher, which adds to his eventual value. Meanwhile, Vaquero and Hurtado remain primarily “bonus baby” prospects, and continue to leak downwards on the charts. I laugh at anyone who credibly tries to rank Hurtado in the top 20 of our system after hitting .236 while repeating the DSL. Mota could be a sneaky good prospect for us, as he hit well in Low-A while playing a ton of 3B while making way for the likes of Dickerson & Willits. He can play SS as needed.

Lastly, a word on Nauris De La Cruz, who gets a debutant ranking here after a very solid DSL debut. He signed for a pittance outside the normal signing period (they didn’t announce his 2025 IFA signing bonus, meaning it was at best $10k and likely less), but slashed .294/.448/.450 for the season. He may be a bit older than the normal DSL kid, but he still will move stateside having played mostly CF for the DSL nats.

---

41 (nr) Clayton Beeter RHP (Reliever)
42 (42) Robert Cranz RHP (Reliever)
43 (nr) Browm Martinez OF (CF)
44 (47) Phillips Glasser SS
45 (nr) Juan Reyes LHP (Starter)
46 (16) Kevin Bazzell C
47 (53) Jose Atencio RHP (Starter)
48 (96) Pablo Aldonis LHP (Reliever)
49 (40) Orlando Ribalta RHP (Reliever)
50 (37) Daniel Hernandez C

Discussion: Yes, this is the first time you’re seeing relievers. I have an awfully hard time ranking relievers in the top 30, let alone the top 40. Why? Well, look no further than the makeup of the current Nats bullpen: 2 MLFAs (Ogasawara, Pilkington), 2 waiver claims (Poulin and Lao), 2 trade acquisitions (Thompson, Beeter), and two high-profile Nats failed starter prospects (Rutledge, Henry).

So, yes, I know Cranz had awesome numbers. I know Beeter and Ribalta have MLB time this year. They’re still 4-A guys who seemingly could be a 6-era or a 2-era guy in a MLB pen. Lets talk about the rest of these guys. Aldonis converted to relief this year and completely dominated across 3 levels, finishing the season with a 1.45 ERA to post some of the best numbers of any reliever in the system.

Martinez is a lottery ticket trade acquisition who was hitting .400 in the DSL when we acquired him, but who immediately hit the DL and that’s that. His ranking is incredibly speculative. Glasser gets the nod here on the heels of just being named the Nats 2025 Minor league Hitter of the Year. I still think he’s got Org Guy stink on him, but if he makes the majors as a bench guy in the same Jake Alu vein, then more power to him.

Juan Reyes was the star of the DSL rotation this year … but at age 20. It’s entirely possible his success in 2025 was “too old for the level,” but he signed for nothing and has pitched his way into an FCL look next year. Atencio missed the entire 2025 season with injury but was a 3.41 ERA starter last year in AA, so hopefully picks up where he left off.

Daniel Hernandez was a 7-figure 2025 IFA signing who is a Catcher, and he hit like one this year, posting a .552 OPS figure in his debut DSL season. #50 may be generous here.

Lastly, there’s Bazzell, who takes a mighty tumble down the ranks. He spent the entire season in Low-A despite being a 3rd round pick from a major baseball conference and put up some pretty anemic numbers, even for a catcher. Zero homers and a .283 slugging percentage. Keith Law ranked this guy #6 in our entire system earlier this year.

---

51 (69) Daison Acosta RHP (Reliever)
52 (23) Elijah Green OF (CF)
53 (32) Darren Baker 2B
54 (33) Zach Brzykcy RHP (Reliever)
55 (nr) Sam Brown OF (Corner)
56 (43) Randal Diaz SS/3B
57 (27) Armando Cruz SS
58 (24) Rafael Ramirez Jr. SS
59 (55) Hyun-Il Choi RHP (Starter)
60 (13) Andry Lara RHP (Starter)

This is the section where we see a slew of more heralded prospects now getting pushed down after years of unproductivity. Elijah Green being the headliner, but joined by Baker (recently DFA’d), Brzycky (who was always too high, even for a reliever, before getting blasted in the majors), Cruz (who hit just .177 in High-A this season), Ramirez (who barely played this year after missing a ton of time on the DL), and especially Andry Lara, who was absolutely tattooed in AAA this year to an 8.92 ERA, which was nearly as bad as his MLB ERA of 8.79 in a few mop-up appearances. Yes, I know he’s only 22 and I know he throws hard, but it must be straight as an arrow to get hit as hard as he has.

is Baker a prospect at all? It’s hard to see where he goes from here; likely he plays out the 6-year string with us and moves on. He’s still got some positional value (he can play several positions in a pinch) but if the team needs backup middle infielders they’re likely moving on other names at this point.

Choi was a minor league rule5 guy who went from the opening day AAA rotation to mostly pitching out of the AA rotation all year. I don’t see a lot of ceiling here. I think he gets whacked again in AAA next year and moves to the bullpen.

Lets talk instead about the two guys in this group who seem to be moving up: Brown and Diaz. Brown was seemingly a throw-in from the Angels in the Chafin/Garcia trade, but he got to AA here as a 24yr old 2023 12th round pick and hit; .307/.384/.472 from the left side in his time here playing 1B/RF. Not bad. The other guy in this section I like a bit more: Randal Diaz was a 5th rounder in 2024 who never appeared last year and played the whole season in F’burg. He’s listed as a SS but we know Short was primarily manned all year by either Dickerson or Willits, so Diaz moved around. A lot: he played games at every infield position plus Left and Right at some point this year. We know the Nats love positional flexibility. Problem is, he didn’t hit as well as he needs to; just .229. We’ll see.

---

Stay tuned for Part 2, ranking #61 to #125.

The 2025 minor league seasons may not entirely be over, but the Arizona Fall League rosters have been released, so let’s take a quick peek at who in the Nationals system has been sent.

Typically, the Nats send a hodgepodge of players who fit into one of three categories:

• Pitchers who were injured for a lot of 2025 and who need innings
• Pending Rule-5 guys who they want to see challenged against the AFL’s best
• Seemingly lesser so; our top prospects.

So of the 8 guys announced so far, what are we seeing?

Pitchers

• Aldonis, Pablo, lefty reliever who dominated in both Low-A and High-A this year in a setup reliever capacity. He’s a 19IFA so he’s been Rule5 eligible for years, but got a late start to his career so he’s now pushing up on 6yrs MLFA. Is he in the “pending Rule5 guy” category? Probably: he got plenty of innings this year.
• Amaral, Austin, He’s had a really nice season, first as the High-A closer and lately as a AA setup guy. Not a ton of K/9 but a lot of weak contact, getting BAA .216 for the season. He’s a 23 draftee so not yet rule-5, and seemed to get plenty of innings this year (69ip), so an interesting pick.
• Bennett, Jake, who finally came of the DL after missing half of 2023 and all of 2024; he’s been excellent all year as they ramp him back up. He’s in the “injured guy who needs more innings” category, in that he only got 70 for the year as a starter. He’s also newly Rule5 eligible this coming off season and is a pretty obvious protection candidate.
• Linan, Sean Paul: he only threw 3 innings for Wilmington before he hit the D/L, and thus only has 77 IP for the season as a starter. He’s in AFL to get some more work. Glad to see he’s not seriously injured; usually these “one start and DL” types are more serious.
• Simpson, Jared*, lefty reliever with weird numbers this year: 6+ era, 64/57 K/BB in 52ip. Got lots of work this year, clearly needs to work on his command; why is he in AFL? He’s a 2023 drafee and thus not Rule5 eligible til next off-season. Weird pick.

Batters

• King, Seaver. Our 1st round 2024 pick struggled all year, likely over promoted to AA, and certainly could use more work. He does check the one box of the team sending a “top prospect,” though King’s prospect ranking is sure to take a hit after his 2025 season.
• Petersen, Sam, who had a brilliant season at the plate and now holds a career slash line in the minors north of the vaunted .300/.400/.500 marker. This is probably a “show me” AFL challenge posting to see if Peterson can cut it against the top talent there.
• Petry, Ethan, our 2nd rounder from this year who many think will be a fast mover. This might be an aggressive AFL posting for a kid who was hitting aluminum bats a couple months ago, but he’s considered to be a mature hitter. Classifies as the top prospect category.

Who could make sense for an AFL stint this year:

Potential Rule5 guys to consider: there’s a few players who have taken steps up this year who are newly rule5 eligible, but none seem immediately to be an obvious protection candidate. Bennet and Cornelio are the pretty clear newly-eligible Rule5 guys who could have gotten plucked. Luckham in the same boat, ending the year in the AAA rotation. On the IFA side, the 2021 class is now coming due and even tough there’s a couple of important names on that list (Polanco and Romero, both in the Low-A rotation all year), the biggest money guy is Armando Cruz, who hit .177 this year in High-A and isn’t a candidate to get picked.

There’s some Rule5 holdovers who also might now make sense to look at: Boissiere, Tolman, Powell, Sinclair, etc. But no one really pressing. Kevin Made?

Injury guys who could use the work: scouring the AA and High-A roster, I don’t see any names that pop out as players who knowingly missed a ton of time.

Show-Me popup prospects: we’ve already talked about Peterson in this category. Our Low-A stars are too young (Willits, Dickerson, Feliz), Bazzell didn’t perform well enough.

So, that’s the 2025 slate.

Here’s the five month check-in with all our top 20 (and some) prospects. This mostly does an August focus on the prospects being mentioned, but sometimes mentions season-long stats, which are as of 9/1/25 as best as possible.

This is our prospects as I ranked them prior to the season: If i was to re-rank prospects today a big chunk of these guys would be graduated or moved. Plus, we picked up at least six guys who will feature in our top 30 at the trade deadline; i’ll put those after the top 20 in a special section to highlight their pre-Nats stats.

#1. Dylan Crews OF (CF/RF): Returned from a couple months off, played about half of August and was not good. .218/.317/.309. He’s providing positive defensive contributions so he’s somehow got a positive bWAR for the season, but this isn’t what we were expecting. He’s still plagued with a ridiculously low BABIP; .248 for 2025, on par with where he was last year. He’s at a 40% hard-hit percentage, but is over 50% ground balls. I dunno what to say here. Temperature: remains cold so far professionally.

#2 Travis Sykora RHP (Starter): Tommy John surgery. Temperature: on ice til 2027.

#3 Brady House 3B: Cooled off considerably from July to Aug, slashing just .22/.230/.278 for the month and has been losing ABs to the likes of deJong. Tangent: why the F is this team giving ABs to deJong, Bell, or any other random dude who’s going to be a FA this off-season? It makes no sense. Bell should be DFA’d tomorrow and you bring up Yepez or Morales immediately to see what they can do. You’re 30 games under .500; time to see if our AAA hitters can cut it in the majors in games that are meaningless. Temperature: cooling off as the season grinds on.

#4 Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter). Had an awesome month in August, then grabbed his arm and exited his last start. Apparently just a tendinitis issue, but it sure looked worse. On the DL, likely done for the season, and the team has to wonder how he’ll bounce back. He’s now our most important pitching prospect by a mile. Temperature: on ice for the rest of 2025, hopefully nothing more serious than reported.

# 5 Seaver King SS. Bottoming out as the season winds down; .209/.275/.282 in August. Not really the production we expected out of a top 10 1st round pick. Should he still be in High-A? Temperature: ice cold.

# 6 Yohandy Morales 1B maintained his July slash line through August, going .298/.394/.489. I’m frankly pissed that we’re still playing Josh Bell full time at this point. Morales needs to be in the majors, right now, starting at 1B and seeing what he can do. Temperature: hot.

#7 Cayden Wallace 2B/3B: well, he had no where to go but up, and up he did in August: .359/.413/.587 for an OPS north of 1000 in the month. He had one game where he went 4-5 with 2 homers and 11 TB, but he also had a 7 game hitting streak in the middle of the month to help out. Lets see if he can keep this up, if he’s figured something out. Temperature: red hot in August.

# 8 Cade Cavalli RHP (Starter): Didn’t exactly “earn” his way into the Majors other than being the only starter on the 40-man roster, but has performed well in his MLB stint so far. Temptingly good actually. We discussed it more in the Pitching post, but save for one weird start in NY he’s been quite solid. Wow, can he be a contributor in 2026? Temperature: Warm?

#9 Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter): Promoted to AA as a 20yr old; wow. Got shelled in his first 3 starts; no surprise. Went 6ip with 1H in his most recent start; that’s what i’m talking about. Clemmey should be higher on our prospect lists this coming off-season and could be in the majors next year at this pace. Temperature: staying hot.

# 10 Robert Hassell III OF (CF): Seems to have officially supplanted Jacob Young as our starting CF, which is saying something given how good a defender Young is. Slashed .246/.306/.386 in August, which is ok but not awesome, but enough to keep him in the starting lineup. Amazing how Hassell was nearly being written off in some quarters at this time a year ago, now he may have secured a starting job in the majors. Temperature: warming up.

#11 Caleb Lomavita C: had a solid month in August at the plate: .288/.325/.411. I’d like to see a bit more power, but he’s maintaining a decent slash line in AA in his first pro season, so can’t really ask for much more. Temperature: Improving.

# 12 Luke Dickerson SS/2B: put up his third straight month of hitting in the 100s, and now has to fend with the drafting of Willits pushing him to 2B. Or, frankly, the bench, if he doesn’t step up. Temperature: ice cold

# 13 Andry Lara RHP (Reliever): 10.70 ERA in August. I’m not sure what his future holds. On the one hand he’s only 22 and on the 40-man, on the other hand he’s having an absolutely awful 2025 and i’m surprised he’s not getting DFA’d. Temperature: ice cold.

#14 Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter): Tommy John. out til 2027. Temperature: on ice for a while.

#15 Daylen Lile OF (CF/RF): with Crew’s return, ABs have been tough to come by with 5 outfielders on the roster, but Lile’s bat has kept him in the lineup. For august: .304/.353/.418. That will keep you in the lineup. Temperature: warming up

#16 Kevin Bazzell C: has continued his solid July with an even better august: .333/.400/.350. Still want more power out of him, but can’t argue with .333. Temperature: warming.

#17 Jake Bennett LHP (Starter): 5 starts in AA, 0.77 ERA. I don’t care that they’re still babying his innings, he’s really shutting down the league. Only nit: not a ton of Ks; just 12 in 23 IP last month. I wonder if that’s who he is, or if he’s pitching more to contact trying to stay longer in games. Either way, He should be in AAA next season as a 25yr old and may really put his name into the mix for the Majors soon. Temperature: red-hot

#18 Brad Lord RHP (Starter/Reliever): has been inserted into the rotation to cover for injuries and may have finally reached a plateau he cannot overcome. In 2025 in the majors as a starter: 5.79 ERA. As a reliever? 2.79 ERA. I think we know what he should be in the majors. Temperature: cooled as a starter

#19 Angel Feliz SS: did not start off low-A well: .200/.271/.320 while trying to find innings at SS on a team with both Willits and Dickerson. He’s only 18, and a lot of his 24IFA class are still on the island, so no real complaints. Temperature: cold but young

#20 Andrew Pinckney OF (CF or corner): continued hitting in AAA; .317/.372/.515 with 5 homers in August. See above comments on Morales: why is this guy still in AAA? We have a 1B and a DH slot in the majors … frigging use Pinckney and Morales in those spots now. Temperature: hot.

---

Trade Acquisition Update. here’s the 10 prospects we’ve acquired with their season stats and levels. They’re listed in rough order of their prospect ranking, with some quick comments on their Aug performance here:

• Linan, Sean Paul: SP: had one 3-inning start then hit the DL in High-A.
• Franklin, Christian: OF (CF): tearing it up in AAA: .296/.381/459 in August.
• Swan, Eriq: SP: 4 starts, 5.03 ERA in High-A to start. Meh.
• Cruz, Ronny: SS: in FCL, season complete.
• Randall, Josh: SP: 5 starts, 6.17 ERA in High-A to start. Meh.
• Beeter, Clayton: RP: fantastic august in AAA bullpen: 18/0 K/BB in 13ip as an 8th/9th inning guy
• Sales, R.J.: SP 5 low-A starts, 3.86 ERA, good start to Nats career.
• Eder, Jake RP; on the AAA DL the entire month.
• Martinez, Browm, OF: in DSL, on DL, season complete.
• Brown, Sam: 1B/LF: crushed it for AA in August: .365/.436/.573 for an OPS > 1.000. Awesome.

The first 6 of these 10 guys are already in our top 30 on both BA and MLBpipeline lists. I like Sales and Martinez for the back-end of that list at some point. Eder might be a 4-A lefty reliever, and Brown might be a throw in. But we got 10 guys into the system in a week, which is great.

2025 Draft Acquisition update: a slew of our 2025 draftees have already debuted; here’s how things are going for those in full-season ball (in order of their draft round):

• 1st Willits, Eli: SS: great start: .333/.417/.357 so far in Low-A, starting at SS.
• 2nd Petry, Ethan: 1B/LF: also a great start: .274/.391/.370 in Low-A, playing mostly 1B/LF.
• (our three other prep draftees Harmon, Sime, and James all are in FCL and have not played)
• 8th Maddox, Riley SP: has one brief appearance but is getting a start this week
• 9th Henseler, Wyatt 2B/3B got pushed up to High-A after hitting .351 in Low-A as a sr sign, only hit .118 in 9 high-A games so far
• 13th: Biven, Tucker, a few games in low-A bullpen so far.
• 14th Hollifield, Nick C: decent start as a backup C in Low-A: .286/.397/.304 so far.
• 15th Walsh, Jacob 1B; struggling at .117 in pro debut in Low-A.
• 18th Puk, Owen RP: a few innings in Low-A bullpen

---

Notable Prospects #20 and above who are going to be ranked much higher the next time I do a list.

in MLB:

• #28 Alvarez finally got promoted and had a great MLB debut. Lets see if he can continue.
• #38 Millas finally got some PT in the majors as some have clamored for … and frigging broke his finger, ending his season. They’ve already put him on the 60-day DL, icing him even if he could come back in a few weeks.

In AAA:

• All props to Cornelio for now making it to AAA and holding his own. he’s probably the Nats Pitcher of the year, following in Alvarez’s footsteps.

In AA:

• #25 Made: remember when i was all excited b/c he hit the crap out of the ball one month? well, he remains cold, hitting just .209 in August.
• Jackson Kent, 2024 4th rounder, is now in AA. That’s awesome to see. He’ll make a big jump from his preseason prospect ranking.
• Brandon Boissiere is finally holding his own at the plate, maintaining a .800 OPS in AA this season.
• The team keeps giving Schultz and Huff spot starts/opener duties when the rotation needs a break; maybe these are possible conversions back to starters? Schultz in particular seems really effective this year, maintaining a .179 BAA all season.

In High-A:

• #39 Sam Peterson last played on Aug 13th, and sat for a week before that. No DL trip, no news. He’s been one of our best hitters all year but its curious why he would just get benched like this w/o a DL trip for so long.
• Like Peterson, High-A has also buried Yoel Tejeda on the “non playing, non DL list” for the basically the entire month. I guess they just don’t need the roster room.
• 2024 draftee starter Davian Garcia got moved to High-A deservedly, but has struggled since arriving.

In Low-A:

• Every time I see 2024 10th rounder Luke Johnson have a successful start, i’m ecstatic. Reminder: he signed for exactly $2,000. He could have refused to sign and gotten ten times that as an NDFA; why he agreed to sign for that is kind of beyond me, but he’s holding his own and I hope he continues.

In FCL:

• Season Complete: a few guys have been moved to Low-A, most done for the year.

In the DSL:

• Season complete, and I havn’t seen a single promotion state-side from the 2025 roster. Probably not a huge surprise since FCL is done too and none of these guys can go straight to F-burg.

---

That’s August. One more of these to go at the end of the season.

This is the 5th monthly review of all our rotations for the 2025, checking in on the latest month’s worth of production and doing some analysis.

I popped into baseball-reference.com to start this work, and realized we’re now 30 games under .500. The Nats went just 9-19 in August, including an 8-game losing streak to finish out the month to go along with our best starter hitting the DL. There’s no sugar coating it; this team has taken a significant step backwards from “the rebuilding roadmap” that led them from horror in 2008 to glory in 2012. I’m not sure what’s next.

Each team section analysis will have the same items: current rotation, changes in the last month, observations, next guy to get promoted (if its in the minors), next guy to get cut, and then a few comments about relievers.

All seasonal stats quoted are as of 8/31/25, though we mostly focus on the past 30 days of stats.

Important links for this analysis:

• Big Board
• Nats MLB stats: at baseball-reference.com
• AAA Rochester stats: (all minor league stats at milb.com)
• AA Harrisburg stats
• High-A Wilmington stats
• Low-A Fredericksburg Stats
• FCL Nationals Stats
• DSL Nationals Pitching Stats

---

We’ll start with the Majors.

• Opening Day 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
• End of April 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, TWilliams, Lord
• End of May 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams (back to the original)
• End of June 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Soroka, TWilliams
• End of July 2025: Gore, Irvin, Parker, Lord, Ogasawara
• End of Aug 2025: Irvin, Parker, Lord, Cavalli, Alvarez

Changes since end of last Month: Two big changes. Our Ace Gore hit the DL at the very end of the month with what’s being described as “minor shoulder inflammation” and he hopes to return this season. On the one hand; why bother returning? We have less than a month left and we’re in last place. On the other hand, if the team wants to flip him this off-season, he really needs to get back into the rotation and not end the season on the DL. However … if you’re an interested team, did the price to acquire Gore this coming off-season just take a massive hit? Yeah it did. Honestly, for those who want to keep Gore this may be a godsend of an injury timing. This may guarantee he stays with the Nats until next trade deadline, when presumably nothing has changed, we’ve spent no $$ this coming off-season and we’re 10 games under .500 once again.

Elsewhere in the rotation, Ogasawara gave us two predictably bad starts covering for Williams before Cavalli was deemed healthy enough to get out of AAA. Gore is set to be replaced in the September rotation by long-serving AAA starter Andrew Alvaraz, which is a great recognition of the work he’s done for this team at AAA and I hope he has a decent debut.

Rotation Observations: Gore’s August was about as bad as his July, so maybe the DL trip will be helpful. Irvin had an 8.78 ERA in August, he leads the league in homers allowed, and looks like he’s ready for a vacation. Parker now leads the league in losses thanks to an 0-5, 10.21 ERA month. Lord’s move into the rotation has not been good: 5 starts, 7.06 ERA. As much success as he had in AAA as a starter, I think the team has discovered he needs to stay in the bullpen. Lastly the most important development; how did Cavalli look? I mean, not great all things considered; he had 5 starts, a 5.11 ERA, a 1.581 whip. 22/7 K/BB, 6 homers in 5 games. However, he was the best Nats starter of the month.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Parker is pitching himself out of the 2026 rotation, if he hasn’t already.

Bullpen comments: There’s not much joy in Mudville. The Washington bullpen collectively has a -0.2 fWAR for the season at this point and had a collective 4.88 ERA for the month. In other words, they’re just as bad as the starters.

---

AAA Rochester

• Opening Day 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Ogasawara, Choi, Solesky
• End of April 2025: Alvarez, Lara, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli (rehab)
• End of May 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli, Sampson
• End of June 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Shuman, Cavalli, Sampson
• End of July 2025: Alvarez, Solesky, Cavalli, Conley, Ogasawara
• End of Aug 2025: Alvarez, Conley, Luckham, Sampson, Cornelio

Changes since end of last month: Lots of moves this month. Solesky hit the DL, replaced by a long-overdue promotion of the 33-yr old Sampson from AA. Cavalli and Ogasawara both got promoted up, replaced by similarly promoted Luckham and (most importantly from a farm system perspective) Cornelio.

Rotation Observations: Alvarez finally gets the promotion after one last solid month, giving AAA 5 starts with a 2.96 ERA. 33-yr old Sampson looked excellent in 5 starts, but begs the question, So What? Anyone in AAA over the age of 30 is there for one reason: to sop-up meaningless minor league innings that our own prospects couldn’t fulfil. So, when 31-yr old Conley posts a 7.50 ERA for the month, i’m looking for him to get replaced. As for actual prospects, Luckham gets another shot at AAA (this is his 3rd try) and at least kept his ERA under 5.00 this time. Lastly; Cornelio has made it to the minor’s highest level after an excellent two-promotion 2025 (his MILB picture still shows him in Wilmington); 5 starts, 5.32 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, .277 BAA. Not bad, something to build on. I’ve maligned Cornelio’s development for years, but now the 7th rounder is in AAA to stay.

Next guy to get Promoted: Alvarez was the most deserving, and is now in MLB. Next? Would Sampson and his middling K/9 rate get shelled in the majors?

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Solesky hit the DL so he’s off the table to get cut. We’re now into the last few weeks so frankly nobody’s getting cut at this point, but the two 30-somthing arms Conley and Sampson are basically finishing out the string to MLFA in a few weeks.

Bullpen comments: We now have five 40-man arms in the AAA bullpen, soon to be six when they re-demote Mason Thompson. What a churn. Salazar, Brzycky, Loutus, Fernandez, Lara, and Thompson. Are any of these guys going to produce going forward? Some of these guys have BAAs that would lead the majors.

---

AA Harrisburg

• Opening Day 2025: Shuman, Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Atencio
• End of April 2025: Luckham, Saenz, Susana, Choi, Soroka (rehab)
• End of May 2025: Luckham, Saenz, Choi, Cornelio, Conley (with multiple Gomez openers)
• End of June 2025: Luckham, Choi, Cornelio, Conley, Stuart with Lara, Sykora coming in at end of month.
• End of July 2025: Luckham, Choi, Cornelio, Bennett, Huff/Schultz openers (with Sampson, Sykora, Lara each getting 1 start)
• End of Aug 2025: Bennett, Susana, Tolman, Kent, Clemmey

Changes since end of last month: A slew of moves here. Luckham and Cornelio promoted up, replaced by High-A promotions Kent and Clemmey (two big development promotions). Choi was mercifully dumped out of the rotation, replaced by fellow LR/SS Tolman (also promoted from High-A). Lastly, Susana came back off the DL to replace opener starts and one-offs from the likes of Huff, Schultz, and Sampson, but more on Susana in a moment.

Rotation Observations: Bennett finally in AA … and he dominated this month. 5 starts, a 0.77 ERA. They’re still limiting his IP per start, which will prevent him from winning any POTM awards since he’s not qualifying for any wins. One nit on Bennett; he’s not getting any Ks. In August he got just 12 Ks in 23ip. Clemmey’s AA debut was one to forget: a 13ERA in his first 3 AA starts. Well, welcome to the big time kid. He turned 20 like 6 weeks ago so i’m not worried. How about another top prospect in Kent? His AA debut is somewhere in between Bennetts and Clemmey with a 6-ERA, but at least he’s keeping his K rate up. We saw Kent’s performance start to wane a bit in High-A before he got promoted, so this isn’t a surprise either. He’s at 113ip in his first full pro season and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him rested before the season is out. Tolman has earned two promotions this year to get to AA at age 26 after a lost season to injury; he struggled this month but has some time.

Lastly, lets talk about Susana. We got an UCL scare earlier this year but it turned out to be non surgical. He rehabbed, then gave us five AA starts with some eye-popping numbers (in 5 starts he had 41 Ks in 21 innings… Jeeze). However … he grabbed his arm and fell to the ground in his last start, a move that normally spells Tommy John doom. However, reports are that he suffered “only” some soreness in his triceps and not in his elbow. So… we’ll see. I wonder if he pitches again this season.

Next guy to get Promoted: I got both Sampson and Cornelio promotions right last month. This month? Not as straight forward; there’s nobody at this point with 3 weeks left who should be promoted. Bennett needs to finish out the season w/o anymore tumult, and the rest of the guys need to not get hurt.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Choi was demoted out of the rotation as I predicted; if another needs to go it seems to be Tolman, who I’d guess will be a reliever next year.

Bullpen comments: Daison Acosta was deservedly promoted after a dominant August (21/3 k/bb in 11 ip) as the AA closer. Junior Santos has taken over as closer and has been nearly as good.

---

High-A Wilmington

• Opening Day 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Tepper
• End of April 2025: Clemmey, Cornelio, Kent, Sthele, Arias
• End of May 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Sykora, Bennett, Stuart (rehab) plus a bunch of spot starts
• End of June 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Bennett, and four rehab stars from Ogasawara/Lara
• End of July 2025: Clemmey, Kent, Sthele, Tolman, Susana rehab starts plus Tejada and Garcia late.
• End of Aug 2025: Sthele, Garcia, Meckley, Randall, Swan plus a slew of spot starts

Changes since end of last month: Lots of changes here. Four of the five starters from July were promoted (Clemmey, Kent, Tolman, plus returning Susana to AA), so we needed four new guys. Luckily the Nats acquired a ton of arms at the trade deadline and could slot in two new acquisitions here in Randall and Swan immediately. Then, Garcia continued in the rotation from the tail end of last month. Meckley was a mid-month promotion.

Rotation Observations: First off, lets talk about the new trade acquisitions Randall, Swan, and Linan. Linan made one start, gave up 3 R in 3IP and hit the DL. Randall made 5 starts with a 6.17 ERA though better peripherals. Swan had a 5.03 ERA but a low BAA … likely because he can’t find the plate (14 bb in 19ip). Sthele continues to get by on smoke and mirrors and a 4 K/9 rate. Garcia’s success in Low-A has not translated to High-A; he has more walks than Ks in Wilmington. Lastly, Tejeda made one start at the beginning of the month, gave up 4 in 5, then … has done nothing. No DL trip, no mid-week work, nothing. I dunno why they’re not DL-ing the guy if he’s not pitching. But whatever. Not a lot of joy in the High-A rotation this month.

Next guy to get Promoted: We got Tolman right from last month. This month nobody deserves a promotion.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Sthele reverted back to having a “bad” month this time, but really nobody stood out as needing action at this point.

Bullpen comments: Anthony Arguelles had 15 Ks, 0 walks in 8 appearances/10 IP this month. Can’t ask for much more than that. Pablo Aldonis was just as good: 13/1 K/BB and a 1.20 ERA.

---

Low-A/Fredericksburg

• Opening Day 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia
• End of April 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia with Bennett making his 2025 debut
• End of May 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia with two “rehab” starts from Bennett/Sykora
• End of June 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Tejeda, Roman, DGarcia, Romero
• End of July 2025: Polanco, Meckley, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson
• End of August 2025: Polanco, Romero, Sullivan, Johnson, Sales

Changes since end of last month: Meckley bumped up, replaced with new Trade acquisition Sales.

Rotation Observations: Polanco was competent this month; solid numbers, nothing to write home about. Romero had 19 Ks and 18 walks in 19 innings, yet somehow had only a 2.12 ERA for the month. Amazing. Both Sullivan and Johnson are too old for the level and have solid seasonal numbers, even if August’s weren’t that great. Most important development: new guy Sales looked decent in his Nats debut: 5 starts, 3.86 ERA, 29 ks in 23 ip.

Next guy to get Promoted: Liam Sullivan has one of the best K/9 rates in the minors and is 23 in Low-A. Move him up. He’s a lefty who can start or soak up innings and could move fast.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Luke Johnson may not be long for the rotation.

Bullpen comments: I’m not sure what Merritt Beeker needs to do at this point to get the heck out of Fredericksburg. 38 games this year, 1.85 ERA, 78 Ks in 63 ip as a 23yr old 2024 draftee. Um, why isn’t he higher up?

---

FCL/Rookie

• Opening day: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Johnson, Rehab starts
• End of May 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Johnson, Lunar
• End of June 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Lunar, Sullivan (rehab)
• End of Season/End of July 2025: Feliz, Portorreal, Farias, Lunar, Johnson

Just a reminder that FCL ended; no more analysis. The team did promote Farias and Johnson post-season and they’ve both gotten Low-A time.

---

DSL/Rookie

• Opening day: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Carrasco, Mejia
• End of June 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Carrasco, Torrellas
• End of July 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Torrellas, Carela
• End of Season/End of Aug 2025: JReyes, De La Cruz, Robles, Torrellas, Carela with Gimenez

Changes since end of last month: The last few weeks of the season saw solid middle reliever Greyson Gimenez given a couple of starts, otherwise the DSL rotation was unchanged from last month.

Rotation Observations: There’s no splits for DSL guys, so i can’t isolate the last month without doing a ton of XLS work that frankly I don’t want to bother doing since I barely consider these guys prospects until they show up in Florida. Heading into 2026, i’m most interested in seeing Reyes, Carela, and Gimenez moving to the FCL.

Next guy to get Promoted: Reyes: he was a 23IFA and is a 20yr old in DSL: time to come stateside. This is exactly what I wrote last month and it remains true for the final month.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: The two moved out of the rotation so far this year (Mejia and Carrasco) are both 25IFAs, where as everyone else in the rotation right now is a 23 or 24IFA.

Bullpen comments: Juan Lopez remains the only reliever that looks like he could move stateside right now, but with FCL done it won’t happen until next spring.

Happy Labor Day weekend!

We’ve touched on Expansion a couple times in the past few weeks in this space, and in the comments we’ve talked about a couple of interesting “what-ifs” related to the side effects of Expansion, namely:

• What happens if we put MLB teams into existing AAA markets?
• How would two new MLB teams build out their affiliate farm systems?

I’ve given these topics some thought in the past, but never put pen to paper in this space, so what better time than the present. First, I did a little XLS work to build what i’m calling the MLB Pyramid. I cross-referenced all full season minor league teams to their Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) to see where there’s under-served markets that might be suitable for eventual minor league team relocation.

Here’s that spreadsheet, and then here’s some quick macro market analysis.

First off, if you’re looking at the Google XLS link, here’s a guide to the color coding:

• i’ve got the markets that currently have a MLB team highlighted in Yellow.
• Then, I’ve highlighted the 6 leading expansion markets that keep getting bandied about in Green.
• lastly, i’ve highlighted in Red the Markets that either have NO baseball, or which clearly don’t have a big enough team right now.

You can filter on the level to find the 30 teams in each level if you want to see them in one place, which is a fun exercise. If you filter on MLB though the count isn’t 30 since several markets have 2 teams and I don’t have Canadian teams here.

So, what does this pyramid tell us? Some interesting information.

MLB Market Consideration Thoughts

• The largest area w/o a MLB team technically is Riverside, but as part of the larger LA market it won’t get a third team. Just like Brooklyn won’t get a 3rd team, despite NY being the largest MSA in the country.
• Orlando is thus the largest stand-alone MSA without a MLB team. And, it doesn’t have ANY organized full season baseball. It doesn’t even have a spring training facility. Is it fair to characterize Orlando as basically a city serving its two massive theme parks, and as such one that cant’ really support 80 home dates of a baseball team? Maybe, maybe not; it hosts an NBA team just fine.
• The two leading expansion cities per the tea leaves (Nashville and Salt Lake) trail a slew of other markets, and if a team went into SLC it’d immediately be the smallest market in the sport, well behind even Milwaukee. This is problematic, but unavoidable; no matter where you put a team it’s going to be a “small market” and not able to immediately compete with the Houstons and Philadelphias of the world.

---

Ok, so lets assume Nashville and Salt Lake City get MLB teams. Guess what? Both cities have established AAA teams. So, what happens to them? Well, it depends.

• The team could just dissolve, though this seems highly unlikely given that AAA teams are worth around $50M right now.
• More likely, the AAA team would relocate. When the last round of expansion happened in 1998, both Denver and Phoenix had existing AAA teams. What happened to them? Well, initially the Denver Zephyrs moved to New Orleans and the Phoenix Firebirds moved to Tucson. Interestingly, both of those teams have since moved; New Orleans’ franchise is now in Wichita, while Tucson’s moved to Reno.
• Ironically, New Orleans and Tucson now are amongst the largest markets in the country without affiliated baseball of any sort, and could both be targets for a new AAA team if/when the existing teams have to relocate.

Where else would a new AAA team make sense? Well, scanning down the markets:

• If Orlando and Portland don’t get teams, they’d both make good AAA sites. Portland has had AAA baseball in the past, though area residents don’t speak fondly of the experience.
• San Jose remains a major, growing market that’s further from the San Francisco ballpark than Nationals park is from Camden Yards, yet the Giants maintain territorial control.
• Several AAA teams technically live in the same MSA as their MLB teams: Atlanta, Minnesota, Seattle, and Houston’s AAA teams play in Gwinnett, St. Paul, Tacoma, and Sugar Land respectively. However, neither Nashville or Salt Lake are “big” enough to have both a MLB and a AAA team in the same spot.

If, for some reason, MLB went into two totally blank markets instead (say, Orlando and Raleigh), then there’s zero impact to any existing AAA or other team, and you’d have to basically come up with brand new AAA teams from existing markets. What do you do then?

• If you wanted to “promote” an existing AA market to AAA, there’s a couple that make a lot of sense. San Antonio and Richmond both have AA teams now but are more than big enough to support AAA baseball. Richmond was a AAA affiliate for decades before the Braves bought the team and moved it to an Atlanta suburb, while San Antonio is technically in the market for a MLB team itself and could more than support AAA.
• However, if you made Both Richmond and San Antonio AAA markets, you’d screw up the AAA league structure, giving both the International and Pacific Coast league odd numbers of teams. PCL has two divisions of 5, while IL has two divisions of 10, so this might be problematic unless you moved one to the other. And there’s zero teams in either league who geographically make sense to move.
• If you wanted two to IL (which would give it 22 teams, and would make for more unbalanced divisions) you’d probably go Richmond and Hartford.
• If you wanted to go two to PCL markets you could probably promote San Antonio and one of Tulsa/Little Rock, which would give PCL two divisions of 6, which is nice and neat.

MLB teams want their AAA franchises to be somewhat close, and putting two teams in the Texas/Oklahoma area kind of splits the difference between an eastern and western team. So that works.

---

If you displace two AA markets with AAA teams, then you’ve got further cascading franchise disposition to deal with. Here’s the fun part; we still have to “find” markets for two more AA, High-A, and Low-A teams, in addition to two more spring training facilities (one in Florida, one in Arizona). What would that look like? Lets take a look.

AA Minor league expansion

In the lower leagues, we get a lot more geographically focused. AA has three leagues: the Eastern League, the Southern League, and the Texas League. So, there’s really no west coast leagues out there. Furthermore, if you look at where the High-A leagues are (East Coast, Upper Midwest, and the Northwest), there’s really only one option: you have to move two High-A South Atlantic teams into the AA Eastern League:

• Wilmington and Brooklyn’s teams are in the biggest High-A markets and make the most sense given the geographic layout of the Eastern League. There’s AA teams that span from New Hampshire to Richmond, and putting these teams right in the middle makes sense.
• There’s North Carolina markets that are tempting, like Raleigh or Greensboro, but these teams are probably irked by the trip south to Richmond as it is.

High-A expansion

Again, since the three High-A leagues are so geographically clustered (Carolina, California, and Florida), the only real option is to take two Low-A teams in the Carolina League and move them into the South Atlantic league. There’s several decent options; two teams in the Charlotte suburbs, Charleston (which used to be High-A before the re-org), Myrtle Beach (same), Columbia, South Carolina, or even Fredericksburg. These were all solid High-A markets before getting “demoted” and some could get the call.

Low-A expansion and below

Because we’ve poached so many east coast teams, we’d have to basically “find” two new markets somewhere in the mid-Atlantic coast to replace the two lost Low-A franchises.

Both would make sense in Virginia; one in Charlottesville, one in Ashburn/Leesburg? Or, you could go find some closed Short-A teams that make sense (though many of them are now lost to time).

Lastly, some teams have rookie teams outside of their complexes; if these two teams wanted to go that route they could put teams in two non-served western markets Casper WY and Fort Collins.

---

Anyway, this kind of empties the notebook on a text file I’ve had sitting around for a decade. Thoughts? Interesting?

We talked about Manfred’s expansion floating last week, and lots of pundits out there are doing the same thought exercises related to where two new teams might pop up (Salt Lake City and Nashville … or maybe Portland and Charlotte), and then how we’d realign to go to an NFL-style 8 division format.

However, I got fed a little interview with John Smoltz, hall of fame Braves pitcher and now excellent broadcaster, and he had some awesome ideas.

Here’s his proposal:

Fewer Divisions, not More.

Don’t go 8 divisions of 4 teams each … go 4 divisions of 8 teams each. Then, keep the divisional focus in scheduling and make the adjustments so you’re more geographically sound. So, borrowing from my previous post, we could combine some of my proposed divisions to look something like this

• AL East/Southeast: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore plus Kansas City, Colorado, Houston, Texas
• AL Central/West: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA, Oakland/Las Vegas
• NL East/Southeast: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington and Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta
• NL Central/West: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis and LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco

Honestly, i’d just abandon the geographical terms and go with some NHL-style division names. I’d probably pick four historical names for the divisions with ties to one of the teams in that division.

• the AL Ruth Division for the AL East
• the AL Cobb Division for the Central/West
• the NL Aaron Division for the NL East division
• the NL Mays Division for the NL Central/West

Each team in these divisions play each other in 3 home/away series (that makes for 18 games * 7 opponents = 126 games), then you get one 3-game set against each team in opposite AL division alternating home/away year by year (8*3 = 24 games), then that leaves 12 games/4 series that can either go against your designated NL rival or maybe like the NFL you rotate around chunks of the opposite league and play exactly 4 of them each year on a rotating basis. Something like this.

However, this isn’t the awesome part.

Declare First Half and Second half winners!

Brilliant. Winners of both halves get byes in the October playoffs, then are joined with Wild Cards determined somehow (that’s the hard part).

The real brilliance is this: by having a first half and a second half, you get stuff we don’t have now:

• A playoff race from Mid June to Mid July that we don’t have now with real implications.
• Another playoff race at the end of the year which we have now. We have a playoff race now of course in September, but this one won’t have the same feel since the first half winners won’t be part of it necessarily.
• Teams that finished dead last in the first half don’t have to “give up” at the trade deadline and can regroup. This is his big reason: he’s tired of seeing teams give up in July.
• If a team wins both halves, they get a playoff bye or some other incentive.
• Wild Cards can be given based on several factors; 2nd place teams in the races, or if a team manages to have the best overall record but doesn’t win either half they are guaranteed a playoff spot as well.

Let’s assume that we want the same number of playoff teams that the 32-team expansion/NFL style schedule dictates; that being 6 teams. Here’s how this could look:

• AL East 1st Half Winner
• AL East 2nd Half Winner
• AL West 1st Half Winner
• AL West 2nd Half Winner
• Two AL Wild Cards: the two teams with the best full season records, or perhaps the two teams with the best individual half records.

Playoffs could go like this

• Two best half records get byes. If they’re the same team, go to next best team.
• If same team wins both halves, you’d go with 2nd best team.
• Wild cards play into the two lowest ranked half winning teams.

It would take some noodling to figure out the wildcards honestly. Maybe you just go 1st half winner versus 2nd half winner and eliminate wildcards … though this is a revenue non-starter since playoffs generate so much cash for the owners.

Some thoughts.

what do you th ink? Do you like half winners?

MLB’s commissioner has long been on the record saying that, once the league resolved the two big stadium issues it has had (Oakland and Tampa Bay), that they’d pursue expansion. He’s been saying this for years, and as recently as mid-2023 intimated the same. In fact, I wrote a big chunk of this article in February of 2024, the last time Manfred really went off on this topic. However, His most recent comments on the topic, made this week at the LLWS, included another hyper-parsed comment related to expansion giving the league a chance to “geographically realign,” code-word for “big time changes” that has the industry buzzing … and not in a good way.

With Tampa Bay now having a $1.3B plan for a new stadium in St. Petersburg, and with Oakland’s move to Las Vegas approved and a $1.5b stadium approved, we’re getting really close to the point where all 30 existing teams play in “acceptable” stadiums (ignoring for the moment the fact that Kansas City and the White Sox are now both clamoring for new stadiums). Manfred just stated that he wants to retire in 2029 AND have expansion plans in place before he retires … so we kind of have a roadmap for expansion.

So lets talk about MLB expansion. The league has sat at 30 teams for decades, which has lead to weird divisional alignments for all this time, for unbalanced schedules where there’s interleague play every day, and for odd wild-card scenarios. The NFL has 32 teams and a very neat eight division structure that MLB seems to want to emulate. Furthermore, Manfred’s latest claims, coupled with some recent Media landscape changes, has another interesting wrinkle: the possible alteration of the league structure of Baseball to move more towards an “Eastern” and “Western” league structure. This is how the NBA and NHL do things, and it cuts down on cross-country travel significantly for teams. So, we’re now talking about the possible death of the American and National leagues, which have been around for 120+ and 140+ years respectively. This is no light talking point.

Why does a geographically balanced schedule appeal to Manfred and the owners? Well, it certainly could cut down on travel costs. Here’s a quick example of an NBA team’s schedule: They play 82 games a year (which you could neatly double to see what an MLB team might look like):

• You play the four teams in your division four times each: 16 games
• You play the other ten teams in your conference at least three times each 30 games
• You play a select few conferences teams one additional time: 6 more games.
• You play the opposite conference two times each: 30 games

So, out of the 82 games, teams only travel across the Mississippi river 15 times, and many of those trips are planned out so that teams hit multiple non-conference opponents in a row. For example, when looking at the Washington Wizards 2025-26 schedule, you’ll see trips like what they take between March 25th-March 30th, where they play at, in order, Utah, Golden State, Portland, and Los Angeles. On another trip in Jan 2026, they’ll play in order at Phoenix, at LA, at Sacramento, and at Denver in a row. That’s basically every West Coast game done in two 6-day trips. MLB would LOVE to be able to do this, instead of forcing the Nats to do what they do now: a 4-game trip just to Denver then home, then a week in Seattle & Arizona, then 9 days in California in June, then 3 days in San Francisco in August, etc.

I looked at the topic of expansion more than a decade ago in this space, noting that adding 2 teams made more sense than mass realignment. At the time, I noted that the two biggest markets without baseball were Portland and San Antonio/Austin, while pointing out the challenges that Montreal/Vancouver would face, and kind of passing over Charlotte/Research Triangle.

So, a decade later, who are the leading candidate cities? Things have changed. We now have some familiar names from consideration and a couple new ones. ESPN just did a very nice deep-dive into all these areas that’s worth reading, if you want to really hear the pros and cons of each market.

Here’s the list, in likely order of getting a team (Note: in a first draft of this article done several years ago, las Vegas was the #1 option … now they’ve gotten a team, so we’ve moved to the next two.

• Nashville
• Salt Lake City
• (seemingly a gap)
• Portland
• Austin/San Antonio
• Charlotte
• Raleigh/Durham
• Montreal
• Vancouver
• Orlando
• Sacramento
• San Jose
• Mexico City

So here’s some thoughts on each:

• It seems like the front runners are Nashville for sure and either Portland or Salt Lake City right now, altogether for a bunch of independent reasons. One in the East, one in the West. One in the kind-of-underserved NC/TN middle Atlantic area to serve the fan base between DC and Atlanta, and one in an underserved sports market Portland/SLC. Jeff Passan’s recent analysis gives a deep dive into why SLC is in the mix suddenly. Nashville and Salt Lake City are both ranked in the 20s in terms of MSA and TV markets, which makes them “small markets” if they get teams … but there are no big cities anymore.
• Portland could be the #1 alternative to SLC as the ‘west coast’ selection, and would solve a bunch of issues in that city … but there are ownership group concerns. It also barely has baseball now; it doens’t have a minor league team in the city itself, and the area only supports a High-A team and some wood-bat summer teams.
• Salt Lake, it should be noted, is smaller than Milwaukee, the current 30th ranked team in the sport. Would that be a factor?
• The San Antonio/Austin would seem like a shoe-in, given that its a huge market and in a baseball hotbed, but seems too close to Houston. Plus … is it in San Antonio or in Austin? You can’t stick a team in some dinky town like New Braunfels or San Marcos and cater to both markets … no a stadium has to be center-city to take advantage of the downtown culture in order to be successful in the modern game.
• Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham are great choices but seem to be “behind” Nashville for whatever reason. Charlotte has the NFL and NBA, has Nascar, has a ton of money. It’s also the biggest US market w/o baseball by population. Nobody would be surprised if it supplanted Nashville as the “east coast” expansion team.
• Montreal, for reasons I don’t really understand, continues to be thrown about as a possible location despite reams of evidence that it can’t/won’t support baseball. However, it remains in the discussion b/c it is, by far, the largest population market in the US or Canada without MLB baseball.
• Vancouver doesn’t really seem to be in the discussion right now but are listed as an option in some places. I’ve seen people push back on Portland in Quora answers … and every argument anti-Portland people make works for Vancouver as well.
• Tampa and Miami barely draw, and Orlando is primarily a tourist town, so i’m not sure who would want to put another team there.
• I just can’t imagine Sacramento supporting a team; California’s government has proven to be very anti-public stadium funding, and they’d have to build something out of scratch in a market that basically exists to support the state government. It is on this list though b/c Sacramento is the largest market by DMA (tv rankings) w/o the sport.
• San Jose is completely blocked by San Francisco’s territory rights, as the Supreme Court told us a decade ago before it got even more conservative in the last presidential term. Nevermind that downtown San Jose is more than 55 miles away from Oracle Park in Downtown San Francisco along a corridor that’s amongst the heaviest traveled in the US. Distance from Downtown Baltimore to Nats stadium? 38.3 miles.
• Lastly I laugh at anyone who thinks that Mexico City could support a team, given that the median income in Mexico is a 6th of what it is here (somehow I don’t think MLB players in Mexico are going to accept being paid in pesos).

---

So, some navel gazing; what would 32 team divisions look like with two new teams in Nashville and Salt Lake City? It’d look pretty cool I think, if you’re not blowing up the leagues.

Current AL Divisional makeup:

• AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore, Tampa
• AL Central: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Kansas City
• AL West: Houston, Texas, Seattle, Los Angeles, Oakland/Las Vegas

So, you have to pull a team out of the East to make an “AL Southwest” division to go with Nashville. The obvious choice is Tampa. But, you also have two teams in the AL West that are in Texas while the rest are on the coast. That seems to imply that they’d make more sense to pair with this new group while Portland heads into a division with Seattle for rivalry purposes. But that leaves too many teams in the AL.

Meanwhile, here’s current NL Divisions:

• NL East: Philly, Atlanta, Washington, New York, Miami
• NL Central: Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis
• NL West: LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco, Colorado

Atlanta and Miami are kind of isolated from the Northeast corridor teams and make sense to yank out. Pittsburgh could move to create an in-division rivalry with fellow Pennsylvania state. But how do you balance this out?

Divisional Scenario #1: Here’s some proposed eight team divisions that prevents any teams from having to move from AL to NL:

• New AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore. Classic rivalries maintained, little impact.
• New AL Southeast: Tampa, Kansas City, Houston, Texas. You move KC to be closer to the Texas teams. Tampa the outlier, but this is least impact to the existing AL.
• New AL Central: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago. Minimal impact.
• New AL West: Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA Angels, Oakland/Las Vegas. You have your new Northwest rivalry and all the teams are in the same time-zone, which you can’t say now.
• New NL East: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington: you move Pittsburgh to create a new cool rivalry with Philadelphia and these teams can all take the train to play each other.
• New NL Central: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis; minimal impact, keep century-old rivalries alive.
• New NL Southeast: Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, Colorado; this would be perfect except for Colorado, which is difficult to place anywhere.
• New NL West: LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco; all four now in the correct time zone

---

Divisional Scenario #2: Now, if you weren’t opposed to having some AL->NL movement, you could put both new teams in the AL, move some teams to the NL, and create some better geographic divisions like this:

• New AL East: Boston, Toronto, New York, Baltimore.
• New AL Central: Minnesota, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago
• New AL Southwest: Kansas City, Colorado, Houston, Texas. Colorado is forced to move to the AL, but gets the best ever regional travel schedule its ever had.
• New AL West: Seattle, Salt Lake City, LA, Oakland/Las Vegas
• New NL East: Philly, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington
• New NL Southeast: Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta. Tampa is forced to move to the NL, but you get a division where all four teams are on the same Interstate (I-75).
• New NL Central: Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis
• New NL West: LA, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco

I love this second scenario honestly. Minimal teams changing leagues (just two newer teams in Tampa and Colorado having to move leagues) and a ton of improvements in geographic rivalries.

---

Divisional Scenario #3: Manfred’s East/West conference layout, destroying current leagues, may look something like the following. First, we squint at the map of the teams to figure out the 16 teams in each conference:

• Eastern Conference: Boston, Toronto, NYY, Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh, NYM, Washington, Detroit, Cleveland, Miami, Tampa, Nashville, Atlanta, Cincy, Milwaukee
• Western Conference: LAA, LAD, Arizona, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Salt Lake, Oakland/Las Vegas, Colorado, Houston, Texas, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minnesota, Chicago, Chicago

So, right off the bat, you have an issue here: The two Chicago teams in the “Western conference” seems silly. But, if you look at the distribution of teams geographically … you have to draw the line at Chicago. And, if you were giving up on leagues, might as well give up on divisional splits too:

• New Eastern Division 1: New York, New York, Boston, Toronto
• New Eastern Division 2: Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philly
• New Eastern Division 3: Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Nashville
• New Eastern Division 4: Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cincinnati
• New Western Division 1: Houston, Texas, Colorado, Kansas City
• New Western Division 2: LA, LA, San Diego, Arizona
• New Western Division 3: SF, Oakland/Las Vegas, Seattle, Salt Lake City
• New Western Division 4: St. Louis, Minnesota, Chicago, Chicago

Can you imagine the two New York teams, or the two Chicago teams, playing each other 18 times a year? Can you imagine us playing Baltimore 18 times a year? Can you imagine having both NY teams, Boston, and Toronto in one division, ensuring that the likelihood of two of them missing the playoffs every year is high? Does this alignment ensure Atlanta wins the next 20 divisional titles out of that group?

A final thought; when MLB introduced simple rule changes to improve the sport’s presence on TV, purists lost their minds. Imagine the fight baseball will have with the soul of its purist fanbase if/when they push to eliminate divisions or leagues? I just can’t imagine the damage they’ll do to the fan base if they decided to blow up 140 years of history so the owners can save a few bucks on airline fuel.

Conclusions: Do I “want” expansion? Sure. Two more teams means more MLB opportunities for players plus another dozen minor league teams, which turns into hundreds more jobs for players. It also opens the door for new markets, more fans, better reach, etc. I have a whole detailed analysis of how we’d come up with two new sets of minor league teams for two expansion clubs that will wait until we’re closer to it.

Do I want the elimination of leagues to do “geographic realignment?” Of course not. We live in 2025, not 1925; these players travel on private jets, not coal-fired overnight trains. But I do think my #2 scenario above makes the most sense (moving Colorado and Tampa leagues and adding two new teams) is the best.

I wrote this post the day the event happened, but we’ve had one thing after another and now its 3 weeks on. None the less, it’s still a topic i’m pretty passionate about, so lets post this.

So, the MLB commissioner (who works for the owners, lest we forget) is apparently making the rounds of MLB clubhouses to start putting a little nugget into the players’ minds ahead of the next collective bargaining session, and that nugget is simple: the sport needs a Salary Cap. He’s doing this to provide “cover” for the high likelihood of a lockout at the end of the 2026 CBA, one which baseball insider Ken Rosenthal already puts as a 90% likelihood.

And, when Manfred went to the Phillies clubhouse, one filled with veterans and highly-paid superstars, Bryce Harper told him to get the f*ck out.

Now, Harper is a lightning rod in the sport, and has been since he was 16. He’s hot headed, he gets ejected a lot. He’s been in fights on the field. So, I can understand if you immediately thought it was one more example of him being a hot-head. But, in this instance Is Harper right?

Yeah he is, because as usual the commissioner being disingenuous and is selling something that the owners want, and which won’t help the players as much as he’s claiming.

First, lets lay down some basic Macro Economic facts about Baseball.

• MLB generated $12.1B in revenue last year
• The 30 team’s combined payroll for 2024 was $4.89B
• There’s a soft cap in place now, with no floor and specious penalties for teams who don’t spend enough.

So, the players are currently getting paid right around 40% of total revenues in combined salary. If you want to add in a few more million per team to cover its 150 or so minor leagues collectively, fine, but it doesn’t really change the overall economic argument.

The other three major leagues in North America all have salary caps (as the commissioner will remind you), but the other three also have defined percentages of revenues that go to the players AND they have salary floors. Lets go league by league:

The NBA has a soft cap with exceptions and taxes built in:

• their CBA calls for players to get 51% of “basketball related income” or BRI
• In 2024, the salary cap is $140M
• in 2024, the salary floor is $126M
• But, teams can go over the cap to sign their own players and are then taxed at differing levels going north at $170M and upwards in a very complex system that is covered well on this wiki page.

Not for nothing, but there’s a NBA salary FLOOR of $126m, for basically 12 active players a night. Meanwhile, there’s 12 of the 30 MLB teams that aren’t spending that much right now … for 26 guys.

The NFL has a hard cap system in place:

• The hard cap in 2024 was $255M, which is increasing to $279M for 2025.
• There is a defined salary cap floor; 89% of the cap over a rolling four year period.
• The split between owners and players is supposed to be 50/50, though tactics by the owners now have that at more like a 52/48% to the players. Still a lot more than 40%.

Lastly, the NHL also has a hard cap with a floor and a defined revenue split in place:

• The Hockey CBA calls for a 50/50 split of all “hockey related revenues” or HRR
• There’s an $88.5M cap and a $65M floor defined in the CBA for 2024

---

So, Mr. Manfred, you want a salary cap in MLB? Fine. But it should come with two stipulations:

• if there’s a cap, there needs to be a floor.
• if there’s a cap, it needs to come with a defined percentage of revenues to the players that’s adjusted annually to league revenues.

Good luck pitching that to owners, because there’s no way they’ll agree to it. The Owners want to have their cake and eat it too, per normal. Which is why it’ll never happen voluntarily, and why we probably face a work stoppage after this CBA expires as the owners push for it.

Let’s say for sake of argument that the players demand 50% of revenues. Only seems fair right? Every other pro league in the continent basically has a 50/50 split, and without the players there’s no game. Lets forget for a moment that only 1 or 2 teams make their books public (Toronto and Atlanta as publicly traded teams); the rest have private books where they claim they’re losing millions while watching their franchise values grow exponentially over time. Some teams own their own RSNs and net hundreds of millions more in revenues that are completely off the books and out of the public eye. In all likelihood the quoted annual revenue figure is an estimate and is likely low, but for the sake of the rest of this article I’m going to trust the $12.1B revenue figure for the industry.

Lets do some simple arithmetic:

• 50% of $12.1B in revenues is $6.05B
• If the players were given 50% of revenues, then $6.05B split into 30 teams = an average payroll of $201M per team.
• Right now, the average payroll in the league is $163M. The median team income is even lower thanks to massive spending at the top; just $142M.
• Only 10 teams out of the 30 even hit $200M this year, and 5 teams don’t even hit $100M.

You want a salary cap? Fine: then basically every team needs to increase its payroll right now around $40M to make up for the missing money across the entire industry. That would instantly make up the $1.2B gap between a 40% revenue split and a 50% revenue split. Commit to an NFL-style rolling four-year salary floor structure where teams have to spend 89% of the salary cap over a rolling period; this would theoretically allow teams to purposely spend less to rebuild, but then would force them to catch back up and play by the rules. But, if the teams attempt to cheat (ahem Miami), then that money still has to be paid to the players somehow, and there needs to be enforced penalties that actually hurt the team.

Does anyone here think any small market team like Pittsburgh, or Miami, or Tampa, or wherever the Athletics are right now are onboard for an average payroll of $200M? Or, even to be forced to increase spending $40M right now? Of course not. Which is why a salary cap without a floor or a revenue split is NEVER going to be fair to the players.

By the way, none of this is news. This payroll discrepancy issue has been the case ever since the Luxury tax went into effect. An entire generation of middle-aged players on the wrong side of 30 suddenly disappeared out of the game once the luxury tax started because it gave cover to teams to basically stop spending. Multiple times there’s been grievances filed by the MLBPA against teams for not even spending their revenue sharing dollars, and one team (Miami) has been so audacious in their skirting of the rules that they don’t even bother to try to adhere to the guidelines. There’s basically no penalties being levied for teams that are cheating, and at the end of the day the collective payroll of the players takes the cut.

Meanwhile, every time a player actually gets paid … the next chorus of “players are overpaid” nonsense comes from a certain part of the fan base, who have been conditioned by ownership over decades of labor fights to look at these 8-figure deals (while simultaneously looking at their own 5-figure salaries) and blame players for being “greedy” every time this issue comes up. If you’ve ever said to yourself, “why does Juan Soto need $70M/year?” then you’re buying into the owner’s game as well. You can’t look at one individual player’s contract; you have to look at the industry as a whole, and owners have short-changed players billions of dollars of salary over the past decade. Billions and Billions of dollars.

(Also, if you want to complain about baseball players being “overpaid” just go take a look at the NBA per-season salaries … and take a look at the number of guys making $30M/year or more who literally you couldn’t pick out of a lineup. There’s 60 players in the NBA making $30M/year or more, which is more than double that of the current MLB despite having a fraction of the players. Except … this is what the players there deserve, since the league makes so much money. This is where dozens more baseball players should be).

So, when Manfred comes to peddle his nonsense, the players absolutely should tell him to “get the f*ck out” unless he wants to have a legitimate conversation about how a cap, and a floor, and a revenue split, would be discussed.

The third of the “big 3” scouting/prospect ranking shops (BA, Fangraphs, and MLBpipeline) updated and published its system top 30s this week, so following on similar analysis with the other two shops published, I thought i’d put out a review. So, here’s a look at how Mayo/Callis and the team at the MLB Pipeline shop viewed our draft haul, along with some tweaks they made while they had our system cracked open this month.

Click here for the updated list. Top 30+ list is in a table below.

Rank	First Name	Last Name	Position
1	Eli	Willits	SS
2	Travis	Sykora	RHP (Starter)
3	Jarlin	Susana	RHP (Starter)
4	Luke	Dickerson	SS/CF
5	Alex	Clemmey	LHP (Starter)
6	Landon	Harmon	RHP
7	Seaver	King	SS
8	Ethan	Petry	1B/OF
9	Coy	James	SS
10	Cade	Cavalli	RHP (Starter)
11	Jake	Bennett	LHP (Starter)
12	Caleb	Lomavita	C
13	Robert	Hassell III	OF (CF)
14	Christian	Franklin	OF (CF)
15	Angel	Feliz	3B/SS
16	Sean Paul	Linan	RHP (Starter)
17	Miguel	Sime Jr.	RHP
18	Ronny	Cruz	SS
19	Eriq	Swan	RHP (Starter)
20	Yohandy	Morales	3B
21	Jackson	Kent	LHP (Starter)
22	Andry	Lara	RHP (Starter)
23	Yoel	Tejeda Jr.	RHP (Starter)
24	Brayan	Cortesia	SS
25	Daniel	Hernandez	C
26	Sam	Peterson	OF (CF)
27	Cristian	Vaquero	OF (CF)
28	Marconi	German	SS
29	Randall	Josh	RHP (Starter)
30	Tyler	Stuart	RHP (Starter)
31	Victor	Hurtado	OF
32	Beeter	Clayton	RHP (Reliever)
33	Cayden	Wallace	2B/3B
34	Kevin	Bazzell	C/3B
35	Kevin	Made	SS
36	Sir Jamison	Jones	CA
37	Marquis	Grissom	RHP (Reliever)
38	Elijah	Green	OF (CF)
39	Andrew	Pinckney	OF (Corner)
40	Orlando	Ribalta	RHP (reliever)

Wait, you said MLB top 30; why are there 40 names on this list? Well, because between the draft and the trade deadline we managed to add 10 players to our top 30 list (plus an 11th who now sits in the mid 30s), and I just tacked on the next 10 players who used to be ranked a month ago to get our “top 40” instead of the top 30.

I suppose the biggest point here is this: we added 10-11 names to our top 30 prospect list within a couple weeks of each other, replacing 7-8 names who we’ve graduated this year, which is great news. Not all of these guys are going to pan out, but they’re ranked higher than the names we used to have in these spots for exactly one reason: they’re better players. If we “hit” on these 2025 draft picks in particular, we may be sitting pretty at some point soon.

The MLBpipeline team didn’t do a ton of fiddling around with the existing players ranked in the top 20 (so, for example, no dropping Sykora based on new TJ news), but in the 20-30 range we did see some movement up or down, which I’ll highlight below.

So, here’s some commentary, mostly on the 10-11 new guys:

• First, a quick overview of the prospects who have graduated this year: in rough order of where they were ranked: Crews, House, Lile, Lord, Henry, Rutledge. And we’re darn close on Hassell and Ribalta. So, not a bad year for “using” the farm system.
• Willits enters our system as its #1 ranked prospect, immediately supplanting both Sykora and Susana. Would I have ranked him above a healthy Sykora? No. But this is pretty consistent with where other shops are putting Willits. Fangraphs had him below both Sykora and Susana, others all have him starting #1 for us.
• Here’s where Willits is being ranked in the entire minors before he plays a game: MLBPipeline #18, Baseball America #30, Fangraphs #44, Keith Law #48. So, yeah this is a big-time prospect.
• 2025 Draftees Harmon (3rd rounder), Petry (2nd rounder) and James (5th rounder) all pop into our top 10 list as a starting point. This is more aggressive than where BA or Fangraphs put these other three guys. The final 2025 draftee getting a $2M bonus was NYC hurler Sime, coming in at #17.
• Our Trade deadline netted us 10 prospects, six of which appear in the top 30-35 range on MLB’s list. The highest ranking is AAA OF Christian Franklin, who comes in at #14 in the system.
• Linan, Cruz, and Swan all pop in to our rankings in the 16-19 range as a starter.
• Kent got moved up roughly 8 spots in the new rankings, a nod to his decent pro debut in High-A.
• The team moved up Brayan Cortesia a few spots to account for his .327/.447/.374 line in the DSL as of this writing.
• Sam Peterson is starting to get some notice, sitting #26 now, but with the influx of players below him this indicates a roughly 12-13 spot rise this year.
• Vaquero’s .914 OPS month has bought him some prospect love: he still sits in the low 20s but has maintained that spot with all the acquisitions.
• A debut for DSL star Marconi German, who has 8 homers and 26 SBs in 47 DSL games this year.
• Tyler Stuart takes a dive; he was #15 a few weeks ago, got TJ surgery, now he’s #30.

In the 31-40 range i just tacked on players who were in the top 30 before all the trade and draft acquisitions, but who are now moved out. Here’s some notables:

• Hurtado now at #31; the $2.8M signing is being outshined by Marconi and Cortesia as he repeats DSL.
• the final trade acquisition who was ranked at all is Better, showing up now at #32 after getting pushed down by our 5 draftees.
• Cayden Wallace, who I ranked #7 pre-season, now is #33 on this list. Phew.
• Kevin Bazzell, who we drafted last year to some promise, has done so little this year that he’s now out of the top 30.
• Elijah Green now sits at #38 on this list.
• Is Andrew Pinckney “only” the 39th best prospect in the system? A 24yr old in his second AAA season, who can play CF and might finish the season with 20 homers? What am I missing here?