Nationals Arm Race

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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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

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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.

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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

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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?

I had a great idea this draft cycle. How do we tell which mock draft pundits actually do the best job of predicting the draft? Since I’ve got such hyper coverage of the draft going back a few years, this post circles back to the past few drafts, posts the actual top five players picked, then posts the final mock draft predicted top 5 from major pundits to see who is getting these things right. For the most part I have the same 8 pundits who do mocks going back to 2020.

I’ll include links to past content from this blog, which generally had links to the mock drafts leading up all the way to draft day. In each section there’s:

• Actual Draft top 5 link, which goes to baseball-reference.com’s draft database for that year.
• The Major Pundit final mock post here on nationalsarmrace.com from the day of the draft.
• Then, pundit by pundit a direct link to their final mocks published.

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2025 Draft: Actual top 5: Willits, Bremner, Anderson, Holliday, Doyle

Major Pundit final mocks

• Keith Law/The Athletic: 7/12/25 final mock: Anderson, Hernandez, Arquette, Holliday, Willits (3/5)
• Jim Callis/MLBPipeline 7/13/25 Final Mock: Anderson, Doyle, Hernandez, Holliday, Willits (4/5)
• Jonathan Mayo/MLBPipeline: 7/13/25 Final Mock: Anderson, Doyle, Hernandez, Holliday, Willits (4/5)
• Baseball America Staff. Final Mock 7.0 7/13/25: Anderson, Doyle, Hernandez, Holliday, Willits (4/5)
• ESPN/Kiley McDaniel: Mock 3.0 7/10/25: Anderson, Doyle, Hernandez, Holliday, Willits (4/5)
• Fangraphs/Eric Longenhagen: 2025 Mock 7/13/25: Willits, Doyle, Holliday, Anderson, Carlson (4/5)
• Mike Axisa/CBSSports First Round Prediction 7/13/25: Anderson, Doyle, Irish, Holliday, Willits (4/5)
• BleacherReport/Reuter: 7/12/25 final mock: Anderson, Doyle, Arquette, Holliday Willits (4/5)
• Prospects 1500: Final Mock 7/13/25: Anderson, Arnold, Hernandez, Holliday, Willits (3/5)
• Prospects Live Final Mock 7/12/25: Anderson, Doyle, Hernandez, Holliday, Arnold (3/5)
• Baseball Prospect Journal: Mock 4.0 7/20/25: Anderson, Arnold, Arquette, Holliday, Willits (3/5)

What Happened? Well, the ONLY pundit to have the Nats taking Willits 1-1 in the end was Longenhagen, but then the rest of his top 5 was way off. Willits was in nearly everyone’s top 5, but primarily going 5th to the Cards. Mostly everyone had Holliday-Colorado, but Bremner at #2 was a massive shock. The Nats parting ways with their GM a week before the draft seemed to grease the skids to go with youth versus polish, and hence the near consensus 1-1 Anderson slipped to the Mariners, who were probably shocked and ecstatic at the development. Guys frequently mentioned in the top5 all spring who slipped out: Arquette slipped to #7, Hernandez to #6, and Arnold all the way to the Athletics at #11.

Who was Closest? Longenhagen the only one to get Willits right. Most of the pundits got 4 of the top 5 right ultimately, but not in the correct order. Nobody had Bremner in the top 5.

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2024 Draft: Actual top 5: Bazzana, Burns, Condon, Kurtz, Hagen Smith.

Major Pundit final mocks:

• The Athletic/Keith Law’s Final Mock 7/14: Bazzana, Condon, Burns, Montgomery, Caglianone. (3/5)
• MLBPipeline/Jim Callis Final Mock 7/14: Wetherholt, Condon, Burns, Bazzana, Griffin (3/5)
• MLBpipeline/Mayo Final Mock 7/14: Wetherholt, Condon, Burns, Bazzana, Montgomery (3/5)
• Baseball America/Collazo Final Mock 7/14: Wetherholt, Condon, Burns, Bazzana, Caglianone (3/5)
• ESPN/KIley McDaniel Final Mock 3.1 7/14/24: Bazzana, Condon, Burns, Wetherholt, Caglianone (3/5)
• Fangraphs/Longenhagen Mock 7/11/24: Bazzana, Condon, Burns, Montgomery, Caglianone. (3/5)
• CBSsports/Mike Axisa: Final Mock 7/14/25: Bazzana, Condon, Smith, Montgomery, Caglianone (3/5)
• BleacherReport/Reuter final mock 7/13/24: Bazzana, Condon, Burns, Montgomery, Caglianone. (3/5)

What happened? Bazzana surprised many and took a haircut off the 1-1 draft slot, but word had gotten out by draft day so the best connected pundits knew. Everyone had Condon & Burns , though not in the right order. Oakland at #4 was “on” Kurtz for a while, then the industry thought they backed off, but they picked him anyway, and nobody had him in their mocks. The joke is on the industry; Kurtz is destroying MLB pitching this year for the Athletics and had a famous 4-home run game a few weeks ago. Lastly the Smith pick was a shock to everyone. Montgomery and his broken leg was in most people’s top 3; he ended up slipping past the Nats to #12.

Who was Closest? So, most everyone got 3 out of 5, with nearly everyone having the same three names at the top. Props to those who didn’t have Wetherholt going 1-1 as the “winners” of this mock draft cycle.

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2023 Draft: Actual top 5: Skenes, Crews, Clark, Langford, Jenkins.

Major Pundit final mocks (I did not do a mock draft collection in 2023)

• The Athletic/Keith Law Final Mock: Langford, Skenes, Crews, Clark, Gonzalez (4/5)
• MLBPipeline/Jim Callis Final Mock: Langford, Skenes, Crews, Clark, Jenkins (5/5)
• MLBpipeline/Jonathan Mayo Final Mock: Langford, Skenes, Crews, Clark, Gonzalez (4/5)
• Baseball America/Carlos Collazo final Mock 7/9/23: Langford, Skenes, Crews, Clark, Jenkins (5/5)
• ESPN/KIley McDaniel final mock v3.1 7/9/23: Langford, Skenes, Crews, Clark, Gonzalez (4/5)
• Fangraphs/Longenhagen mock v2.0 7/9/23: Langford, Skenes, Crews, Jenkins, Clark (5/5)
• CBSsports/Mike Axisa: final mock 7/9/23: Crews, Skenes, Langford, Clark, Teel (4/5)
• BleacherReport/Joel Reuter final mock 7/8/23: Skenes, Crews, Langford, Clark, Gonzalez (4/5)

What happened? The industry was convinced that the cheapskate Pirates were shying away from bonus demands from Crews/Boras and wanted a bat over an arm, leading them to Langford. Instead, on draft day Pittsburgh stayed true to their board and took the consensus 1-1 pick in Skenes, which then cascaded Crews to us at #2. Langford blew through the minors and looked like a steal for Texas as #4.

Who was Closest? Several pundits got the top 5 right, but only Bleacher Report had Skenes correctly going 1-1. Interestingly, the player most missed with (Gonzalez) fell to 15th in the draft (??), a weird set of events.

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2022 Draft: Actual top 5: Holliday, Jones, Rocker, Johnson, Green

Major Pundit final mocks

• Keith Law final mock 7/16/22: Holliday, Jones, Green, Collier, Nats take Parada (3/5)
• MLBpipeline Callis final mock 7/17/22: Jones, Holliday, Green, Johnson, Nats take Parada (4/5)
• MLBpipeline Mayo final mock 7/17/22: Jones, Holliday, Parada, Johnson, Nats take Lee. (3/5)
• Baseball America: Final Mock 7/15/22: Holliday, Jones, Parada, Johnson, Nats take Green. (4/5)
• ESPN McDaniel mock 3.0 7/15/22: Jones, Holliday, Parada, Collier, Nats take Berry. (2/5)
• Fangraphs/Longenhagen: mock 7/17/22: Johnson, Jones, Holliday, Neto, Nats take Parada (3/5)
• CBSsports Mike Axisa final mock 7/14/22: Johnson, Jones, Holliday, Collier, Nats take Green (4/5)
• Bleacher Report/Reuter: 7/16/22 final mock: Jones, Holliday, Johnson, Collier, Nats take Parada (3/5)

What happened? Most of the pundits got this relatively close, though there was a lot of mention of Kevin Parada in the top 5 (he ended up going 11th). Everyone had Holliday-Jones going 1-2. Some had Brooks Lee or Cam Collier in the top 5: Lee slipped to 8th while Collier went 18th (how do you go from a top 5 pick to 18th?)

Who was Closest? Baseball America was probably the closest here, getting four of the top 5, correctly predicting 1-2, and getting the Nats’ Green pick.

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2021 Draft: Actual top 5: Davis, Leiter, Jobe, Mayer, Cowser. Nats at 11 get House.

Major Pundit final mocks

• The Atlantic (Keith Law) Mock 7/9/21: Mayer, Rocker, Leiter, Davis, Watson. Nats land Jobe (3/5)
• MLBPipeline (Callis) Final Mock 7/10/21: Mayer, Leiter, Jobe, Davis, Watson. Nats take Bednar. (4/5)
• MLBPipeline (Mayo) Final Mock 7/10/21: Mayer, Leiter, House, Davis, Watson. Nats get Madden (3/5)
• Baseball America v7.0 day of: Mayer, Watson, Jobe, Leiter, Lawlar. Nats take Madden (3/5)
• ESPN/McDaniel: 7/11/21 mock: Mayer, Leiter, Jobe, Davis, Watson. Nats take Madden (4/5)
• Fangraphs/Longenhagen day-of Mock 3.0: Mayer, Leiter, Jobe, Davis, Lawlar. Nats go Madden (4/5)
• CBSsports (Axisa) Mock 7/9/21: Mayer, Lawlar, House, Leiter, Davis. Nats take Jobe (3/5)
• Bleacher Report (Reuter) mock 7/11/21: Meyer, Lawlar, Jobe, Leiter, Cowser. Nats Madden (3/5)

What happened? Pittsburgh got a big haircut off of Henry Davis at 1-1, which threw off everyone’s mock draft. Then, Rocker inexplicably slipped to #11 and the Mets, where he infamously didn’t sign due to arguments about medicals. For whatever reason, House slipped all the way to the Nats at #11 and we nabbed him, in a series of moves similar to the Rendon draft. Ty Madden, who many of the pundits had the Nats taking at #11, didn’t go until the 32nd overall pick and just made his MLB debut.

Who was Closest? Jim Callis, Longenhagen and McDaniel hit on their first four picks, just getting them in the wrong order. Props to Reuter for being the only one to mention Cowser who goes 5th

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2020 Draft: Actual top 5: Torkelson, Kierstad, Meyer, Lacy, Martin. Nats at #22 get Cavalli.

Major Pundit final mocks

• The Athletic (Keith Law) 6/10/20 Final Mock: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Meyer (4/5)
• MLBpipeline (Jim Callis) 6/10/20 final mock draft: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Meyer. (4/5)
• MLBpipeline (Jonathan Mayo) 6/10/20 final mock draft: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Meyer. (4/5)
• Baseball America (Collazo) 6/10/20 final Mock Draft v8.0 ; Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Meyer (4/5)
• ESPN (Kiley McDaniel) 6/10/20 final mock draft: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Hancock, Meyer (4/5)
• Fangraphs (Eric Longenhagen) Mock 3.0 6/10/20: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Meyer (4/5)
• CBSSports (Mike Axisa): 6/9/20 final mock: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Hancock.  (3/5)
• Bleacher Report (Reuter): 6/10/20 final mock: Torkelson, Martin, Lacy, Veen, Meyer (4/5)

What happened? In the weird Covid year, most all the pundits were really “on” this draft, getting 4 of the top 5 correct. Everyone missed on the Orioles taking Kierstad at #2 and for good reason: He took $1.5M or so off his asking price, a deal no one could have known about.

Who was Closest? Nearly all our major pundits got 4 of 5 this year.

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Final scores? Adding up top-5 performance for the last six drafts:

• Keith Law/The Athletic: 20/30.
• Jim Callis/MLBPipeline 24/30
• Jonathan Mayo/MLBPipeline: 21/30
• Baseball America/Collazo 23/30
• ESPN/Kiley McDaniel: 21/30
• Fangraphs/Eric Longenhagen: 23/30
• Mike Axisa/CBSSports 21/30
• BleacherReport/Reuter: 21/30

So there you have it: Jim Callis is the best, closely followed by the BA’s Collazo and Fangraphs Longenhagen. Keith Law brings up the rear, having missed out on one fewer top-5 pick than the collection of Mayo, Axisa, and Reuter. Of course, it bears noting that the entire spread is 4 picks across 6 drafts, so maybe this isn’t as conclusive as I’m making it sound 🙂

Here’s the four month check-in with all our top 20 (and some) prospects. This mostly does a July focus on the prospects being mentioned, but sometimes mentions season-long stats, which are as of 8/1/25 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): Missed all of May and all of June with oblique issue, but is finally doing a rehab assignment in AAA and should be back soon. Was not hitting well before hand. Temperature: on ice, 2026 possibly a lost season.

#2 Travis Sykora RHP (Starter): What a turnaround; in a month’s time he went from a promotion to AA to needing Tommy John surgery. Temperature: on ice til 2027.

#3 Brady House 3B: Is now firmly entrenched as the 3B starter, improved his slash line in July to .270/.276/.392. Only walked once in the month; that has to improve. Needs more power too but he’s trending well. Temperature: Hot for making majors, warming up in the MLB.

#4 Jarlin Susana RHP (Starter). Seems to have dodged the TJ bullet so far with his UCL Sprain; done a few rehab starts and should be back in full-time action in AA by mid-August. Temperature: hopefully warming up soon.

# 5 Seaver King SS. Another awful month for King: .221/.282/.286. I just can’t help but think that he’s been over promoted. Yeah he was a 10th overall pick, from a big conference. But he’s just not cutting it in AA. It sure looks like we got screwed in this draft: Konnor Griffin (taken just before King) is now the #1 prospect in the entire minors per Baseball America and MLBpipeline. Rainer (taken just after us): #34 by MLBpipeline in Detroit’s system. Montgomery (the guy I really wanted): #26, in AA as well, .800 ops for the season jumping up 3 levels instead of getting over-promoted to AA before he was ready. *sigh*. Temperature: cold.

# 6 Yohandy Morales 1B got hot in a hurry in AAA: .292/.360/.510 slash in July. Nice. If he could present as a legitimate 1B/DH type in the majors, we could stop buying veteran retreads and hope they turn into a trade asset. His picture reminds me of the great Michael Morse, by the way. Temperature: warming up nicely.

#7 Cayden Wallace 2B/3B: improved in July from an awful June but is still bad: .219/.301/.356. MLBPipeline has dropped him 20-some spots in their rankings, and I can’t believe i ranked him #7 in the system this spring. Phew. Temperature: ice cold.

# 8 Cade Cavalli RHP (Starter): 0-5 with a 7.50 ERA, a 1.71 WHIP and a .340 BAA. We’re running out of excuses for Cavalli upon his return from 1.5 years off. Tommy John recovery isn’t 100% guaranteed. Temperature: Not impressing.

#9 Alex Clemmey LHP (Starter): only made 3 starts in July thanks to going to the Futures game. He took a small step back in those three starts but still was solid for the month. I wonder why the team hasn’t promoted him this year; its not like Wilmington is in a playoff race. Temperature: staying hot.

# 10 Robert Hassell III OF (CF): After getting demoted from MLB after his initial call up, Hassell didn’t do what many do (which is struggle, pout, or otherwise underperform): no: he frigging tore up AAA this month: .341/.439/.473. This has earned him a return to the majors and more playing time. Can’t ask for anything more. Temperature: scorching in July, now back in the show.

#11 Caleb Lomavita C: Not a great july: .246/.269/.338. First full pro season as the full time C in Wilmington may be wearing on him. Temperature: cool.

# 12 Luke Dickerson SS: has hit a wall in Low-A: he slashed just .197/.244/.276 for the month. He’s still starting, despite the promotion of rising prospect Angel Feliz. After such a promising start I sure hope he’s not hitting a wall already. Temperature: cold

# 13 Andry Lara RHP (Reliever): has been kept on the 26-man roster as the “Tanner Rainey” of 2025: the 8th guy out of 8 who only goes into the game if the team is winning or losing by more than 6 runs. Lots of “8-GF in an 8-1 loss” type logs. And he’s getting hit. While in AAA in July he wasn’t exactly Sandy Koufax either. Eh: he’s still only 22. Temperature: cold.

#14 Tyler Stuart RHP (Starter): He left his 6/28/25 start without getting out of the first, and it was announced this week he’s undergone Tommy John. Poof: see you in 2027. Temperature: on ice for a while.

#15 Daylen Lile OF (CF): he’s now exhausted rookie status with more than 150 PAs, and he’s holding down a starting job in the Nats outfield. He now has a 97 OPS+ for the season. Can’t argue with that for a 22yr old. Temperature: hot for getting there, warming up a bit.

#16 Kevin Bazzell C: finally found his footing at the plate this month: .288/.383/.327. Where’s the power? Zero homers this season in Low-A as a college Jr draftee from a big school. The team is keeping him as the Catcher nearly full time; just a few DH games so far. Temperature: warming.

#17 Jake Bennett LHP (Starter): They babied the hell out of him in his come back, but he’s now off rehab starts and back in AA where he belongs. First two AA starts? Not good. Shelled. He needs more time.. Temperature: cold for now, hopefully warms up.

#18 Brad Lord RHP (Starter/Reliever): basically the Nats’ 2nd best pitcher this year, and now with Soroka traded and Williams hurt will be in the rotation going forward. 18th rounder; in the rotation. Temperature: Red Hot all around.

#19 Angel Feliz SS: struggled in the last month of the FCL season (.191/.304/.294) but promoted up to Low-A nonetheless. He’ll split time at SS with Dickerson the rest of the way. Temperature: cooled off

#20 Andrew Pinckney OF (CF or corner): had a very solid AAA month: .284/.363/.556. 6 homers in 21 games. He can play any of the three OF positions and has essentially split his time almost equally amongst the three this season for Rochester. Is there something here? Temperature: warming

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In honor of the trade deadline. here’s the 10 prospects we’ve acquired with their season stats and levels. They’re listed in rough order of their prospect ranking:

• Linan, Sean Paul: SP: Age 20. 3-3, 2.78 ERA, 1.09 whip as a starter in low- and high-A.
• Franklin, Christian: OF (CF) Age 25, .265/.393/.427 in AAA. 8 HR, 12 SB playing CF fulltime
• Swan, Eriq: SP Age 23 4-3, 4.43 ERA, 1.38 whip as a starter in High-A. 77/46 K/BB in 69ip.
• Cruz, Ronny: SS Age 18. .270/.314/.431 in AZL. 6 triples, 2 homers; lots of gap power.
• Randall, Josh: SP Age 22. 5-5, 3.92 ERA, 1.32 whip in Low-A this season.
• Beeter, Clayton: RP Age 26: 3.10 ERA in AAA as a setup/closer type: 33/16 K/BB in 20 ip.
• Sales, R.J.: SP Age 22: 4-3, 2.71 ERA, 1.12 whip in 16 Low-A starts.
• Eder, Jake RP (lefty): Age 26: 4.91 ERA in 8 MLB appearances this season.
• Martinez, Browm, OF, Age 18, .404/.507/.632 slash line in 18 games this year but on 60-day dl
• Brown, Sam: 1B age 23: .243/.350/.358 as a full-time 1B in AA this year.

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.

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Notables #20 and above by the level they mostly played in July 2025

In MLB:

• Six of the Eight relievers we now have in our MLB bullpen were Washington grown: Rutledge, Henry, Ferrer, Brzycky, Ribalta, and Lara. That’s awesome. We complain a lot about not developing players, and yeah its “just the bullpen,” but this is meaningful.
• Seven of the eight relievers in the bullpen were in the minors for this team at some point this year and have been promoted up. That’s also great to see; the farm is working.
• Now, have they been awesome? No, not really.

in AAA:

• He was a MLFA in the off-season, so not entirely a “prospect” but Nick Schnell had himself a month in AAA: .385/.449/.854 (!) for an ops of 1.303. He hit 11 homers in the month. Wow. Where does this guy fit into the OF hierarchy?
• #31 Chapparo hit just .203 for the month but still managed to slug his way to an OPS of .849.
• #32 Baker still hanging around: he hit over .300 for the month again. He’ll get his shot.
• #28 Alvarez: I know he isn’t sexy, but he seems to deserve a shot. Maybe the next time we need a starter we can add him to see what he can do.

In AA:

• #101 Brandon Boissiere certainly is putting a kickstart into his career: .324/.444/.432 for the month in AA after putting up a couple years of mendoza line BAs.
• #25 Made: remember when i was all excited b/c he hit the crap out of the ball one month? July: .156/.239/.297. Ouch.
• I was so down on Riley Cornelio last off-season I didn’t even have him in my top 100. Now? He might be the Nats minor league pitcher of the year. July in AA: 4 starts, 1.66 ERA, 0.88 whip, .147 BAA. He’s a top 25 prospect right now, might get better.

In High-A:

• #39 Sam Peterson got promoted and was basically High-A’s best hitter in June. Then, he was also the best Wilmington hitter in july, going /317/.446/.600 in that hitter’s death park in Delaware.
• SS Courtland Lawson (born in Reston!) had a nice month, slashing .297/.358/.446 … but one has to wonder what the plan is here? He was in AA all last year, barely hit, got demoted to high-A to make way for 1st rounder King, and now he’s 25 and still in A-ball in his 4th pro season.
• #79 Gavin Dugas went just 5-63 for the month (.079 BA) and, well, might be in serious trouble as a 25yr old in A-ball who was a $20k senior sign.
• #42 Cranz has picked up where he left off in Low-A. Maybe we try him as a starter?

In Low-A:

• #87 Jorgelys Mota was hitting .400 for the month and starting to push his way into top 30 area in BA and MLB when he hit the DL this month.
• Holy cow, Vaquero is hitting! .329/.361/.553 with 3 homers and a ton of XBH for the month.
• #67 Yoel Tejeda Jr and Davian Garcia (who I didn’t even rank in my top 100 pre-season) both pitched their way out of Low-A as 2024 draft picks. Garcia has the bigger draft bonus as a 6th rounder but Tejeda has had a great season too. Both now showing up in the 25-30 range of prospect lists and will finish out the year in High-A.
• #23 Elijah Green is back in full-season ball after destroying the FCL. Still only hitting .220 but his Ks are down. Not sure where they can go with this guy.

In FCL:

• The FCL is over; lots of these guys only got 5-6 innings for the month so difficult to pass judgement. Most of the guys moved up at the end of the season were more age based than performance based: the likes of Johnson, Farias, Otanez, Kane, and Montero were all 23 and still in Rookieball, so they had to move up.
• Last month’s darlings Sir Jamison Jones and Dashyll Tejada both struggled to finish out FCL. Wish the season was longer.

In the DSL, we can’t really do monthly splits so here’s a quick look at the six hitters in my top 100 pre-season. Then I’ll add in the guys newly impressing and starting to pop up in top 30 lists.

• #22 Victor Hurtado is still not hitting, slashing just .223/.370/232 for the year.
• #29 Brayan Cortesia is still crushing: .344/.459/.400.
• #37 Daniel Hernandez continues to be highly regarded on major prospect shops but it isn’t showing on the field: ..215/.270/.252.
• #66: Rony Bello has taken a nose dive since a strong start: .224/.333..343.
• #70 Hector Liriano: hitting .185 as a 1B? that’s not going to cut it.
• #103 Juan Obispo has maintained his solid line all season: .317/.388/.450.

Meanwhile, Marconi German, a 2025IFa, has exploded onto the scene: .282/.485/.538 so far this year in DSL with 7 homers as the starting SS for the team. He might be the find of the season.

On the pitching side, our DSL’s rotation ace Juan Reyes continues to lead the staff in whip despite being a starter: 9starts he’s got a 2.51 ERA and a shutout this season.

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That’s July.

This is the 4th such review of all our rotations, checking in on the latest month’s worth of production and doing some analysis. Given that the trade deadline just passed, as we go level by level I’ll discuss who is gone, who we added, and guess what may happen 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 stats are as of 7/31/25.

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

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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

Changes since end of last Month: Two big changes: Williams got hurt, hit the DL and was announced to need a “brace” procedure: boom done for the year. He was replaced in the rotation by Lord, completing Lord’s amazing journey to the major league rotation as an 18th round pick. Then at the trade deadline we moved Soroka. This led to the recall of Ogasawara, who will take up the 5th starter spot. It was either Ogasawara or Cavalli, who has done nothing to impress since getting off the DL.

Rotation Observations: Gore’s July was .. not good. Ironic in that he started to get trade buzz just as he was driving production wise. 6.75 ERA for the month, but he didn’t get moved so now he can focus on being good the rest of the year so we can trade him this coming off-season. Irvin improved but still had a 4.55 ERA month. Parker had a 6.04 ERA in 4 July starts. Lord is being eased back into starting so is only going 3-4 innings a start, so we’ll withhold judgement. Ogasawara remains tbd.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Ogasawara; I can’t imagine he’ll hang in the rotation and we may see Cavalli or a call-up at some point soon.

Bullpen comments: Our bullpen is now almost entirely guys who we’ve promoted from our minor leagues this season. Here was our opening day bullpen versus today (this includes 8/1 callups Ribalta, Loutus)

• Opening Day: Finnegan, Lopez, Sims, Ferrer, Poche, Salazar, Ribalta, Lord
• 8/1 post trade deadline: Ferrer, Henry, Rutledge, Pilkington, Brzycky, Loutus, Ribalta, Lara.

What churn. Finnegan traded, Lopez released, Sims released, Poche released, Salazar demoted, and Lord to the rotation. We still have a few 40-man options in AAA (Thompson, Beeter, and Eder), so I’d imagine we’ll be seeing the new guys next.

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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, tbd (was Ogasawara)

Changes since end of last month: Shuman was dumped out of the rotation (as predicted last month) for Ogasawara, Sampson was demoted to AA after getting hurt and spending some time on the DL. Ogasawara as of this writing hasn’t been replaced on the AAA roster, nor have the other promotions (I have Rochester at just 24 of 28 slots). I’d guess either Shuman back or Sampson promoted back to AAA as the 5th guy.

Rotation Observations: Ogasawara had a couple of clean starts in July after coming off DL. Alvarez and Conley’s month was 4.00 era-ish and decent if not spectacular peripherals. Solesky struggled badly; ERA above 9.00, whip above 2.00. The big news is that Cavalli just doesn’t seem to have it right now; 7.50 ERA in 5 July starts. He gave up 33 hits in 24 innings; that’s just not good enough. If he’s working on something fine, but if this is what we have, that’s not good.

Next guy to get Promoted: Though Cavalli is the sole starter on the 40-man, if a need pops up I’d add and Promote either Alvarez or Conley. Conley is 30 with no MLB time so that’d be a great story, but Alvarez deserves it too.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: Solesky; the MLFA who we got out of indy ball got crushed this month, and with some upwards pressure bubbling up from the lower levels, he may get slid out of a job.

Bullpen comments: Bravo to Pilkington for finally getting promoted after being excellent all season. Same with the likes of Loutus and Brzycky. As for the rest of the bullpen … not much good to report.

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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)

Changes since end of last month: A busy month for the AA rotation: Conley got promoted, and he was mostly replaced by Bennett. Stuart pitched for a month and then hit the 60-day DL (not good). He was mostly replaced by a couple of relievers doing “opener” gigs. At the end of the month Sampson returned from AAA D/L to make a start. Lastly, the big news: Sykora made one July 5th start, hit the DL, and now he needs Tommy John. Dagger.

Rotation Observations: Susana is doing rehab starts after 2 months of radio silence; so we’ll see what happens. Luckham and Choi struggled badly in July. Bennett’s introduction to AA has not started smoothly. Sampson’s one start isn’t enough to go on, and at 33 it’s kind of ridiculous for him to be in AA. The bright spot? Frigging Riley Cornelio, who continues to tear through the minors in 2025. 1.66 ERA and 0.88 whip in AA in July. I’ve been questioning this guy for two years; suddenly he’s one of our system’s best arms. Bravo.

Next guy to get Promoted: I got the Conley promotion right from last month; this month I’d say that Sampson needs to go back up just based on age/experience. But on performance, its Cornelio. I don’t know if he’s ready yet, perhaps he continues for another month and finishes things out in AA with an eye towards starting next season in AAA.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: The answer for the 2nd month in a row is Rule-5 guy Choi. Though Luckham may have reached his ceiling as a player.

Bullpen comments: Erick Mejia’s journey back to the majors as a reliever looks great in AA: a spotless month; 7 games, 8ip, 1 hit. I’d put him in AAA right now. Junior Santos also had a zero ERA for the month, and Thomas Schultz looks great. If they move a couple of the AAA guys up, I could see a few of these AA studs moving up in turn.

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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.

Changes since end of last month: Bennett made 3 more dominant starts and finally got pushed up to AA where he belongs. To take his place the team moved up both Tejada and Garcia from Low-A.

Rotation Observations: As noted, Bennett posted a 1.45 ERA in 3 starts and got moved up. Clemmey continues his great season: 2.81 ERA in his 3 starts in July. Kent showed a bit of fatigue in his first pro season, driving up to a 4.85 ERA for the month. Tolman continues to be excellent and I’m not sure why he’s not permanently installed in the rotation. Garcia and Tejada’s intro to High-A wasn’t pretty; they have the rest of the season to figure it out for 2026.

However, we’re about to see some major changes here, because the team acquired THREE new High-A starters in Randall, Swan, and Linan. By my count, there’s now at least 10-11 guys on the Wilmington roster who are “starters” … which is twice what we have room for.

Next guy to get Promoted: We got Bennett right from last month; Next we’ll see Susana returned from “rehab” to AA. If it was me i’d probably move up Tolman, who’s lefty, 25 and can be both a starter and a reliever.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: For the second month, nobody really. Sthele pitched well for the month, Kent isn’t going anywhere despite having a 4.60 ERA for the season (maybe the answer is, Kent gets an invisible “injury” and gets shut down to make room for the new guys).

Bullpen comments; nobody really notable pushing for a promotion right now.

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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

Changes since end of last month: After months, we got some movement here. Tejeda and DGarcia (finally) moved up, Roman (finally) axed from the rotation with his 8+ seasonal ERA. They were replaced with Sullivan off the DL and Johnson finally getting promoted up from the FCL despite being 23.

Rotation Observations: Tejeda and Garcia were excellent in July and were worthy to move up. Polanco was solid again but now faces a huge crush of starters in our Low- and High-A teams. Sullivan’s debut was excellent, which is nice to see. Johnson’s 2nd low-A start was bad. Lastly Romero got hit.

However, the team has created a crush here by promoting the FCL’s two best guys at the end of the month in Farias and Feliz (the FCL season ended on July 30th), plus added Sales in the trade window. So Low-A now has 8 guys for 5 spots. (post-publish correction, thanks FredMD; the Nats promoted Angel Feliz the SS, not Jose Feliz the pitcher).

Next guy to get Promoted: They moved up Tejeda and Garcia … now there’s no room in High-A even if someone in Low-A deserved it.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: We got Roman right from last month: i’d guess the team moves Johnson to the bullpen and might sideline Romero to make room for the new additions.

Bullpen comments: They finally promoted Cranz and Aldonis. Baldo need to go next; he’s 25 and isn’t being challenged in Low-A.

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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

Changes since end of last month: The season ended with Sullivan back in Low-A and Johnson doing the last few starts.

Rotation Observations: Sullivan overpowered rookie ball as expected. Feliz finished off an excellent FCL season with another month of sub 2.00 ERA. Portorreal was solid but didn’t earn the promotion at the end of the season. Lunar struggled. Lastly Farias had another iffy month but got moved up to low-A nonetheless, perhaps to see if he can cut it in Low-A the rest of the way in a sink or swim move.

Next guy to get Promoted: Sullivan and Farias got moved up at the end of the season in kind of age-related moves. Feliz should have moved up based on performance.

Next guy to get cut/demoted: n/a; end of season.

Bullpen comments: they moved up Kane as they should have. Nobody else in the FCL bullpen really pitched much worth of analysis in July.

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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

Changes since end of last month: Carrasco moved to the bullpen, replaced by Carela. Only 7 guys have made starts this year for DSL.

Rotation Observations: There’s no splits for DSL guys, so i can’t isolate July versus the whole year. Reyes and Carela have the best season numbers so far, both with sub 3.00 ERAs. Reyes is a 23IFA and is already 20 so no surprise here. Robles and De La Cruz have both been ok but wild. Torrellas needs more time.

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. This is a perfect example of why the loss of Short-A is troublesome.

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.