Five Top 100 Players I'm The High Man On
"He's boringly impressive"
Since my last newsletter, we’ve had an explosion of new content over at Baseball America, headlined by the release of our 2025 Top 100 prospects list. I won’t link every single piece we’ve released along with the Top 100, but you can find all of it on the Top 100 itself if you feel so inclined.
Between the website and the Prospect Handbook being available right now digitally (and very soon physically), this should help you guys get fully prepped for the start of the 2025 season.
Since the top 100 is now public, I wanted to mention five players I’m the “high man” on—at least compared to my peers at BA—with some brief rationale on why I’m bought in. Each player is featured with their 2025 playing age.
This isn’t me thinking I’m smarter than my peers. Far from it. I’m much more confident in our final top 100 than my personal list. It benefits from many more viewpoints and the expertise of writers who are much more locked into the pro side than I am throughout the year.
It’s mostly to put my outlier players out here publicly so you guys can judge me at the end of the season (and five years from now) and we can see if I was right or wrong—and why that might be.
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Dylan Crews, OF, Nationals
Age: 23
I am officially the Dylan Crews bandwagoner of the office and ranked him No. 2 on my personal Top 150. In a world where Roki Sasaki doesn’t exist or wasn’t posted, I would have Crews as my top prospect in the game. I think a lot of people are sleeping on Crews because his numbers are just “fine” in his brief time in pro ball, but it’s incredibly difficult for me to shake just how advanced and how impressive a hitter he was in college. I didn’t see Adley Rutschman in person at Oregon State near as frequently as I saw Crews when he was at LSU, and because of that Crews is probably the single most impressive college hitter I’ve watched in person in my time at BA. I’m as bought in as I possibly can be on the tools, the athlete and his ability to make the necessary adjustments in the majors. I had him six spots higher than the No. 6 placement he has on the Top 100.
Marcelo Mayer, SS, Red Sox
Age: 22
In the wake of tremendous seasons by org mates Roman Anthony and Kristian Campbell, the star has faded a bit on Mayer, who I still view as a top 15 prospect in the game and the No. 2 shortstop prospect in all of baseball. I ranked Mayer 11th overall and right behind Rays SS Carson Williams, who I had as the first shortstop on my board at No. 10. Mayer has been limited by injuries in his pro career, but when healthy I think he’s a plus hitter with above-average power potential and strong defense on the left side of the infield. At No. 11, he’s not too far off the No. 15 placement of the BA 500, but I do have Mayer over Campbell.
Brayden Taylor, 3B, Rays
Age: 23
Taylor is quite literally a bag of 50s across the board, but despite his relatively “boring”1 profile, I have a high degree of confidence in Taylor’s ability to hit. He’s had an advanced approach going back to his college days, and I’m confident his swing path, feel for the barrel and pitch selection will allow him to get the most out of the solid-average raw power that he does have. Even if Taylor is never an All-Star, I could see him being a steady eddy, reliable player who can handle a few different defensive positions competently over the course of a 10-year career. In general I think we overlook how valuable average big leaguers are and I think Taylor is right in that mold. I had him at No. 55 on my personal board, narrowly edging out JJ Cooper, who had him at No. 57. Based purely on my conviction in his hitting ability I might still have him too low.
Blake Mitchell, C, Royals
Age: 20
There’s no sugar coating a 30.7% strikeout rate for a hitter in A ball, and I won’t attempt that here. Mitchell has an extreme offensive profile that includes a ton of swing-and-miss, but also extremely rare swings on pitches out of the zone and great impact when he does connect. Pair his power and OBP skills with a rock solid defensive reputation and a 70-grade arm behind the plate and I’m pretty enamored with the overall profile. It’s sort of a less extreme Emmanuel Rodriguez profile to me, but at a more premium defensive position and with fewer durability questions. I ranked Mitchell No. 51 compared to his No. 75 placement on the Top 100. I believe Matt Eddy was the closest to my bullish view of Mitchell, and he ranked him at No. 72.
Cam Collier, 1B, Reds
Age: 20
Collier is the lone player I’m mentioning here that didn’t actually crack the top 100, but was inside my personal top 100. I ranked the lefthanded slugger No. 89 overall because I remain bullish on his offensive profile and relative youth. He’s coming off a 20-homer, 21-double season spent entirely at High-A Dayton where he was more than three years younger than the average hitter, with a 129 wRC+. I don’t view him as a third baseman in the long run, but even then would still be quite excited about his hit/power combo profiling nicely at first base. He makes a lot of contact in the zone, has massive top-end raw power and I think is still learning how to get the ball in the air with more consistency.
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There’s a ton of content that’s come out on my end since my last newsletter, so I’ll try and be brief as I lay out all out here.
We recently expanded the 2025 draft list to the top 200 players in the class and at the request of readers, I’m also including tool grades and BA grades earlier than ever in the process for amateur players. Hopefully that is a nice value add to those of you who follow the draft year round.
Along with the draft update, we also asked scouting directors how they grade this year’s class on the 20-80 scale. I’ve loved doing this poll in recent years, as it gives us a more objective way to quantify the draft at this point in the calendar and compare other draft classes. Long story short: the 2025 class looks deep, but unspectacular right now.
Our annual preseason All-American teams came out today as well. The college team is led by unanimous first-team member Jamie Arnold, while the high school team features no unanimous players but is led by back-to-back first teamer Ethan Holliday. These All-American teams also include best tools winners.
It’s been a hyper active month on the podcast and YouTube side as well.
For Future Projection, Ben Badler and I talked about players we are “buying and selling” throughout the updated Top 100 list, and we also picked our breakout National League prospects to watch.
On the draft podcast, Peter Flaherty and I drafted the best tools we could think of to create the best hypothetical high school players and also broke down nine sleepers to know for the 2025 draft.
For the YouTube channel and the main BA Podcast feed I joined Geoff Pontes and JJ Cooper to talk through the top of the Top 100 list and also look into some players we like further down the list. Additionally, I hosted JJ on a Rays deep dive podcast (we’re rolling these out for every team over the next few weeks as well).
If you aren’t subscribed to Baseball America, I would highly encourage you to check out the YouTube channel. We’ve been a lot more intentional and active in getting more of our content on that platform over the last year or so and January of this year has been a great month for us there.
OK, that’s it for today. Thanks for following along and reading everyone. Have a great week!
I use boring in quotes here because I don’t find Taylor’s game boring at all. It’s a true joy to watch him manage at-bats. That said, to many people his game might just be a little bit boring. I think JJ encapsulated it well when he wrote “The best way to describe Taylor is he’s boringly impressive” in Taylor’s 2025 scouting report.