The Best Baseball America Stories From 2025
I’m writing this newsletter from deep within the Prospect Handbook production crunch.
Because of that I’ve got less time to expound upon all things baseball and prospects, but I still wanted to keep you guys up to date with what I’ve been working on and doing.
The typical links of mine are at the bottom.
But I also asked the Baseball America staff to tell me their favorite stories from this past year.
Consider this the “Best of BA” for 2025:
JJ Cooper: To Have A Lengthy MLB Career, Pitchers Need To Throw Hard — A data-backed exploration into why pitchers with velocity are able to log more innings and hang around in the big leagues longer than soft-tossers.
Matt Eddy: 7 Reasons Why Lefthanded-Throwing Position Players Are Becoming Rarer Than Ever In MLB — Matt called this piece “esoteric and fun” and I have to agree.
Ben Badler: How The Brewers Exploited A Draft Inefficiency To Help Build One Of MLB’s Top Systems — A deep dive into how drafting underlooked and undercommitted high school players at the back of the draft has paid off for one of baseball’s savviest teams.
Josh Norris: 50 MLB Prospects Who Impressed Scouts On Spring Training Backfields — This is one of my most anticipated reads each year and Josh never disappoints. Good old-fashioned backfields baseball reporting.
Geoff Pontes: Meet Tyler Uberstine: How Inspirational Red Sox RHP Went From A Parking Lot Throwing Session To Cusp Of MLB — A lot of people know Geoff as the data guy, so I love that his submission was a well-reported and well-written profile on Uberstine’s unique path that has him on the cusp of the big leagues.
Peter Flaherty: 2025 College Baseball Transfer Portal Rankings — Peter breaks down the top 100 players to know who are moving from one school to another. The transfer portal is insane these days, but this piece can get you up to speed.
Jacob Rudner: Inside Summer Ball’s Fight For Survival In The College Baseball Transfer Portal Era — College summer ball is broken. Jacob explores all the reasons why that is, and some of the ways summer leagues are trying to fix it.
Jesus Cano: Athletics Scouting Director Eric Kubota: Baseball America’s 2025 Tony Gwynn Award Winner — Jesus dispels the Moneyball myth of Eric Kubota’s promotion to A’s scouting director, and tells the actual story of his impactful 41-year career in the game.
Carlos Collazo: Baseball America’s 2025 Scout Survey: Evaluators Fear Game’s Direction Amid ‘Doom And Gloom’ Offseason — Last offseason I heard more animosity from scouts about the future of the game than ever before. This survey was a response to that. I wanted to give scouts a bit of a voice.
Below is the work I’ve produced for Baseball America since my last newsletter.
Writing
Post Draft Lottery Mock Draft: Picks 1-40. A mock draft for the people is like candy to a baby. We know you can’t help yourselves. Just don’t ask ChatGPT for the content or I’ll block you.
Guardians Top 10 Prospects. This system remains deep and a lot of fun to write about. Tons of hitters top to bottom.
Guardians Prospects Chat. The most popular player of this chat was OF Juneiker Caceras.
Revisiting The 1-1 Pick History Of Draft Eligible Teams. There are some crazy stories from drafts in the 20th century. This is also a great reminder that we don’t really know what we are doing.
Why The Rockies, Nationals & Angels Can’t Get The No. 1 Pick. Draft lottery minutia that everyone is clamoring for.
2026 MLB Draft Order & Lottery Odds. Full results from this year’s draft lottery in case you missed it.
2026 MLB Draft Lottery Winners & Losers. Which teams have something to be excited about and which are probably upset in the wake of the lottery.
Why The White Sox, Giants & Pirates Will Be Ineligible For The 2027 Lottery. Draft lottery minutia that everyone is clamoring for, V 2.0.
Podcasting/Video
Draft Podcast: Analyzing The Top College Pitchers In The 2026 Class. Peter and I talk about Florida’s Liam Peterson, Coastal Carolina’s Cameron Flukey, UC Santa Barbara’s Jackson Flora and Georgia’s Joey Volchko.
Future Projection Episode 148: AL East Farm Systems. The Red Sox have become quite pitcher heavy all of the sudden and the Orioles remain impressively deep.
Future Projection Episode 149: AL Central Farm Systems. This is one of the better divisions in the game for high-quality farms.
We’ve also been converting a lot of our farm system overviews into YouTube videos so I would encourage you to check out the BA channel there if you prefer to watch your prospects content.
That’s it for today. Hope you’re all doing well. Thanks for reading and following along.
Fascinating. 'Esoteric and fun' is exacly my kinda deep dive.