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We’re about a month and a half into the minor league season, a reasonable time for a Top 100 update, albeit one with a relatively light touch. The purpose of this update is to pluck the low-hanging fruit, to polish and reshape the list rather than tear down the one from February. Much of the country is chilly or rainy in April and early May, and it can take time for players (hitters especially) to get going. Young players are also changing all the time, which often includes adjustments to their first taste of failure. You can see the updated list in its entirety here. Below, I’ve highlighted some individual players. I touch on how everyone who is a 60 FV prospect or better has performed so far this year, as well as which players have moved up the list in a meaningful way. There are many cases in which the order of the list changed but the player’s overall grade and evaluation did not. If a pitcher is hurt and slid to the back of their FV tier (as with River Ryan, Ricky Tiedemann, Kyle Hurt and Chase Hampton), or if guys are stacked differently due to syllogistic reasoning (such as former back-of-the-list starter Christian Scott racing past similar talents who are in, say, Double-A), then I don’t address that individual move.
**How Does Each Top Prospect Look?**
**Jackson Holliday, SS, Baltimore Orioles**
You’re probably familiar with the sequence of Holliday’s 2024. He and the entire Norfolk lineup began the season on a collective tear while the Orioles were getting little production from second base. Holliday was promoted, hit .059 during a two-week big league trial, was sent back down, and has only sort of bounced back. Holliday’s spray chart has shifted away from his pull side and moved toward left field and the third base line. For most of the last three weeks following his demotion, he’s been inside-outing lots of contact the opposite way, including pitches on the inner third of the plate that he typically turns on. He is swinging with a ton of effort and imprecision right now. The way Holliday’s body unwinds throughout his swing is still very exciting and athletic, but he may need to make an adjustment that simplifies things so he can be on time more consistently. Bryce Harper’s swing might be a good template. These early hiccups are not reason enough to come off of Holliday’s top prospect evaluation.
**Wyatt Langford, OF, Texas Rangers**
Langford went on a god-like Cactus League tear, broke camp as a heart-of-the-order hitter on the defending champions’ Opening Day roster, and then didn’t hit for power during a month of big league at-bats before he was shelved with a hamstring injury. Langford’s quality of contact was better than his surface-level slash line, and the things that made him the no. 2 overall prospect before the season started (huge tools and plate coverage) were still evident. He hit a lot of balls just shy of the wall in April. I still expect him to be an offensive star upon his return, and probably pretty quickly.
**James Wood, OF, Washington Nationals**
Wood, who entered the season as our fifth overall prospect, has cut his strikeout rate significantly early this year. Entering the season, it had been up around 30% since he was traded to Washington, but it’s a rock solid 19.1% so far in 2024, and Wood is getting to so much power that he has an OPS over 1.000 as of this writing. Wood’s wrists are remarkably quick and he has uncommon bat control for a hitter his size. For such a huge guy, the holes in his swing are relatively small, mostly up around his hands right now. It’s likely that big league velocity will sneak past him more often (the average Triple-A fastball is 91-92 mph so far in 2024), but the ceiling on Wood’s power is as big as anyone in the minors and he’s increasing collective confidence in his ability to get to it. His ranking on the preseason Top 100 was already very aggressive, but Wood’s grade has been boosted.
**Paul Skenes, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates**
I wrote a long Skenes update here. From an FV grade standpoint, his new splitter/sinker and increased changeup usage and feel are meaningful developments, enough for Skenes to move up a FV tier into rarified air for a pitching prospect. Here are the pitchers who I’ve ever 65’d or better: Alex Reyes, Shohei Ohtani, MacKenzie Gore, Eury Pérez, Grayson Rodriguez, and now, Skenes.
**Jackson Chourio, OF, Milwaukee Brewers**
It became a virtual lock that Chourio would break camp with the big league team when he signed a contract extension this winter. In his offseason scouting report, I wrote about how the length of Chourio’s swing might make it tough for him to catch up to big league velocity, and that has so far been the case, as he’s got an OPS close to .600 against fastballs 93 mph and above, against which he basically has no pull-side airborne contact. He has enough power to be dangerous to the opposite field and his defense is going to give his offensive production quite a bit of margin for error, so while Chourio isn’t off to a great start, he’s still a super talented 20-year-old who should be an impact player over time.
**Jackson Merrill, SS, San Diego Padres**
I wrote about Merrill’s transition to center field and its impact on his prospectdom here. In short, he looks like he’s going to stick out there and that’s a big deal.
**Jordan Lawlar, SS, Arizona Diamondbacks**
In late March, Lawlar suffered a torn UCL in his thumb that required surgery and, according to the Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro, was to keep him out for at least all of April and May. Lawlar is rehabbing in Arizona and making frequent cameos at Chase Field.
**Junior Caminero, 3B, Tampa Bay Rays**
Caminero is hitting well (he has an OPS north of .900 as a 20-year-old at Triple-A as of this writing) and included in this update is a more bullish forecast for his defense. It’s still plausible at his size that he’ll eventually need to move to the outfield, but for now, what Caminero lacks in hands he makes up for with a lightning fast exchange and plus arm. The concerns about his swing that I outlined in his full scouting report are still present, but he continues to perform in a superlative way despite them.
**Samuel Basallo, C, Baltimore Orioles**
Basallo has a slightly below-average wRC+ so far in 2024, but he’s a 19-year-old catcher at Double-A, so that’s fine. He looks good behind the plate (his receiving has improved, and his arm is still great), but he is more often playing first base and DH’ing than he is catching. Especially with his offense slowing down somewhat, I think it makes sense for the Orioles to revisit focus on the catching position. He’s going to have enormous power at maturity and has rare ceiling for a catcher, and there isn’t an immediate need on offense at the big league level. It’s possible this isn’t an indication that the Orioles are effectively moving on from Basallo as a catcher and instead are just trying to preserve his body with a lighter load. If I thought Bassallo was going to move off of catcher entirely, I would slide him into the 55 FV tier of the list, right around the corner thumpers like org-mate Coby Mayo.
**Dylan Crews, CF, Washington Nationals**
Here we have another upper-echelon prospect whose pre-existing swing issues have been exposed and are going to force an adjustment. I wrote in Crews’ Top 100 blurb from the offseason that he’s often late against fastballs and really only able to pull softer stuff on the inner third with any kind of power. This has been an issue in the early portion of 2024, as he’s striking out nearly 30% of the time while getting to enough of his power to be productive anyway. He and the Nationals need to find a way for him to…
