It's that time of year again when we rank the top prospects in Major League Baseball, some of whom will be in the majors in 2024 and others who will rise through the minors during the upcoming season.
I won't waste too much time setting the stage for the many words below, but there were two notable trends that I'll call out here:
First, there's a consensus from everyone I spoke with across the industry that there's a notable and uncharacteristic drop-off in the area of the list around Nos. 40 to 50, which is why I put the 50/55 Future Value (FV) break right there. I'm used to having a deep group of players my sources are arguing for at the end of this list but nobody really did that this time, so I resorted to including more players from the loaded 2023 draft than I expected.
The second trend is the large number of recently drafted players making the list. What's the reason for that drop-off in the middle of the rankings? Nobody was really sure. Maybe teams are pushing players to the big leagues faster, creating a temporary vacuum behind them? Maybe talent is cyclical and after a historically strong draft class -- possibly the best in a few decades -- this is the calm before the storm of a bunch of those players rising up the list together, once they get full seasons to prove themselves. In anticipation of that being true, I was very aggressive with 2023 draftees coming off strong debuts.
For a quick overview of the tool grades on the 20-80 scale that are used heavily throughout this list -- and are the industry standard across baseball -- along with other key terms used in the ranking, click here. Today's list kicks off our 2023 top-prospect coverage. Our ranking of all 30 MLB farm systems comes Friday and our team-by-team prospect lists for both leagues are scheduled to follow next week.
Now let's move on to ranking baseball's Top 100 prospects entering the 2024 MLB season, starting -- and ending -- with the son of a former major league star.
Jump to team's top-ranked prospect:
American League
BAL | BOS | CHW | CLE | DET
HOU | MIN | NYY | OAK
SEA | TB | TEX | TOR
(No Top 100 prospect: KC, LAA)
National League
ARI | ATL | CHC | CIN | COL
LAD | MIA | MIL | NYM | PHI
PIT | SD | SF | STL | WSH