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Please see our player page for Blaze Jordan to see projections for today, the next 7 days and rest of season as well as stats and gamelogs designed with the fantasy baseball player in mind.

1. OF Roman Anthony | 19 | AA | 2025

Anthony charged to the top of this group with a superb season in 2023. A left-handed hitter at 6’2” 200 lbs, Anthony slashed .272/.406/.466 with 14 home runs and 16 stolen bases in 106 games across three levels, finishing with ten dominant games in Double-A (.343/.477/.543) after slugging .569 in 54 games at High-A. I include the full-season line here along with the particulars because the full season tells the story of a player improving in a hurry. He slashed just .228/.376/.317 with 38 walks and 38 strikeouts in 42 games at Low-A but started driving the ball in Boston’s friendly High-A setting, where he drew 40 walks with 70 strikeouts (30.6 percent) in 54 games. He then struck out just six times in the ten Triple-A games. Man that’s a lotta stat salad. I’m just trying to say he’s a player in flux and reminds me a little of Ronald Acuna at this stage in the sense that he’s got more than one path ahead of him as a hitter and could become a total-package type who slashes .300/.400/.500 on the regular. He’s also quick enough to swipe some bags in the go-go era. Snagged 16 in 23 attempts this season but got caught just once in six tries between High-A and Double-A. I’ve got his ETA as 2025 here, but that can change in a hurry if Boston is competitive and Anthony is on his game.

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Mike Couillard and Jeremy Brewer have launched a pod, Cards & Categories, to discuss baseball from card collecting and fantasy angles! In our second episode, we open with fawning over Shoehei Ohtani and comparing his bat flip to Max Kepler’s bat kick. Then we overview Topps Chrome 2023, slated to be released on July 26. Lastly, […]

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For this list, I used the players’ ages as of July 9, 2023.

The cut-off lines for eligibility were 130 at bats for hitters and 50 innings for pitchers.

Here’s a link to the Top 25.

Here’s a link to the Top 50

Here’s a link to the Top 75.

76. Mets SS Ronny Mauricio | 22 | MLB | 2023

Breakout season began in winter ball but has been complicated by the club’s efforts to find its best lineup. Probably should’ve been playing big league second base a long time ago. Jeff McNeil was a nice find, but he’s 31 years old with a .324 slugging percentage. He’s essentially Luis Guillorme without the cool infield defense. How any club lets him block a bonus baby coming into his own is beyond me.

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Remember when you could play as Yoshi for the first time in a Mario game? Maybe it was Mario Tennis. Maybe you could count riding him in that first SNES game? Remember how great it felt to win a Mariocart race as Yoshi? 

Boston members. 

Though they lack a truly elite prospect, the Red Sox have assembled an exciting group of hitters that should matriculate to Fenway in waves over the next few seasons. Best system I’ve seen here in four years doing these lists. Took me a long time to whittle down to these top ten. 

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I was going to copy and paste the whole list here, but then I remembered last time I did that, I had to scroll forever to read the profiles on this group, which is arguably the most important group in the list for our purposes given that they’re the likeliest to be available in the most leagues. Anyway, the links are still here and the most streamlined way to build this out, I think. 

Here’s a link to the Top 25

Here’s a link to the Top 50.

Here’s a link to the Top 75.

 

76. RHP Gavin Williams | Guardians | 22 | AA | 2022

77. RHP Cade Cavalli | Nationals | 24 | AAA | 2023

78. C Tyler Soderstrom | Athletics | 20 | AA | 2023

79. OF Sal Frelick | Brewers | 22 | AAA | 2023

Gavin Williams threw six hitless innings his last time out, bringing his Double-A ERA down to 1.59 and his WHIP to 0.95. That’s in 45.1 innings across 11 starts. WHIP is 0.81 in eight starts since July. Cleveland is somehow getting better at pitcher development, partly because they’re applying their systems to better and better athletes. Williams is 6’6” and 255 pounds but repeats his delivery well. Two plus benders. Double-plus fastball. 

Cade Cavalli is similarly enormous at 6’4” 240 lbs. You could convince he’s three inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than that. Looks like a linebacker pumping high heat with extreme run to the right-handed batter’s box. Bigtime tempo guy. When it’s going well, he’s back on the mound and firing in blinks. When it’s not, his whole game slows down. He’s been awesome for three months (2.12 ERA, 1.02 WHIP since May 22) and would likely be in the majors at the moment if the Nationals were. 

I’ve never been a Tyler Soderstrom pusher. I think he can hit, and I’ll give him the high-probability big leaguer thing, but ours is a game of impact. Standout tools. Soderstrom’s best tool is hit, which is often what you’d like to see, but Oakland is not the best home for a hit-first catcher who might not catch but doesn’t have much speed to handle the outfield. 

Get your money for nothing and your licks for free. Better Call Sal has a 200 wRC+ in 15 games at Triple-A. He’ll be on the next stash list. 

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Welcome to the Island of Misfit Toys!

That wannabe dentist elf is plucking the bumble’s teeth in the igloo over yonder. Rudolph’s in the corner puking his guts out (crying his eyes out). Except igloos don’t have corners. 

And just like the Island of Misfit Toys, First Base Archipelago seems like a pretty cool place to end up after a journey around the diamond looking for a place to fit in. Players wash up here for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s just a depth chart issue. Cody Bellinger, for instance, could play anywhere in the outfield. More often, it’s a last-chance stop for players who’ve proven themselves below replacement level everywhere else on the field. If they hit enough to keep their head above water where bat-first prospects go to drown, they can find their way home in time for the big Christmas party at the end of the movie/season.

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It didn’t end the way they would’ve liked, but the Red Sox had a wonderful season, channeling some Tampa Bay ways with the help of Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom and employing smart management on the field with the help of Alex Cora. When the club signed Enrique Hernandez, few would have predicted a 4 (3.9) WAR season punctuated by a monster playoff run (.408/.423/.837 with 5 HR), but I feel pretty confident this won’t be the last time the current Boston braintrust generates All-Star outcomes from mid tier free agents. The scary part is they don’t have to. With a big payroll and stocked system, the Sox appear poised for a long contention cycle. 

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If you google Ryan Mckenna without specifying Orioles, baseball, or something to that effect, you get some kid that took a selfie with Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl. The kid was from Massachusetts so OF COURSE it’s a way bigger deal than it should be. Then again, here I am writing more about the selfie kid than the actual prospect at hand. That of course would be the baseball playing Ryan McKenna. The former fourth round pick from the New Hampshire prep ranks Ryan McKenna. The very same Ryan McKenna that was largely ignored by the industry, my self included, coming into the season. So much so, that he was left off the Baseball America system Top 30 entirely. That’s the Orioles list too, which coming into the season looked as barren as too be expected, outside the top 5 particularly. McKenna’s made a huge leap at the plate this year, in large part to improving pitch recognition skills. It’s not completely out of nowhere either, if you were paying attention to Delmarva late last season. He finished the season on a hot steak over his final 9 games hitting .324, before getting pegged in the back in the penultimate game of the season.

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