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Please see our player page for Marcelo Mayer 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.

26. Padres C Ethan Salas | 17 | AA | 2025

I’ll never have Salas on a roster. Nothing against him, really, just a matter of public-facing, real-baseball lists running him so high up the rankings that there’s no road back to dynasty baseball value. He’s already a top ten prospect in most places, and he’s just nowhere near that for our purposes. He’s in Double-A at 17, but he hit just .200 for nine games in High-A, so that’s an artificial placement to say the least. He’ll likely open back in High-A and should have to hit his way out. There’s absolutely no rush. At 6’2” 185 lbs, Salas moves smoothly behind the dish and receives and frames with a deft touch that’s a decade beyond his years. With a bat in his hands, he’s a dangerous lefty power hitter with a discerning eye. An elite prospect to be sure. Just not an ideal building block for our game.  

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twenty years, Warbucks has plenty to go around and you should be plenty satiated for cashola, I mean, shortstops. I.e., there’s a lot of shortstops and you should be drafting them early and often. Okay, let’s get to it! Here’s Steamer’s 2024 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Hitters and 2024 Fantasy Baseball Projections for Pitchers. Subscriptions are up and running, and you can already get Rudy’s Draft War Room. Anyway, here’s the top 20 shortstops for 2024 fantasy baseball:

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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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Here’s a link to the Top 25. 

That top 25 blends in pretty well with what you’ll see elsewhere, and so this group, mostly, but from here forward, my lists tend to be tilted toward near-term fantasy functionality, for what it’s Wuertz. 

I value the grind of the climb. Each level brings new separators, so guys like Maikel Garcia and Joey Ortiz have shown more, in my opinion, than a guy like Jackson Merrill. Nothing against Merrill or anyone in the lower minors. They’ll have their day. I just don’t see much value in jumping headlong on to Tom Smykowksi’s Conclusions Mat when we’ve got so many great prospects on the cusp who’ve earned their keep. If I get three seasons of useful stats out of a player before a higher-ranked teeny-bopper even gets started, that matters to me. I suppose you could cut it up differently for a rebuilding project, but I wouldn’t change much.

26. Guardians RHP Tanner Bibee | 24 | AA | 2023

Bibee’s currently my favorite of Cleveland’s pitching prospects for dynasty purposes in terms of cost v. value. That’s probably changing as I type, but for now it’s still cheap enough to at least ask about Bibee in your leagues. He’s coming off 73.2 innings in Double-A with a 0.88 WHIP. He allowed just four home runs there and wound up with a 1.83 ERA. He’s good enough to the naked eye that I think he’ll make waves this spring. His 122.2 innings pitched last year sets him up perfectly to step in whenever the Guardians need help. At 6’2” 205 lb, Bibee can sit comfortably in the mid-90’s deep into games and has that Cleveland specialty skill of commanding his off-speed pitches. In case you can’t tell from the blurb, I want him everywhere I can get him. You could more or less say that for every Cleveland pitcher, which I try to remind myself any time I’m making moves or building lists.

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Prospect News: Top 50 for Dynasty Leagues, Post-Draft Update

Here’s where the introductory words for part two would go, if I thought any of us wanted to see those.

And here’s a link to the Top 25, in case you want to see those.

26. RHP Taj Bradley | Rays | 21 | AAA | 2023

27. OF Zac Veen | Rockies | 20 | A+ | 2024

28. LHP Ricky Tiedemann | Blue Jays | 19 | AA | 2023

Taj Bradley is getting knocked around a bit at Triple-A (5.25 ERA in three starts), but this is Tampa we’re talking about. Nobody suppresses their own pitchers’ ratios like the Rays. 

Zac Veen has 50 stolen bases in 54 attempts with a 129 wRC+ in 92 games. The Rockies have more good hitting prospects than usual. Can’t wait to see how they screw them up. 

Give Ricky Tiedemann another couple dominant starts in Double-A and he’ll have a case for the top ten. He might be there already on some lists. No real argument with that from me. The rankings feel especially fluid right now. It’s a time of putting your money in your mouth and then chewing it up and chasing it down with a shot of tequila. 

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List season continues this week here at Razzball. It’s a stressful time for yours truly, if I’m honest with myself, as I don’t have time to write about everything I’m noticing just under the surface of prospect world. Stress isn’t negative all the time. It’s also exciting in this case. Tickles the geek inside my haunted carnival of a baseball mind to check in with each and every prospect and rearrange them rung by rung, tier by tier. 

I’ll try to stay concise in between the tiers here, but you can access a more in-depth consideration of each individual player by clicking on their names or skimming around in the 2022 Minor League Preview Index

Here’s a link to the top 25, Prospect Rankings Update: Corbin Carroll Headlines Top 25 for June 22.

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When mapping out this year’s Top 100, I kept getting lost in the layout. I’ve tried a few different ways to skin this cat, and I think my favorite so far was my first: Top 25 Prospects for 2020 Fantasy Baseball.

It was simple, sleek, easy to see, easy to scroll, and it was built in tiers, which feels like a realistic lens through which to view these players. You can argue that George Kirby is definitively a better prospect than Nick Lodolo if you want to, or vice versa, but if you get offered one for the other in a trade, you might freeze up like me pondering the layout of this article. The differences are real, certainly, but they’re more aesthetic and subjective than anything like objective truth. It’s a difference in type or style more than a difference of quality. 

I’ll try to stay concise in between the tiers here, but you can access a more in-depth consideration of each individual player by clicking on their names or skimming around in the 2022 Minor League Preview Index

Here’s a link to the Top 25 before we roll on down the mountain. 

Drumroll please and away we go!

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Some of these guys will have to move off the position, either because they’re blocked by a star-level regular or because they lack the hyper-elite twitch, reflexes, hands and arm required to make it as a big league shortstop, but for the most part, these guys will man their middle infields for the next decade or so. Some dynasty league veterans build minor league rosters populated almost exclusively by shortstops and outfielders. Solid plan, really. Shortstop might be the game’s deepest position at the moment, and it’s only getting deeper. 

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Dynasty drafts come in several shapes and sizes. Some leagues break the player groups into veterans and prospects. Some leagues let you draft 34-year-old relievers right alongside 16-year-old little brothers. I don’t really have a favorite way to cut it up. I just love the game. Though I will say the Razz 30 has something special going on with a prospects-only draft and a vets-only auction that becomes, at its core, a bums-only auction. It’s about two weeks of slow-bidding Steven Brault up to $21, and it’s a treat like few others in the fantasy realm. Jose Martinez once sold for $96. Michael Pineda went for $62. Zach Davies for $36. Two of those are purchases of mine! The fun never ends! Well, except when you ask MLB owners if they’d rather make money or take all the different balls and go home.

Anywho, I’ve broken this year’s First-Year-Player Draft rankings down into tiers and included some snippets about where my head would be during those spots on the draft board.

You can find most of these guys in the 2022 Fantasy Baseball Prospects, Minor League Preview Index

If not, feel free to drop a question in the comments so we can talk some baseball, pass the time.

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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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I’m often referencing the echo chamber in this space, and sometimes I’ll throw in a specific citation even though I’m not here to drag other prospect people in specific as much as I’m here to help readers find value in general. A big part of finding value is knowing who’s free and who’s a helium-filled fever dream. When a deep lens into the echo chamber crossed my Twitter feed this week courtesy of High Upside Fantasy, it seemed like something I should share here. 

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