Top 100 Prospects for 2021 Fantasy Baseball Volume 2: La Vida Vidal

I tend to dislike a lot of prospects. Not on a personal level of course. But I’ve played and coached and watched a lot of baseball, so it’s pretty common for me to dismiss a player at a glance. As I discussed in Wednesday’s article, Prospect News: Alek Manoah Debuts with Grown-Man Gas, I maintain a video-heavy research process to try and curb these first-blush reactions. My guiding principle as a teacher and coach is that anyone can make a leap in skill at any moment. We see it in baseball all the time. If you ignored JD Martinez, Justin Turner, and Max Muncy because of who they were in a previous life as a ballplayer, you missed out. These types of transformations are happening all the time, all the way down each system, on every side of the game. From throwing across the diamond to blocking breaking balls in the dirt to opening up early to pull an inside pitch out in front of the plate, players are bodies in motion, constantly evolving just to keep up. Take a glance at the statlines for Mookie Betts and Juan Soto this season. Hitting is incredibly hard. Baseball can be a nightmare when you’re caught in between, facing an adjustment phase or, like Francisco Lindor said today about studying himself from 2017, trying to imitate your past self and coming up just short. 

These rankings will look a little different, I suspect, from most you’ve seen. The biggest change will likely be the names you won’t find here. If a guy is hurt or slumping, I can probably find a better prospect for the top hundred in all of baseball. We can probably all find a better guy for our dynasty teams, too. For example, I cut Houston SS Jeremy Pena in a 15-teamer the instant I learned he was out for the season. I could have tried to shop him, I guess, but he’s still a free agent in that league today. Herein we see the most crucial aspect of succeeding in dynasty leagues: maximizing every roster spot, even in the short term, even if you’re rebuilding. I’m not recommending anyone go drop JJ Bleday or Cristian Pache or George Valera, but I am suggesting you make an effort to trade some prospects with established name value if their flaws are manifesting in their stat lines in ways that most leagues and ranking services are a little slow to spot. 

Well that was a much longer intro than I’d planned at the outset. Let’s get to the list.

Thanks for reading!

I’m @thepropsectitch on Twitter.

PS: I hope to continue the conversation in the comments and plan to go a little deeper next week.