Fantasy Baseball Top Minor League Prospects

The following listing is our ranking of our Top Prospects. It includes some players that are currently in the major leagues, but with short tenures. Many of those players will probably be purged from the list as soon as we become more confident that they're not in danger of being sent back down to the minors. You can sort on our list by rank, by player, by position, or by age. "Rank" is overall MLB rank for that prospect. For feedback on our rankings, please contact John Sickels.

Players who have exceeded rookie qualifications (130 at-bats, 50 innings) are not included. Jason Heyward is still on the list for example, but will likely exceed rookie qualifications by the time of the next update in June. Removed from the list this time for exceeding qualifications: Jason Heyward, Neftali Feliz, Starlin Castro, Justin Smoak, Austin Jackson, Ike Davis, Jhoulys Chacin, Mike Leake, Jaime Garcia, Alex Avila and Michael Saunders.

All prospect lists are a blend of short-term, medium-term, and long-term potential. We try to consider both fantasy and "real life" baseball in mind when doing these lists. As a result, this list looks different than if we were looking solely at pure baseball ability, or if we focused entirely on fantasy value. Obviously you'll need to adjust your investments based on the context in which your fantasy team plays.

Sample sizes at this point of the season are small, therefore the movement of players up and down the list is relatively limited at this point. As the season progresses and we get more data, there will be more radical changes on the list. I am hesitant to kick people completely off the list because of a slow start or an injury, and I’m likewise cautious about adding people to the list because of a hot start. It is VERY easy to overreact based on a current hot or cold streak.

This list is somewhat different than the Top 50 Hitters/Top 50 Pitchers list I published in the 2010 Baseball Prospect Book. The RotoWire list is oriented more towards fantasy value rather than pure baseball, and also looks more for the short-term than the book list. The list in the book is focused more on long-term value and baseball upside without as much fantasy consideration.

We will update this list once a month during the regular season.

* Any player who wouldn't qualify for rookie of the year (ie. too much major league service time) isn't included.