Baseball America announced a slight mid-season re-rank of its top 30 prospects for every team on 7/9/24, and the Nats top 30 saw a bit of movement. Here’s a quick look at their top 30 right now plus a discussion on the changes they’ve made since the beginning of the season.
BA Also put out a quickie update in early May, so we’ll talk about the changes these players have had from January to May to July.
Here’s the latest list and the link for subscribers.
| Rank | Last Name | First Name | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wood | James | OF (Corner) |
| 2 | Crews | Dylan | OF (CF) |
| 3 | House | Brady | SS/3B |
| 4 | Cavalli | Cade | RHP (Starter) |
| 5 | Morales | Yohandy | 3B |
| 6 | Hassell III | Robert | OF (CF) |
| 7 | Lipscomb | Trey | 3B |
| 8 | Susana | Jarlin | RHP (Starter) |
| 9 | Rutledge | Jackson | RHP (Starter) |
| 10 | Lile | Daylen | OF (CF) |
| 11 | Vaquero | Cristian | OF (CF) |
| 12 | Hurtado | Victor | OF |
| 13 | Bennett | Jake | LHP (Starter) |
| 14 | Lara | Andry | RHP (Starter) |
| 15 | Sykora | Travis | RHP (Starter) |
| 16 | Herz | DJ | LHP (Starter) |
| 17 | Green | Elijah | OF (CF) |
| 18 | Pinckney | Andrew | OF (Corner) |
| 19 | Brzykcy | Zach | RHP (Reliever) |
| 20 | Feliz | Angel | 3B/SS |
| 21 | Millas | Drew | C |
| 22 | Henry | Cole | RHP (Starter) |
| 23 | Made | Kevin | SS |
| 24 | De La Rosa | Jeremy | OF (Corner) |
| 25 | Cruz | Armando | SS |
| 26 | Nunez | Nasim | SS |
| 27 | Baker | Darren | 2B |
| 28 | Alvarez | Andrew | LHP (Starter) |
| 29 | Lord | Brad | RHP (Starter) |
| 30 | Brown | Marcus | SS/2B |
Here’s my thoughts and observations.
- #1 and #2 flipped in May, with Wood taking over for Crews. No surprise here.
- 3-4-5 have stated the exact same, in the same order. They havn’t dinged Cavalli for his rehab difficulties, nor Morales for his struggles in AA so far.
- Rutledge dumped from #6 to #9. #6 was always too high for this guy, even based on his 2023 rise. Now we’re seeing him come back to earth. His 2024 numbers do not merit a top 10 system ranking.
- Lipscomb has gone from 16 to 9 to 7. Soon he’ll be going to “graduated” since it seems like he’ll be playing 3B in the majors the rest of the way.
- Parker: started the year #29, was up to #10 in May, now graduated. Not a bad 5th rounder.
- Susana rightfully gets bumped up a few slots, from #11 to #8. Go look at his game logs for this year; whoever he talked to after his May 24th start did him a solid: since that start, 7 starts, 35 innings (5 innings a start exactly, no more, no less); 15 hits, 13 walks, 2 ER, total. 57 Ks. Wow. Talk about a good month.
- Vaquero dumped a few spots from #8 to #11: dude’s hitting .157 this year. I mean, if they’ve dumped Green as far as they have, why not Vaquero as well? He’s still ranked this high entirely based on the size of his signing bonus.
- Andry Lara, massive riser. He went from #31 pre-season to unranked last May, now he’s #15. He’s been solid the entire year and rightfully earned the promotion to AA. I’ve been complaining about Lara’s progression for several years, but no taking away his 2024 so far.
- Sykora holding steady at #15, which seems to be underselling what he’s done so far in his first pro season. Like Susana, the team won’t let him pitch past the 5th inning, so he’s got a slew of “5ip 1hit 8ks zero walks zero runs” outings as of late. His absolute worst outing was his pro debut and he’s nearly in line for a promotion. He should be top 10 material soon.
- Herz also holding steady at #16, probably unfairly given that he’s made his MLB debut. I mean, lets be honest; why would Herz be ranked lower than Rutledge right now? It was Herz who got the call-up, not Rutledge. Dumb.
- A reminder: Jacob Young started the year as a #18 prospect, now is projecting for a 4-win season and rookie of the year votes. Bravo.
- Green continues his slide: started at #9 (where I thought he was actually UNDER ranked), now slipped from #12 to #17. Ouch. He’s hitting .174 with 136 Ks in 67 games as of this writing. What the hell is going on here?
- Not much movement for the guys in the 18-25 range; mostly fringe guys or former top prospects who continue to scuffle.
- Nunez, who still retains his rookie status by ABs since he’s barely playing, dumped to #26. The team has lasted this long with him, but honestly, does anyone see him actually working out based on what we see? I’d also like to point out that it is now mid July; he’s had 13 total at-bats this year. 13! he’s 1-13 for the season.
- Brad Lord comes in at #29, the first time we’ve seen any prospect ranking shop rank him. Lord was, lest we forget, an 18th round SENIOR draftee who was a reliever in college from a mid-major UCF, who worked his way into the low-A rotation last season, then held his own in 9 starts to finish the season, got moved to AA to start this season, completely owned it, and is now in the AAA rotation. An 18th round draft pick. Bravo to him and his success.
- Marcus Brown holding steady at #30. Not sure why. He’s hitting .203 in low-A despite coming out of a major conference.
- The only player previously listed not here is TJ White, who got bumped from #28 to #30+.
Missing? I think you can make a case for a slew of guys to be on this list at the expense of the likes of Brown or Nunez. Luckham, Cox, Quintana, Shuman come immediately to mind. But, this was clearly not a major overhaul/analysis either.
Soon we’re ramping up for draft week!