Baseball America just released an updated top 30 rank for all 30 teams in the majors, their first release of updated ranks since they published their big off-season material in January. Unlike some pundits, who barely bother to move prospects in-season, the BA staff did a massive overhaul of our ranks, seemingly re-evaluating the entire top 30, moving prospects in some cases 20+ spots based on the first 6 weeks of the season, to give our system a pretty radical overhaul.
Here’s the current ranks as of today; I’ve included their rank in the Jan 2026 data for comparison purposes, and will then list the next 10 or so names mentioned 5 months ago who are not in the announced top 30 today. I’ll also comment on the movement.
| BA 5/18/26 rank | BA 1/28/26 rank | First Name | Last Name | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Eli | Willits | SS |
| 2 | 2 | Jarlin | Susana | RHP (Starter) |
| 3 | 26 | Ronny | Cruz | SS |
| 4 | 8 | Seaver | King | SS |
| 5 | 9 | Devin | Fitz-Gerald | SS |
| 6 | 4 | Luis | Perales | RHP (Starter) |
| 7 | 6 | Travis | Sykora | RHP (Starter) |
| 8 | 5 | Gavin | Fein | SS |
| 9 | 24 | Miguel | Sime Jr. | RHP (Starter) |
| 10 | 3 | Harry | Ford | C |
| 11 | 15 | Ethan | Petry | 1B/OF (Corner) |
| 12 | 7 | Alex | Clemmey | LHP (Starter) |
| 13 | 22 | Yeremy | Cabrera | OF (corner) |
| 14 | 11 | Coy | James | SS |
| 15 | 13 | Landon | Harmon | RHP (Starter) |
| 16 | 10 | Luke | Dickerson | SS/CF |
| 17 | 14 | Sam | Peterson | OF (CF) |
| 18 | 16 | Alejandro | Rosario | RHP |
| 19 | 20 | Marconi | German | SS |
| 20 | 18 | Jackson | Kent | LHP (Starter) |
| 21 | 30 | Riley | Cornelio | RHP (Starter) |
| 22 | 19 | Yohandy | Morales | 3B |
| 23 | 12 | Angel | Feliz | SS/3B |
| 24 | 21 | Caleb | Lomavita | C |
| 25 | 23 | Samil | Serrano | OF (Corner) |
| 26 | 25 | Jorgelys | Mota | SS |
| 27 | 29 | Yoel | Tejeda Jr. | RHP (Starter) |
| 28 | 40+ | Cayden | Wallace | 2B/3B |
| 29 | 37 | Davian | Garcia | RHP (Starter) |
| 30 | 17 | Andrew | Pinckney | OF (Corner) |
Here we go. Any stats are as of 5/18/26.
- Willits stays top, as he should. He’s slashing .270/.412/.440 for the season in Low-A when, had he been a normal kid, would be finishing off his High School regular season. He’s also got 24 steals in the first 36 games of the season, on pace to hit a century of SBs (which would have led the entire minor leagues in 2025). No notes.
- Susana stays #2 despite no appearances and no real timeframe for his return. The latest news as of May 5th was that he was “continuing his throwing program.” I mean, ok? it was a Lat surgery, not an arm/shoulder, so that’s one thing. But I was not expecting him to miss months of 2026.
- Ronny Cruz is everyone’s new favorite Nats prospect, and BA gives him major props, moving him from #26 in January to #3 now. Cruz was in the Mike Soroka deal last trade deadline, coming over along with Christian Franklin in a classic “one established prospect and one lottery ticket” trade. Well, that lottery ticket is looking like it’s hitting the Powerball for sure right now.
- Seaver King now in the top 5 as he has a monster slash line right now in AA (.336/.427/.562). It seems like it’s just a matter of time before he gets moved up; the guy playing SS in AAA right now is Trey Lipscomb, who unfortunately seems to have peaked as not even a “4-A guy” having already been outrighted off the 40-man. The “story” on King is that someone in the Nats player development staff tried to get him to “pull the ball in the air more” last year (according to Keith Law), and it took until the AFL for him to get back on track. I hope whoever this Nats PD guy was, is no longer. There remains disagreement in the pundits about just how “good” his defense is (Law says “plus-plus defender” while Longenhagen has him as a 30 grade defender right now … i’m not sure who’s not seeing what the other is seeing here).
- Devin Fitz-Gerald has not shied away from the aggressive promotion to High-A, and is crushing the ball in a pitcher’s park/pitcher’s league. He’s slashing .307/.423/.650 with 11 homers as a 20-year old. He’s played mostly 2B thanks to Angel Feliz’s presence in Wilmington, but has starts at SS and 3B this season. He’s one of 5 prospects we got in the Gore trade, and is the clear leader in the clubhouse for value in that trade. He’s not blocked in AA at all (2B currently manned by a MLFA in Kevin Pichardo, and the guys on the AA infield bench are org-guys who i’m surprised are still in the system).
- Gavin Fein has slipped down a bit from January thanks to a wrist injury that cost him most of April. Jury still out, but he’s just turned 19 so hard to criticize. He’s listed as a SS but has thus far only played RF for Low-A; I wonder if he moves back to the dirt with some coming mid-season promotions (Willits can’t stay in Fredericksburg all year, can he?)
- The next big riser after Cruz is Sime, going from #24 to #9. 44 Ks in 21 innings will do that for you, as will the 101mph fastball he used to strike out J.J. Wetherholt in the Spring Breakout game. Same Wetherholt who was a top-5 prospect in the entire minors and who just got called up. Big arm, big velocity, but not a big track record so far for managing his pitch counts; he’s got 8 starts but just 21 total innings as he is struggling to keep the ball in the strike zone.
- Harry Ford’s awful start has him drop from #3 to #10 on BAs’ list. I had him #2 before the season and that’s aging like … well not aging well at all.
- Petry has earned a jump up the board with a nifty 3/4/5 slash line … he should get promoted ASAP frankly. In fact, AA Harrisburg just put their starting 1B Sam Brown on the DL, so there’s a natural spot open for Petry to get moved up, perhaps by the time you read this since i’m writing this on the monday off-day for the Minors that serves as a nice little promotion travel day for guys.
- Clemmey’s ugly start (28 walks in 28 innings) has dropped him a bit down the board. Every time I write about him I remind people of his age (he’s 20 in AA), but that’s only going to tell part of the story. There’s something missing here in 2026.
- The third major riser in these ranks is Yeremy Cabrera. He absolutely torched Low-A for a month to earn a promotion to High-A. I thought perhaps his promotion would spell the end of the strikeout machine Elijah Green, but they’re still sharing the OF in High-A for now. He’s the 3rd of 5 prospects in the Gore trade, which is looking more and more like a steal the better these guys play.
- Luke Dickerson, despite some decent numbers (an .815 OPS) and others not so decent (45 Ks in 36 games) drops a bit on BA’s list to #16.
- Jackson Kent drops a couple of slots, mostly due to getting layered by the likes of Cruz/Sime/Cabrera, but he’s a sneaky solid prospect putting up very solid numbers in AA right now: 2.35 ERA, 0.88 WHIP, .176 BAA, and a 38/8 K/BB ratio in 30 innings. Maybe we’re looking at the next Andrew Alvarez or Mitchell Parker for the system: an unheralded lefty starter who dominates all the way up while getting little top-prospect buzz until suddenly he’s in the majors.
- Some love for Cornelio, putting him at #21 in recognition of his ascent to the majors. Remember guys … that’s the whole point of prospects! To get them to the majors so they contribute.
- Amazingly … Yohandy Morales was ranked #19 in January and is now #22 on this list. Reminder: his AAA slash line right now is .348/.435/.589. And he plays on the dirt. How is this production DROPPING his prospect ranking? He’s 24! in AAA! Where he’s been since May 23rd of last year. Did Morales like insult the mothers of all these prospect evaluators in the industry? Morales is one injury away from someone like Garcia or Mead from getting added to the 40-man and probably playing every day in the majors. In fact, if the team was smart right now they’d move Garcia back to 2B (where Nunez has a 53 OPS+ figure) and would put Morales into the 1B/DH carousel.
- We mentioned Angel Feliz as being the one who’s blocking Fitz-Gerald from playing his natural SS position; BA doesn’t like Feliz’ start to the season and has dumped him more than 10 spots. Interesting; he’s not hitting THAT bad (.243/.335/.371) to warrant such a precipitous drop.
- Cayden Wallace is the sole player outside the top 40 from January who’s back into the top 30 today, thanks to his excellent start to 2026. He’s slashing .276/.345/.546 with a ton of homers and playing primarily 3B. He’s kind of blocked from moving up (Glasser at 2B and Morales at 3B in AAA), but could see a move if we see a cascading set of promotions that sees Morales head to MLB.
- Davian Garcia is a bit of a divisive prospect, but has moved up 10 spots since January despite somewhat iffy AA numbers to start the season. His ERA is ok at 3.90 but he’s walking nearly a batter an inning and his whip is 1.66.
Here’s the list of players that BA ranked somewhere in the 27-40 range in January who are no longer in the top 30:
- Linan & McGarry: traded and released
- Christian Franklin: was #27 now probably in the low 30s. He’s not really any different from where he was last year; kind of the 7th man on a 7-man OF depth chart on the current 40-man roster, and not really doing anything to improve his lot on life right now in AAA.
- Alvarez was at #31; probably at the same relative spot now.
- Glasser: was #32 but is putting up just a .583 OPS figure in AAA right now playing mostly 2B. He certainly earned his promotion to Rochester and started out last year great, but not much since.
- Others in that 30-40 range include DSL types like De la Cruz, Cortesia, injured arms like Swan and Stuart, and the bonus baby Vaquero, who’s got a mid .500 OPS in High-A.
Highest player I ranked who’s nowhere to be found on either Jan or May 2026 BA list?
- Josh Randall: 4.86 ERA in high-A, but his peripherals make him look a little better. I had him #29 on my list, odds are i’d re rank him 10 spots lower right now.
- Albimec Ortiz, who is on the 40-man and is doing 1B/DH duties in AAA. He’s closer to a DFA than he is to a promotion and this ranking looks terrible just 6 weeks into the season.
- Rafael Ramirez Jr, who was kind of the forgotten prospect in the Lane Thomas trade nearly 2 years ago, has been toiling in the shadow of all our more heralded prospects in Low-A. He can play anywhere on the infield but has struggled to get onto the field ahead of Willits, James, and Dickerson (and not to mention Fein, who’s been relegated to RF to get playing time). Even given that, his numbers are solid so far this year: .269/.432/.433 with more walks than Ks. Maybe we need a promotion to get him more PT.
- Kevin Bazzell is back to producing; the catcher in High-A has a .827 OPS so far this year. Unfortunately, he’s completely blocked upstream, with Ford in AAA and Lomavita in AA requiring full-time play.
- Daniel Hernandez joins three other 2025 IFA guys who are ranked prospects (German, De la Cruz, and Cortesia) in the FCL league that just started. We finally get to see some domestic production from the four best players from that class right now.
There’s some real helium in the Nats’ system; here’s hoping that it continues.
I don’t think that Yohandy Morales’s prospect status has been lowered. I think that it’s a case of some fast risers moving their status up to slot ahead of him. Although FWIW Logenhagen at FG is NOT a fan, describing him in a chat last Friday as: “right right 1B only defender with no launch, 30-grade contact rate against fastballs. Late a lot of the time. Fringe guy.”
Other Nats notes from his Friday chat: he still likes Crews to be good, but feels like “franchise-altering” is leaving the building. He also is feeling kinda sheepish for hanging a modest 45 power/40 game power. He got at least two comments noting that DFG has done nothing but rake since, and his response was kinda fun: “Certainly looking like i underrated the pop, just a product of seeing him when it was 35 degrees (he said sheepsihly)?”
John C.
18 May 26 at 2:47 pm
I agree with Todd’s assessment that this is an uncommonly responsive re-ranking. I think it ends up in a pretty reasonable spot, with a few exceptions.
Ford hasn’t been good, but he’s been hitting better, and more in line with his historical line, the past couple of weeks. I mean, we have to see, but I think this is too quick of an adjustment based on a bad month.
I also don’t know what to make of Rosario at 18th. BA had him 49th league-wide in the 2025 preseason rankings. I know it’s possible that the prospect gurus know something specific about the medicals, but they don’t agree. ESPN and FG still have him as a 45 or 45+, which would rank in the back half of our top 10, but Pipeline and Law have him around where BA does. Unless I hear a good rationale (or until he struggles in his return), I find the optimistic case more persuasive, but I guess we’ll all just have to see what he looks like next spring.
But mostly this is a good list, and I agree with John C’s enthusiasm about the system-wide helium.
SMS
18 May 26 at 5:23 pm
I’ll chime in to also say this is a surprisingly reactionary ranking. I feel like it corrects some guys who were overlooked before, but I feel like it could also look quite foolish with some of the big moves.
I’m a big fan of Ronny Cruz, but I feel like everyone has gotten a little carried away with an excellent 20 game stretch. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really, really happy that finally someone in our org is getting outsized attention, but Cruz has a few concerns. He strikes out a lot. Since his batted cooled down after his torrid first 20 games, he’s struck out 22 times in his past 15 g (68 PA). I’d have him around the 5/6 range, but I’d absolutely boost him quickly if he can sustain his performance over a half season or longer.
Without seeing a deeper dive into Harry Ford’s slump, his fall also feels very reactionary. This is the first time he’s ever posted an OPS below .745 at any level, and we’re only 31 games in. All it takes is a good 2 weeks for Ford’s numbers to look a lot better, and then this looks silly to drop him so much, especially behind a guy like Fien, whose talent is still entirely hypothetical (Fien’s entire minor league career OPS is almost identical to Ford’s bad 2026 OPS). This feels like prospect fatigue, rather than Ford suddenly having less upside.
Lastly, with all the drastic shifts for guys performing exceptionally well it feels like a relative punishment to drop Morales. If a good month is enough for Cruz, King, Cabrera, Wallace, Petry and Fitz-Gerald to get a significant boost up the rankings, I don’t see why Morales too doesn’t deserve a boost. Plus his OPS and wRC+ is better than all of the above, except Cabrera and Fitz-Gerald.
Will
19 May 26 at 3:51 am
Off topic, but I’m surprised to see House get demoted for Crews, of all players.
I’m not really sure who plays 3B from here on out. Tena’s defense at third is brutal. Do they really want to trot out an even worse infield defense than the one we’ve already got with Abrams at SS and Garcia at 1B? They don’t seem interested in playing Mead there (which probably also doesn’t help on the defensive side of thing), so it seems the solution will be to give Vivas the lion’s share of playing time. But Vivas’ bat is even worse than House’s, and his glove there might not be much better either.
The best solution would’ve been to promote Morales, who has done much more to deserve a promotion than Crews, but that would’ve required DFA’ing Wiemer or Vivas, and Toboni has some irrational infatuation with these two guys.
Will
19 May 26 at 4:08 am
@will: agree on all counts. But, BA isn’t the only shop to not really give Morales any credit. But, stats don’t lie and that Prospect Savant sheet is interesting.
https://prospectsavant.com/player/691002
Let me ask a dumb question though … if us keyboard warrior baseball fans can find this Prospect Savant sheet data, and see that Morales apparently can’t hit a fast ball .. I just have to ask: why the hell is he slashing 3/4/5 right now? Who would be throwing him ANYTHING but fastballs right now? It’s not like he’s struggling with curves, which are harder to throw over and over both from wear and tear perspective and from a control perspective … anyone can throw a 4-seamer. So, something doesn’t seem to add up here.
All that said … and with appropriate caution given to Small Sample Size enthusiasm (with Cruz, with Fitz-Gerald, even with King) … I honestly can’t remember a time in this franchise’s history where we had SO MANY hitters all firing at once. I mean, up and down the system, we’ve got guys crushing the ball at every level. It’s amazing. And it’s all happening at the same time that hte MLB team is inexplicably bashing the ball as well.
Todd Boss
19 May 26 at 10:13 am
House demotion: also surprised … but the writing seemed to be on the wall with some of the Manager’s comments recently about how disappointed he’s been with defensive miscues.
FWIW, Tena gets a lot of DH abs, maybe with House going down they put Tena at 3B primarily, then put Crews into the OF/DH rotation? I also agree the promotion that would have made the most sense was Morales up to play 3B … but if they’re demoting House b/c of his defense, they can’t possibly then bring up a “3B” that most scouts don’t think can actually play there…
Todd Boss
19 May 26 at 10:16 am
I suspect the prospect gurus’ willingness to update so quickly is affected by the new leadership and the fact that there have been so many hitting improvements system-wide. I think we would see less updating and less willingness to update significantly if either (1) the same 2026 batting lines were occurring but the front office was exactly the same as last year; or (2) there were fewer improvements–e.g., instead of ten guys raking it was only three or four.
The problem with updating based upon small sample sizes is you might be updating based on noise. The completely different approach taken by an entirely new front office plus the fact that the batting success seems to be widespread gives the prospect gurus a lot more confidence that they are observing signal and not noise.
Derek
19 May 26 at 11:25 am
Todd, on Morales’ defense: It’s been far too many times now that prospectors have been COMPLETELY wrong about a players’ defense, that I’m highly skeptical of scouting reports on defense. CJ Abrams was reported to have plus defense. James Wood was supposed to be an above average CF. Jacob Young was supposed to be barely good enough to play corner OF. Brady House was supposed to have potentially elite 3B defense. Ruiz was supposed to be above average behind the plate.
And now two prospectors are in disagreement as to whether Seaver King is the best defensive SS in baseball or one of the worst.
And these are just the most recent examples I can think of (they were more or less right that Crews is an above average corner OF, average/slightly above average CF, who is the only example I can think of that wasn’t waaaayyy off). So consider me skeptical that prospectors are being so definitive that Morales can’t play 3B. If you read the scouting reports, you’d think Morales was questionable as to whether he can even play 1B, and yet, he’s been the starting 3B all season, and only has 2 errors. I know using errors to determine defensive talent is highly flawed, but it seems that the scouts’ methods are somehow even less predictive.
I’d like to at least see Morales given a chance at 3B in DC before we say definitively he can’t play there. But I also understand why Toboni isn’t doing it, even if I disagree with it.
Will
19 May 26 at 1:55 pm
While we’re on the subject of the massive improvement in hitting, something that’s been on my mind recently is the state of our pitching. In the article and the comments, like… 10%? of the content is focused on pitchers. It’s easy to do because the bats have been THAT good. But the arms haven’t really made any progress. If anything, the already sorry state of the org’s pitching has gotten worse this season.
Clemmey, D. Garcia and Tejeda have taken steps backward. Perales has been very underwhelming in his return. Only Miguel Sime, Jackson Kent and Riley Cornelio have looked particularly good. And no one else has really come out of the blue like Cruz or Cabrera, or reinvented themselves, like Morales or King.
Of our 59 arms to throw at least 10 innings this season, only 5 have a FIP below 3.00. 4 of those 5 are 23/24 years old in A ball, and the other is Miguel Sime. 22 arms have a strikeout rate above 11K/9IP, only one of them is younger than 23 (again Sime). Hell, of the 59 arms to throw at least 10 IP, only 10 of them are younger than 23! That’s an incredible dearth of talent. And even if some guy emerges from no where, there’s like a 90% chance he’s age inappropriate and just bullying batters 3-5 years younger than him (see: Erick Mejia, Carson Fischer, Grant Manning, Jacob Roberts, Brady Hill, etc. etc.).
It’s been quite the interesting (and startling) contrast to the bats.
Wil
19 May 26 at 2:09 pm
Guess they weren’t done. Chaparro has been promoted, and Wiemer optioned. Didn’t realize Wiemer had any options remaining, which makes his inclusion in the team all the more strange! I thought like Vivas and Mead, he was there by necessity than anything else.
I hope that Chaparro gets a fair run out of games. I don’t think he started two games back to back at all last season. But this could be his last shot. If he hits poorly over the next month, then DFA’ing him for Morales will be considerably less difficult to do.
Will
19 May 26 at 5:14 pm
The Chaparro/Mead swap out makes the Crews / House one a bit easier to understand. I think Mead gets a chance to play more vs righties at 3rd now with the hope he can run with the position. He has his most time in MLB at 3rd. House had had most of his PAs against RHP, so I suspect that they will gradually expose Mead to 3rd base against all pitching. Chappy gets the short-side of the platoon at 1st, and Morales gets his turn in a month or so if Chappy fails or they move on from Garcia.
From a minor league perspective, doesn’t this make the Red Wings lineup simpler? Rather than play Morales at 3rd, House will get almost all the playing time there, and Morales and Abimelec will split time at 1st and DH.
JCA
19 May 26 at 5:17 pm
Mead will playing 3rd base when the opposing starting pitcher is a lefty.
Despite playing only 2 games at 3B this season, Mead has played more 3rd (64 games) at the MLB level than other position. While the sample size is small (again 64 games), he is only a slightly below average at 3B in his MLB career, which is actually a step up from Tena, Vivas and even House this season.
House has the talent to be at least an above average 3B. Hopefully, his stint in Rochester is short, but understand the move as his bat and even more so, his defense, have been poor.
Pilchard
20 May 26 at 11:00 am
@Todd – that’s a really interesting question re Morales- why is he getting anything besides fastballs? Certainly some AAA pitchers are rehabbing MLers or true prospects who aren’t going to change their priorities just to win a minor league game. But that’s got to be at most 20% of his PAs. What is going on the rest of the time?
Also, I want to follow up on your answer to my thought experiment. You point out that 90%+ draftees/IFAs never make it to the show and are therefore (very probably) worse baseball players than the replacement level guys. But, unless we’re going to value minor league wins directly, it’s not clear to me what advantage the org gets from those players who make the majors but are unable to produce there.
Leaving aside replacement players who provide very heterogenous value (via extreme platoon splits or superlative base-running or whatever) because they can be productive role players if used correctly, I think it’s clear that the WAR model presumes that the value of a replacement level player is 0. But that’s only true practically if there are either (1) so many available replacement level players that every org can roster as much depth as they’d ever need or (2) the trade and MiLFA markets are frictionless enough that replacement level league-wide depth will move around to cover any org’s needs.
I’m not sure I believe either of those things to be true. Drafting and developing a replacement level player to fill in when needed provides value over the -0.5 WAR player who would be next on the depth chart. Signing Riley Adams for $500k makes sense because they couldn’t count on backfilling replacement level catchers if needed.
But maybe that’s just equivalent to “replacement level” being incorrectly defined, and perhaps insufficiently skewed by positional scarcity.
SMS
20 May 26 at 12:28 pm
@SMS: about Replacement players/0 WAR players … they’re probably misunderstood because they generally provide “zero war” which then is implied to be “zero value.”
The absolute worst player in the majors last year via fWAR was Michael Toglia, who posted a -2.2 fWAR while slashing .190/.258/.353 for Colorado and playing abhorrent defense at 1B. So, Toglia actively made the team worse than if they’d just taken another 4A 1B type like Ortiz or Chapparo and just plugged him in. The point is, replacement players DO have value. Most WAR systems say that an entire team of replacement level players would go something like 40-122. they woudln’t go 0-162. So they’re just basically keeping the team afloat so to speak. A player in AAA who can’t even cut it in the majors would, if given the opportunity, actively make the team worse.
Todd Boss
20 May 26 at 4:20 pm
Kent: after watching him yesterday, Todd is spot on regarding the comps to our other two surprise LH risers.
plus, he’s got a tick more on his fastball than Alverez with a better changeup and a whole lot better command than Parker.
FredMD
24 May 26 at 11:59 am