Well, we’re past the trade deadline and the 2026 draft, where we got a near top 10 pick added to the system.
How are we looking? The first shop to do a post-trade deadline and post Draft prospect inclusion is the trusty old Baseball America shop; here’s their updated top 30 with some commentary.
Here’s a link to their updated top 30 if you’re a BA subscriber, other wise the table below shoes their 8/10/26 rank along with their 7/1/26 rank.
| 8/10/2026 | 7/1/2026 | First Name | Last Name | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Eli | Willits | SS |
| 2 | 2 | Seaver | King | SS |
| 3 | 3 | Jarlin | Susana | RHP (Starter) |
| 4 | 4 | Devin | Fitz-Gerald | SS |
| 5 | 5 | Ronny | Cruz | SS |
| 6 | 6 | Travis | Sykora | RHP (Starter) |
| 7 | Pre-Acqu | Chris | Hacopian | 2B |
| 8 | 7 | Luis | Perales | RHP (Starter) |
| 9 | 9 | Miguel | Sime Jr. | RHP (Starter) |
| 10 | 10 | Jackson | Kent | LHP (Starter) |
| 11 | 25 | Samil | Serrano | OF (Corner) |
| 12 | Pre-Acqu | Chase | Brunson | OF (CF) |
| 13 | 12 | Landon | Harmon | RHP (Starter) |
| 14 | 8 | Gavin | Fein | SS |
| 15 | 18 | Coy | James | SS |
| 16 | Pre-Acqu | Cooper | Harris | RHP (Starter) |
| 17 | Pre-Acqu | Jack | Cebert | RHP (Starter) |
| 18 | 20 | Luke | Dickerson | SS/CF |
| 19 | 13 | Alex | Clemmey | LHP (Starter) |
| 20 | Pre-Acqu | Ben | Grable | RHP (Reliever) |
| 21 | 21 | Alejandro | Rosario | RHP |
| 22 | 16 | Sam | Peterson | OF (CF) |
| 23 | 27 | Yoel | Tejeda Jr. | RHP (Starter) |
| 24 | Pre-Acqu | Luke | Williams | SS |
| 25 | 11 | Ethan | Petry | 1B/OF (Corner) |
| 26 | Pre-Acqu | Josh | Hartle | LHP (Starter) |
| 27 | 15 | Yohandy | Morales | 3B |
| 28 | Pre-Acqu | Yovanny | Cruz | RHP (Reliever) |
| 29 | 19 | Yeremy | Cabrera | OF (corner) |
| 30 | 17 | Cayden | Wallace | 2B/3B |
| 31 | 23 | Angel | Feliz | SS/3B |
| 32 | 24 | Caleb | Lomavita | C |
| 33 | 26 | Jorgelys | Mota | SS |
| 34 | 28 | Marconi | German | SS |
| 36 | 30 | De la Cruz | Marlon | RHP (Starter) |
| MLB | 14 | Harry | Ford | C |
| MLB | 22 | Riley | Cornelio | RHP (Starter) |
| MLB | 29 | Andrew | Pinckney | OF (Corner) |
Ok, so lets talk about the additions and notable changes.
- The Draft netted us 4 new top-30 prospects: Hacopian, Brunson, Harris, and Williams. Our first 4 rounders.
- The Trade Deadline also netted us 4 new top-30 prospects: Cebert, Grable, Hartle, Cruz.
- As of this ranking, 3 guys were in the MLB and are not included: Ford, Cornelio, Pinckney (though Pinckney would have been pushed off the end of the previous top 30 with all these new names coming in).
- No changes in the top 6 from 7/1 to 8/10, even though Susana seems to be on track to miss the entire season with a murky injury that’s never really been disclosed. Update: maybe not; apparently he’s on track to return next week … just in time for the season to be over.
- Hacopian slots into his first ranking at #7. Our farm system has come a long way when our first rounder comes in so low. Here’s some comparisons to other top draft picks and where they debuted in our farm system:
- Willits: 2025 1st round, 1st overall: Went right in at our #1
- King: 2024 1st round, 10th overall: debuted at #7 on BA’s first list post draft
- Crews 2023 1st round, 2nd overall: was #2 on Fangraphs (behind Woods), #1 most everywhere else
- Greene 2022 1st round 5th overall: was #5 on Fangraphs, #4 on BA’s first list
- House 2021 1st round 11th overall: went right to #2 behind Cavalli
- Cavalli 2020 1st round 22nd overall: Went to #4 to start
- Rutledge 2019 1st round 17th overall: started at #4 in the system.
- Denaburg 2018 1st round ?th overall: started at #4 on multiple shops
- Romero 2017 1st round ?th overall: Started at #5
- Kieboom 2016 1st round-S: 6-7th
- Dunning 2016 1st round-S: 7th-8th
- As noted elsewhere, Jackson Kent #10 is going to get called up to pitch in the MLB rotation, above Perales.
- Samil Serrano is the first player with a significantly improved relative ranking to 5 weeks ago, going from #25 to #11 on this list. No surprise, with him slashing .300/.418/.523 in the DSL in his debut season after signing for $1.9M in January. It would be great to develop someone out of the DSL.
- Gavin Fein gets dumped 6 spots for his struggling 2026 season, fair.
- Coy James actually moved up a few spots relatively. It pays to play the infield.
- Fein: .238/.330/.406 with 9 homers splitting time between CF and RF.
- James: .230/.345/.438 with 18 homers playing all around the dirt.
- Our highest ranked prospect acquired in trade is AA starter Jack Cebert, ranked #17 here.
- Alex Clemmey takes a dive, from #13 to #19. Understandable given his season performance, even if he’s had some decent games lately.
- Sam Peterson takes a dive as well, from 16->22. The Nats don’t think so; they just promoted him to AAA and he’s started hot.
- The biggest drop has to be Ethan Petry, who was on the cusp of the top 10 in early July and got dropped 14 spots in this ranking. Ouch.
- In the same vein, Morales got dropped from 15 to 27 after struggling for the last two months. That seems awfully harsh.
- The last two guys on the current top 30 are also hitters who have gotten dropped: Cabrera and Wallace. Cabrera I get; he’s now finishing his 5th pro season and is struggling with the promotion to High-A, but Wallace’s dinging doesn’t make sense. he’s had a really solid season and is now in AAA.
Ford, Cornelio, and Pinckney if they were still on the list probably would come in at around 20, 25, and 30ish respectively. None of the three are graduated yet in terms of ABs or IPs, probably just some BA thing where they don’t rank guys in the majors.
Five guys got pushed out of the top 30 with all this churn: assuming they’re still in the same order:
- 31: Angel Feliz
- 32: Caleb Lomavita
- 33: Jorgelys Mota
- 34: Marconi German
- 35: Marlon De la Cruz
In terms of overall farm system rankings, I’ll be super curious to see where we sit now. One week after ranking our top 30 in July, BA put us at the #4 farm system in all of baseball, and that was before adding 8 more guys. The three teams ranked above us (Milwaukee, Tampa, LA Dodgers) are all in first place and were absolutely “buyers” at the trade deadline, meaning the combination of us adding and them all subtracting gives this team a real chance at getting to the #1 spot, which is crazy.
In all the time i’ve tracked prospects and Farm system rankings, going back well before our time in DC, the Nats farm system has been ranked #1 exactly ONCE by any shop: the 2012 Baseball America Handbook release just before we moved a bunch of guys to acquire Gio Gonzalez. Do we have a chance to get there again?
https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board?org=wsn
Fangraphs “The Board” now reflects both the trades and the draft.
#6 – Hacopian (45+)
#11 – Cebert (40+)
#21 – Brunson (40+)
#22 – Williams (40+)
#27 – Grable (40)
#31 – Harttle (40)
#32 – Harris (40)
#36 – Dion (40)
#37 – Y Cruz (40)
#38 – Virguez (40)
#44 – Mitchell (35+)
FWIW, they rank 51 35+FV or higher.
jca
10 Aug 26 at 9:21 pm
These monthly updates are dumb and to me suggest BA are (or were) badly informed. It turns prospect evaluation into power rankings, where prospects rise and fall (each month!) on their performance rather than their future potential. Or, it shows BA were ill informed in their previous rankings, in that seeing a prospect in person one or two times could lead to a HUGE change in scouting outlook.
Really, this is just engagement-bait, and here I am taking it…
For example, I strongly doubt someone from BA went to the DR to watch games, and got to see Samil Serrano numerous times (you couldn’t pay me to watch that god awful DSL Nats team). But even if so, what about that would suggest Serrano’s already positive scouting reports and huge signing bonus were insufficient? More plausibly, his 14 spot jump is just entirely based off his .900+ OPS. It confirms he’s a mature hitter for his age, who will need less development time than his peers. Fine. I’m wary of making really big proclamations from DSL performances. We see all the time players fail to translate DSL success to even the FCL. But whatever, there’s a solid argument here. Likewise, Ethan Petry’s 14 spot tumble can only be explained based off him struggling mightily against AA pitching, because someone would have presumably have seen him perform well in Wilmington to merit his last quite aggressive placement at #11 a mere month and a half ago. But ok, fair enough. It feels pretty ridiculous that a relatively short slump can have such a drastic impact, but I understand the logic. I’d guess there’s a similar logic to the other biggest tumblers on this list, right? Those hitters are in order of fall:
Petry – 14 spots
Wallace – 13
Morales – 12
Y. Cabrera – 10
Feliz – 8
Lomavita – 8
German – 6
Petersen – 6
Wallace – Since July 1, he’s hit .272/.296/.388 almost exclusively after being promoted to AAA. He started out slow, but has really been heating up recently (hitting .306/.324/.444 in August). From my view, that’s AT WORST, a holding steady kind of performance. Not a 13 point free-fall.
Morales – Todd, what “struggle” are you talking about? Since July 1st, he’s hit .241/.353/.586. His strikeouts are down, walks up, power up, but his usually excellent AVG has been knocked down by an unlucky .216 BABIP. This is, if anything, a wildly positive past month, marred by a relatively short IL stint, where he’s returned arguably even better than when he left (hitting 2 HR in 3 games). If we’re considering a .939 OPS struggling, Morales has an impossibly high bar to live up to. And in spite of all that, he falls 12 spots?!
Cabrera – He’s hit .221/.303/.356. Not good.
Feliz – Very similar to Cabrera: .236/.285/.396
Lomavita – see above: .213/.259/.307
Marconi German – since July 1, he’s hit .324/.425/.735… yes, a 1.150 OPS. You read that right. Why did he fall? Especially when you figure that Samil Serrano, another very raw, signing bonus baby, rose 14 spots for a worse performance in a worse league than German.
Petersen – he’s hit a very respectable .248/.406/.395, and that’s with a promotion to AAA mixed in! Another holding steady kind of performance, IMO.
So what’s the logic here? Among the hitters with what should be the worst performances since July 1st, we have 4 guys who’ve been solid (or fantastic in Morales and German’s case), and 4 poor but not disastrous performances.
What’s all the more strange is there’s no shortage in this org of underperforming prospects, they’ve all almost exclusively not moved at all.
In the same period, Willits has hit a Petersen-ian .226/.436/.345, feasting on A ball pitchers’ awful control. King has been good, but mostly injured during this period. Fitz-Gerald has hit .217/.301/.265 and Cruz has hit .175/.308/.247…
I appreciate that Willits, especially, is in another tier of prospect status, that even if he went hitless for the past month, he’s still sit at #1, but the players in the #2-9 range are all very, very good, and I’d expect to see a bit of reshuffling here. For example, I’ve seen enough in Sime’s very good performance AND upside, especially contrasted with Cruz’s very large sample size showing him unable to cope with A+ pitching, that they’d basically swap spots. I’d also expect to see a correction on the bullish take on Devin Fitz-Gerald. He is displaying the exact same concerns as Petry is in AA (bad contact and plate discipline), so if you’re going to ding Petry, I’d expect a re-adjustment of Fitz-Gerald (who is “only” a year younger than Petry).
On the whole, I’d have something like:
Tier 1
1. Willits
Tier 2
2. Sykora
3. Susana
4. King
5. Sime
6. Hacopian
Tier 3
7. Harmon
8. Fitz-Gerald
9. Morales
10. Cruz
11. Perales
12. Kent
Then after that a big group of rough/unproven, toolsy guys, like Dickerson, James, Fien, Y. Cabrera, Brunson, Williams, German, Serrano, N. de la Cruz, B. Martinez, Rosario, Clemmey and Harris, and a couple more players I’m almost certainly forgetting. Mixed with several low-ceiling, what-you-see-is-what-you-get types like Petry, Wallace, Romero, Hartle, Glasser, Petersen, Randall, Lyon, etc. Then I still need to learn more about our recent lower-profile acquisitions/draftees to have an opinion.
Will
11 Aug 26 at 5:37 am
I agree with a lot of what Will says here. BA is being way too reactive to short term stats (and I’d say at least a bit too reactive to stats at all).
Similar to Pipeline and unlike Law or FG, I don’t think BA does much independent scouting. I do think they have a lot of industry sources and I find that aspect of their takes more interesting / useful than their stat-based analysis (which often is, frankly, mediocre and suffers from them having to keep track of literally thousands of potential prospects).
I’d add Ford to the list of folks who fell undeservedly. He had a terrible April, but he was learning a new org and a new pitching staff and dealing with a shoulder injury. He had a league average bat in May and ran a 130 wRC+ in June. In the month before his call up, his wRC+ was 168. As a catcher. The guy was a top 100 prospect 6 months ago, and because of a very bad April they rank him ~20th? Wild. I still think he’s a 50 and he’s been vacillating between 4th and 5th for me (with Fitz-Gerald – who I also am very happy to extend a few months grace to given his family health issue).
Rosario is another one where I’m meaningfully off consensus. The guy was a Susana-level prospect before his injury, and while the atypical nature of his recovery does need to lower our expectations some, I don’t think I can justify more than a full grade drop. Which puts him like 8th for me. Big error bars though.
My top 14 is those 2 plus the same 12 guys Will separates out, and I do agree that there is a big drop off after that set. I’m currently rank those top 14 as:
FV60: Willits
FV55: Susana, Sykora
FV50: Ford, Fitz-Gerald
FV45+: Sime, Ronny Cruz, Rosario, Harmon, King
FV45: Hacopian, Jackson Kent, Perales, Morales
SMS
11 Aug 26 at 11:10 am
Morales must be the most AAAA guy ever — he’s not playing with a metal bat or something in Rochester, is he?
I really can’t understand why that performance is being punished by not even thinking about calling him up.
kevin r
11 Aug 26 at 11:32 am
@JCA; thanks for that note on Fangraphs; i’ll add in our new guys to my artifact. Probably won’t do a reaction piece though, but it is good to have another data point. MLBpipeline always takes longer to add in draft prospects … maybe b/c they all go on vacation as soon as the draft is done 🙂
Todd Boss
11 Aug 26 at 11:52 am
@Will: Morales “struggling” was just reacting to his .217 BAA in July. He still slugged .522 putting his OPS at .843, so totally fair to question that comment.
Todd Boss
11 Aug 26 at 11:54 am
Taking a peek at Fangraphs rankings … they have Seaver King 30th in the system.
30th.
I understand that some pundits were down on him. But putting him 30th strains credulity of this dataset. BA has him #2. That might be the biggest delta for an individual player i’ve ever seen .
Todd Boss
11 Aug 26 at 12:02 pm
Also, another on Fangraphs ranking; 51 players ranked, no Morales. Or Pinckney, or Wallace for that matter.
Maybe they just can’t properly value hitters in AAA. Like, at all.
Todd Boss
11 Aug 26 at 12:13 pm
Re FG and King – I had a chance to ask EL about that when the list came out, because it struck me as particularly odd given that they bumped King up to a 45+ after the AFL. EL said that he was seeing and hearing terrible things about his defense, and that the profile doesn’t really work if he can’t stick up the middle. And that’s why he slid so far down.
I think that’s a reasonable argument, and the defensive concerns are why I’m lower on King than you guys, but I don’t understand how such a small sample size could justify such a dramatic re-evaluation of his defense. (The tool-level prevent value / future projection went from 50/60 in 2025 to 30/45. Which is a big shift.)
Based on errors, he’s been better since the promotion to AAA, but we all know that’s a terrible metric. So I don’t know. I wish we could get OAA for AAA. Sometimes I think the only way we can get reliable scouting on folks’ defense is to give them a month in the majors.
Re Morales – the story that I’ve heard on him is that he’s weak against fastballs and doesn’t elevate enough. MLB pitchers will too easily exploit the first issue and MLB defenses will turn too many of those hard hit groundballs into outs. They think he is 100% AAAA. I don’t agree (obviously, based on me ranking him 14th) but I do think those are actual issues that paint a more complicated picture than the excellent topline production.
SMS
11 Aug 26 at 12:51 pm
I can’t help but laugh about the criticisms of Morales’ launch angles, when he presently has the 4th most HRs in all of AAA. It’s such a myopic take on a slightly better than back-of-a-baseball card statistic. Does Morales hit too many groundballs? Yeah. But isn’t it remarkable that a guy who hits too many groundballs has hit some of the most HRs? His exit velocity and raw power is astounding. Like very good by MLB standards, never mind AAA. THIS is the key thing. Morales has a flaw in his swing that, if adjusted, could make him a superstar. But as it stands now, he just might be able to get by as is! That’s why I think he’s such an exciting player, and that’s why any highly regarded prospect is rated highly, for their future potential.
People (Eric Longenhagen) also talk about his inability to hit fastballs, and yet his xwOBA against fastballs is .323. That’s not good, but also not bad. And his hard hit% is 59%, so even though he struggles to make contact, he still mashes the ball when he does.
All that to say, Morales isn’t a perfect player. 99.9% of prospects aren’t. But I’m continually astounded by the collective and concerted effort to write off Morales, where he’s held to a ridiculously high standard that no other prospect is. It just defies logic, and I can’t wait to see him get a chance, which will hopefully come quite soon!
Will
11 Aug 26 at 2:52 pm
@Will – I think we’re actually pretty close on the Morales eval but I’ll defend the FG take a bit.
First, on launch angles, 23 HRs is good, no argument, but that’s with a 32.4% HR/FB rate, which is the single highest of any qualified batter in AAA. That’s also 3pp higher than any qualified MLB hitter and more than 10pp higher than the 10th best MLB hitter – which is I think is fair to use as a quick and dirty “best case projection” for what Morales might be able to produce in the majors. That means, if he can’t make the adjustments to his swing to put more balls in the air, those 23 should really be counting as 15, and that’s before adjusting to AAA pitchers and AAA parks, and all of a sudden it’s not looking so great for a 1B.
(Of course, if you do think he’s going to be able to sustain the highest HR/FB in the majors, then launch angle really isn’t much of an issue, because we do in fact care more about that numerator than the denominator.)
Second, fastballs. Overall, Morales has a .395 wOBA, which compares well to a .343 league-wide average. Against fastballs, the league jumps to .372, but Morales’s falls to .383. So, not actively good, but not a liability. Still better than average. Fair enough.
But these are AAA fastballs. Let’s look at 93+. Nothing crazy, just normal major league average or faster. Now, Yoyo’s wOBA falls to .271(!) on 102 PAs. The league average is .351.
So I think it’s totally fair to say that he has some real issues. Can he learn to improve from here? Absolutely. Will his power play if there are even small favorable adjustments? Definitely. But it’s not so wild to me that the evaluators have doubts.
SMS
11 Aug 26 at 4:47 pm
I totally understand the criticisms against him. I’m not claiming he’s a slam dunk major leaguer. Far from it. He’s far more likely to fail. But, I think he possesses several skills that, if they click, could make him a very good major leaguer. The same can be said of every prospect in the history of time. Will Willits ever develop real power? Can King’s defense improve? Will Sykora and Susana come back as good as before they got injured? Will Sime learn how to control his electric arm? Will Morales be able to make the most of his prodigious power by making better contact and keeping up with speed?
What I take exception with is that prospect watchers use Morales’ flaws as a way to completely dismiss him as a prospect, while brushing away the other aforementioned prospects’ flaws as something they will hopefully improve in the future. There’s a very weird double-standard that I can’t ever remember seeing. It’s especially funny because BA kind of broke from the group-think and bumped Morales up to 15th, and then after another great month, dropped him back to near-irrelevance.
I don’t know if others remember, but an old writer for FanGraphs, Carson Cistulli, had a series (The Fringe Five) where he highlighted players who didn’t make any prospect lists, who performed well in the minors despite the lack of hype. His end of year lists always featured quite a few players who turned into really good major leaguers, despite no one considering them to be capable of that. I guess Morales sitting towards the end of most people’s top 30 would’ve excluded him, but he’s just the type. Systematically overlooked, but still churning out really good performances at every opportunity. Give me that every day over a guy who is exceptionally hyped up, but fails to ever produce or live up to that hype.
Will
11 Aug 26 at 7:07 pm
I’ve stated my lack of interest in these lists before and that has not changed. I suspect that AI-driven tools may be quietly influencing how MLB prospects are evaluated and ranked, even if the extent of that influence is hard to confirm.
FredMD
12 Aug 26 at 10:05 am
Slam dunk major leaguer isn’t the question for any of these guys except maybe Willts. Even 50s bust half the time. You’re right that they’re all flawed, but the flaws aren’t all equal. We have to evaluate based on on our guesses about how bad the flaws are, and how fixable they are.
Why do you think it’s implausible that poor performance against velocity is a stickier flaw than poor pitch recognition or poor command?
You’ve heard the cliche about how the league treats rookies – fastballs until they prove they can hit it. Maybe that’s not as true as it once was, but 80% of qualified pitchers average 93 or higher. If Morales can’t hit those pitches, the rest of his profile simply doesn’t matter.
By the way, I do remember the Fringe 5, and it wasn’t a list of the most productive non-prospects league wide. Cistulli had a few specific under-the-hood stats that he relied upon to find his overlooked guys. A low swinging strike rate was big for him. He also liked defensive versatility. Glasser is our Cistulli’s guy, not Morales.
If you want to make the case that big power guys who can’t hit velocity is a new market imbalance, that’s fine. The league is throwing fewer fastballs, more pitchers are pitching backward, maybe the league doesn’t exploit this flaw as hard as it once did. But the industry is saying pretty clearly that they don’t think he’ll improve, so I think you need more to make your argument than good AAA production. Can you find any similar players from the last few years? How did they do in the majors?
SMS
12 Aug 26 at 10:29 am