What to expect from the Top 100 and ‘Just Missed’ prospects on MLB Opening Day rosters

Nine players from my Top 100 prospects made MLB Opening Day rosters this year, along with two players who were on my list of prospects who just missed the top 100. I’ve compiled all 11 of their preseason scouting capsules here, along with a sentence or two on each player with what I think they might do in the majors this year.

Dylan Crews, OF, Washington Nationals

Age: 23 | Ht: 5-11 | Wt: 203 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 7

2025 outlook: Crews hasn’t looked like a future star in his year-plus in the minors but does make a lot of contact and should manage to get to a .320-.330 OBP this year with 15-20 homers if he plays all season.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Crews was the second pick in the 2023 draft and made his major-league debut about 13 months after signing, advancing quickly through the minors as expected but without the dominance that most people anticipated. Crews hit .274/.343/446 in Double-A, in a good hitters’ park in Harrisburg, and .265/.340/.455 at Triple-A Rochester. It was a solid performance, boosted by above-average defense in center field, but he’s not just any prospect — he won the 2023 Golden Spikes award after starring at LSU and beating up on SEC pitching for three years. The good news is that his batted-ball data points to better results going forward, as he ran into some bad luck in the majors despite hitting the ball pretty hard in a small sample; his hard-hit rates in Triple-A (43.3%) and the majors (44.7%) were both above the median, even though he was just 22 and young for both levels. He’s closed off some of the trouble he had in 2023 with fastballs up in the zone, and missed just 10 percent of the fastballs he swung at in the majors. He hit lefties fine in his brief sample in the big leagues as well, struggling mostly against breaking stuff from righties, especially down and away.

Even with the tepid performance in the high minors, he still shows the underlying characteristics of an above-average hitter in the big leagues, and that coupled with what is probably grade 55 defense in center — or plus if he moves to a corner at any point — would still make him at least a consistent 3-4 WAR player right now. I’m still hopeful there’s more upside here with the bat than he’s demonstrated in his year-plus in pro ball.

Kristian Campbell, 2B/OF, Boston Red Sox

Age: 23 | Ht: 6-3 | Wt: 191 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 9

2025 outlook: I won’t predict a hot start for any hitter making his MLB debut, but if the Red Sox give him a long ramp, Campbell is a good bet for an above-average OBP, maybe a dozen homers, and above-average defense at second base, too.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Campbell was my minor league player of the year for 2024 after he posted a .330/.439/.558 line across three levels, from High-A through Triple-A, in his first full year in pro ball. The Red Sox took him in the fourth round in 2023 as a redshirt freshman at Georgia Tech, betting on the makeup and the athleticism, and that good scouting work paid off as he not only hit at every level but did so while playing four positions — second, short, third, and center. He’s a plus runner who’s fast enough to play any of those spots, but his fringy arm probably limits him to second or center, with second his best position right now and in the long run as well. His swing has a little funk to it and he can get flat through contact, resulting in a 60% groundball rate in his brief time in Triple-A, but he has an incredible eye at the plate and gets the bat to the ball consistently enough for hard contact. He does have some holes he’ll have to work on, including four-seamers up and anything moving down and in under his hands or at his front hip, some of which may just be a function of his limited experience before getting to Triple-A.

He’s also already gained 10-15 pounds of further muscle this winter, which could help with bat control and getting some more loft through contact. He could easily be a plus defender at second and at worst should post high OBPs with 20-30 steals and 50-plus extra-base hits a year.

Jackson Jobe, RHP, Detroit Tigers

Age: 22 | Ht: 6-2 | Wt: 190 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 11

2025 outlook: Jobe’s going to miss a lot of bats, and he’s probably going to walk too many this year, so even with the ceiling of a front-line starter, he’s probably going to be closer to league average this year — or even a little below it.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Jobe is the best pitching prospect in the minors right now, although every candidate for that list has missed some time with injuries in the past two years, Jobe included, so buyer beware. He’s got a four-pitch mix highlighted by a high-spin four-seamer that sits 94-98 when he’s starting and an elite changeup, one of the best in the minors, that has tremendous late tumble, and that he can throw to both sides of the plate and uses against left- and right-handed batters. He’s also got a sweeper-slider and a hard slider, both of which are more weapons against righties, although the sweeper is probably going to be the fourth pitch in his arsenal in the majors. He has cleaned up his delivery somewhat since 2023, so he should be better positioned to repeat it and throw both more strikes and better strikes going forward, as high walk rates have been one of the only negatives on his report to date — he walked 12.6% of batters he faced in Double A and Triple A last year, which is a giant gift to batters given how hard his stuff is to hit.

He’s also had a lot of non-arm injuries, missing the first half of 2023 with a lower back injury and two months of 2024 with a hamstring strain, so he’s thrown just 252 2/3 total innings in three full pro seasons, including time in the AFL in 2023. That may point to a limited workload in 2025, especially since he’s likely to spend most or all of it in the majors. It’s No. 1 starter upside if he can go from 45 control to 55, which he certainly should given his athleticism and where the delivery stands now.

Matt Shaw, 3B, Chicago Cubs

Age: 23 | Ht: 5-9 | Wt: 185 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 14

2025 outlook: Shaw’s got a great swing and a history of making hard and frequent contact, so while his two-game debut in Japan wasn’t great, I’m still projecting above-average offensive performance from him this year, more from average and OBP than from power.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Shaw might be the Cubs’ starting third baseman this April, and he’s earned the shot after reaching Triple-A in his first full pro season and hitting better as the season progressed. Shaw started 2024 in Double-A, where he overcame some bad luck on balls in play to hit .279/.373/.468 with just a 17.5% strikeout rate, and then bumped up to Triple-A and hit .298/.395/.534 with a 19.7% strikeout rate. He makes very consistent hard contact, averaging 89.3 mph in Triple-A with a 90th percentile exit velocity of 106. He utilizes a very rotational and clean swing that tends to put the ball in the air. He’s a shortstop by trade but has played second and third as well in the minors, a reflection of the Cubs’ needs, with second base probably his best position and his third-base defense playable if not quite average yet. He’s a 55 runner with excellent instincts and could probably handle center or left if needed.

Shaw is one of the best bets to hit for a high average of any prospect in the minors, and should add another half-grade of power to get last year’s 21 homers up into the 25-30 homer range in his best years. Depending on his position and how much he can improve his defense, he could be a 5-WAR player at his peak.

Jasson Domínguez, OF, New York Yankees

Age: 22 | Ht: 5-9 | Wt: 190 | Bats: S | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 22

2025 outlook: Domínguez is going to start in left field, which isn’t his best position, so his defensive numbers might not be good this year. He’s got now power and could hit 20 homers this year in a full season, doing most of his damage from the left side, probably with a strikeout rate worse than league average.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Domínguez may never quite be the Mickey Mantle-esque star that the earliest hype around him indicated, but he’s going to be a very good player — more so if the Yankees just leave him in center field and let him hit. Signed for a $5 million bonus as a 16-year-old in 2019, Domínguez was very physically mature for his age then, and showed plus power early on in his career as a result. He’s also a 70 runner and has 30/30 upside if he hits enough to get to it, and so far, he has hit for contact and average up through Triple-A, hitting .287/.363/.465 there last year in his return from 2023 Tommy John surgery. He’s a switch-hitter with really good swings from both sides of the plate, but has always been better from the left side and has struck out 29.3% of the time when batting right-handed over the last two years, one thing that bears watching as he moves to the majors.

He’s a natural center fielder and a good one, with range from that plus speed along with solid instincts to read balls off the bat. There’s some hit tool risk, especially against southpaws, and he doesn’t have the same room for physical projection that most prospects his age still do. I see enough present strength and power — his EV50 in Triple-A was 101.6 mph, which would have ranked fourth on the Yankees last year — to project him as a 25-30 homer guy as is, and with the speed and defense that still makes him a well above-average regular and occasional All-Star.

Drake Baldwin, C, Atlanta

Age: 24 | Ht: 5-10 | Wt: 210 | Bats: L | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 27

2025 outlook: If there’s a name on this list who’s getting underestimated by projection systems and, I think, by fans, it’s Baldwin, who keeps improving as a hitter with more playing time and is more than good enough defensively to hold the job. If he gets enough reps, he’s going to hit well enough to give Atlanta a real conundrum about who their actual catcher of the near future is.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Baldwin is such a good defender behind the plate that he’s almost certainly going to be someone’s everyday catcher, and if his raw power keeps showing up in games as it did after a midseason promotion to Triple-A, he’s going to make some All-Star teams. He was Atlanta’s third-round pick in 2022 out of Missouri State, where he wasn’t a full-time player until his draft year, and he’s improved substantially as a hitter since entering pro ball, loosening up at the plate to try to get to more of that plus power. He had a slow start in Double-A but Atlanta promoted him to Gwinnett in early June, after which he took off, hitting .298/.407/.484 at the higher level with 12 homers in 72 games. He hits the ball extremely hard — his average exit velocity in Triple-A was 92 mph, his EV50 was 103, and his 90th percentile EV was 107 — so there’s every reason to think the power is real. He whistles the bat through the zone with excellent bat speed, and even with a pretty high starting position he hasn’t had trouble getting to pitches at the bottom of the strike zone so far. He’s an outstanding blocker and receiver with plus arm strength but just fringy accuracy so far, leading to a career 20% caught stealing rate in the minors.

A 20-homer catcher with plus defense will rank among the best backstops in the majors, and Baldwin looks like he can be at least that, and probably will debut this year.

Cam Smith, 3B/RF, Houston Astros

Age: 22 | Ht: 6-3 | Wt: 224 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 43

2025 outlook: Smith destroyed the Grapefruit League, and the expectations for him are through the roof, which is unfair for a kid who’s barely nine months out of college. He should hit well enough to stay on the roster, maybe not getting to power until later in the year, although I’m worried he’ll struggle while learning a new position as he’s also trying to make the huge jump to the majors.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Smith was a draft-eligible sophomore last year who reworked his swing and his body to surge to a .387/.488/.654 line in his sophomore year at Florida State, raising his average by over 100 points, and landing with the Cubs at the No. 13 pick. He then had the best pro debut of any prospect in the draft, hitting .313/.396/.609 across three levels and finishing up in Double-A. That ended his Cubs career, as they traded him to Houston in the Kyle Tucker deal this offseason, immediately making him the Astros’ No. 1 prospect. Smith’s swing gets the bat to the zone quickly, and he makes a lot of very hard contact, topping out over 115 mph in the spring for Florida State, and the Cubs already managed to get him to lift the ball more often to turn that loud contact into more power.

He’s only played third base since signing and that’s his best long-term outcome; that seemed like wishful thinking as recently as 2023, but his improved conditioning gives him a chance to stay there, with first base or right field also possibilities. He looks like he can flat-out hit, and might get to 25 homers too. If he does that as a third baseman, he might be able to fill Alex Bregman’s shoes in Houston and make a few All-Star teams.

Rhett Lowder, RHP, Cincinnati Reds (15-day IL)

Age: 23 | Ht: 6-2 | Wt: 200 Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 48

2025 outlook: Lowder is starting the year on the injured list and probably comes back slowly to protect his elbow; when he’s ready to rock, he’s got an out-pitch in the changeup and the fastball should play, but he might be very homer-prone given his flyball tendencies and that home ballpark.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Lowder reached the majors just over a year after the Reds took him with the No. 7 pick out of Wake Forest, showing three pitches with a ton of movement albeit a little less velocity than he had shown in college. His best pitch as an amateur was his changeup, which is hard to pick up out of his hand and has both fading and tumbling action to it, but it was actually less effective at generating whiffs than his 92-95 mph four-seamer or his high-spin slider in his six big-league starts, even just against lefties. All three of his pitches should be above-average, with the run helping the fastball play up and sharp downward break to the slider, so it was surprising that he gave up so much contact, with a 41% hard-hit rate, in his debut. Even with that high contact rate, Lowder was very lucky in the majors, with a 1.17 ERA but a 3.10 FIP, and even that latter figure doesn’t adjust for the improbability of allowing 0 homers in 30 innings.

He’s major-league ready and probably a league-average starter given his current velocity and what looks like 55 control and maybe 45 command, with of course the chance to get beyond that if he starts working less in the heart of the zone with his fastballs. (You may not give a damn, but he’s the first player named Rhett in big-league history.)

Kumar Rocker, RHP, Texas Rangers

Age: 25 | Ht: 6-5 | Wt: 245 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking: 51

2025 outlook: Rocker and former Vanderbilt teammate Jack Leiter both made the Rangers’ rotation this spring; Rocker’s going to rack up strikeouts around the 25% mark, and probably walk 10-12 percent of batters, while dealing with what I assume will be an innings limit in his first full year back from Tommy John surgery.

2025 Top 100 scouting report: Rocker’s road to the majors was … uh, rocky? Sorry, I’ll work on that. He was the No. 10 pick in 2021, but the Mets didn’t like something in his post-draft physical, so he went to indy ball and pitched well enough to go No. 3 to Texas in 2022 but blew out his elbow six starts into his pro debut the next year. He returned in 2024 and the Rangers kept moving him up as he kept posting, eventually getting him three starts in the majors in September where he looked as good as he had since his freshman year at Vanderbilt. He had lowered his arm slot back in 2022, but it’s back to its original position, which allows him to get more depth on his slider. The slider is easily plus and might be a 70 once again, and keeps him on top of his 94-97 mph four-seamer.

His path from here is largely about him — he has succeeded in the past by out-stuffing guys, and being very aggressive with those two main pitches (he has a curve and changeup, but uses them less), but in the big leagues he’s going to have to show better command to get ahead of hitters and to avoid a lot of four-inning, 85-pitch starts. This is a bet that he’ll make those adjustments and end up at least a mid-rotation starter, perhaps someone who pitches at a higher level than that but needs to skip some starts here and there to keep him healthy.

Sean Burke, RHP, Chicago White Sox

Age: 25 | Ht: 6-6 | Wt: 230 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking:‘ Just Missed’ list

2025 outlook: Burke won his rotation spot on the basis of his plus stuff, even though he walked nine in 12 innings in spring training. He’s likely to be highly volatile, with some high-strikeout starts alternating with three-inning ones where he runs up his pitch count too quickly. He’s also had a lot of arm injuries and probably isn’t going to make more than 15-18 starts.

2025 ‘Just Missed’ scouting report: You’d be forgiven for wondering if I made Sean Burke up, as he’s thrown 252 total innings since he was drafted in July 2021 and spent time on the 60-day injured list in both 2023 and 2024. He did make his major-league debut in September, however, and despite all of his arm woes, the stuff was electric: He sat 94-96 with life up on the four-seamer, topping out at 99, and showed a plus curveball that could be a 70 with a ton of two-plane break. He also throws a mid-80s cutter/slider hybrid — Statcast calls it a slider, it looks more like a cutter, but that’s probably just semantics — and a changeup that’s a clear fourth pitch and that he will have to improve, as he already showed a modest platoon split in the minors last year.

His delivery is good enough for him to have at least average control, and he gets excellent extension over his front side. If he stays off the injured list, and just improves the changeup a little bit through repetitions, he’s a potential No. 3 starter. I worry that it’s either that or nothing, given his checkered health history.

Jacob Wilson, SS, Athletics

Age: 23 | Ht: 6-2 | Wt: 190 | Bats: R | Throws: R

Top 100 ranking:‘ Just Missed’ list

2025 outlook: Wilson might hit .270-.280 with above-average defense at shortstop — even though his defense in the majors last year was less than that — but I don’t expect more than single-digit homers or an OBP above .320.

2025 ‘Just Missed’ scouting report: Wilson reached the majors last year, almost exactly a year after the Oakland A’s (they were still Oakland then, I’m not letting that go) took him with the No. 6 pick. He suffered a hamstring injury in his first game, but returned to hit .250/.314/.315 with a 9.7% strikeout rate — pretty much in line with expectations. He’s an extreme contact hitter with no power, with low average and peak exit velocities that back that up, averaging 85.8 mph in the majors and just 84.0 mph in Triple-A. He had 186 balls in play between Triple-A and the majors; only 24 of them were hard-hit (95 mph or harder), and only four were above 102 mph.

The one surprise in his MLB debut was that his defense was worse than advertised; scouting reports on him in college (including my own) had him as a plus defender at short, with excellent hands and at worst above-average range, but his range was just average in Triple-A and below that in the big leagues, especially moving to his left or right. I had him as a soft or second-division regular in last year’s reports, and I’m sticking with that — I think he’s a little better than he showed in the majors, but I’m concerned that we all overrated the defense, and the bat isn’t going to make up for that.

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