Progress Report

by John Sickels on Jan 12, 2026 3:00 PM EST

I am working on the Top 50 Hitters and Top 50 Pitchers list. The pitchers I have a good grasp on, but for some reason the hitters seem much harder than normal to work with this year.

I've got the top eight ranked but after that it starts getting very tough. I think we are going to see a wide variety in rankings after the obvious top group from the various pundits this year.

I will be doing an integrated Top 100 list for SB Nation/Minor League Ball this year. That will be even more problematic, but people want to see it, so, so be it. I will do monthly updates on that as the season progresses.

My current goal is to have all grades finalized by Monday morning, then next week i will update all of the organization Top 20 lists to account for trades. Then we will proceed to a ranking of organizations.

Some community members in the Fanposts section have been taking the preliminary grades and making farm system rankings out of them. I think that is a worthy exercise, although the exact results depend on what formula you use to weight grades. When I do the actual system rankings, part of it will be based on that type of method, but not entirely.

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Thanks for all of the hard work!

Particularly excited about the new Top 100 list - is that in the book?

by delmonfan on Jan 12, 2026 3:03 PM EST reply actions

the book will still be a seperate 50 hitters and 50 pitchers. Because, frankly, I still am philosophically against integrated lists. I think they are misleading.

by John Sickels on Jan 12, 2026 3:11 PM EST up reply actions

Teams draft BPAs right?

Isn’t that what an integrated list would mean? Would you rather have Trevor Bauer or Anthony Rendon? Would you rather have Jake Marisnick or Matt Harvey? An integrated ranking comes down to those simple questions. I don’t see how it could be misleading.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 3:25 PM EST up reply actions

I realise the ranking will come down to a lot of tough calls

But in the end, an integrated list or hitter/pitcher list seem to be fundamentally the same thing.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 3:27 PM EST up reply actions

to me is is very misleading

Pitchers and hitters are different species.

by John Sickels on Jan 12, 2026 3:37 PM EST up reply actions

But let's say there was a draft

You would be able to make a selection between Bauer and Rendon right?

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 3:43 PM EST up reply actions

Well, it can be a somewhat unfair comparison.

Since pitchers always have so much more risk between them. In an honest top list, the hitters would be much more concentrated towards the top and the pitchers towards the bottom, just because of that risk factor. But that’s not how anyone does them.

by ThePanda on Jan 12, 2026 3:54 PM EST up reply actions

I think that is how people do them

They just prefer taking high risk pitchers over some good hitting prospects.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 4:09 PM EST up reply actions

We see it in the draft every year

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 4:09 PM EST up reply actions

you are confusing two separate goals

if you rank prospects purely off of projected value, then hitters will be concentrated at the top (which is what most prospect rankings endeavor to achieve)

that’s not what the draft is about. teams draft based on how they wish to allocate risk among their assets. the fact that draftees are a lot cheaper than free agents, means that it makes sense for teams to draft pitchers even though pitchers are riskier than hitters. this is because they can allocate higher risk volatility to cheaper assets (as opposed to a allocating free agency money to pitching). this is also reflected in hitters being worth more on the free agent market than pitchers.

by blue bulldog on Jan 12, 2026 4:47 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs

Excellent point

You want to draft pitchers precisely because the cost of a draftee pitcher busting is so much smaller.

by MjwW on Jan 12, 2026 4:50 PM EST up reply actions

It is pure opportunity cost

The very same applies to which A ball prospect you’d rather have. Obviously all those good pitching prospects are going to be drafted at some point. If you’d rather have Bubba Starling and Josh Bell and George Springer instead of Gerritt Cole and Trevor Bauer and Dylan Bundy, then draft those guys first. And rank them first in a prospect ranking as well. But people don’t actually think those hitting prospects are better. Every ranking comes down to a choice between 2 similarly valued assets. It doesn’t equate to expected WAR. The reward for a potential ace might outweigh the higher possibility of an everyday OF. If you see Bauer ranked ahead of Rendon, or drafted ahead of him (assuming the same signing bonus), then assume that the ranker prefers Bauer and the drafter prefers Bauer as well.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 5:10 PM EST up reply actions

i'm not sure what you are trying to say

but i’ll do my best to answer, and extend also some arguments of mine above

i think a better way of thinking about what i was trying to explain above, is that the opportunity cost for drafting poorly and the opportunity cost for signing bad free agents is very different. essentially, the volatility difference between draft prospects as a whole vs. pitching prospects, is much smaller than the volatility difference between free agents as a whole vs. free agent pitchers. in terms of absolute asset value.

this is true because draft picks are not tradeable assets. in other words, you can’t convert them into straight up, liquid, dollars. you can’t even “save it, and spend it later,” the way you could save dollars in free agency. if draft picks could be sold, then i think you would see the draft reflect the same trend as free agency a lot more. a lot more hitters being congregated at the top, and pitchers falling a little bit more.

i don’t think a general Top 100 prospect ranking reflects the same consideration for risk profiles. in fact, i’d say that when ranking prospects, most people tend to rank prospects along one of two models: A) Expected value (which means subconsciously taking into consideration all possible outcomes, and multiplying each outcome with a probability of the outcome occurring and integrating); or B) Ceiling (which means subconsciously assigning a value of “highest” possible outcome, usually what the Top 10 percentile or Top 25 percentile outcome constitutes, and not really weighing other outcome possibilities)

note that neither of these models takes into account the risk profiles of teams. which is fine, because teams’ risk profiles are highly unique, and depend on their markets, park factors, decision-maker’s philosophies, etc.

i think John conceives of his list along the Expected Value Model. this is probably why he thinks integrated lists are misleading, because if you think of the list as EV’s of prospects, then the hitter/pitcher ratio should be much higher at the top. the problem is, most lists aren’t designed like that, because a lot of other rankers (BA, KLaw) follow the Ceiling Model. the simplest way to get out of this problem, is to disaggregate the list into Top 50 Hitters and Top 50 Pitchers.

by blue bulldog on Jan 12, 2026 7:56 PM EST up reply actions

I don't know

I doubt John calculates EV and compiles his list that way, even if he only does a rough calculation in his head. I think everyone who makes lists (John’s hitter list alone for example) is based purely on who he’d rather have. Obviously the choice between really raw young players and established players that look like marginal starters is going to be a tough choice. And it might be a tougher choice when you have to throw in marginal relievers and young upside arms that are 5 years away. I’m not claiming that the choices don’t get harder, but they are still choices…still preferences.

I would probably agree that a drafting team might have slightly different concerns than a general evaluator of future productivity, because contract considerations come into play and other needs as well and teams rarely get a player for the full length of his career, and if they do and the player is good, they have to pay a lot for him, etc. But I think in general the reason a high ceiling pitcher gets drafted is the same reason he’d be ranked highly on John’s list or my list or Keith Law’s list. And the reason he’d be ranked ahead of a lower ceiling higher floor pitcher (or ranked behind that pitcher) is for the same reason as well. It comes down to who you’d rather own the rights to. The same is true for that high ceiling pitcher vs a high ceiling hitter or high floor hitter. Everyone decides who they’d rather have. The evaluators that value ceiling higher than others do so because they believe that 1 major strike out of 5 is better than 2-3 minor strikes out of 5. They might not calculate EV in terms of WAR, but they are considering it in general. They might not value low EV players that can contribute because they are replaceable in general. They might overvalue high ceiling guys for the same reason teams overvalue successful high ceiling players in free agency.

Some people will be misled by John’s hitter ranking alone, and maybe moreso by the combination of hitting and pitching lists, but I would hope John would compile his list the way everyone else does. Put the guy you’d rather have the rights to higher on your list.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 9:08 PM EST up reply actions 1 recs

I guess

He might calculate EV in his head in some fashion. I just mean it is unlikely tied to WAR directly.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 12, 2026 9:09 PM EST up reply actions

+1

by Kelsdad on Jan 12, 2026 9:11 PM EST up reply actions

I'm not sure I'm getting my points across

First, you say “Everyone decides who they’d rather have.”

I’m trying to show:

Draft - Everyone decides who they’d rather have in the context of their risk profiles

Prospect Rankings - Everyone decides who they’d rather have in a vacuum

What I mean by in a vacuum, is that people tend to read a prospect ranking like this. “If I were starting a team from scratch, and I could have only one player, then I’d only be willing to trade the No. 2 prospect for the No. 1 prospect straight up, and I’d only be willing to trade the No. 3 prospect for the No. 2 prospect or No. 1 prospect straight up, so on and so forth.”

Second, even though that’s how a lot of people read a list, that’s not necessarily how the designer of the list created that list. Does BA design their lists that way? If so, then they’ve been historically wrong, since the production of their pitchers have been historically less valuable than the production of their hitters. I think their list is simply governed by a feeling that top tier pitchers (in relation to other pitchers) should be rated in the same relative range as top tier hitters (in relation to other hitters). And if that’s the case, then as John said, it might make more sense to just separate into Top 50 Hitters and Top 50 Pitchers lists.

by blue bulldog on Jan 13, 2026 12:55 AM EST up reply actions

Well

I don’t understand what you mean by if “I could only have one player.” The assumption is, if you could only add one player right now, but you’ll still have hundreds of other players to choose from later. This is the same thing that happens in a draft (assuming future draft years will actually occur). I’m not claiming that Keith Law or John Sickels would pick EXACTLY the same way in a draft as they would in an overall re-draft (or prospect ranking), but it would certainly be in the ballpark. If every team prefers hitters in a vacuum, they would not be worried about missing out on pitchers because no other team would be picking pitchers.

But that is kind of a separate point. The point is, you say BA has been and continues to be “wrong” because the pitchers future average WAR per slot ends up being less than the hitters future average WAR per slot. But they aren’t using WAR as their standard. They don’t think WAR properly reflects player values at the high end maybe, or that top pitchers matter so much more in the playoffs than in the regular season, that WAR is overstated. Who knows? They actually prefer the pitcher to the hitter. You’ll never convince me otherwise because it would be complete nonsense to just integrate top pitchers and top hitters wily nily. If John’s plan is to integrate them without thinking about which player he’d rather have in his organization, then I’d suggest he does not do that, and instead does what I assume every single other prospect ranker does…pick the player you prefer.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 13, 2026 11:03 AM EST up reply actions

i'm not sure what to say about this

BA is “wrong” not because of some WAR measurement, but because everyone (whether you believe in traditional stats, or sabermetric stats) agrees on the reality that good hitters (relative to other hitters) are worth more than good pitchers (relative to other pitchers). again, just take a look at free agency and also how teams sign extensions. the best hitters in baseball sign for significantly more money and significantly longer terms than the best pitchers in baseball. i guess a way of expressing this from a quantifying standpoint, is that the top ten percentile of hitters in baseball is more valuable than the top ten percentile of pitchers in baseball.

note: isn’t the fact that we are arguing about this basically evidence for John to think integrated lists are misleading?

i guess i just don’t think there’s anything wrong with what John is doing. i’m not sure what “integrating top pitchers and top hitters wily nily” means, but i always just thought BA integrated their lists by conceiving of players as tiers relative to other tiers. so like, the value of a pitcher in the 1-25 range relative to the value of a pitcher in the 75-100 range is similar to the value of a hitter in the 1-25 range relative to the value of a hitter in the 75-100 range. i think this is why i like the grading system of assigning A’s, A-’s, etc. better.

by blue bulldog on Jan 13, 2026 4:01 PM EST up reply actions

Oh man

How are you determining that the top 10 percentile of hitters is more valuable than the top 10 percentile of pitchers? You say you aren’t using WAR or I assume anything similar to WAR. You are going purely on free agent salaries? Or some subjective criteria?

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 13, 2026 4:42 PM EST up reply actions

free agent salaries

can’t say i’ve done anything exhaustive, but it seems pretty intuitive

free agent salaries is the best free market measure of player value

by blue bulldog on Jan 13, 2026 11:23 PM EST up reply actions

Well then

I doubt too many prospect evaluators are making their lists based exclusively on expected free agent replacement player or comparable player salaries. But there would be almost as much to mislead people about hitter or pitcher rankings based purely on expected free agent salary information as there would be with a mixed hitter and pitcher list.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 14, 2026 5:32 AM EST up reply actions

Agreed

Not that those lists shouldn’t exist, but they add an additional layer of complexity based on the ranker’s viewpoint that makes interpretation even more cloudy.

Kila's slash for Apr 20 to May 4, 2011, right before he was sent down: .276 / .344 / .448

by SagehenMacGyver47 on Jan 12, 2026 8:26 PM EST up reply actions

Looking forward to the top 100!

One of those times where a reader is happy about the writer “selling out to the man.”

@stealofhome

by Chris St. John on Jan 12, 2026 3:13 PM EST reply actions

… but for some reason the hitters seem much harder than normal to work with this year.

I blame the new BBCOR bats.

"There ain’t much to being a ballplayer, if you’re a ballplayer." - Honus Wagner

by Fla-Giant on Jan 12, 2026 7:00 PM EST reply actions

List

Many times, it is NOT simply case of “would I rather have X or Y.”

What is the context? Am I talking about a fantasy context with short-term necessity? Am I talking about needing someone for 2012? Am I talking about a long-term investment? Am I talking about real baseball?

All those things factor in to a creation of a prospect list. It can be very much context-driven.

by John Sickels on Jan 13, 2026 1:52 PM EST reply actions

Sure

I don’t mean to criticize. But I think we are talking real life baseball and a long term investment (not just the years under team control).

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 13, 2026 1:57 PM EST up reply actions

I know you try to mush together fantasy and real life

So I guess you could continue to mush those together however you do that. But I’m pretty sure everyone thinks we are talking about total careers, however you judge the quality of a total career.

by auclairkeithbc on Jan 13, 2026 1:59 PM EST up reply actions