Law\u2019s top 100 list<\/a> are shortstops who have already reached Double A, and seven of them got there before turning 21. Historically, that\u2019s an unusual number of upper-level shortstops getting this much prospect attention. Elite athletes have always played shortstop when they were young, but many have moved down the defensive spectrum as they\u2019ve gotten older, or else they\u2019ve failed to hit enough to maintain Top 20 prospect hype in the upper levels.<\/p>\nUpper-level shortstops in Top 100<\/p>\n
YearTop-100 SS<\/p>\n
2026<\/p>\n
9<\/p>\n
2025<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
2024<\/p>\n
5<\/p>\n
2023<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
2022<\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
2021<\/p>\n
0<\/p>\n
2020<\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
2019<\/p>\n
2<\/p>\n
2018<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
2017<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
2016<\/p>\n
3<\/p>\n
2015<\/p>\n
3<\/p>\n
The Athletic<\/p>\n
Now, more than a third of Major League organizations have an upper-level shortstop ranked among Law\u2019s top 31 prospects, and the second half of Law\u2019s Top 100 list is loaded with 19- and 20-year-olds playing premium positions and primed to take off if they can prove themselves early and move quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeams are getting better at development and pinpointing things that players need to work on,\u201d New York Yankees director of player development Kevin Reese said. \u201cOr at least expediting the amount of time it takes to figure out, is this going to work or not?\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s good news for those young players who thrive out of the gate, but for prospects who take a while to gain traction, the game\u2019s relatively new minor league roster limits leave less margin for error and less room for second chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou find out about guys sooner,\u201d Tampa Bay Rays vice president of player personnel Kevin Ibach said. \u201cThe flip side of that is, when guys don\u2019t have success as early on in their minor league careers, you see turnover among minor league prospects in ways you might not have 10 or 15 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifteen years ago, the amateur draft was 50 rounds and MLB placed no meaningful limit on the number of minor league players a team could keep in its farm system. Teams were allowed to add extra affiliates, and each affiliate had far more roster spots than it needed. As recently as 2019, the Yankees had eight minor league affiliates in the U.S. alone, meaning they had enough roster spots for nearly 300 domestic minor league players.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Major League Baseball cut the draft to 20 rounds and limited each team to only five domestic affiliates. In 2024, the league reduced each minor league roster from 36 to 33 players, meaning organizations are now allowed only 165 minor league players outside of their Latin American complexes. It\u2019s survival of the fittest to fill those spots.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re releasing guys that you know are good players,\u201d Murton said, \u201cbut that you know probably are not that guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
That guy \u2014 the one with a superstar ceiling, who\u2019s too advanced for Class A pitching even as a teenager \u2014 no longer has to pass the eye test or meet some arbitrary at-bats benchmark to move up the ladder. When, in 2023, 19-year-old Roman Anthony was hitting just .228 with one home run through 42 games for Low-A Salem, the Boston Red Sox promoted Anthony to High A based on his outrageous plate discipline and batted ball data. Anthony finished that year in Double A, and a year later was considered by many to be the top prospect in all of baseball.<\/p>\n
This spring, Anthony was the standout left fielder for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, and he just made his first Opening Day roster as the Red Sox leadoff hitter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re getting better at predicting who\u2019s going to sink and who\u2019s going to swim beyond the typical back-of-the-baseball-card performance,\u201d Reese said.<\/p>\n
It remains an imperfect science \u2014 Kristian Campbell, who also had outrageous under-the-hood numbers, ultimately fell flat when the Red Sox pushed him to the Major Leagues last spring \u2014 but teams have faith in their internal models to predict future performance.<\/p>\n
As starting pitchers have thrown fewer innings, pitching prospects have become less valued \u2014 there were only two pitchers among Law\u2019s top 20 prospects this year \u2014 and prediction models tend to place a premium on those athletes who can handle the game\u2019s most difficult positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think teams tend to keep players at certain spots longer because those positions carry more value both in internal models and externally,\u201d Abraham said.<\/p>\n
The younger the player, the better the outlook.<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung-for-level makes guys pop a lot higher,\u201d Murton said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have to perform as well because they\u2019re young-for-level, so I think a lot of teams are being aggressive to make sure these prospects are popping in other teams\u2019 models because they want to have more value in trades.\u201d<\/p>\n
For players entering pro ball, the shift in player development norms is happening almost immediately, especially for draft picks out of high school. The eliminated short-season level came in-between the introductory rookie league and full-season Low A. It was a go-to assignment for elite high school talent coming out of the draft, but those high-upside 18-year-olds are now going straight to Low A, where the rush of biomechanical and batted-ball data helps identify strengths and weaknesses while testing hitters against more advanced pitching.<\/p>\n
When elite athletes are given detailed workout plans and need-based drills, massive gains can happen in a short amount of time. Aggressive promotions can help developing players avoid complacency and stagnation so that they keep rising.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they\u2019re just kind of hovering in A ball for too long, you\u2019re not seeing those adjustments take place,\u201d Ibach said.<\/p>\n
There is a domino effect to such an accelerated career path. As teenagers are pushed into A ball, more experienced players are pushed out of minor league affiliates altogether. Often, it\u2019s talented organizational players and so-called Four-A players \u2014 veterans who are excellent in Triple A but unable to sustain success in the big leagues \u2014 who lose their roster spots. Those players rarely became difference makers in the big leagues, but they historically raised the level of play across the minors.<\/p>\n
Now, every minor league level is skewing younger.<\/p>\n
According to Baseball Reference, the average Double-A Eastern League batter in 2006 was 25 years old. When Griffin got to the Eastern League last season, the average batter was 23.8.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2261370224-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n Konor Griffin could be the next impact shortstop to arrive soon. (Julio Aguilar \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a huge separation now between Double A and Triple A,\u201d Murton said. \u201cAnd I think the gap right now between Triple A and the big leagues is probably the biggest it\u2019s ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
Minor league baseball has always been a race to the top, but modern player development has evolved to create, not shortcuts, but express lanes for elite young players who can adapt early and move quickly. The path to a rapid rise is more readily available than ever before.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel weird about it still,\u201d Reese said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Dude, if this guy was playing three years ago, he\u2019d still be in Staten Island,\u2019 and we\u2019re throwing him out in Double A and seeing what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
What happens sometimes is a kid just never stops hitting until he has a four-hit game in his debut, a home run on Opening Day, or his sights set on wearing a big league uniform before his 20th birthday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe throw a lot of these kids in the deep end,\u201d Ibach said. \u201cAnd you hope they can swim.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin McGonigle opened last season in A ball, then skipped Triple A altogether to make the Detroit Tigers\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[5654,64,63,5156,5257,5260,5261,591,1830,2365,5160,5162,85,2366],"class_list":["post-576631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-athletics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-cincinnati-reds","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-pittsburgh-pirates","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-sports","tag-st-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n