2023 Fantasy Baseball Top 400 Prospect Rankings: Jackson Holliday Tops Major Rankings Update
Published: Jul 14, 2023
*UPDATED July 12*
The 2023 MLB Draft results are in the books. The All-Star Game is over with. There’s a ton of prospects set to, or already have, graduate(d) including past top prospect Elly De La Cruz. Now is a great time to update the Top-400 MLB Prospect rankings. These rankings have taken into account the top players drafted in the first round, competitive balance round A, prospects drafted on MLB Draft day 2. That’s not all, some international signings who were previously on the outside looking in have been added as well. In total, 50-plus players drafted in the 2023 MLB Draft have made the top-400.
Oh yeah, there’s also a new top overall prospect…Jackson Holliday! And a new top pitching prospect in MLB…Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates!
Players like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson have graced their presence at the top of the list previously and now it’s Jackson Holliday’s turn. Let’s also not forget that Corbin Carroll was atop the list last year too. It’s not all about the top prospect though. I’ve also included a position-by-position ranking of updated rankings, and a team-by-team ranking for the Top-100 and Top-400 prospects. These will help you get an overview of what the deepest positions are and how each MLB farm system ranks against each other.
The process for coming up with these rankings generally revolves around the value the prospects provide for fantasy baseball lineups and dynasty leagues. So just because some one was drafted highly in the 2023 MLB Draft or previous year’s drafts doesn’t mean they’re locked in to the top of the rankings. A few examples from this year are Jacob Wilson and Tommy Troy. Both are shortstops drafted by the Oakland Athletics and Arizona Diamondbacks respectively. Both are guys I described as “baseball players” in my pre-draft analysis and on this week’s MLB podcast. So while they were both taken in the top half of the first round this year, they’re both outside of the top-150 because there’s nothing spectacular about their skillsets for fantasy baseball managers.
Hitters mainly come down to their overall skill package and what that means for fantasy baseball rosters going forward, however, it’s a bit different for pitchers. The main thing that I take into account for pitchers, aside from pure stuff, is what their team has done in terms of development and park factors. So, for another example from the 2023 MLB Draft, a guy like Chase Dollander gets a big knock for winding up in Colorado. While the stuff speaks to being a frontline starter, the Rockies and Coors Field haven’t been kind to developing pitching and thus he lands outside of the top-150 despite being arguably a top-three arm in the draft class. We also have to take into account the “reliever risk” of certain pitchers. For example college arms with a lack of control or solid third pitch typically wind up more on a reliever path than starter and that dings their overall fantasy value as well.