Griffin’s Rise: From Prospect to #1 | Scouting Report

Translated by José M. Hernández Lagunes

This year’s race for Baseball Prospectus’ Top-101 prospects started much earlier than most. When compiling the midseason Top-50 for release in July, we knew that most of the top prospects wouldn’t graduate, so putting together the top of our midseason list would serve as a rehearsal for the 101, with most of the same candidates. But the conclusion we reached in July, which served as a (refutable) presumption for the winter—that Kevin McGonigle was the best prospect in baseball—didn’t hold up in the cooling weather.

With all due respect to Samuel Basallo y Carson Bengeour list of considered prospects included eight for the top spot. Here’s how we went from those eight to just one: Connor Griffin.

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If your paradigm is “hitter most likely to be an above-average major leaguer,” you could easily end up with JJ Wetherholt as your main prospect. He has the longest track record as a prospect of this caliber; There probably isn’t a time between his sophomore season in 2023 at West Virginia and now where he would have ranked outside the top 20 on an “open universe” prospect list that includes players not yet drafted. Everything about Wetherholt’s game is good: he should hit for good average, good power and play a good middle infield.

But there is only so much bueno. Do you have a true tool to drive the ball to every outfield? It doesn’t have huge raw power or great directionality. He may hit for a healthy average, but his contact rate in the zone was below average in Triple-A through 47 games, and it’s hard to start projecting an above-average hitting tool in light of that. Add to that his history of hamstring issues and we believe he lacks the potential of most of the players who came before him.

Trey Yesavage has perhaps the simplest argument: The Blue Jays picked him to start Game 1 of the World Series and to pitch the eighth inning of Game 7, in both cases with plenty of solid veteran options available. So the team that won the American League pennant already considers him one of the best pitchers on an excellent pitching staff. Much of what we could say about him supports all that. His minor league performance in 2025 was exemplary—a 30.6% strikeout/walk rate across all four farm levels—and his splitter is one of the best individual pitches of any prospect.

But (there’s that word again) his pitch mix is ​​strange, and not always in a good way. His arm angle is maxed out, which weakens some of his incredible fastball carry. And his only current breaking ball, the slider, actually breaks on the arm side. Can he truly be elite without a single pitch escaping right-handed hitters? I don’t know; What I do know is that if we’re going to turn a pitching prospect into the best prospect in the game, there better not be any “I don’t know.”

Max Clarkhonestly, was not in this discussion for much of the process, due to the fact that he was not selected in the end: it is difficult to get him to have more or less power. But the difference between him and McGonigle, which in our opinion was quite big at the beginning, ended up being quite small. Clark hits the ball harder and makes more contact than you might think, all while playing like a lethal center and controlling the zone, and has some results that feel a little like “what if PCA didn’t chase so much?”

I think Leo De Vries gets overlooked in these conversations because people can’t believe the Padres traded such a good prospect for a reliever. That caused a lot of criticism about his defense and his athleticism in particular. But he played the entire 2025 season as an 18-year-old and posted a wRC+ of 125, split between high-A and Double-A, with performance metrics to match. Hit the ball hard and often, controlling the zone. Yes, he’s probably a second or third baseman, and no, he can’t match Griffin’s athleticism. But is it possible that the Padres traded him because AJ Preller changes everyone and not because they think he’s bad?

We considered this group of four and quickly eliminated them. That means there are four left.

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During the process of putting together our list, I argued several times that Nolan McLean He was the best prospect in baseball. I’m not sure I ever believed it. He’s a 24-year-old pitcher who spent much of the season on the verge of making it all in the high minors. But if you look at it in detail, he’s throwing six different pitches with a real chance of being great, and there’s a pretty strong case that he already has a top-notch curveball. Its shapes and turning capacity are absolutely incredible.

In the end, even I couldn’t support him enough for this to be more than an argument on our conference calls. It’s too old. Its speed is not high enough. There may not be enough north-south movement in the profile. Could be a good number two. And just like with Yesavage, there can be no uncertainty that outweighs a pitcher with the best talent in the top tier of the OFP 70. But before I dismiss the idea entirely, answer me this: Would the Mets trade McLean for anyone else on this list right now? I don’t think they do.

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That leaves three shortstops, all with perfectly viable options to be the best prospect in baseball, and all could have been.

Jesús Made had a very similar season to De Vries: same age, he also reached Double-A, similar production. He doesn’t have the experience of being traded or being an extremely unlikely shortstop. But when compared to Griffin, he is a little less. Griffin is more athletic and hits harder, which means we give Griffin more potential to be an MVP candidate and an exceptional player. Say that you would choose Bobby Witt Jr. on Ketel Marte It’s not a criticism of Mars, it’s simply the truth.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we start from the refutable premise that Kevin McGonigle He was the best prospect in baseball. But that premise simply didn’t hold up. Yes, McGonigle’s hitting tool is still safer than Griffin’s (he makes more contact and makes better swing decisions) and McGonigle hits the ball at the upper end of his exit velocity range quite often. But that EV range isn’t Griffin’s, and defensively, McGonigle is performing as a decent second baseman, while Griffin looks to stick to short stops with arguably spectacular defense in center field.

And ultimately, Griffin is the one. He answered virtually every question in a season in which he hit .333/.415/.527 between low-A, high-A and Double-A, turning 19 midway through the season. Would I make enough contact? A contact rate of 76% is not excellentbut he is above average, and if this player has a hitting tool of 55, he could very well be the best player in baseball. Would you bring your power to the parties? An exit velocity of 108 mph, the 90th percentile, is really great for anyone, but especially for his age. As the season progressed, he went from hitting ground balls to popping out fairly consistently. Where would he finish defensively? Now it seems that as a shortstop.

Griffin simply ticks all the boxes. He could be a superstar and he probably will be. And that’s why it went from 86th last year to 1st this year.