Prospect Pearls: 10 Under-the-Radar Talents
Going into 2025, we identify 10 prospects who don't get the hype they deserve
Heading into 2025, we want to highlight some hitting prospects we’re bullish on compared to mainstream prospect projections. The first four prospects we mention are “studs,” guys who already receive some love but still don’t get the praise we think their tools and results deserve. The last six prospects are sleepers, guys who have a lesser chance to make an impact, but players we feel exceed the depth/utility potential they’re most often tagged with.
Without further ado, here’s our non-exhaustive list of Oyster Analytics’ Prospect Pearls:
Our Four Underrated “Studs”
Alvarez is a polarizing prospect; our model is a big believer in his skillset, placing him inside our top 10. He’s got fantastic contact skills, hitting a career .284 in the minors and .297 in 289 Triple-A plate appearances in 2024. He also has exceptional swing discipline, posting a 13.4% walk rate and 16.9% K-rate in the minors in 2024. The missing piece in his game before 2024 was his power, but he doubled his career home run total in his Triple-A stint, clubbing 10 homers in only 64 games.
The right-handed hitting Alvarez also had massive reverse splits in 2024, tallying a .813 OPS vs righties and a .569 OPS vs lefties. Oddly, he was far better at hitting lefties than righties in 2023, hinting at the possibility he could develop into a less-split-heavy everyday bat.
We’re not blind to his shortcomings, but we’re still pretty shocked that Alvarez hasn’t gotten more buzz. While he lacks the high-ceiling tools that other top prospects have, he does many things well. While others view him as a career utility infielder, we think he’s got the contact/discipline combo to be a solid regular. His power development is especially exciting, as he improved his fence-clearing abilities without compromising his contact or K-rate. While Ozzie Albies and Austin Riley nail down 2B and 3B for the Braves, we tap Alvarez to improve his approach and get results at the big-league level in 2025, even if a trade is needed for him to get regular time.
Unlike Alvarez, Justin Crawford does have an elite tool, possessing ++ speed that makes him both a strong CF and base stealer, swiping 40+ bags in each of his first two full minor league seasons. Crawford responded well to heightened competition in 2024, posting a .834 OPS in 180 Double-A plate appearances. His speed also turns some singles into doubles, and he’s an above-average XBH threat.
Crawford’s biggest drawback is his extremely high groundball rate (60.9% in 2024), which is still a massive improvement from 69.7% the year prior. He has high exit velocities but currently lacks the ability to elevate and/or pull the ball to harness his raw power.
Despite these shortcomings, Crawford continues to hit, and his ability to make hard contact despite his high ground ball rate makes him more than your typical speedy glove-first slap hitter. We’d expect him to start 2025 in AA, and we’re eager to see if he can up his walk rate or reduce his ground ball rate, two changes that would considerably boost his star potential.
McGonigle is a real prospect analyst’s prospect; many analytically-driven prognosticators tap McGonigle for big things ahead. We are no exception and have had McGonigle in our overall top 10 since the start of last season. He’s an incredibly complete and mature hitter for his age, posting far above-average metrics in all areas bar home run power. His 2024 season was solid, posting a 150 wRC+ in A-Ball and a 113 wRC+ in High-A (despite a .200 BABIP) before a hamate fracture ended his season.
He’s a rare combination of discipline and contact, hitting over .300 in 2024 with a 1.64 BB/K ratio. The one tool he could stand to improve is his home run power, as he’s only clubbed six career homers, but at age 20, he still has time for physical growth and added strength (he looks pretty strong here!). He’s currently a shortstop and is likely an average to below-average glove at that position, and some profile him as a potential MLB second baseman.
We at Oyster Analytics think McGonigle is a real threat to be the mainstream #1 overall prospect before he makes the bigs, and we expect his projections to rise heading into 2025. Adding strength and power is the key to his development into a superstar; if he can be a 10-15 HR player this season in A+ and AA, his stock will rise considerably. He’s still likely two years away from the show, but we regard few prospects as highly as McGonigle.
Farmelo checks all the Oyster Analytics boxes of underrated prospects. Solid production in A-Ball at a young age? Check. A high walk rate? Check. Above average gap power? Yep. Playing a premier defensive position (CF)? Indeed. Shockingly, and in contrast to most of our underrated gems, Farmelo is described as an incredibly toolsy prospect and tremendous athlete, going against our frequent favoritism toward the athletically flawed. Farmelo had a 124 wRC+ in A-Ball, hitting .264 with a monster 16.3% walk rate. He only had four home runs in his 221 PA, but totaled 13 XBH. Unfortunately, his season ended with a torn ACL, and he’s expected to miss a portion of 2025 with the injury.
ACL injuries are no joke, especially with players as reliant on athleticism as Farmelo, who also stole 18 bags before his injury. However, we’re excited to see him return, and the time off may allow for the low-pressure mental development and learning necessary to refine his approach going forward.
Critiques of his game hinge on his somewhat awkward stiff swing, reminiscent of Chase DeLauter’s rigid cuts. We aren’t as concerned, citing his .264 average in his debut season in A-Ball as a positive sign of his bat-to-ball skills. Overall, few prospects with lofty tool-driven ceilings succeed so well in their first taste of higher-level pro pitching, and despite the injury, we are sold on Farmelo. Injuries often cause prospects to lose their hype (Jordan Lawlar is a prime example), but Farmelo deserves his flowers for a strong 2024. We’re excited to see him back in 2025, and going forward, we’re going to keep an eye on his ability to recapture the athleticism that makes him a special prospect.
Now for our Six Sleepers:
Continuing the Mariners theme, we have Ryan Bliss, who played in 33 games for the big league club in 2024, posting a 101 wRC+ with a strong second base glove. Bliss came to the Mariners in the Paul Sewald trade with Arizona, and the 25-year-old had a solid AAA season as well, posting a 110 wRC+ as a primary shortstop. Bliss is particularly intriguing to us because of his solid overall bat; unlike many slap-hitting utility middle infielders, Bliss carries above-average gap power and is not below average for his competition level in any of our six measuring criteria. He can also play both shortstop and second base, which is always a plus.
He has a potential path to significant playing time in 2025, as he’s competing with Dylan Moore for the second base job (new signing Jorge Polanco is moving to third base). Bliss, a righty hitter, also carried strong reverse splits in 2023 and 2024 in the minors, in contrast to fellow righty Moore’s worse splits vs righties. If given the chance, we expect Bliss to be a positive contributor to the M’s, and their stable of young arms will love his + glove up the middle. Reeling in his career-high 31% K-rate that he posted in his MLB debut will be instrumental in upping his productivity as a hitter, but he does possess adequate power to justify a mid-20% K-rate in the bigs.
We wouldn’t be surprised with a Bliss breakout in 2025, and while he currently lacks the tools to be an all-star caliber player, we think he’s destined for more than a utility infield role in the show.
We (Oyster Analytics) recently tweeted about Crooks as an underrated gem, and he’s a rare good-glove good-bat catching combo. Crooks posted a .908 OPS and 140 wRC+ in AA as a 22-year-old and is a hitter with few weaknesses, showcasing an ability to hit for contact, power, and take walks. Thus far, Crooks has met every challenge in his rise through the minors, never posting a K-rate over 23% or a BB-rate under 10%. He also turned some of his ground balls into line drives after making the jump to Double-A, reducing his ground ball % by nine points and improving his line drive % by 11.6 points from his 2023 marks. One downside to the lefty-hitting Crooks’ bat is his somewhat poor splits (.114 OPS points worse vs. LHP). We’re interested to see if he can improve in this area in the future, and lessening the gap is one factor in realizing his starting catching potential.
MLB.com reported that his strong arm and receiving have made him a favorite among the Cardinals’ pitching staff, indicating his complete catching skillset. Many of the top catching prospects are far less balanced (Ballesteros, Basallo, Salas), and while Crooks lacks the ceiling of those guys, he’s a high-floor prospect with limited flaws. Some say he’s backup catcher material, but in our eyes, he can eventually be an everyday contributor. If he performs well in AAA, he could complicate the Cards’ catching duo of Ivan Herrera and Pedro Pagés in 2025!
With Smith being so similar to Jonny Farmelo, it’s not a huge surprise that the Mariners moved Smith at the deadline last season, sending him along with P Brody Hopkins to Tampa Bay in exchange for Randy Arozarena. Prior to and after the deal, Smith flashed legit potential, carrying a .288 average and 139 wRC+ as a 19-year-old in A-Ball. His high average is especially notable, as his biggest perceived flaw heading into 2024 was his hit tool, and he posted a .208 average in 54 PA in 2023.
A prospect with tremendous athleticism, he stole 41 bags in 2024 and has + centerfield potential. Furthermore, his two standard deviations above the mean XBH numbers tease his potential as a homer threat, and a great 43.3% flyball % in 2024 displays he has the swing trajectory to take advantage of his power. One area of improvement is his poor 24.8% infield fly ball rate, and if he can get on top of high fastballs in 2025, he should see his HR totals grow. His weaknesses are few and far between, but the question remains whether he can sustain his production at higher levels.
We’d expect him to start 2025 in High-A, and we will be tracking his infield fly ball % closely. If he brings that number down despite moving up a level, it should signal a positive development in his power and overall approach. However, we won’t be too concerned if he has a slow start, as he’s still only 20 and does so much else right at the dish. This may sound absurd now, but we think Smith is a wild card pick to reach #1 overall prospect status if he continues on his development path. Few toolsy prospects flash as mature an approach as Smith, and we expect him to have a big 2025.
Mogollon’s profile is absolute chaos. In his move from the DSL to the stateside complex league, his strikeout rate nearly tripled to an unfathomable 38.3%. Somehow, he kept his OBP nearly the same, though, as he did the near impossible of walking more outside the DSL than he did in it. His average dropped 56 points despite his BABIP rising 110 points. His fly ball rate increased by 24 points, but his line drive rate decreased by 15 points. He is almost without peer as the premier power hitter of the entire rookie ball circuit over the past two years, hitting 18 home runs and 26 other XBH in 379 plate appearances, but stands at only 5’8”. He is a walking contradiction and true enigma.
Here is what we think happened some time in the winter of 2023/4: a White Sox employee of some kind went up to Mr. Mogollon and told him, “Please focus absolutely exclusively on hitting the ball very far, as you seem to be quite good at hitting the ball very far.”
Whether he came to this approach by himself or by way of some kind of coaching intervention, Mogollon has proven himself to be nothing if not wholeheartedly committed to it. Only 44% of Mogollon’s plate appearances in 2024 resulted in a ball being put in play! He only hit 22 ground balls the whole season (180 PA)! He hit more home runs than almost anyone else in the complex despite clocking in at 160 pounds!
But Mogollon is more than a curiosity; he’s also far from a sure thing, but we do legitimately think he’s got the tools to merit more attention as a serious prospect than he gets. Mogollon is the Platonic ideal of a Launcher (yes we have used this phrase in a prior article). As serious Down on the Farmers will remember from our recent piece, The Launcher is a player who hits absolute tank jobs, lifts the ball loads when he doesn’t, and if he doesn’t make contact, probably strikes out. In Rookie Ball, this is the joint-top of the five profiles we identified in terms of expected future MLB production, as the figure below illustrates.
The Five Profiles of Rookie League Hitters w/ Future MLB WAR/600 PA, 2013-2019
Not all Launchers make it big. In fact, most don’t. Rookie ball is simply a long way from MLB. But Mogollon’s got the two crucial skills that suggest potential at this stage: launch angle and oomph. It would be unwise to rule him out as a future slugger in the show.
Like Jadher Areinamo, who we profile later in this article, his size (5’8”) likely contributes to him being undervalued. At just 18, he performed so well over 201 PAs in the complex in 2024 (walked as much as he struck out, 20 XBH, 11/12 in steals) that he was promoted to Single-A, where he competed with players who were on average 2.5 years his senior. Remarkably, he actually increased his wRC+ after the move from 139 to 141. That was partly down to some good luck–he had a .416 BABIP in that stretch, which compensated for a notable rise in his strikeout rate, and he only hit one home run upon promotion.
So, while it’s not likely that Francisca will climb the levels in a flash with no setbacks along the way, his 2024 performance was immensely impressive and built on a fantastic 2023 in the DSL. Francisca walks at a good clip, hits home runs at a good rate for his age, hits the gaps at as good a rate as anyone at any age, and has plus contact skills. His groundball rate is higher than ideal (54.3% across both levels) but not at an unreasonable level for a hitter at this stage of development. When he does lift the ball, he hits it with an authority that most wouldn’t expect given his size, and he was able to reduce his IFFB% between 2023 and 2024. Scouts think he may not have a future at short, depending on how his arm develops, but the sense is also that he’s got the athleticism to be a strong second baseman. Our Oyster model gives Francisca a 57% chance to be a regular in MLB.
If you follow @oysteranalytics you know we are massive fans of Areinamo. Like many of the prospects we like more than most folks do, he’s undersized, standing at just 5’8”, and obviously like everyone else on this list he’s buried in a Milwaukee farm system we think is the strongest in baseball at scouting and signing international amateurs.
Areinamo’s only real weakness at the plate is his discipline. While he’s phenomenal at avoiding K’s, his BB% was a low 7.1% last season. This is a legitimate concern, but for now he’s able to compensate for it with fantastic bat-to-ball skills and well-above-average gap power. To take the next step, he’ll likely have to ensure his walk rate ticks up.
Even with a small improvement there, Areinamo has the potential to be a seriously valuable middle infielder. In 110 games as a 20-year-old (2.2 years younger than league average) in High A, he smacked 30 doubles and 10 home runs, stealing 32 bases at a respectable (80%) success rate. In Areinamo, you get a guy who puts the ball in play with authority, and if nothing else will make the defense earn their outs. As he continues to develop, it’s also possible his current home run power, which puts him at 15 a year, could tick up to 20. Suddenly, you’re looking at a 20/20 guy who plays a good second base and hits more than his fair share of doubles to boot. Our model gives Areinamo a 42% chance to be a regular in MLB.
Check out our friend @LouisAnalysis who interviewed Areinamo!
That’s all for now. Check back in soon for an article on five more prospects who we love who get forgotten in the bowels of especially strong and deep farm systems.