Fresh Cleats is our running look at the players stepping into the batter’s box — or back onto the mound — for the first time, whether that’s a true big-league debut or a hard-earned second chance. New face, new chapter, same question every time for fantasy baseball owners: is this the one that sticks?

There’s a certain kind of pitcher who gets the call not because everything’s figured out, but because the raw stuff has simply become impossible to ignore. Brody Hopkins is that pitcher right now, and Saturday, the Rays stopped ignoring it.

Tampa Bay selected Hopkins’ contract from Triple-A Durham before their game against Houston, and he made his major league debut out of the bullpen in a 3-2 win — logging his first career strikeout in the process. It capped a wild final stretch that saw him go from a struggling Triple-A starter to a shutdown reliever to a big leaguer, all inside about six weeks. Hopkins’ own description of the day: “everything that I’ve ever dreamed of.”

Two Hopkins boys, two big-league debuts

Brody isn’t even the first member of his family to make this walk. His older brother TJ played 25 games as an outfielder and DH for the Reds back in 2023 — meaning the Hopkins name has now shown up on both sides of a big-league box score within a few years of each other. Brody took a more circuitous route to get his own turn: Seattle drafted him in the sixth round (187th overall) out of Winthrop University in 2023, then flipped him to Tampa Bay at the 2024 trade deadline as part of the package that sent Randy Arozarena to the Mariners — a challenge-trade classic where teams disagree on which secondary piece is actually the prize. The Rays’ bet on Hopkins looks like the correct side of that argument right now.

The velocity spike, the walk problem, and the fix that actually worked

Hopkins came into 2026 with real prospect helium — 37th on Baseball America’s preseason Top 100 — built almost entirely around triple-digit stuff most Rays farmhands simply don’t carry. Baseball America’s scouting report called him blunt and simple: “Hopkins has the best stuff of any Rays minor league starter, with an all-out, all-power, all-the-time approach that is quite unusual for a starting pitcher,” grading his curveball as a 70 on the 20-80 scale — a true knockout pitch to go with a fastball that’s touched 102.1 mph in relief outings this year.

The stuff was never the question. The command was. As a starter this year at Triple-A Durham, Hopkins posted a 5.96 ERA with a brutal 92 walks in 94 innings — the kind of number that buries even electric arms if it doesn’t get fixed. By August’s preseason ranking updates, he’d actually fallen out of MLB Pipeline’s overall Top 100 entirely and slid from 37th to 81st on Baseball America’s list, prospect stock dropping in real time even as the raw velocity ticked up.

Then Tampa Bay made the move that’s rescued a hundred hard-throwing starters before him: they put him in the bullpen. The transformation was immediate. Across his last nine relief appearances at Durham, Hopkins posted a 3.00 ERA with 16 strikeouts and just five walks over 39 batters faced — command numbers from a completely different pitcher wearing the same jersey. His final tune-up before the call-up was the kind of outing that makes a front office stop debating: four of his 13 pitches clocked at 101-plus mph, a benchmark he’d only reached five times across 1,795 pitches at Triple-A all year, capped by a nasty 88 mph curveball that froze a hitter for a backwards strikeout.

The scouting report

RotoProspects has Hopkins ranked No. 166 overall in our latest Top 700. Our grades on him, 20-80 scale: 65 Fastball / 70 Curveball / 45 Changeup / 65 Cutter / 60 Future Value. That’s a loaded arsenal for a reliever profile — two true plus-plus-adjacent weapons in the fastball and curveball, a plus cutter giving him a real weapon against both sides of the plate, and only the changeup lagging as a real weakness. A 60 FV is a notably strong grade for a 166th-ranked prospect, reflecting significant late-season helium once the move to the bullpen unlocked the stuff.

Fastball — 65: Plus-plus raw velocity that’s flirted with elite territory in short bursts — 102.1 mph in a recent relief outing, with a career-long track record of sitting well above average even as a starter. In shorter stints, this grade plays up even further.

Curveball — 70: The headline pitch on the card, matching Baseball America’s own public grade almost exactly. A true knockout breaking ball capable of freezing hitters for backwards strikeouts — the pitch most likely to be his carrying weapon in high-leverage relief innings.

Changeup — 45: Below-average, and largely a non-factor in a bullpen role where he leans overwhelmingly on the other three pitches. Not a concern for a reliever profile the way it might be for a starter trying to turn a lineup over multiple times.

Cutter — 65: Plus, and an important complement to the fastball/curveball combo — gives him a weapon that can tunnel off the heater and eat into a hitter’s ability to simply sit on velocity.

Future Value — 60: Comfortably above-average, projecting a genuine high-leverage reliever or possibly more if the command holds against big-league bats. It’s a grade that reflects just how much better this profile looks in shorter bursts than it ever did trying to go multiple times through a lineup as a starter.

The debut

Tampa Bay beat Houston 3-2 on Saturday, with starter Ian Seymour striking out 10 over six strong innings before handing things to the bullpen. Hopkins’ turn came with mixed results: one inning of work, one hit, two runs (both earned), a walk, and a strikeout — his first career punchout, tucked inside a rockier line than the storybook version of this debut. The Rays’ bullpen as a whole still held the lead the rest of the way, and the win went in the books regardless, but Hopkins’ personal ledger reads like exactly what it was: a talented arm getting his feet wet against big-league hitters for the first time, triple-digit stuff and all.

The corresponding roster moves still told their own story about how much Tampa Bay wanted this specific arm right now — right-hander Alex Cook optioned out, right-hander Michael Grove designated for assignment, both purely to clear a 40-man spot for a reliever who, coming in, had thrown zero big-league pitches in his career.

The verdict: Two earned runs in his first inning of major league work isn’t the shutdown storybook debut Hopkins probably pictured, but it’s also exactly the kind of rocky first outing that rarely means much on its own — especially for a power arm whose whole carrying trait is swing-and-miss stuff, not immediate polish. The strikeout is real. So is the walk and the two runs. What matters far more than one inning is whether the command gains he flashed over his final nine Triple-A relief appearances (a 3.00 ERA, just five walks in 39 batters faced) show up more often than not from here — and one shaky debut inning isn’t nearly enough evidence to answer that question either way.

Fresh Cleats is our running look at the players stepping into the batter’s box — or back onto the mound — for the first time, whether that’s a true big-league debut or a hard-earned second chance. New face, new chapter, same question every time for fantasy baseball owners: is this the one that sticks?

Some prospects wait a year or two for their shot. Emmanuel Rodriguez waited through a torn meniscus, a knee injury, an abdominal strain, and three separate thumb injuries — the last one requiring surgery just four months ago — across seven professional seasons before Minnesota finally called his name.

When it happened, he didn’t play it cool. “Very exciting, and full disclosure, I cried,” Rodríguez said through teammate Pablo López after getting the news Friday night, with his wife and son right there in their St. Paul apartment when the call came through. Saturday, batting ninth against Cleveland at Target Field, he turned his first career big-league at-bat into a home run — giving the Twins the lead in what became a 4-3 win over the Guardians. Baseball doesn’t usually hand out storybook endings this cleanly. This one showed up anyway.

Seven years, 353 games, one enormous amount of patience

The Twins signed Rodríguez out of Santiago, Dominican Republic, for a $2.5 million bonus back in July 2019 — a teenager with a rare combination of power and plate discipline that had scouts talking about him well before he ever got into a full-season game. He didn’t play at all in 2020 thanks to the pandemic wiping out the minor league season, and from there, the pattern that would define his entire minor league career set in early: he’s played just 353 games across six pro seasons, a total most prospects hit in three healthy years.

The injury list reads like a study in bad luck rather than a single chronic issue — a torn meniscus that ended his 2022 season, an abdominal strain in 2023, a thumb sprain in 2024 that he aggravated not once but twice trying to come back from it, then a combination of thumb, hip and oblique problems in 2025. Through all of it, he still managed to reach Triple-A at 22 years old and get himself onto national top-100 lists — Baseball America had him as high as 44th overall as recently as this August, remarkable given how little of a track record the injuries allowed him to build.

This year brought one more gut punch: a UCL sprain in his left thumb on May 1, sliding headfirst into first base, that required surgery and cost him nearly three months. Twins GM Jeremy Zoll didn’t hide that the timing mattered — “It was a real conversation,” he said of how close Rodríguez had been to a call-up before the injury hit. Rodríguez’s own read on it, delivered with a patience that seven years of setbacks apparently earns a person: “Everything happens at the right time. Earlier in the year, before the injury, I knew it was going to be my time, my moment. Things happen, but everything works out the way it’s supposed to work out.”

When he did get back on the field, he didn’t ease in — he hit for the cycle, in order, on September 1 in Omaha, part of a scorching 24-game stretch (.275/.411/.495, five homers) that made the decision to finally call him up an easy one. St. Paul hitting coach Shawn Schlechter put it plainly: “When he got back, and he hit the ground running, I believe it was probably one of the better versions we’ve seen of Emmanuel since I’ve known him in Rookie ball. He’s just a skilled player.”

There’s real practical urgency behind the timing, too — Rodríguez is out of minor league options heading into 2027, meaning the Twins either carry him on next year’s Opening Day roster or risk losing him on waivers. Saturday wasn’t just a nice moment. It was Minnesota starting to answer a real roster question.

The scouting report

RotoProspects has Rodríguez ranked No. 49 overall in our latest Top 700. Our grades on him, 20-80 scale: 40 Hit / 60 Power / 55 Speed / 55 Future Value. That’s a profile with a real carrying tool, a legitimate hole, and a future value that still lands in above-average-regular territory — a shape that tracks closely with a player who’s had almost no chance to refine his bat-to-ball skills against advanced pitching thanks to years of interrupted development.

Hit — 40: Below-average, and the clearest red flag on the card. It’s also the grade most directly explained by circumstance rather than bad bat-to-ball instincts: a player who’s totaled 353 games across seven professional seasons simply hasn’t gotten the repetitions most prospects get by 23. The plate discipline has shown up in the walk rates regardless, but pitch recognition and in-zone contact are skills built through volume, and volume is the one thing injuries have never let him accumulate.

Power — 60: Plus, and the tool that’s never been in question. From his $2.5 million bonus as a teenager through a cycle hit in order at Triple-A this September, the over-the-fence pop has shown up at every level he’s been healthy enough to play. Saturday’s first-at-bat homer is just the newest data point on a very long track record of raw thump.

Speed — 55: Above-average, rounding out a genuinely well-built athletic profile rather than a one-dimensional slugger. It’s not the carrying tool, but it adds a real dimension to the offensive game when he’s on the bases.

Future Value — 55: Comfortably above-average, which is a notable vote of confidence given the hit-tool question mark sitting right next to it. It’s a grade that says the power and speed alone are good enough to profile as a quality everyday player if the bat-to-ball skills stabilize even a little with actual major league reps — reps he’s finally getting a real chance to accumulate.

The debut

Rodríguez’s first big-league at-bat came against a Guardians pitching staff in a game the Twins badly needed, sitting eight games below .500 with the playoff math getting uglier by the day. He didn’t need a second look to feel comfortable — first pitch or not far from it, he put a ball over the fence, giving Minnesota an early lead it would eventually turn into a 4-3 win.

The context around the win mattered as much as the swing itself. The Twins (70-78) remain 4½ games back of the final AL Wild Card spot with four teams still ahead of them in the standings — a near-impossible climb with two weeks left. Manager Derek Shelton was straightforward about what this call-up is really about at this point in the season: “Number one, he has played well and deserves to be here. Number two, I think we want to get an opportunity to get a look at him going into next year.” This is evaluation season in Minneapolis now, not a pennant chase, and Rodríguez just turned in about as loud a first impression as that kind of look can produce.

The verdict: A home run in your first big-league at-bat is rare enough on its own; doing it after seven years and 353 games worth of injuries, surgeries, and setbacks makes it a genuinely great story regardless of what the rest of September holds. The swing was never really the question with Rodríguez — staying on the field long enough for the league to find out about it was. Saturday was one at-bat, not a guarantee of durability going forward. But for a player who’s spent his entire career being described in terms of what he “could” do if healthy, turning his first real opportunity into a home run trot is as strong an opening argument as he could have made.

Fresh Cleats is our running look at the players stepping into the batter’s box — or back onto the mound — for the first time, whether that’s a true big-league debut or a hard-earned second chance. New face, new chapter, same question every time for fantasy baseball owners: is this the one that sticks?

There’s a version of this call-up that’s terrifying on paper: a 21-year-old with zero Triple-A experience, jumping straight from Double-A into the reigning World Series champions’ lineup, filling in for the best player alive. Josue De Paula didn’t seem to get that memo.

Friday night at loanDepot Park, with Shohei Ohtani freshly placed on the injured list with biceps inflammation, De Paula made his major league debut as the Dodgers’ designated hitter — becoming the first Los Angeles position player to jump straight from Double-A to the majors since Steve Sax in 1981, and the youngest Dodger to debut since Alex Verdugo in 2017. He went 0-for-3 with a walk in a 6-2 win. The box score says nothing happened. Everyone who watched the at-bats came away thinking otherwise.

Brooklyn to the Dominican Republic to the top of a stacked farm system

De Paula’s path here started far from either coast most people associate with his name. Born in Brooklyn, he moved with his family to his father’s native Dominican Republic in 2020, at age 15, when the pandemic made it nearly impossible to keep developing as a ballplayer in New York City. The relocation worked: the Dodgers signed him as an international free agent in January 2022 for a $397,500 bonus — solid money, but nowhere near the seven-figure deals the top names in that class received. Because of his unconventional path into the international market, he simply wasn’t as well-scouted as he probably should have been.

The performance did the talking instead. De Paula posted a .970 OPS in his first pro season in the Dominican Summer League, then climbed steadily — Single-A Rancho Cucamonga, High-A Great Lakes, all while continuing to hit and, more specifically, continuing to grow into real power that wasn’t part of the scouting report early on. He hit just two home runs in his first full season in the California League despite a strong .396 on-base percentage; by 2024 the power started arriving, and this year at Double-A Tulsa, it fully showed up: a .303/.401/.547 line with 27 homers, 106 runs, 104 RBI, and a Texas League-leading 152 hits — three more than the next closest qualified Double-A hitter anywhere in baseball. He’d already flashed the ceiling on a bigger stage too, winning MVP of the 2025 All-Star Futures Game on a three-run homer.

He spent this past offseason training in Miami alongside Juan Soto and Elly De La Cruz — the kind of company a $400K bonus prospect doesn’t typically keep two years into his career, and a signal of how quickly the Dodgers’ internal evaluation of him had changed.

Even De Paula himself wasn’t fully sold the call was coming. He’d floated the idea of a 2026 debut back in spring training, but by September, with just days left in the minor league season, he’d talked himself out of expecting it. “I was never 100% sure,” he said on SportsNet LA. “I always had in the back of my mind it could happen, but I never tried to think too much about it… I wasn’t really expecting it because we really only had about four days until the season was ending.” Ohtani’s IL trip changed the math fast.

The scouting report

RotoProspects has De Paula ranked No. 4 overall in our latest Top 700. Our grades on him, 20-80 scale: 60 Hit / 60 Power / 40 Speed / 60 Future Value. That’s about as complete an offensive profile as a corner bat gets — two true plus tools working together rather than one carrying the other — undercut only by fringe-average speed that was never really part of the appeal to begin with.

Hit — 60: Plus, and the foundation the whole profile is built on. De Paula’s approach is what scouts and evaluators keep coming back to — an aggressive-but-selective hitter who racked up more hits than any other Double-A player in baseball this year while still walking at a strong clip. Even in a hitless big-league debut, the swing decisions were the story: full counts worked in his first two plate appearances, a patient walk, and quality contact on balls he did put in play.

Power — 60: Also plus, and notably a tool that had to be built rather than one he arrived with. He hit just two home runs across a full Low-A season three years ago; by this year at Double-A, he’d turned into a 27-homer middle-of-the-order threat with genuine bat speed — his fastest swing Friday night clocked in at 84.7 mph, well above the average big-league swing.

Speed — 40: Below-average, the one real hole in an otherwise loaded card. It’s not a surprise given the profile — De Paula was never sold as a burner, and the added strength that unlocked the power almost certainly came at some cost to the speed that showed up in his lighter-framed teenage seasons (27 steals back in 2024). It’s a fair trade for what the bat now provides.

Future Value — 60: Comfortably in above-average-regular-to-first-division-player range, the kind of grade that reflects both tools already looking legitimately plus and a swing that’s shown it can keep developing rather than plateauing. It’s the grade of a player the Dodgers were comfortable handing the DH spot of the best player in the sport, with essentially no Triple-A track record to lean on.

The debut

De Paula’s first big-league night came against a Marlins team that had no answer for the Dodgers as a whole — Blake Snell struck out eight over 5⅔ dominant innings, and Kyle Tucker delivered a grand slam among a 3-for-3, four-RBI night, as Los Angeles cruised to a 6-2 win, their eighth straight and 90th of the season. De Paula’s own line — 0-for-3 with a walk, batting seventh — was a quiet footnote in a blowout, but the process behind it was the actual headline for anyone paying close attention.

He worked a full count in his first plate appearance before popping up a hanging slider he got to a beat early. His second at-bat ended in a walk, resisting a series of tempting off-speed pitches out of the zone. His third saw him just miss a fastball, fouling it off before eventually being retired. His last chance was a hard-hit ground ball that Miami’s defense ran down. Across three batted balls, his swing speed sat well above 75 mph each time — the kind of underlying Statcast data that made evaluators shrug off the empty box score entirely.

De Paula’s own reaction afterward captured the whiplash of the whole week: “I was in disbelief,” he said, on going from resigned to missing out on 2026 entirely to standing in the box as a Dodger with days to spare.

He didn’t take long to build on it either. In his second big-league game Saturday, De Paula drew two more walks and came around to score a run — three plate appearances into his career, he already had as many walks as outs recorded in that first game, and the discipline that defined his debut showed no signs of being a one-night mirage.

The verdict: An 0-for-3 debut would sink most prospect hype cycles for at least a news cycle. This one won’t, because everything about how De Paula got those three outs — the full counts, the discipline, the bat speed on contact — looked exactly like the version of him that hit .303 with 27 homers at Double-A this year, not a rookie freezing up on the sport’s biggest stage. Two more walks and a run scored the very next night only reinforced that read. The Dodgers didn’t skip Triple-A on a hunch; they skipped it because the numbers said he was ready, and two games in, the plate discipline hasn’t blinked. Worth watching closely for however long Ohtani’s out — this could end up being the least surprising part of a very surprising week.

As we roll out our latest update to the RotoProspects Top 700 Prospect fantasy baseball rankings, let’s dive into the key updates surrounding the top-ranked prospects this week.

Rangers’ Sebastian Walcott mashes his way into the No. 2 spot

Walcott (pictured above, No. 2, up from No. 5) needed just a hot week to leapfrog three spots and take over the No. 2 overall ranking in our Top 700. He’s currently riding a four-straight-game home run streak at Double-A, reclaiming the kind of dominant form that made him a consensus Top 5 prospect entering the year. With that kind of thump and a premium shortstop profile, there isn’t much more to say — he’s about as safe a foundational dynasty asset as exists in the minors right now.

Cardinals’ Jesus Baez rockets into the Top 135 as one of the minors’ best-kept secrets

Baez (No. 134, up from No. 248) has been one of the true breakout stories in baseball this year, and it’s easy to see why. Acquired from the Mets in last year’s trade deadline deal for Ryan Helsley, Baez has moved primarily to shortstop and is now tied for the second-most home runs in all of Minor League Baseball, with 38 homers in 110 games — a 55-homer pace over a full season. He’s in the middle of a scorching stretch that included a three-homer game and four homers in his last three contests. And yes, he shares a name with (unrelated) Cardinals outfield sensation Joshua Baez — St. Louis may have two of the more electric “Baez” breakouts in the minors this year.

Giants’ Cesar Perdomo debuts and breaks into the Top 200

Perdomo (No. 183, up from No. 232) got the call when rosters expanded on September 1 and made his MLB debut in relief that same day, working four innings and allowing just one run on three hits and a walk while striking out four. The 24-year-old lefty split this season between Double-A Richmond (3.98 ERA) and Triple-A Sacramento (5.10 ERA, 36:20 K:BB), and while he may only be needed for a spot start or two down the stretch, he’s shown enough to be worth monitoring in deeper dynasty and streaming formats.

Rangers’ Caden Scarborough tumbles out of the Top 150 with an elbow strain

Scarborough (No. 167, down from No. 118) has had a genuinely brutal 2026, and this week’s fall continues that trend. After missing the start of the season recovering from melanoma surgery, he was shut down again this month with a right elbow strain after two rough starts in a row — 8.2 combined innings allowing 15 hits and 13 earned runs. The Rangers say they caught the issue early and don’t consider it serious, but with his 2026 workload now firmly in question, dynasty owners should expect Scarborough’s ranking to stay depressed until he’s back on a mound and showing the 93-95 mph stuff that made him a breakout arm last year.

The Top 25 players in this week’s updated RotoProspects Top 700 Prospect Rankings

The Top 50 can be found HERE (no subscription required). For the complete list, CLICK HERE (subscription required).

Welcome to the #24 installment of our Weekly Hot Prospects Report ranking the top minor-league performances from the week ending September 6. We’re back with this week’s top performers making waves across the minors—and this week’s trio at the top is stacked with rising stars who are soaring up the fantasy baseball rankings.

Fantasy baseball owners, take note. CLICK HERE to check out the full list, with ETAs and updated statistics (subscription required). This edition has a little bit of everything — a hitless, walk-free complex-caliber start, back-to-back Triple-A shutouts, and a High-A outfielder who slugged 1.417 in a single game’s worth of at-bats.

The Top Five

1. Axiel Plaz (C, High-A South Atlantic League) — Plaz’s week is the best on the entire board: a 1.917 OPS with 3 homers and 8 RBIs, going 9-for-16 with more walks (5) than strikeouts (3). Power production like this from a catcher jumps rankings fast.

2. Andrew Fischer (AA Southern League) — Fischer (pictured above) has some counting stats are just absurd: 4 homers, 11 RBIs, and 10 walks in just 16 at-bats, good for a 1.718 OPS. A double-digit walk week paired with that kind of power is about as complete a profile as you’ll find.

3. Sammy Siani (AA Texas League) — Siani hit .667 on the week, going 12-for-18 with 3 homers, 6 RBIs, and 2 steals for a 1.889 OPS — the second-best mark on the board.

4. Braedon Karpathios (AA Texas League) — Karpathios drove in a week-leading 13 runs, going 14-for-22 (.636) with 2 homers for a 1.712 OPS. Elite volume production from one of the deepest leagues on this list.

5. Grayson Fitzwater (Single-A Carolina League) — Fitzwater’s 1.792 OPS week featured 10 RBIs and a strong 6-to-1 walk-to-strikeout ratio, going 9-for-16. A patient, run-producing week from a lower-level bat.

Other Pitchers Who Were Lights-Out

The zeroes piled up everywhere this week. Mason Molina (AAA International League) was the standout, tossing 10 shutout innings across two starts with 14 strikeouts. Jackson Wolf and Hayden Mullins, both AA Eastern League arms, combined to allow just 1 hit across 12 shutout innings. Juan Reynoso (AA Southern League) struck out 10 without a hit allowed over 5 innings, and Julio Mendez (High-A Midwest League) matched him with an 11-strikeout, 2-hit shutout outing of his own.

Also dealing: Yoel Tejeda, Nolan Perry, Kelvis Salcedo, Cole Miller, and Jack Bowery all posted 0.00 ERAs with WHIPs under 0.80. Rounding out a very deep week for pitching: Johnny King, Sterling Patick, J.T. Etheridge, Erigaldi Perez, Daniel Brooks, Mason Peters, Denis Samudio, Jackson Holmes, Sadbiel Delzine, and Nate Payne — all zero-run outings across every level of the minors.

Other Hitters Who Dominated

Beyond the top five, the bats never slowed down. Owen Henne (Single-A Florida State League) and Henry Godbout (AA Eastern League) each posted a 1.500 OPS, with Henne driving in 11 runs. Avery Ortiz (Single-A Carolina League) hit .500 on the week, and Jorge Quintana and Oswaldo Osorio, both Single-A California League bats, each cleared a 1.560 OPS.

Further down the list but no less impressive: Wyatt Sanford and Jake Gelof both drove in at least 5 runs with multiple homers; Jackson Strong walked 9 times in a single week; and a deep group — Alexander Albertus, Zach Levenson, Charlie Condon, Anthony Potestio, Chase Jaworsky, David Calabrese, and Sebastian Dos Santos — all posted OPS marks north of 1.300. It was, across the board, one of the deepest offensive weeks we’ve tracked this season.

The Top 10 in the Weekly Hot Prospects Report

From dominant arms to scorching-hot bats, here are the Top 10 prospects below who turned heads and boosted their stock. CLICK HERE to check out the full list, with ETAs and updated statistics (subscription required). 

As we roll out our latest update to the RotoProspects Top 700 Prospect fantasy baseball rankings, let’s dive into the key updates surrounding the top-ranked prospects this week.

Athletics’ Devin Taylor climbs into the Top 100 after a promotion to Triple-A

Taylor (pictured above, No. 93, up from No. 126) has been a steady riser all year, and this week’s jump comes on the back of a promotion to Triple-A Las Vegas after hitting .323 with 14 home runs, 54 RBI, and a .943 OPS across 90 games at Double-A Midland. A 2025 second-round pick out of Indiana who signed for $2.5 million, Taylor set the Hoosiers’ all-time home run record and has continued to hit at every stop as a pro. He’s now one step from the majors, and his blend of strike-zone control and plus raw power gives him a real shot at everyday outfield at-bats down the line.

Yankees’ Yostin Pena continues his teenage tear, climbing into the Top 120

Pena (No. 119, up from No. 150) keeps rising fast for an 18-year-old who skipped the complex league entirely after a torrid Dominican Summer League stretch. He’s slashing .275/.385/.425 with 9 home runs, 47 RBI, and 34 stolen bases at Single-A Tampa, and his exit velocities are already elite for his age — a 90th-percentile mark around 108 mph and a peak north of 113. The chase rate and swing-and-miss are still works in progress, but few teenage bats in the minors are hitting the ball this hard.

Marlins’ Brandon Compton earns a Triple-A promotion after a historic power binge

Compton (No. 109, up from No. 135) has been the hottest bat in the minors over the last month and has now been bumped all the way up to Triple-A as a reward. He set a Double-A Pensacola franchise record with 12 home runs in July alone, and across all levels this season he’s slashing .277/.426/.596 with 30 home runs, 18 stolen bases, and a 164 wRC+ — best among all qualified Marlins farmhands. A former two-way college player who had Tommy John surgery before ever throwing a pro pitch, Compton has simplified his approach and is now squarely on the radar in deep dynasty formats.

Brewers’ Eric Bitonti keeps mashing, climbing into the Top 220

Bitonti (No. 213, up from No. 309) has already crossed 60 home runs in the minors before turning 21, and he’s in the middle of another hot stretch — 10 extra-base hits over his last two weeks pushed his season OPS to .934. The 6-foot-5 lefty first baseman has drawn Kyle Schwarber comparisons for his combination of massive raw power and a fly-ball-heavy approach, though the swing-and-miss remains a real question for the hit tool long-term.

The Top 25 players in this week’s updated RotoProspects Top 700 Prospect Rankings

The Top 50 can be found HERE (no subscription required). For the complete list, CLICK HERE (subscription required).

Fresh Cleats is our running look at the players stepping into the batter’s box — or back onto the mound — for the first time, whether that’s a true big-league debut or a hard-earned second chance. New face, new chapter, same question every time for fantasy baseball owners: is this the one that sticks?

Thirty-seven months. That’s how long it took Walker Jenkins to go from being drafted fifth overall to actually playing in a big-league game — an eternity by modern top-prospect standards, and a path that included three straight seasons interrupted by injury before he ever got the call.

He got it Friday night, batting ninth and playing center field against the White Sox at Target Field, with the Twins in genuine playoff peril and Byron Buxton nursing a hip injury that opened the door. Jenkins picked up his first career hit, a knock that put two runners on with nobody out — the kind of moment a player waits three years for. Minnesota still lost, 7-4, in a game that got away from them early. Baseball doesn’t care how long you waited; it cares whether the team wins that night. It didn’t. But the story of how Jenkins got here is worth telling regardless.

The prospect who was supposed to arrive years ago

Jenkins came out of South Brunswick High School in Southport, North Carolina, regarded as the best prep hitter the state had produced since Josh Hamilton went No. 1 overall in 1999. Minnesota took him fifth overall in 2023 — winners of the inaugural MLB Draft Lottery — and signed him for a full-slot $7.14 million bonus. The pro debut was exactly what you’d hope: a .988 OPS in 26 games across two levels right out of the gate.

Then the injuries started. A hamstring issue cost him two months in his first full season; he still managed 82 games across four levels, hitting .282/.394/.439 with more walks than strikeouts — advanced feel for the strike zone at an age when most hitters are still guessing. The next spring brought an ankle injury that limited him to just two Double-A games before a cortisone shot and a lengthy IL stint. Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers, who trains alongside him in the offseason, was raving about Jenkins’s makeup and physical gifts as early as 2024 — “genetically way above where any other 19-year-old is,” in Jeffers’s words — but the on-field track record kept getting interrupted before it could fully back that up. He slid from a preseason No. 3 overall prospect ranking down to No. 6, then further, purely on lost games rather than lost tools.

This year brought one more injury scare — an AC joint sprain in his left shoulder cost him more time — but what happened once he got back on the field is the actual headline. Jenkins hit .308/.407/.532 with 12 home runs and 17 steals across 69 games at Triple-A St. Paul, and then, in August specifically, something clicked that hadn’t shown up before: eight home runs in 18 games, including three multi-homer performances after zero in his entire career to that point. He entered his debut hitting .411 with a 1.283 OPS for the month — the kind of stretch that makes a front office stop worrying about service time and start worrying about wins.

The scouting report

RotoProspects has Jenkins ranked No. 3 overall in our latest Top 700. Our grades on him, 20-80 scale: 70 Hit / 50 Power / 55 Speed / 65 Future Value. A 70 hit tool is about as rare a grade as this sport hands out — true 80-grade-adjacent bat-to-ball skill that public evaluators have echoed for years, and a 65 FV puts him firmly in perennial-All-Star territory if the health holds up.

Hit — 70: Elite, full stop. This has been the carrying tool of the profile since high school, when scouts were already comparing him to Josh Hamilton on pure bat-to-ball ability. The swing produces hard, consistent contact to all fields, and even through three injury-shortened seasons, the plate discipline never wavered — he’s walked more than he’s struck out at multiple levels, a rare feat for a hitter this young.

Power — 50: Average on our card, which may undersell what August suggested. Jenkins managed just six homers in his first 74 games at Triple-A this year before hitting eight in his next 18 — a real, visible power spike that coincided with better pitch selection rather than a mechanical overhaul. A 50 is a fair, conservative grade given the track record; it’s also the number most likely to move if the August version turns out to be the real one.

Speed — 55: Above-average, and it shows up as much in the field as on the bases. Seventeen steals this year plus strong defensive reports in center — MLB Pipeline has separately praised his instincts and routes — round out a genuinely well-rounded athlete, not just a bat waiting for a defensive home.

Future Value — 65: Squarely in perennial All-Star range, the kind of grade normally reserved for one of the very best prospects in the sport — which, on our board at No. 3 overall, he is. The only question mark left is health: three straight seasons shortened by injury is a real pattern, not bad luck, and it’s the one variable that could keep a 70-hit, well-rounded five-tool talent from just being really good rather than genuinely great.

The debut: a taste of the good, a reminder of the stakes

The circumstances around Friday’s game underlined exactly how much pressure Jenkins was walking into. Minnesota entered the night four games out of a Wild Card spot and 6½ back of the division-leading White Sox, fresh off a disastrous road trip, with 15 straight games against AL Central opponents looming. This wasn’t a low-stakes September look — it was a team fighting for its season, hoping a 21-year-old fresh off Triple-A could be part of the answer immediately.

It didn’t start well for Minnesota. Chicago and Dean Kremer traded big innings early, with the White Sox eventually pulling ahead for good. Jenkins’s moment came in that stretch: his first major league hit, a clean knock that put runners on first and second with no one out — instant proof that the swing translates, even if nobody drove those runners in behind him. He finished his debut without a highlight-reel moment attached, but with the far more important box: he belongs.

Jenkins’s own pregame comments framed the night better than any box score could: “I’m a big leaguer now. It’s an incredible thought,” he said, describing what he expected to feel standing for the national anthem for the first time. After 37 months, three interrupted seasons, and a scorching final month that finally forced the issue, the emotion clearly wasn’t manufactured for the cameras.

The verdict: One hit and a 7-4 loss isn’t the storybook debut some were picturing given the .411 average he carried in from St. Paul, but for a player whose whole prospect profile is built on hit-tool patience over instant power, a clean single that put two runners on is a perfectly on-brand first big-league moment. The Twins didn’t call him up to save one game — they called him up because their season is on the line and they believe the bat that’s been the best in baseball at times over three interrupted years is finally ready to show up on schedule.

Game two: the good is already showing up, the wins still aren’t

Saturday brought more of the same encouraging pattern — for Jenkins, not for the Twins. He doubled, drove in his first career run on an RBI groundout, and swiped his first professional stolen base, three real building blocks in a single game. Minnesota still lost, 3-2, in a game that turned almost entirely on one swing from the other dugout: Chicago’s Andrew Benintendi went 3-for-3 with a tie-breaking home run, meaning the entire Twins pitching staff allowed exactly three hits all night and all three belonged to the same guy. That’s the kind of loss that has nothing to do with a rookie center fielder and everything to do with one hot bat wearing the wrong uniform.

The bigger picture keeps getting grimmer for Minnesota regardless of what Jenkins does individually — the loss was their seventh in eight games, and the Twins now sit a season-worst 7½ games out of first in the AL Central, with the Wild Card picture sliding further away by the night. Jenkins is doing exactly what was asked of him: reaching base, using the whole field, showing off the speed that’s part of the profile. It’s just increasingly clear that no single 21-year-old, however talented, was ever going to be enough to single-handedly reverse a slide this deep on his own.

The updated verdict: Two games in, Jenkins has a hit, a walk, a double, an RBI, and a stolen base — a genuinely encouraging start by any measure, and exactly the kind of well-rounded production the 70-hit, 65-FV profile promised. What hasn’t shown up yet is a win, and that’s now squarely on the rest of the roster, not the rookie. The individual story remains exactly what it was after Friday: a legitimately great talent finally healthy and finally performing at the level scouts always believed was in there. The team story is a different, much more urgent problem — and it’s one Jenkins alone was never going to be able to solve.

Quick distinction before this one gets going: Wednesday night wasn’t technically Elmer Rodríguez‘s MLB debut — that happened back on April 29 against Texas. But what he did against Houston at Yankee Stadium was, in every way that matters, a much better story: a career-best outing in his return to the rotation, exactly when New York needed it most.

The Yankees’ message to Rodríguez ahead of his fifth career start was simple — find the swagger that got him here, and trust that his stuff belongs. He did that over a career-high six-plus innings, calling it “one of my best starts,” and Cody Bellinger backed him up with a go-ahead, bases-loaded double as New York rallied for a 9-3 win over the Astros. Not bad for a guy who was optioned back to Scranton just three months earlier after a rough first go-round.

The path: a Puerto Rico product with a fastball that jumped

Rodríguez was drafted out of Leadership Christian Academy in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, by the Boston Red Sox in the fourth round (105th overall) of the 2021 draft. He spent his early pro years as a name in Boston’s system before the Yankees acquired him in December 2024, sending catcher Carlos Narváez to Boston in a trade that also included international bonus pool money — the kind of secondary prospect swap that barely makes headlines until the pitcher involved turns into a top-100 arm.

That’s exactly what happened. In 2025, split across High-A Hudson Valley, Double-A Somerset and Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Rodríguez went 11-8 with a 2.58 ERA and 176 strikeouts over 150 innings — the second-most strikeouts of any minor leaguer in baseball, behind only the Mets’ Jonah Tong. Opponents hit .192 against him. Baseball America ranked him as the game’s No. 59 overall prospect and the Yankees’ No. 2, and the honors kept stacking up: Yankees Minor League Player of the Year, a spot on the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, and a selection to pitch for Puerto Rico in the 2026 World Baseball Classic — a full-circle moment for a kid drafted out of the same country he’d now be representing on a global stage, pitching alongside All-Stars Nolan Arenado and Willi Castro.

The Yankees called him up for his actual debut on April 29 against Texas. It didn’t go badly, exactly — four innings, two runs, three strikeouts, a loss in a 3-0 game — but the shaky command scouts had flagged showed up immediately: four walks in that first start alone. Over his first four big-league outings, Rodríguez walked 11 batters against just 10 strikeouts in 17 innings, and New York optioned him back to Triple-A in early May once Carlos Rodón was ready to return.

He didn’t sulk about it. Back at Scranton, Rodríguez kept dealing — a career highlight came in early August when he struck out seven over seven scoreless innings to continue what the org was calling a Triple-A tear, part of a stretch of three straight starts allowing two earned runs or fewer with zero walks. When Ryan Weathers went down with a forearm injury in late August, the Yankees didn’t hesitate to give him a second look.

The scouting report

RotoProspects has Rodríguez ranked No. 135 overall in our latest Top 700. Our grades on him, 20-80 scale: 55 Fastball / 50 Slider / 50 Changeup / 45 Future Value. That’s a solid, unspectacular three-pitch mix without a true plus offering — the kind of profile that leans on execution and sequencing more than one dominant weapon, which lines up well with the swing between his shaky first stint and Wednesday’s outing: when the command is on, the stuff plays; when it isn’t, hitters get to sit on one of three fairly hittable pitches.

Fastball — 55: Above-average, and it’s climbed as he’s developed — sitting mid-90s with late life and touching as high as 99 mph. It’s the clear foundation of the arsenal, but a 55 (not a 60-plus) suggests the carrying trait here is life and deception more than pure dominance.

Slider — 50: Average. Public reports have occasionally flashed it as a plus pitch, but a 50 on our card says it’s more of a solid complementary weapon than a true out-pitch — which tracks with a guy who’s had to lean on all four quadrants of his mix rather than one bat-missing breaking ball.

Changeup — 50: Also average, and notably the pitch scouts have flagged as his most improved against left-handed hitters. A 50 grade on a changeup for a hard-throwing righty is a legitimately useful piece — enough to keep opposite-handed bats honest without needing to be a wipeout offering.

Future Value — 45: Below-average-to-average, translating to a fringe rotation piece or a good multi-inning reliever if things don’t fully click. It’s a grade that reflects real swing risk in both directions — the ceiling scouts once dreamed on (176 strikeouts across three levels, a near-perfect strikeout-to-walk ratio in his best minor league stretches) hasn’t yet been the version showing up consistently in the majors, and a 45 says the jury’s still out on which Elmer Rodríguez sticks. Wednesday’s start is exactly the kind of evidence that could start moving that number in the right direction.

The return: trouble early, dominance late

Rodríguez’s second stint didn’t open cleanly. With two outs in the first inning, a defensive misplay by Trent Grisham let Isaac Paredes score from first on what should have been a routine play — the kind of moment that could unravel a pitcher trying to prove he belongs. Instead, Rodríguez settled in and shut the door: six-plus innings, three runs on three hits, six strikeouts, just two walks, 88 pitches. Paul Blackburn came on and stranded a bases-loaded jam, and the Yankees bullpen — which had struggled the night before — rebounded behind him.

The Yankees’ offense made sure the story had a happy ending. Ben Rice opened the scoring with a solo homer, George Lombard Jr. added a run on a groundout, and New York blew the game open with four runs in the seventh, capped by Cody Bellinger’s go-ahead, bases-loaded double. Final score: Yankees 9, Astros 3 — evening the series and pulling New York within 3.5 games of Tampa Bay in the AL East race, while Boston’s own loss that night kept the Yankees ahead in the Wild Card picture too.

Rodríguez’s own read on the turnaround was straightforward: “It was just trusting myself. It’s something that I’ve been building up since my first couple of starts, and so each time I’ve felt better.” A far cry from a guy who was walking the ballpark back in May.

The verdict: This wasn’t a debut, but it might have been more meaningful than one — a legitimately talented arm proving his rough first stint was a stepping stone, not a ceiling. The command question that got him sent down is the same one that got answered on Wednesday, and if it sticks, the Yankees may have just found a real weapon for the stretch run. One start doesn’t erase 11 walks in 17 innings from April — but it’s the best evidence yet that the version worth watching is the one wearing pinstripes in August, not the one that got demoted in May.