Last week, I ranked the top 100 prospects in baseball heading into the 2020 season. Now it’s time to go deeper with my team-by-team rankings, starting with the American League.
A quick refresher on a key term you’ll see throughout the team lists: I use something called Future Value, shortened to FV hereafter, as a term that sums up the value of a player into one number. It’s graded on the 20-80 scouting scale. A low-end everyday player is a 50, which correlates to 2.0 WAR; a well above average position player, No. 3 starter or high-end closer is a 60, or somewhere around 3.0 WAR. I refrain from tossing out an 80 on minor leaguers because that would imply one is expected to be one of the top players in baseball. Wander Franco, this year’s top prospect, is the best prospect baseball has seen since Mike Trout.
In addition to the top 10 for each franchise, I rank every player with a Future Value greater than 40 for each franchise as well before summing up the best of the rest. You can see the full scouting report for the players in my top 100 list here.
And now on to my rankings: