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MLB Prospects on the Rise 📈💯
Diving into some MLB prospects emerging this season.

It’s May, which means we have the sample size to start truly evaluating some prospects. This week, we get into prospects that have seen their stock rise in 2025.
We have a lot of exciting content on the horizon with our first mock draft coming later this week and an exciting prospect interview soon!
Rising Stock Hitting Prospects
Early season results present an easy opportunity to jump to conclusions. While a hot month shouldn’t be the only factor involved, it does give us the chance to dive into some players really taking a big step forward.
Aram Leighton put together two pieces this week, one for hitters and one for pitchers, detailing prospects who have seen their stock rise this spring.
We’re gonna preview some of the top names on each list and make sure to read his full articles for more breakdowns!
Luis Peña is the next Brewers international stud. Teammate Jesus Made has gotten a ton of prospect helium in the past year, but Peña is another 18-year-old making the jump straight to Single-A, skipping over the Arizona Complex League. He’s off to an excellent start with a .867 OPS paired with improvements in his exit velocities, a patient approach (more walks than strikeouts), and high-end speed (19 stolen bases) through 20 games.
The Bronx Bombers have looked to unlock something in last year’s first round pick, George Lombard Jr. The son of Tigers’ Bench Coach, George Lombard, has been rising up ranks ever since Spring Training. While some were left skeptical he could continue it, he has silenced the naysayers by starting off the year in High-A with 27 hits in just 24 games. That, and his insane feel for the strike zone, already has him rapidly rising into Double-A and up prospect rankings.
The Mets have been one of baseball’s best teams up to this point. What’s more impressive is what they have going on in the Minors Leagues, and third base prospect Jacob Reimer looks to continue building his stock. This is a team that has been looking for their future third baseman since the retirement of David Wright. We have gone through iterations of the Brett Baty and Mark Vientos eras over the past couple of years, but neither has done much to solidify that role. The third base prospect slugging to a near 50% hard-hit rate is looking to be the answer.
The Marlins once had this prospects’ brother, Jose Salas, in their organization before trading him to Minnesota with Pablo Lopez for Luis Arraez. Andrew Salas signed with Miami for $3.7M during the 2025 IFA period, and they wasted little time throwing him into the fire with an aggressive assignment to Low-A Jupiter. The cerebral hitter is able to flash his above-average bat control by spraying the ball to all fields and walking more than he strikes out. Not to mention the fact that he’s an incredible athlete with an above-average glove in the infield, and the ability to play a strong center field as well.
Just Baseball Trivia of the Week
Our newsletter will have a trivia question every week to test and expand the baseball knowledge of our subscribers! The answer to the weekly trivia question will be at the bottom of the newsletter each week.
What is Roman Anthony’s (JB #1 Prospect) OPS in Triple-A this year? (Happy birthday to Roman!)
A) .877
B) .899
C) .905
D) .921
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Rising Stock Pitching Prospects
Historically, there aren’t many people that tend to geek out on spin rates and pitch movement the same way they do for long home runs and elite speed.
The beauty of this game is that it is ever changing, and here’s a snippet of the eight pitching prospects rapidly rising across the Minor Leagues.
Hunter Barco looks like another pitching prospect on the rise out of the Pirates system. While their Major League team has gone through their fair share of struggles, and a change at Manager, the minor league system has continued to produce arms at an incredibly high rate. His three-pitch mix, compromised of a fastball that we have seen a consistent velocity jump from, a gyro slider, and his execution of the splitter has made him one of the best pitchers in all of the Minor Leagues.
The Marlins have another left-handed starter ready to go in Robby Snelling. It has been mentioned a few times already how a full off-season in the Marlins organization was going to do wonders for Snelling’s development after taking a step back in 2024. The bump in velocity has also sprung over an inch of induced vertical break on his fastball. The biggest thing to follow is the high rate in which he is generating whiffs INSIDE of the strike zone due to the deception that the separation in his pitches creates.
Gage Jump has likely seen the biggest jump in rankings amongst the Minor Leagues with the start to his season. Jump was a draft prospect coming out of JSerra Catholic High School in California and was selected in the 18th round by the San Diego Padres. After deciding to honor his commitment to UCLA, then transferring to LSU, Jump was selected in the 2nd round by the Athletics where he has 45 Ks to just 5 BBs in his first 31 innings pitched.
He may not be the first pitching prospect you think of when someone strikes up a conversation about a Mets pitcher, but Noah McLean is making sure you don’t forget to mention his name, and the curveball spinning at over 3200 RPMs, is amongst one of the good young arms rapidly climbing. Not only is he generating above-average whiff numbers amongst all of his pitches, but he’s producing ground balls at just as high of a mark across his 26.1 innings so far in Double-A.
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Other Prospect Headlines
Just Baseball’s 45th-ranked prospect Cade Horton was called up by the Cubs and made his MLB debut this week, tossing four innings with five strikeouts.
Jordan Lawlar, our 38th-ranked prospect entering the season, was recalled by the Diamondbacks after absolutely tearing up Triple-A to open the year.
White Sox prospect Tim Elko debuted this week and hit a go-ahead home run for his first career MLB hit.
Our latest MLB farm system list features the talented Boston Red Sox organization. Check out their top prospects list here and listen to The Call Up for more analysis!
Our MLB Mock Draft 1.0 will be dropping later this week! Stay tuned👀
Just Baseball Discord
We launched a Just Baseball community on Discord!
Our Discord channel is the ultimate baseball group chat while also providing exclusive access to Peter’s MLB best bets, Aram’s prospect content, giveaways, and direct connection to the entire Just Baseball staff.
Collectibles Corner: The Sports Card CEO
Introducing the newest podcast in the Just Baseball Network, The Sports Card CEO!
🚨Introducing the newest show in the Just Baseball Network🚨
The Sports Card CEO, our official collectables podcast, hosted by Eric Mandelkern, Matt Ham, and Bubba Wilson brings the best content out there within the sports card collecting hobby!
— Just Baseball (@JustBB_Media)
3:46 PM • May 7, 2025
Check out The Sports Card CEO for the card collecting content out there!
Trivia Answer: B) .899
Anthony has been mashing to open the year and should be reaching Boston in the near future!
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