2024 saw Yilber Diaz and Demetrio Crisantes leap up prospect rankings. Who could take a similar jump in 2025?
Heading into 2024, rankings of prospects in the Diamondbacks’ system featured Yilber Diaz somewhere in the second half of the rankings. He was too wild, he was ticketed for the bullpen, and probably wouldn’t arrive for a couple of years. Demetrio Crisantes did not appear on any prospect rankings.
It didn’t work out as expected. Diaz tore through AA, then tore through AAA, and found himself starting in the majors by the middle of the year. He might have gotten a bit lucky, but he started his career with consecutive quality starts, and after a rough outing in Kansas City, bounced back with what might have been his best start of the season from a stuff perspective before returning to the minor leagues. Crisantes, who was absent even from Fangraphs’ ranking of 49 prospects, started out at the complex and ended the year with an ongoing 57-game on-base streak in Visalia. His pursuit of the unofficial record of 71 games currently held by Kevin Youkalis will be one of the storylines when the minor league season gets underway. Fangraphs is lower on him than other rankings, but still has him 26th out of 51 ranked players. MLB Pipeline has Crisantes at 13th, sandwiched between Cristian Mena and Adrian Del Castillo and ahead of far more heralded prospects like Yassel Soler and Adriel Radney.
Prospect ranking is largely a futile exercise. Even with all of the data available these days, there are still a ton of misses, in both directions. Paul Goldschmidt wasn’t a top-100 prospect at any point; he’s likely ticketed for Cooperstown. The 2012 MLB Pipeline rankings put Chris Owings and Matt Davidson ahead of AJ Pollock, Patrick Corbin, and Wade Miley. Future All-Star Ender Inciarte and fan-favorite David Peralta were never ranked by MLB Pipeline. Peralta could be excused because of age, but Stryker Trahan, Jose Martinez, Daniel Gibson, Joe Munoz, and Kevin Munson were all ranked in the top-20 and never saw the big leagues, while Inciarte got Rookie of the Year consideration. Jon Duplantier was rated the top prospect in the system in both 2018 and 2019; trailing him in the latter rankings were Jazz Chisholm, Daulton Varsho, and Jake McCarthy. Those same rankings featured Andy Yerzy and Dominic Miroglio but not Jose Herrera, who actually made the big leagues.
Position Players
Trent Youngblood, OF
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal
Youngblood has yet to make his professional debut. He played college ball at Transylvania, a tiny Division III school in Kentucky, competing in the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference. The largest school in the HCAC is Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, with just over 2,000 students. Transylvania is one of the smaller schools, with an enrollment of just under 1,000. (Only Earlham College and Defiance College—which has now moved to the NAIA—are smaller.) Youngblood is the first draftee in the history of Transylvania, and just the 17th player drafted from the HCAC, and he’d be the first drafted player to make the big leagues (Cy Barger, who played from 1906-1915 in all three major leagues that existed at that time, went to Transylvania, but he didn’t play baseball there.) Meanwhile, the other school in Lexington, KY, has had over three dozen drafted players reach the major leagues, including Brandon Webb.
Guys from smaller schools who hit well in college haven’t had a lot of success in the Diamondbacks’ system in recent years, with Brett Johnson and Jackson Feltner being two recent examples. Feltner has batted 143 points lower in professional ball than in college, and his OPS is 435 points lower. So why is Youngblood different? It’s simple: he was so good in college that his numbers would be fine even with similar drops. All he did in college was slash .422/.538/.686. Plus, unlike the players mentioned above, he’s extremely athletic; he stole 83 bases in his collegiate career, and despite generally playing the outfield, he played shortstop in summer leagues and moved there last year for Transylvania.
Following his Freshman year, he played in the first iteration of the prospect league and slashed .375/.524/.438 but didn’t have enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. He batted .344 in the Coastal Plains League after his Sophomore season, good for 9th. His numbers dropped again in his second stint in the Coastal Plains League, but he still slashed .329/.417/.466 in 424 wood bat league plate appearances over his collegiate career. By comparison, Ryan Waldschmidt slashed .258/.417/.366 in wood bat leagues, and Braden Montgomery slashed .292/.379/.487.
He’ll have a huge adjustment to make, of course, and he’s not going to bat .400 with an OBP over .500 like he did in college. But just as Crisantes has performed just fine despite not facing the best competition in high school, Youngblood can make a splash despite his background.
Adrian Rodriguez, SS/2B
You’d be forgiven for not remembering the 8th round draft pick in 2022. The Puerto Rican shortstop has been in the complex each year since, and played in Puerto Rico during the winters. Not only was he not particularly impressive at the plate, he committed 16 errors in limited action across 2022 and 2023. But last year he posted a .391 on-base percentage and committed just three errors. (He’s also committed just one error in over 200 innings in Puerto Rico.) The glove is coming around. The bat is behind, but he’s got a make-or-break year coming up, as he has just two seasons before Rule-5 eligibility. If he can reprise that .391 OBP in Visalia and show his improved defense, his ability to play a premium position will see him beginning to make appearances towards the back of prospect lists.
Pitchers
Joe Elbis, RHP
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Fangraphs likes Elbis, rating him 16th. The Diamondbacks also liked Elbis enough to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. Perhaps one should argue that last year was his breakout year, but the organization clearly thinks there is more in the tank, and he was overshadowed by Spencer Giesting in 2024. They are likely not wrong to expect more; after recovering from arm surgery, Elbis hasn’t recouped the velocity he had in 2021-2022, when he struck out 73 batters in 63.2 innings. Possibly because of this, his strikeout rate has dropped and his walk rate has increased, but neither are poor. But here’s the other thing:
- Yilber Diaz, 2023: 22 appearances in Hillsboro, 3 in Amarillo. 5.54 RA in Hillsboro, 3.60 in Amarillo. 2.53 K/BB rate in Hillsboro, 1.78 in Amarillo. 1.335 WHIP in Hillsboro, 1.4 in Amarillo.
- Joe Elbis, 2024: 16 appearances in Hillsboro, 8 in Amarillo. 3.19 RA in Hillsboro, 5.00 in Amarillo. 2.59 K/BB rate in Hillsboro, 2.06 in Amarillo. 1.14 WHIP in Hillsboro, 1.289 in Amarillo.
Not that Elbis and Diaz are that much alike; they do have a lot of physical similarities, but Elbis has better control and pitches more to contact, while Diaz has the more electric stuff. But Elbis was better (and saw more time at Amarillo) during 2024 than Diaz was in 2023.
Mason Marriott, RHP
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When Marriott was drafted in the sixth round last year, I proclaimed that he was a potential future back-of-the-bullpen arm. Ian Rebhan said that the Diamondbacks saw him as a future starter, but of course he only worked out of the bullpen during his limited number of professional outings. That was expected. What was unexpected were the results: in his first three outings, he pitched seven innings, allowed just six hits, one walk, and two runs, and struck out seven. He may or may not have had a fourth outing; Baseball Reference disagrees with itself, as it places a fourth outing on his game logs but not on his season stats. If he did in fact make that outing (and MiLB’s box scores are offline due to a Cloudflare outage) it didn’t go well, as he walked three and got just one out. Sometimes minor league information has issues; Gino Groover was, for a time, credited with a pitching outing last year when he was recovering from his broken wrist.
Whether he had that poor outing or not, Marriott demonstrated more ability to throw strikes than he had in college. The competition he was facing in Visalia was probably slightly below the competition he saw in the Big 12, but it’s not that big of a difference. Here’s hoping he stays healthy and builds on that. If so, he could wind up on the fast track to the major leagues, as well as climbing up prospect rankings.