If there’s one other thing baseball loves to do besides quantify everything, it’s create rankings. That’s probably equally true for nearly every sport, but it’s especially true for a sport that is as hyper focused on statistics as baseball. In both of those veins, MLB Pipeline released its rankings of the top 100 prospects grouped by the aptly named “Future Value” or FV. Despite the name, it’s a nonsensical scouting system that grades prospects from 20-80 on five categories (hit, power, run, arm, and field) along with an overall grade that theoretically maps onto the player’s projected fWAR in their first six years of service. ESPN quickly followed suit with their own rankings – first of their top 100 and then of 101-200 – but both of which are locked behind paywalls. Despite the maddening lack of transparency for anyone unwilling or unable to afford Mickey’s extra tax to read about their favorite sport, there are quite literally oodles and oodles of articles floating around the internet about these players as well as both subjective and objective evaluations of them. As fascinating as those evaluations can be and often are, I (along with many of you) have always been a bigger fan of underdogs, the people who don’t get the same kind of attention and thrive anyway. So, rather than devote even more column inches to the players who are being heaped with laurels – and to go along with our series on roster dark horses – I thought it might be more interesting to highlight two non-top 100 prospects who might impact the D-Backs in 2025.
Tim Tawa
This is one player that I’ve been sold on by some folks here over the past few months, especially when we were debating possible internal solutions for filling Christian Walker’s shoes. Evidently, the D-Backs were also convinced of his potential as they elected to put Tawa onto the 40-man roster back in November to protect him from the Rule 5 draft. It’s not difficult to see why either as the 11th-round pick from 2021 spent time with both Double-A Amarillo and Triple-A Reno last season, posting an excellent .304/.376/.616 slash line at the latter. While those numbers are almost certainly inflated by the PCL’s hitter-friendly environs, he also made a name for himself by playing at nearly every position around the diamond and all three outfield spots. That kind of positional flexibility is quite valuable and could very easily elevate Tawa into a big league roster spot at some point in the season but also might be diminishing his prospect ranking. Additionally, with just 37 games and 157 plate appearances under his belt with Reno, the sample size is still a little too small to justify the leap to the big leagues, but he could easily carve out a spot for himself with a solid Spring Training and/or inevitable injury.
Yu-Min Lin
Another 2021 pickup – this time on the international circuit, Lin has seen his prospect stock tick up over the past year as he finally made it to Reno after repeating a year with Amarillo. The 21-year old Taiwanese posted a mediocre 4.28 ERA and 1.447 WHIP in 19 starts with Amarillo, but given the aforementioned offensive inflation that comes with the territory, there was enough to warrant the move up another level. According to his scouting report, his changeup is his best pitch with room for improvement if he could add some additional velocity to a fastball that “only” sits in the upper-80s or low-90s. He has adopted a bit of a kitchen-sink approach with five separate offerings, all of which get decent marks without being overpowering. That said, much like Tawa, Lin has very limited exposure to the Triple-A environment as he made just one start with Reno before the end of the season so if things were to go well, he would have a decent chance to make his debut in September to set up a larger role in the rotation or bullpen in 2026.