Picture of Lance Brozdowski of Jim Callis via the Marquee Sports Network

About a week and a half ago, Lance Brozdowski of the Marquee Sports Network revealed his top 10 prospects on the network with MLB Pipeline’s Jim Callis. Today, the rest of the list came out and it has some pretty good nuggets!

The Top 10

Here’s the top 10 again – in order. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Kevin Alcántara, Hayden Wesneski, Benjamin Brown, Jordan Wicks, Owen Caissie, Alexander Canario, Matt Mervis, Daniel Palencia, and Brennen Davis.

Top Nugget – I love when Lance talks all nerdy about pitching metrics and pitch design. Here’s a bit on Jordan Wicks.

It seems logical that a “bridge” pitch like a true cutter or something with more drop, like a second slider, could fit his repertoire nicely. Given the ease of adding cutters in a pitcher’s repertoire, often due to the orientation of the ball creating the shape while the pitcher just thinks “fastball,” the bigger variable to conquer first is adding velocity.

I have been saying a cutter for Wicks for a while. It would eat righties alive!

The Second 10

For me, Horton is a little too low but it is very cool that he has both Gray and Ferris in this range, Here’s 11-20 in order – Cade Horton, Cristian Hernández, James Triantos, Ed Howard, DJ Herz, Miguel Amaya, Drew Gray, Jackson Ferris, Yohendrick Piñango, and Kohl Franklin, RHP

Coolest Nugget – The fact that Drew Gray’s TJS allowed him to add some weight and increase velocity is the Chef’s Kiss!

His Tommy John recovery also gave him time to bulk and strengthen up, likely with the goal of improving his velocity, which was only 90-91 mph in his 2021 Arizona Complex League stint. If Gray comes out post-TJ sitting 93-94, he’ll push into the top 12-15 of this list with ease. If it takes a bit more time to sit 3-4 ticks above his prior velocity, I’m willing to wait for that jump to make a correction upward.

It is going to be fun with Gray does make his full season debut. However, expect him to be on a strict pitch count all year,

The Final 10

The only real surprise in the whole list came at 28 as Lance plops Jefferson Rojas in the top 30. Lance had the benefit of being the last major list (save FanGraphs) to publish his list. In doing so, Lance looks a little prophetic for a player who won’t see action for two more months in Mesa.

Here is this group starting at 21 with Ryan Jensen, RHP and then came Cam Sanders, Caleb Kilian, Moises Ballesteros, Porter Hodge, Jefferson Rojas, Jeremiah Estrada, Zac Leigh, Kevin Made, and Luis Devers.

Top Nugget – While Lance did put Rojas in his list, the name has been floating around since late December in terms of a breakthrough at fall instructs. Anyway, Lance will get the credit for putting him in first. Here’s why he did.

Rojas was a name that came up in two conversations with different individuals inside the Cubs organization when asked who they thought was an overlooked prospect with great tools. Given I hold the opinions of those two individuals in high regard, I decide to sneak Rojas onto this list in hopes I’m ahead of the industry in bringing his name into discussions.

Overall, it’s a pretty good list and extremely data driven, which I just love!