Every year, the baseball media landscape is dominated by dialogue around who the next “breakout stars” in the sport will be. Last year, it was Jackson Holliday; This spring, Roki Sasaki has been all over the headlines.
However, those dubbed as the “next big thing” don’t always pan out. It’s easy for fans and media members to get carried away with the potential and “ceiling” of young players, but just as often as these players reach their potential, others fall well short.
Here are four prospects currently on dynasty managers’ radars that should be considered as a major risk to fall into the “bust” category.
Dynasty Prospect Busts
Mick Abel, 23-year-old SP, Philadelphia Phillies
2024 was not kind to the former first-round pick. Abel started the season as the #46 prospect in baseball (per MLB), waiting for a call-up to the major leagues. That call never came, and a year later, Abel is no longer among MLB’s top 100 prospects. Entering 2025, he has a long road back to dynasty relevance.
Red flag #1 for Abel is his control. The 23-year-old righty allowed over six free passes per nine innings last season, second-worst among MiLB pitchers (min. 100 IP). He has a plus fastball that sits around 94 mph, and a slider that generated a 35% whiff rate, but hasn’t shown an ability to keep his pitches in the zone.
The second factor raising alarm bells is his inability to generate consistent swings and misses in the zone. The strikeout rate wasn’t elite, but it lands among the top 50 among qualified MiLB pitchers (9.69). The problem is the 86% Z-Con mark that comes along with it. Abel relies on getting hitters to chase out of the zone for success. If that doesn’t happen, he’s in trouble.
Abel’s far from a sure-thing as a “bust”, and has plenty of time to right the ship and get his career back on track. However, if the control issues continue to materialize in the future, it’s hard to imagine Abel being a factor in the Phillies rotation in the future.
Ricky Tiedemann, 22-year-old SP, Toronto Blue Jays
On paper, this might be a crazy take. Tiedemann is a 6’4″ left-handed pitcher who ramps it up to well over 100 miles an hour. That said, he dropped from #29 on MLB’s 2024 top 100 prospect list, to not even ranked in the 2025 iteration.
The main reason for that drastic drop is the series of injuries he faced in 2024. Tiedemann missed almost three months with nerve damage in his throwing elbow. Then, he underwent Tommy John surgery just three weeks after returning to game action. While the latter operation is becoming almost commonplace in the sport, the fact that there has been a series of injuries in that left arm should fill dynasty managers with worry.
Tiedemann also carries significant reliever risk. In his 41 career starts in the minor leagues, Tiedemann is averaging just over three innings per start. That number dipped below three in 2023 and sat at 2.1 in his injury-riddled 2024 campaign. At 6’4″, 220 lbs, Tiedemann passes the eye test to be a starter, but he’s yet to show an ability to go deep into games at the professional level.
There’s no question that Tiedemann is talented enough to make an impact. He struck out 44% of the batters he faced in 2023, pitching to a 1.68 FIP in 15 games. The aforementioned fastball has plenty of life and will be an effective weapon at the next level, especially when mixed with his sweep-heavy slider.
Similar to Abel, the storybook is far from closed on Tiedemann. A healthy and productive 2025 season would vault him right back into the conversation as a possible future ace. However, as things stand, Tiedemann is an electric arm that may be better suited in the ‘pen until he can prove he can pitch deep into games.
Spencer Jones, 23-year-old OF, New York Yankees
I highly doubt I’m the only one with this assessment. Jones filled Yankees fans with excitement when he was drafted in 2022, and it’s easy to see why. At 6’6″ with 70 grade power, it was easy to draw comparisons between him and Aaron Judge, apart for the fact that Jones swings from the opposite side of the plate. Ever since being drafted, he’s been among the top-five Yankees prospects, but that may change in 2025.
There is one glaring red flag when looking at Jones is his ludicrous strikeout rate. Nearly 37% of his plate appearances in 2024 ended with a walk back to the dugout. That mark was more than nine percent from his mark in the previous season. Among qualified minor league hitters, that strikeout rate ranked fourth worst. His contact rate paints an uglier picture, as he made contact on just 61% of his swings last season.
So, not a season to remember for New York’s #2 prospect. It’s not all bad though. When Jones does make contact, it goes a long way and usually ends up over the fence. He already has his first home run of 2025, launching an opposite field home run on February 22nd that left the bat at 105 miles per hour. Last season, he hit 17 more long balls, and stole 25 bases to boot as well. There is 30-30 potential with Jones, but his shortcomings may prevent him from ever reaching those heights.
Any prospect that has a strikeout rate near 40% in Double-A should raise alarm bells. However, the tantalizing power/speed combo could lead fantasy managers to hold on and hope for the best. My advice? Don’t. Yes, his contact rate so far in spring training has been better (75% in two games), and he could blossom into a real contributor in the Bronx. That said, if his strikeout rate is that high two levels away from the majors, there is plenty of room for that to get even worse.
Unless Jones makes serious and significant adjustments in his swing and approach that lead to a sub-28/30% strikeout rate, he’s a prospect I would avoid.
Tommy Troy, 23-year-old SS, Arizona Diamondbacks
Man this one hurts. I was really high on Troy after he dominated the Cape Cod League in 2022 with Cotuit, hitting .310 with five homers and a .917 OPS in 30 games. The Diamondbacks were too, and selected him with the 12th overall pick in the Draft the following summer.
It’s not necessarily Troy’s fault that things haven’t worked out. Geraldo Perdomo has turned into a serviceable big-league shortstop and having Jordan Lawlar for competition can’t be easy. That said, the tools he showed during his final season with Stanford haven’t translated into professional baseball.
That season, Troy hit 17 home runs and stole 17 bags. Both of those were career highs. However, in tandem with the CCBL performance, scouts believed that he could grow into a 20-20 threat in the future. Since then, he’s hit just nine total home runs in 99 career games. He did steal 16 bases, so the speed tool could still have some value, but the power drop-off is concerning.
There’s also durability concerns. He’s missed time with a hamstring issue and required surgery on his foot before the 2024 season. Bad luck or not, a track record of lower body injuries for a prospect who is reliant on speed is never good.
His numbers aren’t horrible and the underlying data doesn’t show any real signs of trouble. However, he’s 23 and is yet to play above High-A. Troy is at least a year away from a major league debut, provided he doesn’t dominate the minors and force a late season call-up.
The optimist in me believes that Troy will ball out to start 2025 and get to Triple-A before the summer starts. However, all of the current evidence points to that not taking place, at least not this season.
wow, so bold picking Tiedemann who may be back in August/September to be a 2025 bust!