Top 100 Prospect Rankings for Dynasty Baseball 2021

Welcome to PitcherList 6.0! I, like so many of my incredible colleagues, have been hard at work crafting a pair of lists for you all to read ahead of the 2021 MLB season: a list of my top 100 dynasty prospects and my top 500 dynasty overall rankings.

While there are a ton of excellent top 100 lists out there, it is important for fantasy players to recognize that not all of them are catered specifically toward dynasty formats.

While it’s impossible for most outlets to create lists for every different fantasy format out there, folx looking to get an edge by reading about prospects should definitely prioritize lists with dynasty leagues in mind – less you end up with a team full of relievers and glove-first infielders, the types of players who are far more valued in real baseball than in fantasy.

The below list is not only catered specifically toward dynasty, it also comes with my preferred dynasty strategy – which is to attempt to win in the first 1-2 years. Trying to draft too far into the future can often blow up in one’s face and make your team non-competitive for multiple years at a time – which where is the fun in that?

I’ll discuss a few individual rankings below, but I will say this list tends to favor players closer to (or already in) the big leagues, and my tendency to value hitting prospects over pitching prospects is prevalent as well.

Without further ado, here are my top 100 prospects:

Notes

• The top is more or less industry standard. I’m curious how Spencer Torkelson will look at third base. If he seems capable of handling the hot corner, he might get a slight boost over the younger, toolsy infielders ahead of him.
• Only one pitcher in the top 15 and only four in the top 25, and you can see my proclivity toward arms who have already had big league success. Mackenzie Gore and Matt Manning should be up soon as well.
• Ryan Mountcastle is perhaps the player I am highest on, at least compared to industry standard. I believe in the hit tool and the power tool, and while his walk numbers may have been a bit of a mirage last year (I wrote about that more here) I still think he has a really good chance of being a .275 hitter with 25-30 home runs, and that’s hard to leave out of the top 40.
• Fairly big run of pitchers with some big league experience in the middle of the list (Luis Patino, Spencer Howard, Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize, Triston McKenzie). I think this order is definitely up for some interpretation, but I like the strikeout potential of Patino and Howard enough to have them slightly above the rest. McKenzie was awesome in his debut, and pitches for a good system in Cleveland, but injury risk scares me a bit here.
• In nearly every startup dynasty league you will see James Karinchak among the top 30 or so prospects getting selected. While we rarely consider pure relievers as top-100 prospects, perhaps we should? (Note: I didn’t include Devin Williams because he exceeded prospect-eligibility according to MLB, but some leagues may still count him as a prospect. I’d probably have him in the 50’s if he were on this list).
• Forrest Whitley and Brendan McKay are two former top 25 prospects who have fallen. Injuries to pitchers scare me a lot, even though they both have the stuff to be huge fantasy assets. Tread carefully.
• Jackson Rutledge is one of my prospect crushes, and a guy I think could be a top-50 starting pitcher consistently if given the opportunity. His stuff would also play up well in the bullpen, which makes him a bit of a risk, but one I’m willing to take above a lot of other No. 4 type starting pitching prospects who were omitted from this list.

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