With Spring Training kicking off, it’s officially time to look towards the future – including some potential future faces of the league! Last year, we debuted my inaugural “Pendulum Prospects” piece which aimed to highlight some of the prospects with the widest potential swings in how we end up viewing them going forward. These players come in a variety of archetypes, from the injury-prone to the ultra-talented players with one glaring hole in their profile to fix before reaching superstardom, but they all fit the style of player that I like to place my bets on going forward.

From my vantage point, prospects are so inherently volatile that even the safest of the bunch can easily find themselves considered a bust by fantasy managers – so why not aim big and take a few home run hacks. Even Aaron Judge strikes out more than 25% of the time! He also would have been a perfect example of a Pendulum Prospect had I been doing this series while he was in the minors as his big skills and elite traits were still not enough to place him towards the upper half of most minor league lists. While an Aaron Judge-like outcome would be a 100th-percentile outcome for this exercise, I hope to unearth gems like that from time to time for you. But to do so, I need to be as forthright with my failures as I am with my successes so with that in mind, here are last year’s selections and my personal take on whether they improved, slid, or stayed similar in prospect value over the course of the year.

Jesus Made is a tough one to take too much credit for as he was obviously entering the wunderkind territory at the end of 2024, but he did nonetheless climb up the rankings due to other graduations and now finds himself a universal top-5 type. That’s still a win though as most publications couched their ranking by placing him around 50th. Misiorowski on the other hand was one of my flag plant players and he provided a fantastic ROI as I fully believed in the Brewers’ pitching development team to reign in his wildness and he was able to do so – at least until hitters started to catch up to him later in the season. Definitely a notch in the W column however.

Franklin Arias and Zyhir Hope couldn’t be more different as hitters but both took slight jumps up in the rankings after their seasons. Arias is a hit-tool afficianado who grades out near a 70, but lacks the current power stroke to make much of a dent in the home run category – similar to a young Luis Arraez. He’s still early enough in his development to grow into additional power, aided by his elite quality of contact, so he could quickly go from the type of player who is “better in real life than fantasy” to a legitimate asset. Meanwhile, Hope is a bundle of tools and, well, hope. He’s got the skills to quickly become yet another Dodgers success story if he can reign his strikeouts in and improve his contact rate.

Lazaro Montes and Robert Calaz are both formed in the same mold as Hope, but show the other frequent outcomes of such a player with Montes performing reasonably but not enough to shake free from the label of being an extreme hit-or-miss prospect despite showcasing his 70-grade power throughout the season. Calaz started at a lower level of the minors and was therefor more likely to boom-or-bust and he did mostly bust during his first foray into full-season ball. With lots of development time still ahead of him though, he could quickly rise back up the rankings – especially since his future in the majors will likely be in Colorado.

Brailer Guerrero is somewhat similar to Montes and Calaz in that he’s built like an NFL linebacker but he suffered a more precipitous drop in value because he suffered a serious shoulder injury that could lead to ongoing issues. Quero was also returning from a serious injury and was unable to rebound as hoped, which is understandable after a full year spent on the sidelines but also reason enough to fall off our consideration for fantasy. Salas, meanwhile, was always a bit of a overrated prospect when it came to production with his bat but even his most fervent supporters (of which I was previously one) have to admit at this stage that it may never happen with him – an all-too-frequent realization for those who toil in the prospect catcher worlds regularly.

And then there’s Charlie Condon. The third overall pick has suffered a precipitous drop in public perception, falling out of Baseball America’s Top 100 entirely – though some publications are still ranking him towards the tail end of their lists. That’s in part due to his lagging defensive ability, leading to a belief that he’s destined for first base, but mostly caused by his plate discipline, including a 28.3% strikeout rate, 70.9% contact rate and 13.5% swinging-strike rate during his time at Double-A. He’s still got a path to being fantasy-relevant but the margins to do so have shrunk considerably since this time last year.

All together, my success rate basically came out at exactly .500 – not bad if you’re an MLB-hitter but hopefully we can aim even higher with this year’s crop!

Josuar Gonzalez – SS (SFG)

As was the case with last year’s feature player – Jesus Made – our 2026 poster child comes in the form of the previous year’s standout DSL hitter.

Gonzalez, however, isn’t quite the prodigy at the plate that Made is, boosting his ranking somewhat with his slick shortstop defense. Still, if you’re betting on any 18-year-old prospect to reach the upper echelon, Gonzalez is at absolute worst the second-best option to do so, along with the recently-drafted Eli Willits. So why Josuar instead of Eli for this list?

Well, even with high school hitters being incredibly volatile, the error bars in projecting DSL players are even larger – in no small part due to the standard subterfuge that comes with J5 bonuses and everything tied to those multi-million dollar contracts being handed out to preteens. Still, I’ve written previously about how this archetype of player is the most likely to provide huge return-on-investment so there’s a reason he’s ranked as highly as he is.

With grades of 60 for his speed, 55 for his raw power and 50 for his hit tool, Gonzalez doesn’t currently project as a superstar talent but the balance of his tools gives him an incredibly high floor to work with, especially as a long-term shortstop. All together, that gives him significant developmental runway to hone his skills and potentially grow further into his adult body frame. If he happens to do so earlier than expected, then he’ll likely find himself following the Jesus Made hypetrain pathway and sitting in the top-10 come spring 2027.

But of course, for players this junior, if the bottom suddenly drops out on them as they struggle to adjust, the hypetrain could quickly come to a screeching halt, leaving him on the outside looking in when it comes to Top 100 lists. His pedigree will undoubtedly keep him on the fantasy radar even with a disaster year but when ranking mostly on hope and hype, you can be proven very right or very wrong very quickly.

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Jeff Clowers

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