They’re called “lottery tickets” for a reason!

Considering how long people have now been following the machinations of the minor leagues, we’ve become fairly accustomed to the boom-or-bust nature of MLB prospects but sometimes we still underrate just how quickly a prospect can go from the hottest ticket in town to simply a name to throw out when you and your friends get into a round of #RememberThatGuy. But in special situations, when those little scraps of paper channel the good fortune of the baseball gods, the return on investment can be an outright gamechanger for you and your squad – which is exactly why this strategy is so popular despite its overall low-probability of hitting.

Depending on your thirst for danger, chasing after these high-ceiling, low-floor players can present an excellent buying opportunity as some managers are more predisposed to seeing the situation as “glass half-empty”. If you’re willing to deal with the risk of striking out on 80-90% of your farm options, all it will take is 10-20% of them to hit an 80th-percentile or better outcome in order to make the investment worthwhile. Think of it like a classic home run slugger – Adam Dunn, anyone? – who barely hits above .200 but manages 35+ long balls each season. The moonshots outweigh the misses in this scenario.

That understanding and mindset mostly apply to how we interpret the possible variance of a prospect when evaluating their ability to transition their minor league stats to the majors. When it comes to players still in the minors who are jumping between levels, we still tend to think of their growth and progression as linear – meaning, slow and steady improvements along the way until the player eventually reaches the standard of “MLB Ready”, not dipping below that line again until they’re old enough to retire. In reality, prospect progression is far from linear. Sometimes a “Can’t Miss” prospect, who never failed at any level in the minors, can suddenly regress once they face MLB competition; other times, the lessons learned during more challenging times can provide players with skills they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

With that in mind, I wanted to explore ten of the minor leagues’ most volatile – and therefore, exciting – players. Compared to other players ranked similarly to them, some of these ten are among the most likely to provide you absolutely zero value in the majors, but they also carry the highest potential chance of reaching future superstardom at some point if everything clicks. Some of these names are nearing the territory of becoming household names – others may never be heard from again. Let’s see if we can predict which are which!

Jesus Made – SS (MIL)

We should probably start with the crown jewel of this year’s batch of lottery ticket prospects, hey?

Following a similar path to fellow teammate and wunderkind Jackson Chourio, there’s now a growing feeling of expectation in fantasy circles that Jesus Made is destined (or… Made, if you will) for immediate greatness. While there are still plenty of hurdles to clear in his progression through the minors, there’s no denying that what we’ve seen from him so far gives him one of the highest ceilings of any current prospect.

If you were to simply scout Made’s statline at face value, you might come away impressed but not necessarily blown away. Even if you did find the numbers intriguing, you could also point to the fact he has yet to even make it to affiliated ball, having only reached the Dominican Summer League (DSL). However, thanks to the fine folks over at Baseball America, we actually have some advanced data available to peruse from the minor league’s Trackman system that gives us the ability to better calibrate his outputs and project into the future. Take a look.

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