“The Dynasty Diamond”: July 29th

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  • By Jeff Clowers

    Last Updated on July 29, 2025 12:45 pm by Paul Williamson | Published: July 29, 2025

    A new influx of prospect talent is upon us! With the 2025 draft having now taken place, we can finally tear our attentions away from the boring stuff like under-slot dealing and instead focus on what the people really want – fantasy ramifications.

    Though they won’t be included here just yet as they don’t have any professional innings to reference, we’ll almost assuredly be noting some debut performances from recent draftees in the coming weeks. That said, this draft is lacking in some of the high-end talent we’ve been accustomed to the last few years so don’t expect quite as many quick rises through the minors like we saw last year, where an outsized number were promoted aggressively up the organizational ladder – including exciting names like Chase Burns, Cam Smith and Jac Caglianone.

    That doesn’t mean there aren’t names with upside though, as Ethan Holliday will get the benefit of being a hitter in Colorado – just like his father did – while Liam Doyle brings his 80-grade fastball to the Cardinals organization. And of course, we’ll undoubtedly see some out-of-nowhere risers from latter in the draft make noise as well, so keep an eye on this space going forward to be the first to jump on them!

    The usual preamble;

    This article will come out every two weeks, highlighting the ten most noteworthy performances for MiLB players during that window. The players discussed will come from a mix of levels (Triple-A, Single-A, etc.) and because of that, I will attempt to contextualize their statistics for both the quality of competition, as well as the player’s own age, to the best of my abilities. In other words, a 25-year old slugger going on a home run binge isn’t going to get my attention if they’re facing off against a 20-year-old pitcher on a daily basis. On the other hand, an 18-year-old holding their own against more advanced pitching is going to skyrocket them towards the top of the rankings very quickly.

    Since we could go as deep into the minors as the Complex and Dominican Summer Leagues, this is intended as more of a companion article for deep dynasty leagues, as opposed to those that shallow enough to essentially just focus on players listed on Top 100 lists. This is more for the sickos who want to be able to brag about having the next Jesus Made or Jung Hoo Lee on their roster more than five years before they make their MLB debut.

    That said, there’s a chance some of our mining leads to some true diamonds in the rough emerging – just look to what Kristian Campbell did last year for example. So with that in mind, I will have a specific section of each article that focuses on how the upper echelon of prospects is performing, in addition to geeking out over the future wave of breakout stars. And as we go through the season, I’ll denote each player written about as one of three categories;

    Golden 🥇 (the best of the best)

    Gems 💎 (exciting up-and-comers)

    Unrefined ⚒ (has tools of interest)

    As the weeks go by, I’ll track each player and how many times they appear in the article under each category in a chart at the bottom. Hopefully by year’s end we’ll then have rough ranking of the most interesting players from each tier as a guideline that you can then use for your own dynasty purposes!

    Statistics are up to date as of July 28th.

    Spencer Jones – OF – NYY 💎

    Last 14 Days: .500/.538/1.409 – 6HR/0SB – .705 wOBA – .909 ISO – 365 wRC+ (AAA)

    Season: .314/.411/.706 – 29HR/16SB – .478 wOBA – .392 ISO – 205 wRC+ (AA/AAA)

    This is the second straight edition in which I’ve written about Jones but even though I was already familiar with the ridiculous hot streak he was on, I felt like I’d written a typo multiple times when entering the stats from his past 14 days. A 1.409 slugging is laughably high – that’s .249 better than Aaron Judge’s OPS in 2025 – and I don’t think I’ve ever once seen an ISO in the .900’s before. That naturally shoots his wRC+ to the moon, eventually landing at two hundred and sixty five percent better than average. Sure, three home runs came in one game but goodness, that’s mighty impressive nonetheless.

    Considering that Jones is now up to nearly 30 home runs on the season and seems to be heating up even further, you may be asking why he hasn’t graduated from the “Gems” tier to the “Golden” tier – and it’s a valid question. The thought process here is somewhat rooted in the old statline-vs-scouts debate as Jones has consistently been held back by his strikeout and contact rates. The former seems to be trending in the right direction and is now in a stable spot, having dropped from 33.7% at Double-A this season to 25.5% after his promotion to Triple-A. The latter is also improving, having jumped from 58.4% to 66.8%, but a 66.8% mark in the minors is still well below-average and major league pitchers will be able to take advantage of the holes in his swing in a way that minor league pitchers simply aren’t able to, leaving Jones with some serious batting average downside.

    While he’s one of the more-talented versions we’ve seen, there have been countless power goofs that have torched the minors with high-power/low-contact profiles only to fall flat on their faces. Even if they end up with a couple notable hot streaks in the majors as well (a la Aristides Aquino in 2019), their longevity is limited and they’re usually out of the league within a couple years (a la Aristides Aquino in 2023). This is why you don’t simply set your prospect rankings by a descending list of OPS – there’s always an infinite number of other data points at play. That said, if you were to watch just one data point of Jones’ going forward, make it his contact rate. If he can get it up above even 70% on a regular basis going forward, then he’ll be firmly in the upper echelon of fantasy prospects.

    Edward Florentino – OF – PIT 💎

    Last 14 Days: .269/.406/.538 – 2HR/4SB – .442 wOBA – .269 ISO – 162 wRC+ (A)

    Season: .316/.424/.600 – 12HR/22SB – .472 wOBA – .284 ISO – 178 wRC+ (CPX/A)

    Florentino may not have as much of a track record to point to as Spencer Jones does, but he’s almost just as easy to dream on joining the aforementioned upper echelon. He too was written up in the last edition of the Dynasty Diamond but his numbers from the past two weeks deserve mention once again even if they’re not quite as comical as Jones’.

    Let’s start with contact rate, since I made such a fuss of it up top. Florentino is currently maintaining an elite 84.9% rate at Single-A while his swinging-strike rate sits at 5.7 percent. He’s also doing an excellent job of putting balls in the air with just a 13.8% groundball rate at Single-A, compared to flyball and linedrive rates of 52.3% and 33.8% respectively. Even with such a high flyball rate, his elevated line drive rate has allowed him to post a .344 BABIP which has helped keep his average at .284 despite a slightly high 25.2% strikeout rate. Surprisingly, his HR/FB percentage doesn’t suggest his home run totals are a fluke either as he’s currently posting a 17.6% mark.

    He’ll need a little more seasoning to prove his mettle prior to a promotion to High-A but that could certainly come by year’s end and put him on a track similar to org-mate Konnor Griffin – newly minted as MLB.com’s #1 prospect in the minors.

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    July 29, 2025, 12:45 pm