Last Updated on June 17, 2025 4:07 pm by Paul Williamson | Published: June 17, 2025

With the Dominican Summer Leagues starting up and as we near the point where we have enough actionable data to work with to identify the breakouts, the focus of dynasty players will soon shift and I’ll be sure to highlight those players in time for you to get the jump on your leaguemates – likely as early as the next edition of The Dynasty Diamond.

For one more article though, we’ll dig into some of the top performers from the upper minors in the past two weeks. We’ve got several players making a repeat appearance en route to staking their claim to the upper echelon of prospect status – while still being acquirable in your league – as well as the usual selection of deep-league options to round things out.

Let’s dive in!

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 June 16th.

Konnor Griffin – SS – PIT 🥇

Last 14 Days: .480/.526/.760 – 3HR/7SB – .577 wOBA – .280 ISO – 248 wRC+ (A/A+)

Season: .346/.405/.564 – 11HR/32SB – .445 wOBA – .218 ISO – 165 wRC+ (A/A+)

Against all odds, the Pirates finally have themselves an exciting hitting prospect!

The ninth selection in the 2024 draft, Griffin was billed as a high-upside option due to his exciting blend of power and speed capabilities, with the glaring hole in his profile coming in the form of his hit-tool, which was viewed as a legitimate hurdle in his ability to translate that skillset into game action.

Through the first month and a half of the season, Griffin was checking every one of those aforementioned boxes. He was striking out close to 25% of the time but still showcasing his strength and agility, racking up eight home runs and 23 steals before the calendar flipped from May to June. Striking out a quarter of the time isn’t an unreasonable tradeoff when you’re punishing the ball in the same way Griffin was though, so the Pirates rewarded him with a promotion to High-A early last week.

Classic small sample size alerts to follow, but the immediate impressions have been outstanding for Griffin. The statline above noting his last 14 days still includes his final few outings at Single-A so let’s separate out just what he’s done since climbing a level;

6GP – .407/.469/.778 – 2HR/6SB – .541 wOBA – .370 ISO – 230 wRC+

That’s a very strong output for a budding dual-threat star but it’s a different set of statistics from his time at High-A that catch my eye most. Take a look at his walk and strikeout rates per level so far;

If Griffin is truly showing a turnaround in his plate-discipline skills, then the upside is close to limitless on his ability to be a high-end fantasy asset. He’ll likely be a darkhorse candidate among the handful of players in consideration for the #1 prospect spot at year’s end if this pace continues.

Travis Sykora – SP – WSH 🥇

Last 14 Days: 10.0 IP – 1.80 ERA/0.16 FIP/0.50 WHIP – 17:0 K:BB – 0 HR (A+)

Season: 29.0 IP – 0.93 ERA/0.56 FIP/0.48 WHIP – 55:5 K:BB – 0 HR (A/A+)

Despite donning my prospect analyst cap every two weeks, I am obviously nowhere near the level of a professional scout or GM. That said, it kind of feels like Sykora should be at Double-A at this point, doesn’t it?

The 6’6″ righty has been nothing short of dominant since returning from surgery to his hip labrum and now has hit the point where his trio of ERA, FIP and WHIP all start with a zero. There’s plenty of other zeroes across the board when it come to Sykora, as he has yet to allow a home run all season and, most recently, he struck out 17 compared to zero walks over his past two turns through the rotation.

Big-framed, high-strikeout pitchers often litter the upper reaches of prospect lists even when they exhibit the occasional bouts of wildness or struggle keeping the ball in the yard but Sykora showcases the best of both worlds. The only other current pitcher prospects to compare against may be Chase Burns and Bubba Chandler. With Chandler getting nearer to a call-up by the day, Burns and Sykora should be left as the two candidates vying for the top spot amongst pitchers until their own big league debuts. It would not shock me whatsoever to see Sykora ranked in the 20s by midseason.

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Jeff Clowers

• Working The Waiver Wire: July 4th
• "The Dynasty Diamond": July 1st
• Working The Waiver Wire: June 27th