Oh man, first I had to brush up on my low level catchers. Now, I have to research a guy that, prior to this prospecting season, I hadn’t really heard much of.
Romeli Espinosa – 56
Zach McCambley – 31
Jean Cabrera – 28
Keaton Anthony – 13
Griffin Burkholder – 12
Carson DeMartini – 9
Yoniel Curet – 7
Mavis Graves – 6
Seth Johnson – 3
Alex McFarlane – 3
Cody Bowker – 1
Well, Matt Winkelman seems to like him. From his own scouting reports:
It isn’t hard to see the highlights and frame and dream he is a future impact player with plus tools everywhere, but he has an enormous distance to go and there are a lot of pitfalls he hasn’t faced yet.
Listen, it’s always fun to dream on a prospect when he really, really young and Espinosa will likely make us do that. Choosing a young player and following his progress as he moves up the chain is a time honored tradition of many fans, so get used to hearing Espinosa’s name a lot as time moves on.
2025 stats (in the Dominican Summer League)
168 PA, .282/.363/.430, 28 R, 2 HR, 12 RBI, 12 SB, 6.0 BB%, 20.2 K%, 113 wRC+
Fangraphs scouting report
This is an aggressive evaluation of Espinosa meant to illustrate his ceiling. He presents a rare combination of present contact feel and long-term power projection for an up-the-middle prospect. Espinosa’s build comps to Elly De La Cruz at the same age: endless limbs on a broad-shouldered 6-foot-4 frame, with the room to add big strength while remaining sufficiently lithe and agile for shortstop. The 2025 DSL season began a few days before Espinosa’s 17th birthday, and he managed to slash .282/.363/.430 there while posting a 77% contact rate (a shade better than the big league average). That’s a very positive contact-hitting origin point for a shortstop prospect built like this, as long-levered hitters like Espinosa are often still uncoordinated at this age… [l]et’s see how his chase rate trends in year two. He’s one of the more exciting and tumultuous prospects in all of rookie ball.
With each new post, we’ll reveal who won the voting for that particular slot, then post new players for you to vote on, adding another one to the list each time until we get to our final tally of 20. Once we get to 20 top prospects, we’ll do an honorable mention post at the end. If a player gets traded to another team, we’ll just chuck him right on outta here and all the players will move up a spot. If a prospect gets acquired, we’ll ask where he should go on the list.
Probably the most important thing about this whole process – please vote. Give us a few minutes of your time, just click a button and then we can discuss other players and things in the comment section, but don’t forget – VOTE!
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