It’s that time of the year once again. As we get closer and closer to spring training – and it’s less than one month until pitchers and catchers report! – we start to see the national publications put out their versions of the Top 100 Prospects list. Today we got the first one. The crew at Baseball Prospectus released their Top 101 Prospects list (subscription needed to see the list) and it wasn’t the best look for the Cincinnati Reds, as they had just two players on the list.
The Reds were able to get their most recent two 1st round picks on the list in Chase Burns and Rhett Lowder. Both pitchers made the top 50, with Burns making the top 20. For Burns, he was the second rated pitcher on the list, trailing only Detroit Tigers starter Jackson Jobe. Lowder was 10th among right-handed starting pitchers and 13th among pitchers overall.
Chase Burns got the largest signing bonus ever in the current draft pool era. He didn’t pitch after the draft. Rhett Lowder began his year in High-A Dayton with the Dragons and worked his way up through the system with a quickness and made six starts for Cincinnati before the season came to an end.
With only two prospects on the list, Cincinnati only had more players ranked than the San Francisco Giants, the Los Angeles Angels, the Kansas City Royals, the Houston Astros, and the Toronto Blue Jays (who had zero players in the top 101).
When it comes to how the Reds stacked up to the rest of the division, as you would imagine by the above information, it’s not great. The Chicago Cubs led the way with five guys that made the list. The Milwaukee Brewers had four players on the list. So did the St. Louis Cardinals. Pittsburgh also topped the Reds as the Pirates had three players make the top 101.
Baseball Prospectus is set to release their version of the Cincinnati Reds top prospect list next week. While we know that Chase Burns and Rhett Lowder will be the top two guys on their list based on their top 101 rankings, we don’t really know who is next in line in their opinion and what they seem to think about all of the players below the two pitchers that the Reds have taken in the 1st round over the last two drafts.
What we do know is that the top five of that list is likely going to look a whole lot different than it did a year ago. Noelvi Marte is no longer considered for these lists, but even if he were it could be a tough sell that he’d be a top five guy after the year he just went through. Rhett Lowder was number two. But he was then followed up by Connor Phillips who had about as poor of a year as one can have without having an injury. Ty Floyd was next on the list and he’s now gone from being drafted in July of 2023 to still having not thrown a professional pitch after missing all of 2024 with an injury. And then it was Lyon Richardson who rounded out the top five.