National League's Youngest Stars Set To Shine This Spring

Spring Training Schedule & Each Divsion’s Best Prospects

Spring Training games officially start this week with the San Diego Padres hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers on Thursday. This matchup is the same one that opens the season in just 30 days in Seoul, South Korea on March 20-21. We’ll get to scratch that Baseball itch again in 72 hours and for roughly the next 7 months, the only streaming service I’ll be using is MLB.TV. Watch Spring Training games and any out-of-market game that isn’t nationally televised, due to those wonderful blackout rules that help grow the game so much, for $150 for the season. The old man in me really enjoys listening to the radio stream of a random 1 pm EST game in June while I’m working.

I’ll be doing my first Ottoneu Baseball league this year, and I couldn’t be more excited to try this format out. It’s an in-depth and intricate way to build a baseball team like Billy Beane. As I do research for this (send over any advice or articles you have), I wanted to share the top prospect on each team so you know who to keep an eye on this Spring.

We’ll start with the National League first, and break them down by division, each with a gold, silver, or bronze medal indicating the top three in each division. Each player will have their position and age, and their name will be a link to their Baseball Reference page so you can nerd out a bit on your guy if you need to know more about him, or your enemies. Let’s slide right in…

National League East

Atlanta Braves: Hurston Waldrep, RHP, 21

Miami Marlins: Noble Meyer, RHP, 19

New York Mets: Jett Williams, SS, 20 🥈 

Philadelphia Phillies: Andrew Painter, RHP, 20 🥉 

Washington Nationals: Dylan Crews, OF, 21 🥇 

National League Central

Chicago Cubs: Pete Crow-Armstrong, OF, 21

Cincinnati Reds: Noelvi Marte, 3B/SS, 21

Milwaukee Brewers: Jackson Chourio, OF, 19 🥇 

Pittsburgh Pirates: Paul Skenes, RHP, 21 🥈 

St. Louis Cardinals: Masyn Winn, SS, 21 🥉 

National League West

Arizona Diamondbacks: Jordan Lawler, SS, 21 🥈 

Colorado Rockies: Sterlin Thompson, OF, 22

Los Angeles Dodgers: Josue De Paula, OF, 18

San Diego Padres: Ethan Salas, C, 17 🥇 

San Francisco Giants: Kyle Harrison, LHP, 22 🥉 

• Xander Bogarts is moving over to 2B, and Ha-Seong Kim will move to SS.

• Whit Merrifield signs 1yr, $8M with the Phillies.

• Arizona Diamondbacks sign Randal Grichuk for 1yr, $1.5M.

• Kyle Bradish will start the season on the IL as the O’s battle some early injuries.

• Boston Red Sox ink Liam Hendriks to 2yrs, $10M. He should return to play around the trade deadline after recovering from Tommy John.

• New MLB Jerseys have been getting eviscerated on Twitter over the last week. They look like cheap knockoffs compared to years prior.

• Sacramento is the favorite to land the Oakland A’s between 2025-27. Salt Lake City and Oakland Coliseum are two other options. (CBS)

Spring Training is here, so let’s continue to get familiar with the top prospects in the MLB. Check out this video of some studs you can learn the name of now before the masses. Fun fact about Cubs top prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong, his mom played Jenny Heywood in Little Big League.

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