RoboScout Top 120 Dynasty Targets (Sept. 15, 2024)

Every week during the season RoboScout ranks the top 25 pitchers and hitters per level. The list ranks the players within the level based on their minor league seasonal performance and applies park factors, regression and aging curves while projecting expected fantasy value, considering their long term and peak performance. We also fold underlying StatCast data into the results to nudge the ranking based on the surface stats upward or downward by considering the Statcast data most correlated with future fantasy performance.

Defense is not considered, nor is the “depth chart” of the major league club, nor previous year’s performance

Our weekly articles attempt to highlight some of the interesting prospect names—based on seasonal performance or based on recent movement in the rankings —and do a deep dive into some of the things that RoboScout doesn’t look at or that are beyond the “number” that RoboScout outputs to help frame the performance into a dynasty league context.

What the weekly articles don’t do is aggregate all of the numbers into one “master” list. For example, if Emil Morales (Dodgers) is the top DSL hitter per RoboScout, is he a better target than Tink Hence (Cardinals) who is the No. 4 name on the Double-A pitching list? Not doing this was by design for various reasons. For one, if one were to project fantasy value in the major leagues for the next three years, probably none of the DSL hitters would even get a single plate appearance in the major leagues. But of course, they have value as prospects in a dynasty league. Also, deciding on how one wants to allocate your minor league roster slots amongst hitters and pitchers is also an important consideration in dynasty leagues, and something that might not be best served by having a master list of “the Top 100 Prospects per RoboScout”.

That being said, however, I created exactly that list at the beginning of July. And then updated it again last month for those who had not yet debuted. I’ve taken the estimated likelihood of making it to the major leagues, projected performance at peak, and fantasy value projected to be earned at peak – and ranked the hitters and pitchers accordingly —while still also not considering defense or the depth chart of the parent club, to minimize human bias and my personal intervention. And now I’m updating it again as the MiLB seasons wrap up.

Of course, this list will be controversial and is not meant to be the end of the conversation or be the primary input for one’s waiver wire claims; for example, you probably shouldn’t trade Jesus Made (Brewers) —who is not on the list —or 26-year-old San Francisco Giants outfielder Jerar Encarnacion who appears at No. 105, though he does seem to be the regular designated hitter for the Giants right now. Also, you will see that Luis Perales (Red Sox) and Owen Murphy (Braves) appear on this list because RoboScout does not know that they are currently recovering from Tommy John surgery and is only looking at their 2024 performance on the season and projecting out. In other words, please apply the appropriate mental adjustments to the output —knowing that these are just the “agnostic” results of RoboScout.

Note, I also removed any prospects who are no longer prospect eligible. Therefore, James Wood (Nationals), Paul Skenes (Pirates), and Jackson Holliday (Orioles) have been removed – even though they would be the top three names, respectively.

To help provide some “performance” context, the estimated conservative peak projection is also listed beside each name, with data through September 14th.