We live for breakouts here at MLB Pipeline. They’re proof of many things in baseball. For example, players aren’t robots and can improve their standing in the game, and when we say player development isn’t linear, it also means that unforeseen leaps in value are included. The sport’s beauty is in its unpredictability, especially its unforeseen good outcomes.
Below, we’ve selected the breakout prospect of the year from each of the 30 farm systems. It could be someone who jumped from outside the Top 30 to a firm spot within those rankings, or it could be a previously ranked prospect who emerged even more into prominence. In fact, eight current Top 100 prospects are included here. General preference was given to prospects who were in the organization for the entire 2026 season, but in some cases, the best breakout talents were acquired in trades and kept on rolling in their new organizations.
Blue Jays: Nolan Perry, RHP (No. 2/MLB No. 94)
The 2022 12th-rounder missed the entire 2025 season due to Tommy John surgery and didn’t crack the Jays’ preseason Top 30 list as a result. He looked revitalized after rehab, however, and finished with a 2.50 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and 117 strikeouts over 82 2/3 innings across the Single-A, High-A and Double-A levels, and he jumped into the Top 100 when it became clearer that he had the stuff to back up the results: a 93-95 mph heater with improved velo, two whiff-inducing breakers in a slider and a curveball and an improved offspeed option in his mid-80s splitter.
Orioles: Caden Hunter, LHP (No. 4/MLB No. 96)
The Orioles’ sixth-round pick out of Southern Cal in the 2025 Draft, Hunter wasn’t even on the team’s Top 30 list at the start of the season. But he quickly showed that an assignment to Single-A Delmarva was no challenge and he earned not one, but two promotions and he finished the year leading all Minor League pitchers who reached 100 innings pitched with his 13.19 K/9 rate and 36.4 K percentage, while placing second in batting average against (.170) and third in K-BB% (25.1 pct).
Rays: Cooper Flemming, INF (No. 5/MLB No. 82)
Even though he was Tampa Bay’s second-round pick last year, Flemming slotted in at No. 28 on the Rays’ preseason Top 30 because of the depth of the organization’s farm. But it didn’t take long for him to look like perhaps the most gifted hitter at Single-A Charleston, and indeed, he was named the Carolina League MVP this week having hit .298/.379/.450 with 11 homers, 16 steals and a 126 wRC+ over 116 games with the RiverDogs. Flemming ran a solid contact rate for his first full season, and there should be more power to come in his 6-foot-3 frame as he enters his 20s.
Red Sox: Franklin Primera, C/1B (No. 4)
Signed for just $10,000 out of Venezuela in 2024, Primera made a spectacular U.S. debut two years later, slashing .427/.549/.718 in the Rookie-level Florida Complex League and .329/.466/.494 in Single-A at age 19. Not only did he total 13 homers in 78 games, but he also displayed all the tools to become a solid defender behind the plate.
Yankees: Wilberson De Pena, OF (No. 14)
Acquired from the Angels for Oswald Peraza at the 2025 Trade Deadline, De Pena earned MVP and top prospect honors in the Florida Complex League this summer after winning the triple crown (.358-16-67) and also leading the Rookie-level circuit in slugging (.677), OPS (1.088), hits (81), doubles (20), extra-base hits (38) and total bases (153). Though he struggled following a promotion to Single-A at age 19, he still showed well-above-average raw power and flashed plus speed.
Guardians: Juneiker Caceres, OF (No. 4/MLB No. 81)
In his first extended taste of full-season ball at age 18, Caceres batted .301/.409/.484 with 11 homers in 74 games between two Class A levels despite dealing with an oblique injury. His knack for making consistent hard contact has allowed him to emerge as the best prospect from the Guardians’ 2024 international class, even if his $300,000 bonus ranked just eighth-highest in that crop.
Royals: Justin Lamkin, LHP (No. 8)
Lamkin showed signs that a breakout was coming in his first Spring Training, and he carried that into the season by moving past High-A Quad Cities after only six starts and striking out 15 over 11 1/3 innings in his first two Double-A starts. His regular season ended there with a shoulder strain, but he’d shown enough when healthy to become Kansas City’s third-ranked pitching prospect. He’s slated to appear in the Arizona Fall League, and his 91-94 mph fastball and 80-83 mph slider (the latter of which had a 55 percent whiff rate in ‘26, per Synergy) along with his above-average control will gain a bigger audience.
Tigers: Brett Callahan, OF (No. 17)
Callahan hadn’t played more than 71 games or seen a level above High-A in any of his first three Minor League seasons, but the Tigers believed there was enough with his speed, defense and power potential for a breakout to come in his age-24 season. Indeed, it did as he hit .269/.365/.443 over 96 games at Double-A and Triple-A and set new career bests for homers (13) and steals (29). The former St. Joseph’s star debuted in the Majors on Aug. 16 and has seen time mostly in left field so far in the bigs.
Twins: Khadim Diaw, C/OF (No. 9)
Diaw has always hit well when he’s been on the field, but he missed a bunch of time with a broken thumb in his Draft season at Loyola Marymount before landing in the third round of the 2024 Draft, then managed just 39 games with a broken wrist and then a hamstring issue. He topped 100 games this year, making it to Double-A, and the results came, as he hit .306/.417/.452 and led the organization with his 130 wRC+, rising from No. 23 up into the top 10 as a result while splitting time between catcher and center field.
White Sox: Anthony DePino, 1B (No. 22)
Though DePino set Rhode Island single-season and career marks for runs, homers, extra-base hits, total bases and walks in 2025, when he also was just one of two NCAA Division I players to total 20 homers and 20 steals, teams didn’t love his age (22) or his profile as a righty-hitting first baseman. His power, penchant for hard contact and mental toughness led the White Sox to take him in the seventh round and translated into a .262/.363/.481 first full pro season with 25 homers in 125 games between High-A and Double-A.
Angels: Hayden Alvarez, OF (No. 3)
The Angels don’t hesitate to challenge players with aggressive promotions, so it wasn’t surprising to see them move Alvarez as a teenager from Single-A to High-A this year after he posted an OPS of .875 at the lower level. He held his own with High-A Tri-City and finished with a combined .289/.391/.456 slash line, answering some questions about impact with 49 extra-base hits and 12 homers to go along with 53 steals. He was third in the system among qualified prospects in wRC+ (118), jumping from No. 12 on the Halos’ list to his current standing and entering Top 100 conversations.
Astros: Jason Schiavone, C/1B (No. 6)
An 11th-round pick out of James Madison in 2024, Schiavone rarely chases pitches and produces elite exit velocities but also swings and misses at alarming levels against all types of pitches inside and outside the strike zone. That combination will produce the first 30-30 season by a Minor League catcher since Willie Royster in 1981 if he can swipe one more bag during the final week of the Triple-A season. He has hit .246/.386/.521 with 31 homers and 29 steals in 118 games while advancing from High-A to Triple-A.
A’s: Breyson Guedez, OF (No. 9)
There is a tendency to try to not get too excited about a strong DSL performance since it’s typically a very hitter-friendly league, but the A’s were excited to see what Guedez would do when he came stateside this year for the first time after signing for $1.5 million in January of 2025, then hitting .359 with an .885 OPS at age 17 in the Dominican. He still needs to work on his approach (132/28 K/BB) but it’s looking like he’s no flash in the plan. He skipped over the ACL and hit his way from Single-A Stockton to High-A Lansing as an 18-year old, jumping from No. 23 at the start of the season into the organization’s top 10.
Mariners: Boston Smith, C/OF (No. 13)
Smith began Spring Training with the team that drafted him in 2025’s sixth round, the Nationals, but was sent to the White Sox before the year officially started. He had mashed his way to Double-A by the time the Mariners got him at the Trade Deadline in the Luis Castillo deal. He wasn’t on the White Sox Top 30 to start the season, but was in the middle of that list and had hit 22 homers over 79 games when he was dealt. He added nine more to be one of 22 hitters with more than 30 homers this season and he also finished in the top 20 in all of the Minors with 97 walks. His 158 combined wRC+ was fourth among all hitters.
Rangers: Hector Osorio, OF (No. 14)
Signed for $47,500 out of Venezuela in 2022, Osorio spent three years in Rookie ball before making his full-season debut in 2025 and starring in 2026. His best attributes are his bat-to-ball skills and high baseball IQ, which helped him slash .295/.411/.543 with 21 homers and more walks (54) than strikeouts (50) in 87 games between two Class A levels. He didn’t play after mid-July because of back issues.
Braves: Eric Hartman, OF (No. 1/MLB No. 41)
A 20th-round pick out of the Canadian high school ranks in 2024, Hartman showed enough glimpses in his first full season of pro ball to land at No. 21 on the Braves’ list to start the year, but nothing could have prepared us for this. Sure, the jump to Double-A was a struggle, but he’s only 20 and he earned the promotion after hitting 24 homers and swiping 38 bags in 94 games with High-A Rome. He finished the year with 26 home runs and 56 steals.
Marlins: Brandon Compton, OF (No. 13)
A power outage during his redshirt sophomore season at Arizona State dropped Compton to the second round of the 2025 Draft, but he had no such issues during his first full pro season. He has batted .273/.414/.580 with 35 home runs in 121 games from High-A to Triple-A, ranking fifth in the Minors in OPS (.994), seventh in homers and eighth in slugging.
Mets: Émilien Pitre, 2B (No. 10)
The 2024 second-rounder was squeezed out of the Rays’ Top 30 by Tampa Bay’s famed prospect depth but was showing off a strong hit tool at High-A and Double-A before he was moved to the Mets as part of the Freddy Peralta return. Now up with Triple-A Syracuse, he owns a .306/.420/.427 line with six homers and 35 steals in 118 games across the top three levels of the Minors, but what might pop up most is that he’s walked 80 times and struck out only 57 in that span. His 1.4 BB/K ratio is second-best among 729 MiLB full-season qualifiers.
Nationals: Ronny Cruz, INF (No. 7)
It was certainly a roller-coaster season for the infielder, his first with the Nationals after being acquired from the Cubs for Michael Soroka last year, but like player development, breakouts aren’t always linear either. Cruz was the talk of the backfields at Nationals camp in the spring and backed up the chatter by hitting .333/.460/.627 with three homers in 14 games at Single-A Fredericksburg, prompting a quick move up to High-A. His aggressive nature caught up to him early with Wilmington, but he heated up again late with a .511 slugging percentage and just a 16.7 percent K rate over his final 24 games. Entering his age-20 season, Cruz still has Top 100 potential with his power-speed combination, and after being ranked No. 25 to start his age-19 season, he’s trending back toward prominence in an emerging Nats system.
Phillies: Bryan Rincon, SS (No. 4/MLB No. 100)
The feeling was that if Rincon, the Phillies’ 14th-round flier in the 2022 Draft, hit at all, he’d have a chance because his plus defense at shortstop gave him a very high floor. Until this year, he hadn’t shown he could, and he hadn’t stayed healthy. This year, things really started to click in Double-A, and it’s not just because Reading is a nice place to hit. The 22-year-old led the Eastern League with his .927 OPS and 95 walks, while tying for the league lead with 26 homers. He also swiped 30 bags and kept his strikeouts in check even with the power surge.
Brewers: Ricki Moneys, SS (No. 15)
Milwaukee has been the gold standard for international scouting and development in recent years. Moneys signed for the third-most money among this year’s Brewers class at $1.15 million but surged into prominence with easy power that has played quickly in the pros. He hit .289/.440/.479 with five homers, 28 steals and a 45/46 K/BB ratio over 53 games in the Dominican Summer League, and while DSL stats can be deceiving, his data was just as strong to make him look like a future everyday bat in the Majors.
Cardinals: Alexander Frias, OF (No. 4)
Frias was showing off impressive exit velocities and elite bat speed from the left side as he climbed from the Arizona Complex League to Single-A Wilson in the Brewers system when Milwaukee moved him to the Cardinals (along with fellow breakout talent Josiah Ragsdale) in the Deadline deal for Dustin May and JoJo Romero. The 18-year-old outfielder is now in Top 100 discussions because of his raw skills and true projection, but for all that talk of the future, he also hit .314/.405/.500 with 10 homers, 25 steals and a 130 wRC+ over 86 games in his first stateside season.
Cubs: Josiah Hartshorn, 1B/OF, (No. 1/MLB No. 38)
The Cubs obviously valued Hartshorn when they gave him a sixth-round-record $2 million bonus a year ago, but they never expected that he’d finish his pro debut as a 19-year-old in Double-A. The California prep product makes unusually advanced swing decisions and features more power than most players his age, leading to a .284/.407/.518 line with 23 homers and 17 steals in 125 games from Single-A to Double-A.
Pirates: Murf Gray, 3B (No. 4/MLB No. 93)
Because he didn’t play at all after signing and also so he could work on some swing decision issues, particularly a penchant for swinging at everything (because he makes contact with everything), Gray began the year with Single-A Bradenton. But that didn’t last long and he proved to be one of the best power hitters in the game, mashing 32 homers and finishing the year in Double-A. He still chased at a 30-percent rate, but upped his walk rate considerably compared to his final year at Fresno State, making a lot of people believe it’s going to work in the big leagues.
Reds: Jirvin Morillo, C (No. 9)
After signing for $420,000 in January 2024, Morillo spent two summers in the DSL before coming to the U.S. The switch-hitter played all of 2026 at age 19, and hit his way out of the Arizona Complex League to full-season ball and finished with a combined .303/.433/.580 line in 76 total games. His 139 wRC+ is fourth among all Reds’ farmhands with at least 250 plate appearances, and it’s his offensive potential that catapulted him from No. 24 on the preseason Top 30 up into the top 10 for the organization.
D-backs: Carlos Virahonda, C (No. 5)
Virahonda was the breakout pick last year too when he first leapt onto Arizona’s Top 30 for the first time, and he’s taken another leap off that foundation and into the Top 5 with his best offensive showing yet in 2026. The backstop, who still earns his best grades for his defensive work, clubbed 19 homers across Single-A, High-A and Double-A – almost five times his previous career best – and finished with a .272/.377/.493 line and 122 wRC+ in 102 games. He’ll compete with fellow Top 30 prospects Ryder Helfrick, Alberto Barriga and Ivan Luciano to be the D-backs’ catcher of the future.
Dodgers: Chase Harlan, 3B (No. 9)
Harlan did a better job of tapping into his big raw power in 2026 by improving his selectivity and making more contact. A 2024 third-rounder from a Pennsylvania high school who signed for a well over-slot $1,747,500, he batted .298/.403/.509 with 14 homers in 86 games between two Class A levels despite missing the final six weeks with an oblique injury.
Giants: Jonah Cox, OF (graduated from Giants Top 30)
Picked up from the Athletics in a February 2024 trade for Ross Stripling, Cox batted .261/.352/.386 in his first two seasons in the Giants system. After making adjustments to his right-handed swing and becoming more selective, he exploded for a .415/.468/.647 line with 34 steals in 55 games between Double-A and Triple-A. The son of former big league catcher Darron Cox, he has spent most of the last three-plus months as a semi-regular in San Francisco.
Padres: Bryan Balzer, RHP (No. 6)
Balzer’s first full season was a rocky one in 2025 with a 7.92 ERA and a 1.78 WHIP over 50 innings with Single-A Lake Elsinore. Not only did he expand the workload by almost double with 98 2/3 frames at Single-A and High-A, but better results also followed with a 4.74 ERA, 1.39 WHIP and 100 strikeouts over that time. The 6-foot-1 right-hander can work into the triple digits and shows a pair of fastballs typically sitting closer to the mid-90s. His mid-80s sweeper earns the best reviews, and he’ll throw a splitter and cutter too for different looks.
Rockies: Cristian Arguelles, OF (No. 5)
After signing for $700,000 in January of 2024, the Rockies gave Arguelles two tours in the Dominican Summer League before he came stateside. In his second summer, he won the DSL batting title (.422) and MVP honors, then showed he wasn’t a DSL-enhanced hitter by topping the ACL with a .402 average and earning a bump to full-season Fresno. He finished with a combined .971 OPS, with 44 extra-base hits (23 doubles, 10 triples, 11 homers), 92 RBIs and 15 steals over 92 games. He also walked (11.0 percent) nearly as much as he struck out (12.0) and posted an impressive 137 wRC+ for the year.