Ryan Waldschmidt was the lone Arizona Diamondbacks prospect to crack two top 100 rankings this week.
He came in at No. 34 in The Athletic reporter Keith Law’s top 100 prospects list released Monday.
Coming off his first season in the minor leagues, Waldschmidt’s ranking improved by 31 spots from Law’s previous list.
So far, Waldschmidt has more than justified the pick with a .426 OBP in pro ball. He’s a good athlete who ran better last year and played surprisingly solid defense in center, both of which were improved from 2024 when he was still recovering from a torn ACL from the summer of 2023. He has excellent feel for the strike zone, chasing pitches well out of the zone just 12% of the time, although Double-A pitchers showed that he needs to work on picking up spin, as he demonstrated a markedly higher propensity to whiff on sliders and curveballs at that level. His raw statlines last year were boosted by spending half his season playing for Double-A Amarillo, where the wind could take a bowling ball from home plate out to center, with all nine of his homers in Double A coming at home.
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He looks like a solid regular with above-average defense in an outfield corner who could get to All-Star level in years when he gets to 20-plus homers.
ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel has Waldschmidt further down the list at No. 63 on his ranking of the top 100 prospects released Tuesday.
He did, however, move Waldschmidt up from his spot at No. 92 in his previous rankings last August.
Waldschmidt was a late riser in the 2024 draft at Kentucky because he wasn’t a good defender and didn’t have a pretty swing or huge tools. By the end of a full junior season in the SEC, his underlying contact metrics, plus exit velos and above-average speed were all clear. I ranked him 15th in my final draft rankings. He went 31st in part because of the shorter track record of high-end performance, a future in left field limiting his profile and the gap between his performance and scouts’ opinions.
The data case seems to be winning this argument thus far, as Waldschmidt had almost as many walks as strikeouts to go along with 18 homers and 29 stolen bases across High-A and Double-A in 2025 while also playing some center field. I still think Waldschmidt is a long-term left fielder, but now he looks pretty good out there defensively. He looks like he’ll hit 20 to 25 homers with a roughly average on-base percentage and some value on the bases.
The former Kentucky Wildcat was selected with the No. 31 pick in the 2024 MLB draft by Arizona.
He slashed .268/.415/.447 with 9 home runs and 43 RBI after 68 games played in High-A Hillsboro. The 22-year-old was then promoted to Double-A Amarillo on June 24, where he upped his numbers to .309/.423/.498 with 9 home runs and 35 RBI in 66 games.
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The Diamondbacks named Waldschmidt their 2025 Minor League Player of the Year in early October, and he was the organization’s No. 1 player on MLB Pipeline’s top prospects list by season’s end. He repeats that honor heading into 2026, moving up from No. 66 to No. 59.
In a press conference announcing the decision to trade outfielder Jake McCarthy to the Colorado Rockies, general manager Mike Hazen didn’t rule out the possibility that Waldschmidt could compete for the starting left field job.
Lourdes Gurriel Jr. is expected to miss at least two months while recovering from a torn ACL, and the team hasn’t made any outfield-related moves in the offseason thus far.
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