Only three Rays prospects make Keith Law’s Top-100 list

Keith Law at ESPN is unveiling his top 100 prospect list 20 players at a time each day. So far he’s counted down to 41, and the top Rays names have already been accounted for.

Rays top prospect SS Willy Adames came in at #43 with Keith, a noticeable drop from his mid season rank of #28 despite exceeding all expectations and even garnering a positive report from Law himself. The drop is even more suspect when you consider all of the players ahead of Adames that graduated to the majors this year.

He bumped RHP Brent Honeywell up from last year by 10 spots, putting him at #54 on the list. He then went on to say Honeywell would need to improve his cutter to an average or better offering to be a #4 starter in a major league rotation, with the ceiling of a #2 if the other non-screwball pitches continue to develop.

Newly acquired RHP Jose De Leon rounded out the top 100 for the Rays, coming in at 73 on KLaw’s list. That was a step back from last year when Keith had him at 60, likely because Keith doesn’t believe JDL has a true out pitch.

Photo by Victor Decolongon/Getty Images

Keith Law ranked the Rays farm system 19th in baseball, dropping five spots from 14th last year due to Blake Snell graduating and top pitching prospects Brent Honeywell, Jacob Faria and Taylor Guerrieri having (by Law’s view) underwhelming seasons for various reasons.

Brent Honeywell may have missed a month and a half to an arm injury, but he only dominated A+ and AA over 115.1 innings and then blew away 5 of the best hitters in the minors in the AFL All Star game.

He also cited a “disastrous year from their 2015 first-rounder Garrett Whitley,” even though the 19 year old ended the season with a 124 wRC+ in a league where the average age was two years older than him, including a 153 wRC+ over the last two months.

I’ll take more of those disastrous years, please.