Here at the TDG Headquarters, we’ve been busy looking for “The Next Big Thing.”  Just like you, we want to know who’s going to be the prospect that will become the core of our fantasy team, or be the trade piece that lands us the players who put us over the top. With that in mind, we’ve assembled a team of prospect prognosticators and developed a set of tiered rankings for each position. And once they’re all posted, we’ll wrap up with our Top 200 Overall Prospects, putting it all together.

Be sure to listen to the Join the Ranks podcast for more discussion about these prospects.

Today, we bring you the third base prospect tiers 3 through 5, which include prospects #15 – 59. (We couldn’t stop at just 50 when putting together this last tier.  Think of it as a bonus!

Tier 3

The Brewers drafted Mike Boeve in the second round of the 2023 draft out of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Boeve has elite contact skills and eye, slashing .338/.415/.471 in Double-A Biloxi. He is not going to win a Gold Glove at third base, but he’s not a statue and has the arm to play the hot corner going forward. It’s generally believed that he will slide to first base in the future. There are definitely opportunities for improvement, as he currently does not show much home run power. However, it looks like he already has skills that many more highly regarded minor league bats lack. He makes huge amounts of contact in the strike zone (90%), he does not chase, and Brewers player development lauds his “cerebral” approach while also identifying points of growth in the linked article. Boeve absolutely needs to get the ball off the ground more frequently so that he can take advantage of his 112 mph maximum exit velocities. Nate Lowe has a very similar batted ball profile to Boeve, including his patience, EV’s, and his excessive volume of ground balls. Lowe is a very serviceable first baseman in 20+-team leagues. If Boeve can retool his philosophy towards doing more damage in the air he becomes a very valuable hitter at a shallow position, which is an adjustment that Lowe has never made. Boeve should start the 2025 season as a 23-year-old at Triple-A Nashville, and that will give us some clarity as Triple-A ballparks have public StatCast data available.

Deyvison de los Santos is a direct contrast to Mike Boeve, and I think it will be interesting to see how their careers play out. He was acquired by the Miami Marlins at the trade deadline from the Diamondbacks for A.J. Puk last summer. De Los Santos posts 90th+ percentile numbers in all exit velocity metrics, has a 93rd percentile barrel rate, and he is also extremely aggressive in the strike zone. He started his career as a third baseman, but in the upper minors he has played 3/4ths of his games at first base. De Los Santos posted excellent numbers in his age-21 season at Double-A Amarillo and Triple-A Reno prior to the trade, though those are two excellent hitting environments. His contrasts to Boeve don’t stop there, as his chase rate, walk rate, zone contact rate, and whiff percentages were all an extremely scary 7th-percentile or lower at Triple-A. One positive note is that with those numbers I would have expected a sky-high number of strikeouts, but they were very manageable. I think that combination of poor traits may be more easily exploited by Major League pitchers than minor league pitchers. De Los Santos is already on the Marlins 40-man roster, and an offseason trade of Jake Burger cleared a direct path to a full time job out of Spring Training. The Marlins have nothing to play for, and have very little excuse to keep him in the minors again. If he can keep his chase rates down in the majors and improves his control of the strike zone, I can see some big power seasons in his future. (Brandon Ring)

This tier has some down-on-their-luck players, which can go in either direction, as well as some flying-under-the-radar types. Brock Wilken stumbled faster than a polar bear on ice. Sure he showed the power at Double-A, hitting 17 home runs and 15 doubles, but his slashline was horrific (.199/.312/.363). If he repeats Double-A in 2025 and does more of the same, jettison him faster than Usain Bolt’s 100 meter dash. Brice Matthews has shown to be a legit power/speed dual threat, but a 31.4% strikeout rate will keep him down until he can correct it. As for the under-the-radar players, look no further than Gino Groover. He doesn’t strikeout (13.6%), takes his walks (11.4%), has shown good power (10 home runs in 53 games between High-A and Double-A in 2024), and has high contact rates (84.1%). If he can stay healthy for a full season, he almost assuredly will rise at least a tier in the rankings come this same time in 2026. (Brian Labude)

In this tier, my two favorite names are Kale Fountain and Yohandy Morales. Fountain has great size and power potential for the San Diego Padres. His swing is super quick even for his size, so he should have early success and might be able to limit the strikeouts for someone his age and height. Morales has been a disappointment given the hype he had coming out of college in 2023. Following another midseason injury, he came back to finish Double-A looking like the sweet-swinging third baseman he has the potential to be. He hit .324/.416/.482, with a 161 wRC+, five home runs, and three stolen bases in 38 games. If he starts 2025 like this, we could be seeing the true potential he has. (Daniel Labude)

Tier 4

Once again I’m writing about a prospect that is likely moving off of third base. This time it’s Demetrio Crisantes of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Crisantes was a seventh-round pick out of high school in the 2023 amateur draft and signed for an above-slot bonus. The scouting reports that I can find on him are all over the place. They agree on a few things at least:

1. Lower minors pitching poses no challenge for his bat.
2. He has undergone two arm procedures, including one Tommy John surgery at 15, and they have taken a toll on his arm strength.
3. His bat is going to have to carry him to the Major Leagues. 

I don’t know that I’ve seen this kind of division on a prospect before. He’s in the top 100 of a few baseball outlets and, top 50 in one, then FanGraphs has him 26th in the Diamondbacks system alone. Over 121 games, Crisantes has slashed .342/.427/.521 in the Arizona Complex League and Low-A Visalia. He only swings at pitches out of the strike zone 13% of the time and has an in-zone contact rate of 86.5%. He only swings at 43% of pitches in the zone. He has below-average athleticism for an up-the-middle player, and he is already playing most of his games at second base rather than third base due to his arm. Scouts grade his running as average and he stole 30 bases in 33 attempts in 2024. The biggest splits in reports regard his ability to hit advanced pitching with his swing, as well as concerns on his power potential.  That will be important in determining his future fantasy utility. Is he going to be another Luis Arráez, who had a very similar season at age 19 in Low-A? Can he develop some power and become more? I suspect he will end up with more power as he has a bigger frame and has a better eye than Arráez at the same age. Crisantes will likely start the 2025 season at High-A Hillsboro and his performance against better pitching will shed some light on these mysteries.

The last year was a bit of a whirlwind for Seaver King. He was a star at NCAA Division II Wingate in 2023 and finished it up with an excellent summer hitting with wood bats in the Cape Cod League. Afterward, he transferred to Wake Forest for the 2024 season with expectations of being a high first-round pick. King was drafted tenth overall by the Washington Nationals and spent 20 games at Low-A Fredricksburg to complete his season. I try not to draw many conclusions from his small sample of 20 professional games, especially when talent-wise Low-A might be very similar to the ACC. This is because small samples can be very misleading. Those disclaimers aside, outside of a walk rate below 10% his underlying numbers were very good. He was aggressive but didn’t chase, he made contact in the strike zone at an 84% rate. He played shortstop exclusively with Fredricksburg, but he split time between centerfield and third base at Wake Forest. Reports say that he has excellent bat speed but not much loft, and that meshes with his professional batted ball profile and his reported 116 miles per hour exit velocities by Wake Forest’s Baseball Analytics’ “X” account. I grant you that he was using a metal bat, but was still just two miles per hour lower than Charlie Condon’s reported max EV with metal. The low loft in his swing resulted in a 50+% ground ball rate, and this is my biggest concern. He rates as a well above-average runner, with quick hands and feet. He has plenty of arm for the left side of the infield, and can also play a decent center field. I expect that King will start at High-A Wilmington where we will get a longer look at him and his numbers can tell a more accurate story. Like Crisantes, King is a player that I’m excited to see play in 2025. (Brandon Ring)

I’m not really a fan of this tier, it’s deep and does not show a lot of immediate promise, except for Gleider Figuereo. He exploded in 2024, hitting 20 home runs between Low-A and High-A. He was repeating Low-A, but he did carry some of his play forward to High-A. On the season he slashed .227/.309/.423, with a 27% strikeout rate, and a 9.8% walk rate. He looks to return back to High-A and if he can have similar success repeating the level like he did in 2024, he could find himself and start hitting for much better averages. Jhonny Severino is actually in a similar position, having repeated the Complex League in 2024. He showed to be a good power/speed threat there, hitting 10 home runs and stealing 12 bases over 56 games. The power stayed with him as he moved up to Low-A and hit another six home runs in 28 games. Unfortunately, his slash line that looked so promising plummeted down to .237/.285/.500. If he adjusts in a similar fashion in 2025, he could be a breakout candidate and then some. (Brian Labude)

In this tier I am interested to see how Gleider Figuereo improves in 2025. He had some of the better power numbers from a teenager in 2024. He launched 20 home runs, about half of which came when he was 19-years-old. Strikeouts are a tad concerning, but improved as the season went along and even when he moved from Low-A to High-A. If he can add more muscle and strength in the next year or two, he has the making of a left-handed Orelvis Martinez. Swing decisions and a plan at the plate will continue to be key for him. A potentially big 2025 could be on the horizon. (Daniel Labude)