Eight players who could rank No. 1 next year

As soon as we roll out our 2023 Top 100 Prospects list, we start asking the question: Who will be No. 1 a year from now?

- J.J. COOPER

The answer is likely easier to discern than you may believe. The player who will top next year’s Top 100 is almost assuredly on the current Top 100 list. It’s been 13 years and 14 Top 100s since Bryce Harper became the last player to lead a Top 100 without being on the previous year’s list.

A player has jumped directly to No. 1 just six times among the 34 Top 100s. And in all six cases, the player wasn’t eligible for the Top 100 the year before.

• Harper was the first pick in the 2010 draft and ranked No. 1 heading into 2011.
• Daisuke Matsuzaka came over from Japan in 2007. The 1997 No. 2 pick J.D. Drew had not signed before the 1998
• Top 100 rolled out. Ultimately, he re-entered the 1998 draft and went No. 5 overall to the Cardinals. He ranked No. 1 on the Top 100 in 1999.
• High school pitchers Todd Van Poppel and Brien Taylor jumped straight from being drafted to topping the lists in 1991 and 1992, and Steve Avery was the first ever No. 1 in 1990, so there was no list for him to appear on in 1989.

It’s highly unlikely that any 2023 draftee or foreign signee will jump straight to No. 1. Of the other 28 No. 1 prospects on the Top 100, all 28 ranked in the previous year’s Top 100. Gunnar Henderson, this year’s No. 1, climbed from No. 60 last year to reach the top spot.

Ronald Acuña Jr. holds the record for the largest climb. He ranked 67th in 2017 before ranking No. 1 in 2018.

Other than those two, the other 26 all ranked in the top 25. Andruw Jones ranked a very aggressive 21st coming out of the Appalachian League in 1995 before ranking No. 1 in back-to-back years in 1996 and 1997.