Organizational prospect rankings, by their nature, are going to fluctuate year to year. And this has especially been true for the Nationals, who have seen their farm system completely overhauled in recent seasons.

As recently as 2021, the organization’s top 10 list (as compiled by Baseball America) was headlined by three homegrown pitchers (Cade Cavalli, Jackson Rutledge, Cole Henry) and two internationally signed infielders (Yasel Antuna, Armando Cruz).

Only two years later, that list looked totally different, bolstered by the additions of top prospects acquired in the Juan Soto trade (James Wood, Robert Hassell III) and more recent first round draft picks (Elijah Green, Brady House).

The top-tier talent perhaps peaked one year ago, when Dylan Crews and Yoyo Morales joined Wood, House and Cavalli to create a pretty impressive one through five.

Now, with Baseball America releasing a new top prospects list within the last week, there’s a whole new set of promising young players busting down the doors, with five of the new top 10 having been acquired by the Nationals in the last 16 months alone.

It was a good week for James Wood.

The Nationals’ top prospect was named the International League Player of the Week for the week of May 6-12 and he cracked MLB Pipeline’s top five in the publication’s updated Top 100 Prospects rankings.

Across six games against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (Yankees), the 6-foot-7, 234-pound outfielder posted a .455 batting average while slugging five home runs with a double and 12 RBIs.

Wood went 10-for-22 during the week against a Scranton/Wilkes-Barre pitching staff that had the lowest batting average against in the International League (.226) coming into the six-game series.

Wood, 23, has played in all 35 games for the Red Wings and leads the team with a .346 average, 33 runs scored, 11 doubles, a .444 on-base percentage and 25 walks. His seven home runs and 23 RBIs rank second on the team this season, behind Travis Blankenhorn in both.

As the offseason dwindles down and pitchers and catchers prepare to report to spring training in 10 days, the last few bits of offseason content are getting pushed out.

Among them continues to be the latest prospect and minor league farm system rankings.

Baseball America has come out with their updated lists two weeks ago. Dylan Crews came in as the No. 6 overall prospect in the sport, with James Wood at No. 11 and Brady House at No. 55. Cade Cavalli, Yohandy Morales, Jackson Rutledge, Robert Hassell III, Cristhian Vaquero, Elijah Green and Jarlin Susana round out the top 10 in Baseball America’s new top 30 Nats prospects rankings.

Over the past week, some new rankings dropped.

A little over a week ago MLB Pipeline released its new top 100 prospects list to conclude their series of ranking the top 10 at each position.

When he met with the media on Friday to discuss the Orioles' acquisition of 2021 National League Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes, executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias summed up the feelings of a lot of people with a few words. 

“This is a big trade and big moment for our team,” Elias told reporters. “Corbin Burnes is exactly what we needed.”

And that about sums up much of the reaction across the industry – it’s pretty positive about the big move where the O’s got their ace. One they had been seeking with, as Elias said, “dogged pursuit the entire offseason.”

He and his front office made a deal that not only elevated the team’s chances to make the playoffs and win another American League East title, but maybe make a deep run when October arrives.

"There are a lot of things to be excited about here in Birdland right now. We’ve got everything going for us right now,” Elias said summing up the feeling right now of much of the fan base. Again with a few words.

There is only so much offseason content to put out with a month left to go before the start of spring training, but some major publications are starting to roll out some preseason topics.

Among those, Baseball America released its latest top 100 prospects list Wednesday morning with some familiar names from the Nationals making the cut.

Outfielder Dylan Crews was ranked as the No. 6 overall prospect in the sport by Baseball America’s staff, with outfielder James Wood coming in at No. 11 and third baseman Brady House at No. 55.

For these preseason rankings, the publication puts together the list of players based on “their long-term MLB impact.”

It’s no surprise that Crews was the highest ranked Nationals prospect after he was selected with the No. 2 overall pick in last summer’s draft after winning a national championship and the Golden Spikes Award with LSU. He entered the draft as the consensus top ranked position player.

At a time when the Orioles organization has gotten a lot of props for their farm system, a lot of those props came due to position players/hitters that have already arrived like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson, plus a few on the way like Jackson Holliday, Samuel Basallo and Coby Mayo.

On the O’s farm, the hitters are higher ranked than the pitchers. On MLBPipeline.com's O’s top 30 right now, there are just two pitchers ranked in the top 11: Chayce McDermott at No. 10 and Cade Povich at No. 11.

But despite that, there are also some reasons to be encouraged about the O’s pitching development program.

It recently got some props and scored quite well in Baseball America’s Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings, co-authored by Geoff Pontes and Dylan White. It was a deep dive into minor league pitchers, aggregating full-season pitching data, metrics and stats for hurlers between ages 17 and 26.

The goal was “to more accurately understand which organizations have the highest quality of overall pitching talent.” And they were attempting to “view the developing pitching talent in each organization, not the team’s ability to stock quality MiLB free agents into Triple-A bullpens.”

It is no secret that on those top 30 prospects lists, the Orioles have many more hitters than pitchers. But a recent article in Baseball America was interesting and enlightening about the O’s pitching on the farm. In several spots, Baltimore's farm pitchers scored well.

It was Baseball America’s Farm System Statcast Pitching Rankings, co-authored by Geoff Pontes and Dylan White. It is a deep dive into minor league pitchers, aggregating full-season pitchers data, metrics and stats for hurlers between ages 17 and 26.

The BA goal was “to more accurately understand which organizations have the highest quality of overall pitching talent.” And they were attempting to “view the developing pitching talent in each organization, not the team’s ability to stock quality MiLB free agents into Triple-A bullpens.”

In an all encompassing stat called “Stuff+” per BA it “is a blended metric of each organization’s STF+ (based on their internal model), per pitch Run Value, xwOBA, and pitch quality metrics such as in-zone whiff% and chase %. The resultant number was then scaled on a wRC+ scale where 100 is average and a standard deviation is 10 points.”

The Orioles organization ranked tied for third with the New York Yankees with a score of 114, behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers at 116 and Tampa Bay Rays at 119.  

Baseball America unveiled its Top 100 Prospects list for the start of the 2023 season Wednesday, and there’s good news: The Nationals not only had four players make the list, they had four players make the top 61.

Outfielder James Wood leads the way at No. 11. Robert Hassell III (57), Elijah Green (58) and Cade Cavalli (61) are all bunched together farther down the list.

That’s a nice development for the Nats, and evidence of the influx of talent they’ve had in what used to be one of baseball’s worst farm systems. Three of those four players, of course, weren’t even in the organization one year ago at this time. Wood and Hassell came from the Padres in the Juan Soto-Josh Bell blockbuster trade. Green was the No. 5 overall pick in last summer’s draft.

And when you add two young players who were highly rated entering the 2022 season but now are full-time major leaguers (CJ Abrams, No. 9; Keibert Ruiz, No. 11), it further underscores just how far the Nationals have come in the last 18 months.

Which isn’t to say they’re anywhere close to achieving what they ultimately need to achieve.

Orioles executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias has said the current O’s top 10 prospects list is about as deep as he’s ever seen. And this is a man that worked for talent-rich organizations in St. Louis and Houston. 

That is quite a statement and it was pretty much proven sound when eight of those 10 were ranked among the Baseball America top 100 prospects list released Wednesday. The magazine has been producing top 100 lists early every year since 1990, and until yesterday the Orioles had never had more than five players ranked in the initial list of the year.

It was great news for an organization that stated a clear intention of building an elite talent pipeline and one that is going to have to thrive using a lot of its homegrown talent. Right now the Orioles have the deepest prospect pool in baseball, and that was not news before yesterday. Numerous outlets have ranked their farm No. 1, even before yesterday.

But a haul of eight is indeed a haul. Cleveland had the second-most with seven, while the Dodgers, Mets and Rays had six each. The Orioles never had more than five on this initial list until now. 

The O’s began the 2022 season with five and ended it with six on the Baseball America ranking of their players this way: Gunnar Henderson (No. 1), Grayson Rodriguez (No. 4), Jackson Holliday (No. 38), DL Hall (No. 55), Colton Cowser (No. 88) and Jordan Westburg (No. 89).

The Orioles have scored 23 runs on 29 hits the last two nights at Fenway Park, but they have split the two games. They won 14-8 on Monday and lost 13-9 last night.

The Orioles pitching, which recently had a three-game stretch versus Detroit and Houston where it allowed one run over three games, has now yielded 38 runs over the past four games.

The Orioles bullpen pitched just one-third of an inning during that three-game stretch, but has now given up 21 earned runs in 23 2/3 innings the past four games.

But the Baltimore offense has picked it up a bit lately. The Orioles have scored, as mentioned 23 runs this series, 42 runs the last five games and 52 in the past seven.

In this series, the Orioles have hit four doubles, five triples and nine homers while going 10-for-26 with runners in scoring position.

After the Nationals lost their seventh of their last eight games yesterday, it would seem now is a good time to look at some recent prospect rankings.

We’ll be doing this a lot over the coming months and even seasons, so be sure to stay tuned.

The Nationals revamped their farm system and entered a full rebuild after trading their best players at back-to-back trade deadlines and signed 19 of their 20 picks in last month’s MLB Draft.

And national publications are taking notice of the new prospects in the Nats’ minor league system.

Baseball America released their updated prospect rankings earlier this week, the top 30 for each major league club and the top 100 overall.

Baseball America has been putting out its top 100 prospects list since 1990, and only once previously has an organization had two different players ranked No. 1 in back-to-back years in their January winter rankings. Now the Orioles have a chance to match that.

Last January, Adley Rutschman was No. 1 and this week infielder Gunnar Henderson moved to No. 1 in the latest Baseball America top 100 update. They are now updating their January release once a month in season. If Henderson stays No. 1 in the January rating this coming winter, the Orioles would match the Cardinals, who had J.D. Drew No. 1 in 1999 and Rick Ankiel No. 1 in 2000.

By the way, Rutschman and Henderson were Mike Elias’ first two draft picks after taking over as Orioles executive vice president and general manager.

Henderson has had a remarkable year on the Baltimore farm starting at Double-A Bowie and moving to Triple-A Norfolk in early June. He has hit for the cycle this year and played in the All-Star Futures Game. He is just 21 years old.

When Rutschman reached 130 big league at-bats, he “graduated” from the top 100 list and thus was removed. For a time, Tigers outfielder Riley Greene moved to No. 1, and then in late July, Blue Jays catcher Gabriel Moreno was No. 1. But now Henderson has passed him for the top spot, as Moreno dropped to third with outfielder Jackson Chourio of the Brewers second.

The Orioles will be picking first overall in the MLB Draft for the third time in the organization’s history on Sunday. One option with the No. 1 overall pick is Georgia high school infielder Termarr Johnson. 

“I don’t know too much about what’s gonna happen in the next couple days, but it’d mean a lot to me," Johnson said about the possibility of going No. 1. “Being selected with the Baltimore Orioles means that, you know, Baltimore gets a ring in a couple years.”

Johnson is rated as the No. 4 prospect in this year’s draft class, according to MLB Pipeline. Most scouts and draft experts rave about Johnson’s advanced bat for an 18-year-old, including Baseball America’s Carlos Collazo. 

“He’s easily the best high school hitter that I’ve seen,” Collazo said. “It’s a special, special bat.”

Baseball America ranked Johnson the No. 1 high school baseball player in the country last spring after he hit .417 with nine home runs, 23 stolen bases, eight doubles and five triples for Benjamin E. Mays High School in Atlanta.