It's time to put a bow on ESPN's annual breakdown of the top prospects in baseball with a look back at the No. 1 prospects over the past decade. In this year's ranking of the Top 100 prospects, Kiley McDaniel put 23-year-old right-hander Roki Sasaki at No. 1, over outfielder Roman Anthony. It's the first time a pitcher has topped ESPN's list, although Sasaki isn't a traditional prospect given his experience in Japan.
How does he compare to the past top overall prospects? We're going to rank them from Nos. 1 to 10 and see if they have lived up to the hype. Kiley has ranked the prospects for ESPN since 2020, with Keith Law doing it the years before that. For this exercise, we're actually going to go back to 2014 in order to rank 10 players. Wander Franco was twice the No. 1 prospect during that span, and we won't be including him since he remains on baseball's restricted list.
Let's dive right into the rankings.
Top 100 | 101-200 | System rankings | Team top 10s | Predictions