January chugs along and that can mean only one thing around these parts: it’s time to rank minor-league prospects. Every team across the majors is selling hope to their fans: some are selling it in a more immediate fashion, in the form of active offseasons full of free-agent signings and trade acquisitions. Others, meanwhile, are selling it in the personage of prospects who could make the difference over the coming years.
CBS Sports is underway examining the top three prospects in each organization. Our definition of “prospect” is simple: does that player have rookie eligibility remaining for the 2025 season? If so, they’re a prospect; if not, that’s probably why your favorite young player is absent from the proceedings.
As always, these lists are formed following conversations with scouts, analysts, player development specialists, and other talent evaluators around the industry. There’s a fair amount of firsthand evaluation, statistical analysis, and historical research mixed in, too. Plus a heaping of personal bias — we all have certain traits and profiles that we prefer over others, there’s no sense pretending otherwise.
Keep in mind that there’s no one right answer with these sorts of things. Besides, these are merely our opinions, meaning they have no actual bearing on the future. We already published our ranking of the top 25 prospects in all of the minors.
With all that out of the way, let’s get to ranking the top three prospects in the Athletics system.
The short hook: Potential middle-of-the-order bat
Kurtz displayed resilience during his platform year at Wake Forest, overcoming a slow start and a shoulder injury en route to being selected No. 4 overall in 2024. He pairs well-above-average power with a patient approach that saw him draw a free pass nearly as often as Barry Bonds did in 2002. On paper, that gives him a strong offensive foundation that lends itself to middle-of-the-order projections. Some scouts expressed concern that Kurtz was too willing to take pitches, a counterintuitive flaw that could work against him as a professional. The recent history of first-round collegiate first basemen is wretched (CJ Cron, picked back in 2011, qualifies as the biggest success), but your mileage may vary on holding that against Kurtz. MLB ETA: Late summer 2025
The short hook: Polarizing shortstop with elite contact skills
Wilson has divided evaluators since his amateur days thanks to an extreme and unusual offensive profile. His game contains just one plus tool, with that being the most important of them all: the hit tool. Wilson is a good bet to run a contact rate around 90% and a strikeout rate around 10% (to date he’s punched out in just 8% of his professional plate appearances). The issue is, well, everything else. He doesn’t have the best command over the strike zone, and he features bottom-of-the-barrel power (in part because of an unsynced kinetic chain). That combination, plus his bat-to-ball skills, mean that a good portion of his balls in play are weakly struck grounders. Wilson’s boosters see him as something like Luis Arraez if he were a competent shortstop defender; his skeptics, conversely, think of him as being more akin to, say, Fancy Cat Kevin Newman. Wherever Wilson falls on that spectrum, he’s guaranteed to be interesting. MLB ETA: Already debuted
The short hook: Promising right-hander who might end up in relief
There’s a trope in prospect circles concerning how often a certain kind of pitcher — typically one with good stuff and lackluster command and/or durability — is projected as “either a middle-of-the-rotation starter or a high-leverage reliever.” Morales fits the bill. He has a high-quality arsenal, including a powerful fastball and two promising breaking balls. Yet he has a lengthy arm swing that limits his control, and he’s yet to throw even 100 innings in a season. (He established a new career-high in 2024 by throwing 81 frames for the Athletics’ High-A affiliate.) The error bars are fat, in other words, and that usually means betting on a future in the bullpen. MLB ETA: Summer 2027
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