Major League Baseball is being dominated by pitching, and that’s only going to continue, judging by the flood of elite young arms who are on the verge of reaching The Show.
Like these 10, who represent the sport’s can’t-miss prospects for the 2015 season.
To avoid any confusion, that means these pitchers should be making a major impact in the upcoming year.
Thus, you won’t see elite arms like Lucas Giolito of the Washington Nationals, Tyler Glasnow of the Pittsburgh Pirates or Luis Severino of the New York Yankees, all of whom are a bit too far away to take the majors by storm this year. Same goes for 18-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers phenom Julio Urias.
And, as always, to qualify as prospect-eligible, these arms cannot have pitched more than 50 innings in the majors or spent more than 45 days on the active roster.
That eliminates, say, Taijuan Walker of the Seattle Mariners, who surpassed that total in his final outing of 2014, as well as Philadelphia Phillies reliever Ken Giles, who was on the big league roster from June 12 to the end of the season.
What we’re looking for are elite young arms who have the right mix of talent (i.e., highly regarded prospects) and opportunity (i.e., proximity to the majors) to do something big in 2015.
Given that this list is about this coming campaign, there’s slightly more emphasis on the latter of those two criteria so that it’s more likely these pitchers actually will, you know, pitch in the big leagues—and make their presence felt—over the next several months.
Let the can’t-miss countdown begin.