The Tampa Bay Rays have one of the best farm systems in all of baseball and one of the most divisive when it comes to ranking the individual players within the system.
The organization features a variety of players with higher floors that look like safe bets for becoming quality big leaguers, such as SS Carson Williams, INF Brayden Taylor, and 1B Tre’ Morgan; while others have the chance to be elite but also have a risky chance of reaching that level like 1B Xavier Isaac and RHP Yoniel Curet.
Those players mentioned are just five of the 14 that received spots on various Top 100 prospect rankings entering the 2025 season.
The six publications being referred to are as follows: ESPN, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs, Baseball America, CBS Sports*, and MLB Pipeline.
*It should be noted that CBS Sports only covered the top 50 prospects entering the season. That list was published today.
What these publications all agree on is that Carson Williams is the Rays top prospect and a top 10 prospect in all of baseball. Baseball America recently pushed him down to 11th following Roki Sasaki signing with the Dodgers, after the list was published, while CBS and ESPN both ranked him 5th in the game.
After Williams, though, there has been a lot of divisiveness.
2022 first round pick and hulking slugger Xavier Isaac receives a lot of praise for his power and newly noted athleticism, but his weakness against left-handed pitching and high strikeout totals have led skepticism about how well he’ll be able to handle advanced pitching in the upper levels of the minors. Isaac was listed by five publications and averaged a 75th overall placement.
Brayden Taylor, on the other hand, doesn’t have any standout tools but is considered above average at most every facet of the game. Thus, Taylor was ranked ahead of Isaac by both ESPN and Baseball America, but was left off of FanGraph’s top 100 altogether.
Nevertheless, the consensus has been that Carson Williams, Xavier Isaac, and Brayden Taylor are the Rays top three prospects. After that trio, you have a mix of eleven players.
Here are the Rays 14 prospects featured with their average top 100 ranking and how many lists they appeared on in parentheses.
- Carson Williams – 7.8 (6)
- Xavier Isaac – 74.8 (5)
- Brayden Taylor – 66.3 (4)
- Tre’ Morgan – 86.7 (3)
- Brody Hopkins – 66 (2)
- Chandler Simpson – 81.5 (2)
- Trevor Harrison – 89.5 (2)
- Theo Gillen – 93.0 (2)
- Jackson Baumesiter – 60 (1)
- Yoniel Curet – 61 (1)
- Dominic Keegan – 69 (1)
- Aidan Smith – 87 (1)
- Gary Gill Hill – 94 (1)
- Ty Johnson – 94 (1)
It should also be noted that several of the publications published the players that just missed their top 100’s as well, with EPSN ranking 10 Rays prospects among their top 138 and 14 among the top 200.
MLB Pipeline published an article in which they stated that Chandler Simpson and Aidan Smith just missed making their Top 100 list.
Baseball America followed suit and included Chandler Simpson as well as Santiago Suarez and Brailer Guerrero (Guerrero wasn’t featured by any of the six publications).
Meanwhile, FanGraphs published a piece in which they predicted that Santiago Suarez, Theo Gillen, Gary Gill, Jackson Baumeister, Jose Urbina, and Aidan Smith are players that could rise into their Top 100 this season.