The end of the minor league season is arriving or has already arrived depending on which leagues you are looking at and that means it is time to look back at everything that has transpired in 2025. A number of big name prospects including Nick Kurtz, Jacob Misiorowski, Jac Caglianone, and others made their mark in the majors while many, many others saw their stocks go up or down significantly over the course of the season.
Parsing every single promotion and development when it comes to prospects is impossible. The publicly available information is too imperfect/incomplete and the sheer number of players involved would make that sort of effort fruitless. However, there are a few players that stood out enough to give some recognition.
Here are our 2025 end of season MLB prospect awards
If you are looking for a scientific process in determining these awards, you should probably look somewhere else. Most of these awards are based on gut feeling and completely not-quantitative measures. Even among the numbers-driven categories, there is a certain amount of "this feels right" going on. No apologies will be given, but feel free to come up with your own choices for these awards.
Prospect who made the biggest jump - Luis Peña, Brewers
It is tough to give all jumps their due respect because guys going from non-prospects to fringe top 100 guys both are massive jumps and happen a lot. Luis Peña is our choice here as he wasn't on many top 100 lists before the start of the 2025 and now he is pretty much a consensus top 20 prospect in baseball. Peña is only 18 years old, but we fully expect him to have a big year in 2026.
Most surprising "nobody" (unknown name before this season) - Caleb Bonemer, White Sox
Again, you will always find someone that says, "I knew that guy was going to be good from the beginning!" and congratulations to those people. However, second round pick prep bats in bad organizations like the White Sox are just not going to be on many folks' radars. However, Caleb Bonemer made his pro debut this year after getting picked in 2024 and has proceeded to already get promoted to high-A and is a top 100 prospects. Not bad, kid.
Most eye-popping number in minors - Kendall George's 100 steals
A lot of really solid choices here and if we are being honest with ourselves, Chandler Simpson would have beaten George by a lot if he spent a full season in the minors. However, 100 steals is a big number no matter what level it happens at. The Dodgers' 2023 first round pick ability to be an impact bat given his lack of power is a fair question, but no one should be denying George's ability to be a terror on the base paths.
Best tool in the minors - JJ Wetherholt's hit tool
A certain amount of weighting tools should be done here because there are definitely 80 runners that end up being non-prospects, so hit, power, and defense tools (in that general order) get priority here. As a Braves fan, it is truly painful to say something nice about any member of the Cardinals. That said, there is no deny that JJ Wetherholt can flat out hit. Once he gets to the majors (in 2026 in all likelihood), Wetherholt is going to be the kind of guy that competes for batting titles while being a pretty consistent 20-20 threat.
Best 2025 Draftee Debut - Eli Willits, Nationals
There are going to be some that roll their eyes at selecting the first overall pick in 2025 for this award, but prep bats usually take a while to get going if they play at all during their draft year no matter where they are picked. In Willits' case, he hit .300 across his first 15 games in full season ball. We didn't see much in the way of power yet, but that is the sort of debut you want to see from any draft pick.
Most likely to cause havoc in MLB next season - Kevin McGonigle, Tigers
So this is tricky because this category doesn't necessary mean a prospect that is moving quickly through the minors, although the Mariners' Kade Anderson is a strong candidate regardless. Picking Griffin again here is also tempting, but the Pirates can't be trusted to promote anyone based on merit. We will go with McGonigle as the Tigers are a very good young team firmly in the middle of their competitive window and he is the type of difference-making all-around bat that could cause a lot of damage.
Best Top Prospect Name - Jurrangelo Cijntje, Mariners
Kruz Schoolcraft and Jhostynxon Garcia have very strong cases here and if anyone makes them their picks, you won't find any arguments here. However, we are going with Jurrangelo Cijntje because he is a mortal lock to be a great test to see if opposing broadcasters do preparation ahead of time to figure out how to correctly pronounce his name. That he is a switch-pitcher with a really unique name helps his case as well.
Best New Minor League Team Hat - New Hampshire Space Potatoes
There are a lot of worthy candidates here including designs from the Flapjacks and IronPigs, but we are going to go with the New Hampshire Space Potatoes which is an alternate identity for the Fisher Cats. MiLB teams fully embracing silly names and branding was a stroke of genius (looking at you, Trash Pands) and the Space Potatoes hat is a delightful blend of that silliness with a 90's color scheme that gets the nod here.
Minor League MVP - Konnor Griffin, Pirates
Very little suspense here as Griffin is our runaway choice. We have said it multiple times on the show (which you all should definitely watch over on the Baseball Insiders Youtube channel) that there just isn't anything on a baseball field that Griffin can't do. Yes, that means pitch as well and if you see his arm in action, it isn't hard to see that playing out of the bullpen. He is the best prospect in the minor leagues and has risen to the challenge with every promotion. Assuming he gets even remotely close to reaching his ceiling, Pittsburgh has a perennial MVP candidate on their hands.