The new MLB Rank from ESPN of Major League Baseball's top 100 players is out, and as usual, my compulsive need to project the future already has me thinking about the 2021 list. After all, who likes waiting?
Since I'm curious about what next year's top 20 could look like, rather than travel into the future and ask the rest of the writers -- and besides, I don't actually have a time machine -- I asked the ZiPS projection system to rank the 10 players most likely to join the top 20 next year who didn't make it this time around. I'm also including where ZiPS has them pegged as far as their ranking for next year.
1. Ozzie Albies, 2B, Atlanta Braves (projected 2021 ranking: 11)
The emergence of two young outfield phenoms in the NL East, teammate Ronald Acuna Jr. and Juan Soto, has perhaps left Albies a bit overlooked in the public eye. But let's not forget Ozzie hit .286/.354/.456 while playing solid defense at second as a 20-year-old rookie in 2017 and has only grown from there.
Just 22 years old in 2019, Albies hit .295/.352/.500 in 160 games at second base and contributed just as much to Atlanta's year as anyone else on the team. Albies became one of the best fastball hitters in the majors last season and while people keep saying he can't add more power given his size, that's exactly what people thought when they called his .171 isolated power as a rookie a fluke. Albies' ISO was .205 in 2019.
2. Gleyber Torres, SS, New York Yankees (projected 2021 ranking: 14)
The prize from the Aroldis Chapman trade a few years back, Torres improved from a solid rookie campaign to the lower echelons of stardom in his follow-up season. Torres isn't an OBP star, but that would be a bit greedy to expect from a shortstop in his early 20s coming off a 38-homer season, isn't it?
It hasn't shown up in his walks yet, but Torres made great strides with his plate discipline in 2019. He raised his zone-swing rate from 66% to 74%, while his out-of-zone swings dropped by about a percentage point. Generally speaking, when players swing more often, their contact rate suffers, but Torres saw his improve from 70% to 74%. It remains to be seen just how well Torres can handle playing shortstop in the long term, but his bat is so good that it might not even matter.
3. Marcus Semien, SS, Oakland Athletics (projected 2021 ranking: 16)
Few players are as great an example as Semien as to why you shouldn't prematurely decide that a prospect can't do something. The book on Semien was that he was too erratic and error-prone at short to stay there defensively, and the White Sox lost interest in him fairly quickly. There were some rough years in Oakland, but Semien worked as hard on his defense as perhaps anyone ever has and, with the help of Ron Washington, has improved to the extent he was a deserving Gold Glove finalist in 2019.
Oh yeah, and he also hit .285/.369/.522 and finished third in the AL MVP vote. While you want to see him do all of it again, his improvement was across the board and there was no wacky BABIP spike you sometimes see in these types of seasons that seem to come out of nowhere. There aren't many shortstops with 6.9 WAR seasons on their résumé.
4. Jose Ramirez, 3B, Cleveland Indians (projected 2021 ranking: 17)
The first half of 2019 was a miserable failure for Ramirez, but one can't forget that he was third in WAR among position players from 2016 to 2018, hitting .300/.375/.533 while playing top-tier defense at the hot corner. He's also just 27 years old in 2020, and after an overhaul of his approach at the plate, he hit .327/.365/.739 in 43 games until a broken hamate bone prematurely ended his season.
5. Jack Flaherty, SP, St. Louis Cardinals (projected 2021 ranking: 19)
The Cy Young Award went to the right guy in the National League, but Flaherty had a second-half run as dominating as any you or I have ever seen or will ever see, allowing just 10 earned runs in 15 second-half starts. Remember Orel Hershiser's 59-inning scoreless streak in late 1988? Hershiser's 26 earned runs allowed for the half was more than twice as many as Flaherty's total. Flaherty did this all as a 23-year-old, and there's no particular reason to think he can't be one of the top NL starters in 2020.
6. Rafael Devers, 3B, Boston Red Sox (projected 2021 ranking: 20)
Like Gleyber Torres, Devers accomplished the challenge of being more aggressive at the plate while simultaneously making more contact. Also like Torres, Devers made better contact, finishing with a .311 batting average and 32 home runs. Devers is still young (the Red Sox's season was long over by the time he turned 23), and only an average glove is keeping him from graduating into elite territory.
7. Bo Bichette, SS, Toronto Blue Jays (projected 2021 ranking: 22)
Who knew that Toronto's apparent plan to accumulate sons of former major leaguers would work out so well? Vladimir Guerrero Jr. still has a bright future. But with a sterling debut and his having nothing like Vladi's limitations on defense, Bo is ahead of Guerrero as an overall player right now. Bichette's .311/.358/.571 rookie line will probably come down a bit, but after turning 22 years old just last week, he has a lot of upside.
8. Shane Bieber, SP, Cleveland Indians (projected 2021 ranking: 24)
There was no projection I was more worried about going into the 2019 season than Bieber's. Entering the season, ZiPS projected Bieber's WAR at 14th among all pitchers, at a 3.71 ERA in 187 innings. Suffice to say, there are a few sleepless nights when the projection system you create pegs a former fourth-rounder who was not a top prospect, and with a 4.55 ERA in his debut season, to finish just under Clayton Kershaw.
But then Bieber was even better than the projection, ranking eighth in WAR and finishing with a 3.28 ERA in 214 ⅓ innings. He also largely eliminated his problems against left-handed batters, the one big flaw in his rookie campaign. After projecting big things from Bieber in 2019 and Bieber achieving those big things, ZiPS is hardly going to project him to play worse.
9. Manny Machado, 3B, San Diego Padres (projected 2021 ranking: 26)
Machado had a bit of a down season in his first year in San Diego, but don't forget he's still just 27 years old even though it feels like he's been in the league forever. Manny was ninth among hitters in WAR from 2015 to 2018, and I'm going to need to see more than one "merely" very good season at age 26 to be convinced that kind of performance is in the rearview mirror. For now, I'll choose to believe Manny was cursed by having to play in San Diego's ultra-generic, blue and white uniforms, and everything will be fine now that the team is back in proper mustard and brown.
10. J.T. Realmuto, C, Philadelphia Phillies (projected 2021 ranking: 28)
Unlike a certain other Phillies acquisition last winter, Realmuto did exactly what he was supposed to in his first season in Philadelphia. Not only did Realmuto remain an elite offensive catcher in 2019, he also took steps toward being an elite defensive catcher. One can say Yasmani Grandal is right there with Realmuto, but when projecting the future, Realmuto has a three-year edge in terms of age -- an important thing for catchers and their ticking-time-bomb knees.