Ranking the 25 and Under Guys

Forget the prospects, where does this club stand in terms of young talent?

Photo Credit: Bryan Kennedy | SF Giants

In case you missed it, here is this year’s Top 50:

• Just Missed List

• 46-50 (Camacho, Foster, Flores, Hernandez, Reckley)

• 41-45 (Christian, Pomares, Ahuna, Perez, Sugastey)

• 36-40 (Howell, Murphy, Miles, Simon, Choate)

• 31-35 (Sanchez, Waites, Bresnahan, Rengel, Maldonado)

• 26-30 (Hipwell, Bello, Tejada, Diaz, Bericoto)

• 21-25 (Ortíz, Furman, Cayama, Harris, Ceballos

• 16-20 (Cox, Martin, Meckler, Bostick, Velasquez)

• 11-15 (Arteaga, Crawford, Davidson, Seymour, Ragsdale)

• 10: Trevor McDonald

• 9: Mason Black

• 8: Joe Whitman

• 7: Rayner Arias

• 6: Jhonny Level

• 5. Dakota Jordan

• 4. James Tibbs III

• 3. Josuar de Jesus Gonzalez

• 2. Carson Whisenhunt

• 1. Bryce Eldridge

Several years ago, Craig Goldstein, the Editor-in-Chief at Baseball Prospectus, reached out to me to ask if I could help out with a small part of their Giants’ rankings. The person who was going to work on their “Best 25 and Under” list had had an emergency, and Craig hoped I could produce something on somewhat short notice. Of course, I was happy to help, and, as I noted to him at the time, it wasn’t exactly a heavy lift, as the organization had, quite literally, just one player who was neither a prospect, nor over 26 years of age. Indeed, some of their prospects at the time were actually over the age cutoff as well. That one player was Logan Webb (so this must have been prior to 2020 or 2021). I wish I could say that I put him on top of the list, but I think I actually slotted him in around fourth or so.

Happily, these days are not those days. In fact, the Giants have a wealth of players who have pushed past prospect status who are still young enough to make a 25U list. The 2024 Giants’ roster had, at various times, sixteen different players who were 25 or younger, which I’m going to guess made it possibly the youngest Giants’ team of the last dozen years, give or take. We’d still like to see some (or all) of these players take a big step forward as major leaguers, but at least the overall age of the roster seems pointed in the right direction.

There have been a few times over the last decade when a Best 25U list for the Giants was just a repeat of their prospect rankings. Now, I actually have to do some thinking — even at the top spot! That seems like a nice trendline!

Now several of those 16 players were actually 25 last year and have aged out of this list. For my purposes, I’m going to use “season age” as the dividing line, which means that players need to turn 25 after July 1st of this year to make the cut. That means that Patrick Bailey, who turns 26 in May, is the last guy I eliminated from consideration — but you’re free to just add him in mentally, which makes this year’s version even stronger, since Bailey probably legitimately belongs in one of the top three spots, maybe even 1st!

Other players who have aged out of consideration for this list include Casey Schmitt, Jung-Hoo Lee, Brett Wisely, Tyler Fitzgerald, Landen Roupp, and Kai-Wei Teng. Fitzgerald is actually the old man of that group, as he’ll actually turn 28 near the end of this season — but I included him since he’s a “young player” in terms of experience. The rest of those guys will all play the 2025 season as 26-year-olds, which isn’t a bad reserve of youngish talent to have on hand.

All ready? Let’s plunge into the most important list of all — a look at the best of the 25 and Under players in the organization as of 2025.