Diego Cartaya, Bobby Miller top 6 Dodgers on Baseball America top 100 prospects list

Baseball America unveiled its 2023 preseason top 100 prospects list on Wednesday. Six Dodgers are featured on the list, including five holdovers from last year plus Gavin Stone, who shot his way through two minor league promotions in 2022 to the cusp of major league readiness.

Catcher Diego Cartaya at No. 18 overall is the highest-ranked Dodger on the list, which is no surprise considering he was rated the team’s top prospect by Baseball Prospectus, Baseball America, and FanGraphs already this offseason.

Cartaya hit .254/.389/.503 with 22 home runs and a 139 wRC+ in 95 games last season with Low-A Rancho Cucamonga and High-A Great Lakes. The now-21-year-old was added to the 40-man roster in November.

“Cartaya boasts some of the biggest power in the minors and has the swing to consistently get to it against upper-level pitching,” said BA’s scouting report on Cartaya. “He has to shore up his defense and stay healthy, but he nonetheless has the bat to be an offensive force.”

Last year, Cartaya was rated the No. 23 prospect in baseball before the season.

Bobby Miller is ranked 21st by Baseball America this year, up from 38 in 2022. In an accompanying piece, Baseball America showed that Miller’s 98-mph average fastball was the highest among the 28 pitchers ranked in the top 100. Guardians right-hander Daniel Espino, at 97 mph on average, was the only other pitcher higher than 96 mph.

Miguel Vargas is ranked 30th this year, up ten spots from before the 2022 season.

The other Dodgers on the list are clumped together. Michael Busch is No. 54 this year, up from 76th last year. Ryan Pepiot is 55th, up from No. 99 last year after making his major league debut.

Stone is the newcomer to the list, ranked 56th after a year that saw him post ERAs that start with a one for each of High-A Great Lakes, Double-A Tulsa, and Triple-A Oklahoma City. In all, he had a 1.48 ERA with 168 strikeouts and a 33.9-percent strikeout rate in 121⅔ innings in 2022. He and Cartaya in late August were named the Branch Rickey Award winners as the Dodgers minor league pitcher of the year and player of the year, respectively.

Kyle Glaser in a separate article at Baseball America tabbed Stone as one of five players who could rise up the top 100 during the season.

“The only questions facing Stone revolve around his size and durability—his 6-foot-1 height listing is extremely generous and he’s 180 pounds on a good day—but he’s strong and athletic in his frame and held up over 121.2 innings last year without issue,” Glaser wrote. “With three above-average or better pitches, crisp command and a steady, professional mound presence, Stone has all the ingredients to continue his meteoric rise and break into the Dodgers rotation before long.”

Only the Orioles, with eight players, and the Guardians with seven have more prospects in BA’s top 100 than the Dodgers. The Mets and Rays also have six players on the list, matching Los Angeles.

Dating back to 2010, six is the third-most prospects the Dodgers had named in the top 100 from Baseball America. Only 2016 and 2020 featured more, with seven Dodgers each year.