Brandon Marsh, Jordyn Adams ranked in FanGraphs top 100 prospects

It’s prospect week at FanGraphs, which on Wednesday meant a new national top-100 prospect list, this one from Eric Longenhagen.

Only the FanGraphs list didn’t stop at 100. Longenhagen included 133 prospects in all, keeping everyone outside the top 100 with a future value of 50 on the 20-80 scouting scale.

Brandon Marsh is the Angels’ best prospect this year, and FanGraphs rates the outfielder as the 15th-best prospect in the sport. That’s Marsh’s best national ranking to date, and his average rank is 34 on lists from Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, ESPN, FanGraphs, MLB Pipeline, and The Athletic.

“A plus-run, plus center fielder with an above-average arm, Marsh can hit and scouts think power will come from his 6-foot-4 frame,” Longenhagen said of Marsh.

The Angels added Marsh to the 40-man roster in November, which puts him one procedural step closer to the major leagues. The Angels opted for veterans this winter to help their outfield depth, trading for Dexter Fowler and signing Juan Lagares and Jon Jay to minor league deals. Fowler and Jay played for Angels manager Joe Maddon with the Cubs.

Those moves might at least temporarily block Marsh and outfielder Jo Adell, who struggled last season and didn’t have a minor league season to be sent down to to further develop. But Maddon thinks Marsh and Adell being around the veteran outfielders will help in the long run.

“I’ve seen it in action,” Maddon said Tuesday via Zoom. “The younger guys need to be around people like this, to truly understand what it takes to eventually become an accomplished major league player.”

The ideal, eventually, for the Angels would be to have Adell and Marsh flanking Mike Trout in the outfield for years to come. Or maybe not flanking at all, given how high Longenhagen (and other prospect rankers) are on Marsh’s defensive abilities.

“He’s also a clean fit in center field and his range out there might be better than Trout’s is at this point, though obviously the notion of moving Trout to a corner comes with other considerations,” Longenhagen wrote. “I think Marsh is an All-Star talent.”

Another Angels outfielder, Jordyn Adams, was ranked 90th by FanGraphs. Adams was also ranked in the top 100 by ESPN (75th) and Baseball Prospectus (76th).