MiLB Top 10 Prospects - Week 18
Tim Kanak brings MLB DW members 15 prospects to watch from all of the minor league action in Week Eighteen
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I should note, I plan to spend the next two weeks re-writing my Top 150 and may not have T-10 articles out in the meantime - but enjoy the org ranking updates on X.
NOTE: Rookie status is determined by 130 ABs, or 50 IPs at the Major League level.
NOTE: All stats from Sunday, Aug. 2nd - Saturday, August 8th 2026
T-10 Prospects
1. OF Zac Veen (Rockies) - AAA
ETA: Debuted
Comp: Young Charlie Blackmon with a worse hit tool
Prime Skills: This is the best version of Veen we’ve ever seen, and it comes with a story behind it, he showed up to camp this spring having added 40 pounds of muscle over the winter along with what’s been described as a genuinely renewed focus off the field (no more drugs), and the results at Triple-A Albuquerque have been loud. He’s up to a career-high 19 homers already, blowing past his previous single-season best of 15 set all the way back in his 2021 debut year. The bat speed and raw pull power are real, but whether the free-swinging version of this approach can survive big league velocity and shape is the entire question that’s kept him property of Triple-A for three years running. Veen could be up by the time this article comes out after the Rockies moved Doyle, there’s clear room for him to share time with Jordan Beck and Jake McCarthy. Veen is coming off a three homer night and a week where he had 10 extra base hits, 5 homers and 2 steals while hitting over .500. Veen is on this list twice in a row, but it’s well earned - he dominated this week.
Hitter Tool Grades:
Hit: 45/50
Plate Approach: 40/45
Power: 50/60
Speed: 60/60
Prospect Rank: Top 250
2. SP Eliazar Dishmey (Marlins) - AA
ETA: 2028
Comp: Taj Bradley / Brayan Bello mash
Prime Skills: Dishmey is a dude I have talked a lot about on the podcast, but haven’t written too much about him. I saw him live a number of times last year in Jupiter; Dishmey is a lean whippy armed righty throwing from a lower ¾ arm-slot with great ride on the fastball and an electric slider with quick-twitch mechanics and some arm-angle deception that help his arsenal play up. The fastball is fantastic up in the zone and he has a beast of a sweeper, though many will highlight his circle change as his best pitch - I think he is best attributed by the fastball, bullet slider and sweeper combo with the change up going east. In his final six starts in 2025, Dishmey had 42 strikeouts and 6 walks in 29 ⅔ innings and has carried his success into 2026 where outside of three rough starts, he’s been electric. The fastball is a ride/run pitch and the gyro slider is a quick downer, playing nicely against his change up (east), slider (south) and sweeper (west). This is Dishmey’s second time on the list this season after a stellar no-hit performance through 6 innings with 10 strikeouts and only giving up one walk.
Arsenal Grades:
FA (93-98 mph): 60/65
CH (82-86 mph): 55/65
FC/SL (86-90 mph): 50/55
ST (82-84 mph): 55/60
CU (76-80 mph): 40/40
Command: 45/55
Prospect Rank: Top 250
3. SS/3B Emil Morales (Dodgers) - A+
ETA: 2028
Comp: Fernando Tatis Jr. light
Prime Skills: Big, athletic shortstop with high end power potential and decent speed. He has the Fernando Tatis Jr. swing which has led to a similar batted ball profile (though beware of the high swinging strike rate as an average hit tool is likely the best case outcome with high 60s-low 70s contact rates). Morales has reportedly (per Baseball America) popped a 105.9 90th percentile EV this season (3 mph over last year) which is incredibly high at his age and when you combine his projected growth as a big 6’ 3” kid with the optimal angles he gets (29.2% line drive rate at A ball last year and 26% this year), there is a lot of power upside here (144 XBH+) even with the lackluster hit tool with 53 extra base hits in 94 games this year. Morales is going to be a stud if he can make more contact and this week had 6 extra base hits with 4 bombs, hitting .304.
Hitter Tool Grades:
Hit: 35/45
Plate Approach: 35/45
Power: 55/65
Speed: 50/50
Prospect Rank: 55
4. SP Brian Holiday (Cardinals) - A
ETA: 2028
Comp: Sonny Gray
Prime Skills: Holiday’s path here is worth remembering every time you look at the ERA, a third-round arm out of Oklahoma State who never got to throw a pro pitch before needing Tommy John surgery, then didn’t debut until this May after rehabbing through the complex league. His last start, a career-high 12 strikeouts and 0 walks (and only 2 hits) over 5.2 scoreless innings, was the best evidence yet that the surgery’s fully behind him, and the pitch data backs up why. The curveball is legitimately special with eight inches of drop, a 39.7% CSW that’s the best mark in his whole mix, and it’s getting grounders at a nearly 60% clip, this is a bat-neutralizing, weak-contact hammer he can lean on all day. He’s actually underusing his best swing-and-miss pitch, a low-80s slider that’s quietly generating an 18% swinging-strike rate, better than anything else he throws, but he’s only going to it about one in every nine pitches - he needs to throw it more often. The fastball, sitting 91 and thrown nearly half the time, is the piece that needs to catch up, hitters are seeing it well and it’s not missing bats or ground the way the rest of the mix does, so it’s playing more as a setup pitch right now than a weapon of its own; though it does have good ride and he has elite command of the pitch. He’s also got a cutter at about 87 mph and getting grounders on over three-quarters of the balls put in play against it, and a changeup that’s still just a show-me look in a small sample. Add it up and this is a contact-management arm first, over half of his balls in play stay on the ground.
Arsenal Grades:
FA (90-93 mph): 40/45
CU (75-78 mph): 60/60
FC (86-89 mph): 50/55
SL (80-83 mph): 45/55
CH (81-84 mph): 35/40
Command: 55/60
Prospect Rank: Top 750
5. SP Joseph Dzierwa (Orioles) - AA
ETA: Mid 2027
Comp: Noah Schultz light
Prime Skills: Dzierwa is a monster, a second-round pick out of Michigan State best known for his size and stellar command despite that size. He’s a college guy, and just like I predicted back in week one when he first made this T-10, he’s been a quick mover after a strong spring, and it’s carried straight into a Big Ten Pitcher of the Year college résumé (2.36 ERA, 104 strikeouts against 22 walks) translating cleanly to pro ball. A weakness is he’s only a three-pitch guy and profiles more as a back-end starter than a front-line arm in my opinion, a repertoire built around generating bad contact more than missing bats, leaning on a primary sinker rather than a four-seamer, backed by a genuinely plus changeup and fringy breaking stuff. This week Dzierwa went six scoreless with nine strikeouts and zero walks, allowing just four hits. He’s also shown some real toughness to go with the polish, he took a bad-hop throw to the face backing up a play in May that needed stitches above the eye and was back on the mound six days later like nothing happened. Between Frederick and Chesapeake he’s now a combined 90-plus innings into his first full pro look with an ERA comfortably in the low twos, exactly the kind of quick, clean transition you want to see from an advanced college arm with feel like this. He continues his rise up prospect rankings and is squarely on track for a 2027 debut.
Arsenal Grades:
SI (93-96 mph): 60/65
CH (81-85 mph): 50/60
FC/SL (84-87 mph): 40/45
Command: 55/60
Prospect Rank: Top 150