Each year, USA Today comes out with their 100 names you need to know for the upcoming season. The list is different from typical prospect lists. Its typically a good resource for fantasy leagues, as these are players who have a good chance to make contributions for the upcoming season:
These aren’t necessarily baseball’s 100 best prospects because many top prospects are too far down in the minor leagues to contribute in the majors this season. Others are stuck behind established major leaguers.
Not all of the players on our list have rookie status, either, but our standard for inclusion is that a player must have had more innings (for pitchers) or at-bats (for hitters) in the minor leagues in 2009 than he has had during all of his major league time.
Conversely, Baseball America released their top 100 prospect list for 2010 .
The Top 100 Prospects list is the culmination of our offseason prospect coverage, which begins with our reviews of the top talent in each minor league and proceeds with ranking the talent in each major league farm system.
