Prospects on Parade! Lugnuts headline March 22 Spring Breakout
The World Baseball Classic is behind us. Opening Day is in front of us. In between, it's Spring Breakout 2026, Major League Baseball's national showcase of the top prospects in every organization in a series of exhibition games that will turn into a full tournament next year. Stocked with MLB
The World Baseball Classic is behind us. Opening Day is in front of us. In between, it's Spring Breakout 2026, Major League Baseball's national showcase of the top prospects in every organization in a series of exhibition games that will turn into a full tournament next year.
Stocked with MLB Pipeline's eighth-most talented roster of all Major League teams, the Athletics' 27-player Breakout assemblage for its game on Sunday vs. Milwaukee is worth digging into:
Pitchers: Jamie Arnold, Corey Avant, Steven Echavarria, Jackson Finley, Kenya Huggins, Cole Miller, Kade Morris, Eduarniel Nuñez, Tzu-Chen Sha, Zane Taylor.
Of these 10 pitchers, five – Avant, Ech, Huggins, Morris and Sha – pitched for the Lugnuts; all but Kade Morris (2024) were in Lansing last year; and there is a chance that Arnold, Echavarria, Finley, Huggins, Miller, Sha and Taylor will all be Nuts in 2026. Nuñez came over from San Diego in the Mason Miller/Leo De Vries trade and tossed eight innings for the A's last year. Morris will start in Triple-A and is the next closest to a MLB debut.
The headliner is Jamie Arnold, an ace at Florida State who was drafted 11th overall last year and is ranked the No. 6 southpaw in baseball. His fellow 2025 draftee, Taylor, led all Division I pitchers in strikeout/walk ratio (9.6) and WHIP (0.76) at UNC Wilmington and comes into the season with a fair amount of buzz himself. Miller was taken a round after Echavarria in 2023, giving the A's two high-ceiling high school stars, though he missed 2024 after undergoing Tommy John surgery. Finley, a two-way star at Georgia Tech, struck out 94 in 83 1/3 innings last year in Stockton. Speaking of two-way players...
The A's signed two-way player Shotaro Morii for $1.51 million - the largest bonus ever given to a Japanese amateur outside of Nippon Professional Baseball.
— Baseball America (@BaseballAmerica) October 3, 2025
Check him out on the mound ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/6uXVJTXRyR
Two-Way: Shintaro Morii.
The 19-year-old native of Japan embarks on his first full season in the minors, and is expected to both pitch and play the infield in Stockton this year... and maybe reach Lansing by August?
There are a lot of folks curious about him, to put it mildly.
Athletics prospect Dylan Fien is starting to tap into his raw power at Single-A. He hit his first two home runs in back-to-back games. Huge potential as a hitter. More advanced as a left handed hitter currently, but power potential from both sides down the line#Athletics pic.twitter.com/2tYnfvEev5
— Daniel Labude (@OrcaBaseball) July 24, 2025
Catchers: Cole Conn, Davis Diaz, Dylan Fien.
Conn excelled with the Nuts to start last year and will open this year in Double-A. Diaz replaced Conn in Lansing, though he initially played third base to spell an injured Tommy White; he likely enters 2026 as the Lugnuts' No. 1 catcher.
Fien is a big young switch-hitter, a 20-year-old standing 6-foot-3 who showed a strong batting eye at Stockton. His younger brother, Gavin, was drafted 12th overall last year by Texas and then traded to the Washington Nationals in a package for MacKenzie Gore.
137 seconds of pre-All-Star Break defensive brilliance from #Athletics prospect Joshua Kuroda-Grauer.@LansingLugnuts | @RutgersBaseball | @MiLB pic.twitter.com/1OeX16tHix
— Jesse Goldberg-Strassler (@jgoldstrass) July 17, 2025
Infielders: Bobby Boser, Leo De Vries, Joshua Kuroda-Grauer, Edgar Montero, Drew Swift, Tommy White.
Thoughts: De Vries is one of the top five prospects in baseball as a 19-year-old, a shortstop-slash-rockstar. He'll either take shortstop at Double-A to open the year, moving the capable Kuroda-Grauer off the position, or take shortstop at Triple-A and move the speedy Swift elsewhere. White dominated the Cactus League just as much as De Vries.
The only lower-level prospect infielders are Boser and Montero. Boser was superb at South Florida, transferred to Florida for his senior year, slashed .336/.437/.613 with 18 homers and 19 steals, and was drafted in the 11th round by the A's. His defensive versatility is fascinating: an everyday center fielder in 2023 who played third base at Florida and shortstop in Stockton. The 19-year-old Montero is a shortstop through and through and a whale of a hitter, batting .313 with 102 total bases and 60 walks in just 55 games in the Dominican Summer League.
Top 30 @Athletics prospects go back-to-back off Michael King during Cactus League action.
— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) March 13, 2026
Henry Bolte (No. 5): 110.3 mph | 401 ft
Breyson Guedez (No. 23): 110.4 mph | 450 ft! pic.twitter.com/lRMD0iXLyV
Outfielders: Henry Bolte, Breyson Guedez, Nate Nankil, Ryan Lasko, Cameron Leary, Junior Perez, Devin Taylor.
Thoughts: All seven outfielders are on the A's Top 30 list, and this doesn't even include Denzel Clarke (Majors), Clark Elliott and Jared Dickey (Double-A), or Gavin Turley (No. 15 prospect, played in Stockton last year). Bolte is rapidly nearing an MLB debut, as is Perez; Lasko excelled in Triple-A to close out last year, as did Nankil in Double-A. Leary finished 2025 in Lansing and probably returns to open 2026 with the potential for big power/speed numbers.
The only players yet to reach Lansing are Taylor, the A's 2025 second-round selection who set all of the Indiana Hoosiers home run records, and the 18-year-old Guedez, who batted .359 in the Dominican Summer League last year, then crushed a 450-foot home run in the Cactus League.