Inbox: Tatís Jr. or Acuña Jr.?

We'll kick off this week's Inbox by breaking down two of baseball's most exciting players, discuss Top 100 Prospects who could be on the move (to the big leagues or in trades) and then take a quick look at the quality of the 2021 Draft.

There's no question that Ronald Acuña Jr. and Fernando Tatís Jr. are the two most tooled-up young players in the big leagues -- not to mention two of the very best. When both graduated from the Minors, Acuña in 2018 and Tatís a year later, we gave them both 60s on the 20-80 scouting scale for their bats and arms and gave Acuña the edge in power (65-60), speed (65-60) and defense (60-55).

If we were to regrade them at this point of their big league careers, we could give them both 65-70 bats with 70-75 power, 70-75 speed, 60 arms and 55-60 gloves. Looking at Statcast, Tatís barrels the ball a little more frequently and produces slightly higher exit velocities than Acuña, who makes a bit more consistent contact and has a more pronounced launch angle.

Given the choice between two players with the same tools, I'll take the shortstop who's a year younger than the right fielder. If MLB were to hold a draft of all current big leaguers, the first two picks would be Tatís and Acuña in either order.

I'm not sure we're going to see right-hander Matt Manning make his debut with the Tigers this year. While fellow Top 100 Prospects Casey Mize and Tarik Skubal got knocked around in their first couple of big league starts, development matters more than results in Detroit right now. I don't think the Tigers are going to quickly pull the plug on Mize or Skubal, and the rest of their rotation is set with Spencer Turnbull, Matthew Boyd and Michael Fulmer, so presently there's no room for Manning.

The next Top 100 arm to debut in the big leagues might be Yankees right-hander Clarke Schmidt. New York has exactly one starter with a sub-4.60 ERA, just put James Paxton on the injured list with a forearm flexor strain and plays five games in three days against the Mets this weekend.

Another Top 100 pitcher who soon could surface in the Majors is Padres left-hander MacKenzie Gore, who was spotted working out at Petco Park on Tuesday. San Diego has the third-best record in the National League but also a hole in the back of its rotation that the game's best pitching prospect could fill nicely.

I don't believe a Top 100 Prospect will get dealt between now and the Aug. 31 deadline. With the coronavirus creating uncertainty as well as leading to expanded playoffs, the sense I'm getting from clubs is that they'll be reluctant to sacrifice blue-chip prospects for a short-term fix when it's easier to make the postseason than ever before.

In a story earlier this week, we suggested Astros right-hander Forrest Whitley (third straight lost season) and Dodgers catcher Keibert Ruiz (blocked by Will Smith in an organization deep in backstops) as potential Top 100 trade candidates. The Rays have a top-notch double-play combination in Brandon Lowe and Willy Adames, so they could afford to part with one of their two second basemen (Vidal Brujan, Xavier Edwards) on the Top 100, and maybe the Padres would give up catcher Luis Campusano to get more immediate help behind the plate. But I think they'll all stay put.

The 2021 Draft looks like it will have a solid crop of talent, though in many ways we're just guessing about the collegians. The high school showcase circuit was somewhat close to business as usual this summer, and scouts got a lot of looks at the prep class and liked what they saw.

With no Cape Cod League, no U.S. national team and very few of the top players taking the field this summer after playing just four weeks in the spring, scouts have much less feel for the collegians than they normally would at this point. After the Draft was reduced to five rounds in 2020 and many more players returned for an extra year rather than turning pro, the college crop will be deeper than usual in 2021.