Where the 2015 MLB Rookie Class Ranks Among Best of the Last 25 Years

The story of the 2015 MLB season, or one of them anyway, has been the tremendous influx of young talent in what may wind up being the deepest rookie class of all time.

With a second wild-card spot up for grabs and the playing field in both leagues as level as we've seen in recent memory, teams have opted to aggressively promote their top prospects as opposed to playing it safe and letting them spend extra time in the minors.

That has left us with a rookie class of epic proportions, but is it the best rookie class of the past 25 years?

The following attempts to answer that question, though obviously a good deal of projection and guesswork goes into such an exercise.

A few things to consider about how things were ranked:

• Career Performance: The following rookie classes are ranked on the overall talent pool of each rookie class, not necessarily on how each group of players performed in their rookie season. For example, Jose Bautista gives the 2006 class a boost, despite not breaking out until years later.

• Depth: The 1995 rookie class featured Alex Rodriguez, Chipper Jones, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte, but there is a steep drop-off in talent behind those four, and as a result they wound up as an honorable mention. Depth of the rookie class played a significant role in narrowing down the top 10.

• Superstar Talent: Once the top 10 were narrowed down, high-end talent served as something of a tiebreaker when two rookie classes were relatively close.

• Balance: The 2013 rookie class was loaded with pitching but light on hitting. The 2003 rookie class was stacked with position player talent and thin on arms. Both made the list, but neither was in the running for the top spot.

Included on each slide is my take on an All-Rookie Class team as well as the 10 best players not included in said team, an overview of the rookie class as a whole, a quick look at who from the class made the All-Star team as rookies and then a statistical breakdown of the class both in rookie-year performance and career performance.

Enjoy.

Note: Any prospect rankings referenced in the following article come courtesy of Baseball America.

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