How does Cags stack up against some of the best power-hitting prospects ever?

In all of baseball history, there have only been 50 instances of a player cracking the 50-homer plateau. Thirty-two different players have done it, including five in the past ten years: Aaron Judge (three times), Pete Alonso, Shohei Ohtani, Matt Olson and Giancarlo Stanton.

That’s not very many. Even in a power-hitting era, elite power remains at a premium. Which might help explain why MLB Pipeline has only thrown an 80 grade -- representative of 50-homer potential in the big leagues -- onto a prospect’s power three times. It’s a rare thing, not easy to come by, and raw power isn’t the same as usable power, meaning the power a hitter will be able to get to in games.

All of which leads us to Royals top prospect Jac Caglianone (MLB No. 10), who was summoned to Kansas City for his much-anticipated big league debut Tuesday on the heels of a torrid power surge at Triple-A. Cags' 70-grade power ranked higher than any player in last year's Draft class, and he is only one of five current Top 100 prospects (Coby Mayo, Bryce Eldridge, Charlie Condon, Xavier Isaac) slapped with a 70 grade. Entering the season, MLB Pipeline tabbed the 6-foot-5, 250-pound behemoth as the game's preeminent power prospect.

The expectations are high for Caglianone in large part due to that light-tower power.

"I think it's unequivocal that he has the most raw power in baseball as a prospect right now," Jim Callis said on the latest MLB Pipeline Podcast. "I do think he has the most usable power as well. But the raw power is an easy call.

"It's not even close," Jonathan Mayo agreed. "If you're just talking raw power, it's Jac Caglianone and everybody else far behind."

But how does he stack up against some of the best power-hitting prospects ever? Callis and Mayo ranked Caglianone against the best seeking to answer that question.

1. Bryce Harper

Harper was such a generational prospect that he sported the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 16-year-old and enrolled in junior college early so that he could be eligible for the 2010 Draft, when the Nationals took him No. 1 overall. In the face of enormous expectations, Harper became the generational hitter everyone thought he would. He's a two-time MVP, eight-time All-Star, won the 2018 Home Run Derby and hit 344 homers over his first 14-plus big league seasons.

"Bryce Harper went to junior college at 17 years old and hit 31 homers in a wood bat league," Callis said. "He would be No. 1 on my list."

2. Bo Jackson

Though injuries ultimately kept Jackson from reaching his enormous ceiling as a baseball player, he remains the only professional athlete in history to be named an All-Star in MLB and the NFL. And his power is still near-mythical. Also a Royal, Jackson ended up clocking 141 homers in parts of eight Major League seasons, including a career-high 32 in 1989 for Kansas City.

"We joke about [Rays prospect] Chandler Simpson having 90 or 100 [grade] speed -- Bo Jackson might have had 100 raw power," Callis said. "If we had Statcast data available back then, I bet Bo Jackson was hitting the ball considerably harder and farther than pretty much anybody. Which was amazing, because he didn’t focus on baseball pretty much ever."

3. Caglianone

As a two-way player, Caglianone was one of the most feared sluggers in college baseball history, crushing 68 homers combined during his final two seasons at the University of Florida, with more home runs (35) than strikeouts (26) during his junior season. Meanwhile, his underlying metrics indicated that power was very, very real. Caglianone maxed out with a 121.7 mph exit velocity as a junior and 117.3 mph last fall in the Arizona Fall League, which ranked second-best among batted balls measured by Statcast on the circuit.

Caglianone then crushed 15 homers in 50 games between Double-A and Triple-A this season. He went on an eye-opening run upon reaching Triple-A Omaha, connecting for five homers in his first six games and homering in four straight. One big fly while at Double-A landed atop a nearby building. Caglianone also turned heads with a 120.9 mph single, two hits off Clayton Kershaw during a rehab start and hit .322 with 24 extra-base hits and a .982 OPS overall.

4. Shohei Ohtani

Ohtani's two-way ability made him an extremely unique prospect, and his power earned a 70-grade before he debuted with the Angels in 2018. He hit 22 homers as a rookie, matching his career high in Japan, then hit 18 in 2019 and seven during the shortened 2020 season. Ohtani then reached another level, rattling off seasons of 46, 34, 44 and 54 homers from 2021-24.

"Ohtani's 70 power was legit, but I don't know if we necessarily thought he'd be hitting as many home runs as he has the last few years," Callis said.

Others in the conversation

In 2015, three of MLB's top 11 prospects -- No. 2 Kris Bryant, No. 9 Joey Gallo and No. 11 Miguel Sanó -- received 80s for their power, an aberration that Mayo chalked up to the allure of the trio's raw power.

"When we do these grades, it's a future grade, but we try to sort of ... hedge bets a little bit with where they are, so we must have gone full-on projection," said Mayo. "If someone had said Kris Bryant might hit 45-50 homers a year in the big leagues when he was coming up, yes, that's a top-of-the-line projection, but I don't know that it seemed so far fetched at the time. And then I think the same with Miguel Sanó. The raw power was so ridiculous. I think we did lean into the raw power with all those guys more than we do now."

Highly regarded prospects who didn't receive 80 grades for their power when in the Minors but then blossomed into 50-homer hitters in the Majors include Aaron Judge (three times) and Pete Alonso (once), both of whom received 60 power grades.

"We were light on Alonso because there were questions about his ability to get to the power consistently, when he came out of college and went through the Minors," said Mayo.

"Aaron Judge never had 70 power because he didn't hit for power in college or the Minors," said Mayo.

"He was more of a gap-to-gap guy in the Minors," added Callis.

Even some of the most prolific home run hitters in MLB history wouldn't have received 80 power grades as prospects, contends Callis.

"You've got [Alex Rodriguez] and Barry Bonds up there on the career list for home runs, and those guys were very talented players ... but I think they were seen ... as more plus power. Back then nobody was hitting 50 homers in a season, and I think you would have had 60s on them if you were being realistic."