In a world of big tools and top prospects, these Minor Leaguer players stood out amongst the rest in 2025. They were the names that could be found atop the statistical leaderboards all summer, the top performers over the marathon that is the Minor League season.
Here are the Minor Leagues' 2025 final leaders in the major statistical categories both at the plate and on the mound.
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Batting Average (.336)
Cody Freeman, 3B (TEX No. 24)
Round Rock Express (AA)
The 24-year-old reached the Majors for the first time this summer amid the best performance of his career. Before that, he amassed 129 hits in 384 at-bats across 97 games at Double-A. That was enough -- though just barely -- for the former fourth-round pick to hang on to the Minors' batting title, though he only outpaced El Paso catcher Luis Campusano by 0.0000597 points in the official math.
OPS (1.036)
Luis Campusano, C
El Paso Chihuahuas (AAA)
The Padres' second-round pick from 2017, Campusano could always hit. But injuries kept him off the field for most of the past two seasons. Healthy again in 2025, he had a career year, finishing either first or second in all three slash line categories and losing the Minors' batting title by fractions of percentage points. Campusano finished tied for first in on-base percentage (.441) with Memphis' Bryan Torres. He also paired 25 homers with 95 RBIs to rank second in slugging (.595), falling short to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre's Jose Rojas by four measly percentage points in the latter category. He was the only player to finish within the top five in batting, on-base and slugging this season.
Home runs (36), RBIs (122), Total Bases (315)
Ryan Ward, OF, Dodgers
Oklahoma City Comets (AAA)
The 27-year-old Ward eclipsed the 30-homer mark for the second straight season amid one of the most dominant power campaigns in recent memory, as he hit .290/.380/.557 and smacked four homers in his last eight games to edge out Spencer Jones for the MiLB home run crown. Ward threw in 113 runs scored (4th most in MiLB) and 16 steals for good measure while also, perhaps unsurprisingly, leading Minor League batters in extra-base hits with 73. In the end, Ward's 315 total bases and 122 RBIs were both the most in the Minors since 2019. The 2019 eighth-rounder finished 2025 with 150 career homers in six MiLB seasons.
Stolen bases (100)
Kendall George, OF (LAD No. 24)
Great Lakes Loons (High-A)
George went on a historic base-stealing binge down the stretch, swiping 15 bags in five games become the fourth player to swipe at least 100 in the past 20 years, joining Billy Hamilton (2011, '12), Chandler Simpson (2024) and Delino DeShields Jr. (2012) in that exclusive club. The 36th overall pick from the 2023 Draft is the Minors' fastest man. He needed only 111 games to crack the century mark and outran everybody else by at least 20 bases; the second-place finisher, White Sox prospect Jordan Sprinkle, finished with 80 steals. George stole three or more bases in 14 games this season -- incredibly, there have only been 12 such instances across the Majors this season -- and 34 bases in August, which would've broken the MLB record set by Rickey Henderson in July 1983.
Hits (178)
Rhylan Thomas, OF
Tacoma Rainiers (AAA)
The 25-year-old Thomas notched 178 hits in 134 games -- an average of 1.32 per day and the most in the Minors in the past five seasons. He also had a week-long stint in the Majors, so that number could've theoretically been higher. As it was, Thomas hit .325/.380/.411 while stealing 35 bases for Tacoma and finished 12 hits ahead of the Minors' second-place finisher.
ERA (1.43), SO (179)
Jonah Tong, RHP (NYM No. 4/MLB No. 43)
Binghamton Rumble Ponies (AA), Syracuse Mets (AAA)
The Mets' 22-year-old rookie arrived in the Majors on the heels of one of the most dominant Minor League seasons in decades. He was far and away the Minors' strikeout leader at the time of his Aug. 29 promotion, accumulating an eye-popping 14.2 K/9 across 113 2/3 innings, mostly at Double-A. His swing-and-miss stuff was so far out ahead of the field that he missed all of September while pitching in the Majors and still held onto the Minors' K Crown. He held opponents to one run or fewer in 18 of 23 starts in the Minors and allowed only two earned runs over his final seven.
WHIP (0.89)
Shane Murphy, LHP, White Sox
Winston-Salem Dash (High-A), Birmingham Barons (AA), Charlotte Knights (AAA)
The 24-year-old southpaw spent much of the year carving up Southern League hitters, as much of his excellent numbers -- 1.66 ERA in 26 games (23 starts), a .199 batting average against -- occurred at Birmingham. His proved especially stingy with the Barons, issuing only 15 walks in 110 2/3 IP -- merely 1.2 BB/9. Overall he walked only 25 in 135 1/3 total innings, leading to the WHIP that topped Tong by 0.03 on the leaderboards. Murphy, Tong and Carolina righty Melvin Hernandez were the only qualified MiLB hurlers to post WHIPs under 1.00.
More worth noting:
Doubles machine: Padres prospect Yonathan Perlaza went two-bagger happy at Triple-A El Paso, legging out 49 doubles in 138 games to lead the Minors. Perlaza's doubles total was the most in the Minors since 2016 and 9th most in the past 20 years.
Coming to the plate ... and around to score: Tacoma leadoff hitter Samad Taylor led the Minors in runs with 124, the most in MiLB since 2019 and tied for the seventh most in the past 20 years. It helped that he went to the plate a whopping 657 times in 137 games -- the most plate appearances in a single Minor League season since at least 2005 (to boot, Taylor also spent a week in the Majors with Seattle). The previous mark of 652, set by Juan Brito in 2024, was also matched this season by Ryan Ward, the Minors' home run champion.
Put it in play: 2025 marked the first time since 2007, and only the second time since at least 2005, that no batter accumulated more than 180 strikeouts during the Minor League season.