Looking for that last minute holiday gift? Nothing stuffs the stockings better than some MLB Pipeline Inbox questions and answers, right? Whether you’ve been naughty, nice or somewhere in between, we’ve got some good topics for your perusal.

What’s a player comp on Riley Greene? -- @r3surr3ctm3

This would be a fun spot to have a video compilation of Jim Callis and I saying on TV how much we don’t like comps. But in the holiday spirit, I’m in a giving mood. So I reached out to folks I know in the pro scouting world for who Greene, the Tigers’ No. 2 prospect (and No. 7 overall), reminds them of. Greene is coming off of a tremendous year in Double- and Triple-A that included a trip to the SiriusXM All-Star Futures Game in Denver in July. Here are the responses I received:

Scout 1: A better version of Andre Ethier. His swing is a little Eric Hosmer-like. There’s a little Christian Yelich/Jason Heyward in some ways early in their career.

Scout 2: Garrett Anderson from the Angels.

Scout 3: Kyle Tucker

Scout 4: David Justice meets Jon Jay?

Talk to me about Quinn Preister. Think he’ll have a big year? -- @OnefiveThe

I was just thinking about Priester, the Pirates’ top pitching prospect who is No. 2 on their top 30 and No. 49 on the Top 100, because this week we’re going to be looking back at the predictions we made for breakout prospects back in January and who turned out to be the breakout prospect for each organization. Priester was my prediction for the Pirates back then and while he had a solid 2021 campaign, (sneak peek) he did not end up being my choice for Pirates’ breakout prospect at the end of the year.

There were a lot of things to like about Priester, the 2019 first-round pick who spent the year with High-A Greensboro, pitching all year at age 20. This was his first full year, after all, though he created a lot of buzz with how he looked at the Pirates’ alternate site and during instructs in 2020. The right-hander missed a fair amount of bats (9.03 per nine), and was relatively tough to hit (.225 batting average against) while getting a lot of ground-ball outs (1.78 GO/AO). His 3.04 ERA led the High-A East. From July on, he had a 2.87 ERA and .200 BAA.

All of this is a good foundation for him to jump to the upper levels and I’m still very bullish on his combination of stuff, size, ceiling and feel for pitching. So yes, I think he’ll have a big year. Keep in mind he’s just 21 with just 134 1/3 official career innings under his belt, but I could see him pitching his way from Double- to Triple-A in 2022 and further cementing his place as one of the best pitching prospects in baseball. Could he see Pittsburgh? It’s not out of the question, as I think he’ll pitch well enough to knock on the door, but there’s also no reason to rush.

MLB Pipeline seems to be high on Brock Jones. Is that consensus, or is he a polarizing prospect? Why is that? -- @RHouset

This one was answered on this week’s Pipeline Podcast, a fantastic episode with No. 2 Draft prospect Termarr Johnson as guest, so be sure to check it out.

It’s true that Jones, the talented outfielder from Stanford, is a bit all over the map when looking at 2022 Draft lists on other sites. We have him at No. 7 overall on our Top 100, the first of three college outfielders who show up in the 7-10 range. As we’ve said repeatedly, the list can, and will, change quite a bit between now and when the 2022 Draft comes around in July. For now, though, I feel Jones is right about where he should be based on industry feedback.

I can’t speak to the processes other entities use in ranking players, but I can provide a little peek behind the curtain at ours. Jim Callis and I split up the country for our Draft coverage. We talk to scouts in all of our assigned areas to develop lists like the Top 100 (It will eventually be a Top 250 in the spring.), both area scouts and regional cross-checkers. We’ll rank our names and then combine for a draft of the top 100. Then we send that list out to dozens of scouting directors, national cross-checkers and executives to get their feedback on the order, as they have the bird’s-eye view of the entire class.

In looking at the feedback we received, no one advocated moving Jones from where we initially had him. There were differing opinions about the other college outfielders in that range, Chase DeLauter from James Madison and Virginia Tech’s Gavin Cross, but by and large, scouts thought we had them in the right area. And Jones has some upside as a former two-sport standout, who played football and baseball for Stanford for a year before focusing solely on baseball in 2021. He had a very good spring season and showed off his tools, albeit a bit inconsistently, last summer with Team USA. He’ll have to go and prove it in the spring, but the guess here is he’s going to take another step forward with another year of baseball-only work under his belt.