Teams from the East and West divisions have dominated baseball lately -- you have to go back to the 2016 Chicago Cubs for the last time a team from the Central won a World Series.

But could that be changing in the near future? If MLB Pipeline's newly updated Top 100 Prospects list is any indication, that may be the case.

We've broken down our preseason 2025 rankings a number of ways and now turn our attention to how the divisions stack up. Of course, it's worth noting that Top 100 prospects are not the same as farm rankings, depth of talent is just as crucial, but this is one way of looking at top-end talent that's nearing the Majors.

Just like last year, the NL Central has the most Top 100 prospects among MLB's six divisions, but there's quite a change after that:

Top 100 Prospects breakdown by division:
NL Central: 23
AL Central: 22
AL West: 15
AL East: 14
NL East: 14
NL West: 12

The AL Central is the big riser, going from 15 to 22. The White Sox are a big part of that improvement (two in 2024, six in 2025), especially after landing Kyle Teel (No. 32) and Braden Montgomery (No. 55) as part of the return for Garrett Crochet.

That also means the two Central divisions make up almost half of the Top 100 prospects in baseball. Which is a pretty important place to be considering their markets and payrolls tend to be smaller than that of their coastal rivals. Among the seven teams with five or more Top 100 prospects, four hail from Central divisions.

The other four divisions are fairly balanced on top prospect talent, which is a change from 2024. Last year's list included 20 prospects in the AL East and 18 in the NL West, with just nine from the AL West. Given that this was the first preseason rankings since 2019 with at least one player from every team, it's no surprise that the strength of each division is closer.

Beyond just the sheer quantity of top-end prospects, we can also assess quality by grading players on Prospect Points. In this basic system, the No. 1 prospect is worth 100 points, the No. 2 prospect is worth 99 points and so on. Here's how the divisions shake out with their top prospects and rankings in parentheses.

AL Central: 1,286 (Walker Jenkins, Twins, No. 3)
NL Central: 915 (Bubba Chandler, Pirates, No. 15)
NL West: 783 (Roki Sasaki, Dodgers, No. 1)
AL East: 774 (Roman Anthony, Red Sox, No. 2)
AL West: 686 (Sebastian Walcott, Rangers, No. 17)
NL East: 606 (Dylan Crews, Nationals, No. 4)

By this measure, the AL Central has pulled well ahead of the NL Central. The gap between them is larger than the gap between the NL Central and the last-place NL East. Having three of the six best prospects in baseball -- Jenkins, Detroit's Jackson Jobe (No. 5) and Max Clark (No. 6) -- and 12 in the top 40 goes a long way toward running up that total.

In fact, the AL Central's score of 1,286 is the highest mark MLB Pipeline has ever recorded. We expanded to a Top 100 in 2012, and the previous best was the 2017 NL Central (1,215), a group led by Alex Reyes (Cardinals), Tyler Glasnow (Pirates) and Austin Meadows (Pirates) in the Top 10 that featured nine players in the top 30.

Meanwhile, the AL West may have the third-most prospects among the divisions, but because Walcott and Colt Emerson (No. 20) are its only prospects in the top 30, it falls toward the bottom of the Prospects Points list.

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We've taken a look at how the divisions compare to each other, but what about the leagues? Altogether, they're quite even, with 51 in the AL and 49 in the NL, and even the point totals (AL: 2,746, NL: 2,304) are in the same ballpark. But that belies the differences between the composition of prospects.

AL East: 13 hitters (761 points), 1 pitcher (13 points)
AL Central: 19 hitters (1,038), 3 pitchers (248)
AL West: 12 hitters (555), 3 pitchers (131)
NL East: 7 hitters (317), 7 pitchers (289)
NL Central: 15 hitters (537), 8 pitchers (378)
NL West: 9 hitters (577), 3 pitchers (206)

American League teams have almost 50 percent more hitting prospects than the National League (44 vs. 31), and they have an even higher share of Prospect Points (2,354 vs. 1,431). Meanwhile, 18 of the 25 pitching prospects on our Top 100 come from the National League, along with an 873-392 advantage in Prospect Points.

The AL Central's dominance is even clearer when broken down this way. It carries more value just in its hitters than any division has in total -- and has three pitchers among the top 35 prospects to boot.