This new decade of ours is only one baseball season old, but baseball fans have already seen the future in some respects. Buster Posey, Jason Heyward, Starlin Castro, Mike Stanton and Stephen Strasburg each had huge rookie seasons, and they are not alone. Meanwhile, Albert Pujols shows no signs of slowing down as he enters his second decade of dominance over the league. Nor are CC Sabathia or Joe Mauer done building their Cooperstown cases.
Who else will emerge as elite talents of the future in the big leagues? Which big names of today will burn out? Which will rise to superstardom before the decade comes to a close? The answers to these questions can affect the prognosis for any franchise, not to mention the decision-making for keeper-league fantasy players.
Obviously, this is an exceptionally hard list to formulate: We are trying to predict nearly ten years into the future here, and the level of certainty is close to zero for most of these players. Nonetheless, it is a fun and thought-provoking question: Who will be the best? Read on for a power ranking of the guys the game will remembers as its very best of this young decade.