Predicting the careers of youth baseball players is often a difficult challenge.

Whether it’s a 10-year-old slugger batting .600 for an entire summer or an 11-year-old pitcher who can’t find the strike zone, there are plenty of unknowns that can impact how a young player turns out. One can never know for sure how teenage growth spurts will create changes in a player’s skills, or which players might struggle with injuries, or who might make a mechanical tweak that unlocks a new level of potential.

But every now and then a group of players comes along that is so gifted, so talented, that one can’t help foreseeing greatness in the future. The 5 Star MVP team that won the 2018 11U Futures Invitational was that kind of squad. With a roster that now boasts three MLB top prospects, four standout players at the Division I level, and four international gold medalists, the 2018 5 Star MVP team might just be the greatest youth baseball team ever assembled.

Don’t believe it? Just take a look through this roster and where these players are in their young careers:

5 Star MVP not only took home the gold medal back in 2018 but did so in dominant fashion. Behind a vintage pitching performance from Seth Hernandez and a barrage of hits from its fleet of sluggers, the superstars from southern California went 5-0 and outscored opponents by a margin of 57-10. A recent phone interview with Rob Prieto, longtime leader of the MVP travel program and head coach of the 2018 11U squad, shed light on how talented the team was.

“That 2018 11-year-old year… that group was special,” said Prieto. “There's going to be so many big leaguers out of that team, it's crazy. And I don't think they're guys that are going to go up and you're going to see them for a year or a couple years and they're gone. There are some names here that are going to be in the big leagues for a long time.”

Prieto coached most of the players for multiple years and knew from the start that they had potential. After learning about the Futures Invitational and the opportunity his players would have to make the 12U National Team, he decided to bring 5 Star MVP to Cary for the first time in 2018. Contrary to the strategy of many, Prieto took a team-first approach to the tournament. As many coaches added players from other programs to complement their rosters, Prieto traveled to Futures with his original team, confident they had what it takes to bring home gold.

“I had just seen them getting better and better and all the work that they put in on the side,” he remembers. “That was a big difference with those guys -- putting in work on the side. I knew the sky was the limit for each kid individually.”

The lineup from MVP’s opening game of Futures highlights how stacked the roster was, with some of college baseball’s biggest stars not even cracking the top half. UCLA’s Aiden Aguayo slotted into the 6-hole, followed by Oregon State’s Adam Haight in the 7-hole and TCU’s Noah Franco batting 10th. The trio combined for five hits and four RBIs in MVP’s 13-3 win over ATP Baseball in game one.

Fast forward eight years later and Aguayo, who Prieto described as “one of the best infielders I ever had,” just finished his freshman season for No. 1 UCLA. He turned 14 doubles plays with top MLB draft prospect Roch Cholowsky in the middle infield for the 52-win Bruins. Not to be outdone, Haight batted .283 with 30 RBIs for No. 8 Oregon State, recording 53 starts in right field and making only one error in his sophomore campaign with the 45-win Beavers. Noah Franco missed a large portion of his sophomore year with TCU due to injury but posted one of the best freshman seasons in the country in 2025. His .313 average, 11 homers, 16 doubles, and 49 RBIs earned him First-team Freshman All-American honors and an invitation to USA Baseball’s Collegiate National Team Training Camp.

“I always thought he had such a high ceiling,” says Prieto about Noah Franco. “[After 11U] he really worked on his game and started developing as a pitcher and a hitter. Before that, I think he was more in his head and didn't trust his abilities, but he's really emerged as one of the top prospects in his age group.”

The 2018 5 Star MVP team travelled to Cary without one of their best players, Anthony Pack Jr., who was out with an injury at the time. Pack Jr. has arguably been the most impressive of all at the college level, winning SEC Freshman of the Year this season with No. 6 Texas. His .358 average and 1.078 OPS have been crucial for the Longhorns in their pursuit of Omaha. One can only imagine the margins of victory had Pack Jr. been healthy in 2018.

In the second game of pool play, 5 Star MVP cruised to a 5-1 victory. They then exploded offensively with a 17-1, mercy-rule triumph in game three. The standout player that day was Dean Moss, a left-handed slugger who was drafted last July out of high school by the Tampa Bay Rays. Moss logged three hits, two runs, two RBIs, and a scoreless inning on the mound, before competing in the 11U Home Run Derby later that night. Prieto recalls the difficult decision about who to select from his team for the Derby.

“There were so many guys to choose from,” he says with a chuckle. “It wasn't an easy choice. But [Dean] kind of stood out from some of the other guys, because he just went up there and took some big hacks. We thought he'd do pretty well, and he won the Home Run Derby.”

Moss also had a younger brother on the team named Dillon, who is now the No. 1 high school catching prospect in the state of Florida and committed to play for Stanford next year. It was the elder Moss in the spotlight in 2018, however, as Dean launched pitch after pitch over the outfield wall at the National Training Complex and received a Gatorade shower.

With an undefeated pool play performance, 5 Star MVP advanced to the weekend semifinals. There, Prieto handed the ball to Seth Hernandez, now the top pitching prospect in all of baseball with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Before he was 6-foot-4 and blowing pro hitters away with his 102-mph fastball, Hernandez was an 11-year-old at Futures with a black eye. Prieto tells the amusing story behind Hernandez’s semifinals pitching performance and the bruise.

“Seth had taken a ball in the face when he was batting during that game, and his whole face was swollen. I'm like, there's no way he's going back out there, because he was on the mound. Then the next inning I turn around and he’s running to the mound, and I'm like, what is he doing? The umpire stopped the game for about 15 minutes, and I went up there to talk to him. And he goes, ‘No, I want to throw, I want to make the [12U National] team.’”

Despite pitching with a swollen left eye, Hernandez threw three scoreless frames, allowing just one hit in the 13-0 win. The right-handed fireballer struck out three and walked none in a sign of what was to come.

"11 years old and an absolute dog,” says Prieto about Hernandez. “Definitely not surprised by what he's doing now.”

The other standout from the semifinals win was Kibru Pam, who hit two doubles and drove in six RBIs. In many ways the star of 5 Star MVP, Pam set the Futures Invitational record with 8 RBIs during the 2018 tournament and started on the mound in the championship game against Top Tier Americans. Behind his shutdown performance and a three-hit day from slugger Paul Dominguez, 5 Star MVP cruised to a 9-5 triumph and claimed the gold. Franco caught the final out and threw it in the air as all the players rushed to celebrate.

“The kids played really well together,” Prieto says about the championship run. “I think all of them really aspired to play for Team USA, to have that across their chest. It wasn't hard to motivate those boys.”

Seven players from 5 Star MVP were invited to participate in the ensuing 12U National Team Training Camp (Paul Dominguez, Gavin Fien, Dylan Green, Adam Haight, Seth Hernandez, Dean Moss, and Kibru Pam). The four who ultimately made the team -- Dominguez, Green, Moss, and Pam -- went on to win a gold medal for Team USA at the 2018 COPABE U-12 Pan American Championships in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Dominguez hit a crucial home run in the title game, and Pam won tournament MVP for his pitching and hitting heroics.

Demonstrating the fickle nature of athletic development, both Dominguez and Pam are now out of the sport. Pam, who Prieto says, “was so much more developed than everybody else that year,” gave up baseball a few years later to pursue becoming a doctor. Dominguez struggled with back injuries during high school, ending his promising career.

“I had never seen a better 12-year-old than Paulie Dominguez,” says Prieto.

Though Gavin Fien missed the 12U roster in 2018, he was only 10 at the time. He returned to the Futures Invitational a year later with the MVP program, winning another 11U title and earning a spot on the 2019 12U roster in the process. After starring for Team USA in the World Cup, Fien went on to become one of the top high school outfielders in the country. The Texas Rangers drafted him with the 12th overall pick in last year’s MLB Draft, just six picks after the Pirates took his former teammate Hernandez. Fien is now a top prospect for the Nationals.

Prieto himself has reached impressive heights since 2018. Last year he won the California JUCO state championship as an assistant coach with Mt. San Antonio College. He then took the head job at Bishop Amat High School in La Puente, California, where he hopes the talented players of the MVP program will join him. MVP has won two more 11U Future Invitational titles since taking gold in 2018.

“The competition [at Futures] is great,” Prieto says. “Every game is pretty much a dog fight. But that year we were so loaded, we kind of ran through everybody.”

“That was typical for that roster.”