Posted in Prospects, tagged Tape Measure Blasts on February 12, 2015| Leave a Comment »
The 2015 season will be here before you know it. In the meantime, it’s prediction time. Here are the Mc Paper’s 100 names to know.
Baseball prospectus says forget 100, i am going with the 101 top prospects .
If that is not enough, check the Fantasy Rundown.
Posted in Around the Web, Minors, MLB, Opening Day, Prospects, Rookie Of Year, Rookies on March 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Unless your name is John Orelud, each baseball player has to go down to the minor leagues, and work his way up the food chain. It is not an easy journey for a player trying to force his way onto a major league roster. Every step along the way, the minor league players performance is analyzed and scrutinized. The players results are compared to the their peers in the current season, and historically to any player who has come through a similar path.
The game of projecting a player’s career based on minor league numbers is not an easy one. For every success case such as an Evan Longoria, there is another player on the other side of the spectrum that fools the critics. Anyone remember when third baseman Andy Marte was rated as a better prospect than David Wright? There are tons of examples out their of players who lived up to the hype, and those who were utter failures:
Jesse Foppert, Joel Guzman, Andy Marte, Sean Burroughs, Greg Miller
Todd Van Poppel, Brien Taylor, Darren Driefort
However, each year we pay attention to these players known as a prospects, phenom, young talent, the future, what ever name you want to give these guys. Some of these players make it, some do not. Another factor in all of this is opportunity. There are some players who did not shows up on the big time prospect lists and go on to have wonderful careers as late bloomers. Matt Holiday is one guy in this mold. Jason Bay is another. How can we forget Big Papi started his career out as with Twins? Johan Santana certainly didn’t start with the Twins organization either.
Now, one last thing that you can’t put a number to (at least yet) is a player make up. The player who has a good head on his shoulders and can get over the failures from previous day, and move on and get past the bad day is better equipped to be successful. The game of baseball is one of always making adjustments and dealing with failure.
With this mind, when you think prospects, think about the combination of talent, opportunity, and makeup. These three together give you an indication of what kind a player you have.
Baseball Digest Prospect Sandwich
Top Prospect Alert (by team)
Keith Law’s rankings
Scoutingbook.com Prospect Matrix
Posted in American League, Around the Web, Minors, National League, Projections, Prospects, Rookie Of Year, Rotisserie, ROY on February 17, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Each year, USA Today comes out with their 100 names you need to know for the upcoming season. This is a good resource of getting to know some of the minor league players that are usually at that point of their career where they are ready make a big impact at the major league level.
Here are a few of the players making the 2011 top ten of the “100 Names You Need to Know:
#1 Aroldis Chapman
Bullpen is the answer to the first big question about the Cuban flamethrower for this season. That’s where he’ll pitch, though the Reds aren’t ruling out a future role in their rotation. The next question revolves around when and if he could take over for closer Francisco Cordero, who is entering the final guaranteed year of his contract ($12 million option for 2012) and allowed baserunners last season at the highest rate of his career.
#2 Craig Kimbrel
Kimbrel, 22, got a taste of key late-inning situations late last season and in the playoffs. His 14.4 strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate through three minor league seasons was impressive enough, but he boosted that to 16.9 in his 25 combined regular season and playoff innings in the majors last year.
#3 Freddy Freeman
Freeman will show up this spring with the first base job and expectations he can be as impactful as Heyward. A lefty like his close friend Heyward, Freeman’s best attribute might be his defense, though he finished in the Class AAA International League’s top 10 in batting before turning 21 in September. His 18 homers last year dispelled concerns the 6-5, 225-pounder might not develop big-time power.
#6 Logan Morrison
Florida has plenty to chirp about with its trio of young studs on offense. Twitter-happy Morrison – and not Mike Stanton or Gaby Sanchez – remains eligible for our list thanks to his late-July 2010 call-up. Morrison moved to the outfield last year after older Sanchez beat him out for the Marlins’ first base job.
Posted in Minors, MLB, Prospects on April 10, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Each year I read all the minor league resources I can get a hold of. A comprehensive list of web sites on the minor league players to know is sure to include Prospect Junkies, MLB Fantasy Prospects , Prospect Insider , Project Prospect , Rays Prospects ,Mets Minors , Braves Minors ,Scouting Book and Johns Sickels Minor League Ball . Many of the selections are players that won’t neccesarily make an impact in 2010, but could be big contributors in future years. Without further adieu, here are my 2010 selctions:
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Ian Desmond watch
Posted in Around the Web, Mets, Minors, Prospects on March 5, 2010| Leave a Comment »
As the Mets had one of their worst offensive seasons in team history in 2009 scoring only 671 runs, with only 95 HRs. As, compared with 799 runs and 172 HRs the previous year. We have former Mets executive Tony Bernazard to blame, but when David Wright goes yard to the right side for the first time in a while (inside edge database reference).
With a new approach at the plate instilled by hitting coach Howard Johnson, along with added muscle, we expected a big bounce back from Wright. The Citi Field dimension change sure helps too. Ike Davis is not too far away either .
Some other Tape Measure Blasts:
Posted in American League, Around the Web, Minors, MLB, National League, Opening Day, Projections, Prospects on February 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Each year, USA Today comes out with their 100 names you need to know for the upcoming season. The list is different from typical prospect lists. Its typically a good resource for fantasy leagues, as these are players who have a good chance to make contributions for the upcoming season:
These aren’t necessarily baseball’s 100 best prospects because many top prospects are too far down in the minor leagues to contribute in the majors this season. Others are stuck behind established major leaguers.
Not all of the players on our list have rookie status, either, but our standard for inclusion is that a player must have had more innings (for pitchers) or at-bats (for hitters) in the minor leagues in 2009 than he has had during all of his major league time.
Conversely, Baseball America released their top 100 prospect list for 2010 .
The Top 100 Prospects list is the culmination of our offseason prospect coverage, which begins with our reviews of the top talent in each minor league and proceeds with ranking the talent in each major league farm system.
Posted in Minors, MLB, Prospects, Rule5 on February 21, 2010| 1 Comment »
In preparing for your fantasy drafts for 2010, most owners will target a few sleepers to go along with the consistent performers. However, most of the time with sleepers, you have to have the roster flexibility, and realize they might not make an immediate impact early on. But, if you can uncover a player you can get at a below market value, that can provide long term dividends, that might be the difference to give you a competitive advantage.
One avenue that I check out each and every year, is to take a look at the Rule V draft selections, that are chosen at MLB’s winter meetings. Last year, I selected Everth Cabrera in all of my leagues, after researching all the players in the 2008 Rule V class. When I announced his name at the draft, everybody was like who??? I had seen that with the Rockies minor league system, he had achieved over 70 stolen bases. Moreover, I had witnessed that Cabrera could hit, whereby he launched a triple while watching a spring training game on TV. I was sold on this player going into draft season.
In looking at the latest rule V draft, the following players look intriguing :
Pirates – John Raynor (from Marlins)
Royals – Edgar Osuna (From Braves)
Indians – Hector Ambriz (From D-Backs)
Diamond Talk MLB on Fox Fangraphs CBS