Minor League Ball Top 75 Prospects: End of Season Update

Seems fair.

Not sure why the big surprise that Ball and Swihart are not honorable mentions. Without them there are 8 probable top 100 players. Swihart had a good but not fantastic season and doesn't have any ++ tools to back a higher ranking. 2013 was a relatively weak draft class and Ball is a raw HS lefty with a lot of question marks.

I can understand and not surprised at it, but they are possible top 100 cadiadate And fans always expect their team have as many top 100, right?

Ball is No. 7 draft. All top 6 is in top 75. 4 players whose draft order later than Ball in top 75, 3 in Honorable mention.

29. Austin Meadows, OF, Pirates, pick no. 9
52. J.P. Crawford, SS, Phillies, pick no. 16
57. Phillip Ervin, OF, Reds, pick no. 27
61. Reese McGuire, C, Pirates, pick no. 14

HM. Hunter Dozier, INF, Royals, pick no. 8
HM. Hunter Harvey, RHP, Orioles, pick no. 22
HM. D.J. Peterson, 3B, Mariners, pick no. 12

As for Swihart, he is around top 100~ 150 guy before 2013. Both his bat, defense improved a lot this year.

I don't understand why I can't just "expect" they are at least in honorable mention list.

Also, all of those guys played, which helps.

No doubt the Sox have a strong young base of future talent. I think we only one one veteran player signed through 2015.

I wonder if there is a package of young players attractive enough to allow us to trade for 1B Goldschmit of Arizona?

No, it's a Sickels feeling that the Sox chose a high school pitcher who threw seven professional innings.  No one else made the top 75 or HM based on striking out high school kids. (Hunter Harvey pitched 25 innings w/ 33 Ks)

Not really what he said. He said, "after reading too many scouting reports" ... so it was about listening to scouts and other professional prospect types, not readers.

[/quote]If this list doesn't represent the value, or future projection by Sickels, then what the heck does it represent? I thought that was the entire point of these lists.

I don't see any reason to list ball higher or lower based on his 7IP, but if Sickels is ranking seven players before Ball, who were drafted after him, then he must feel that these 7 players have superior value or project to be superior players than Ball. This may be representative of their above-projected performances over ~200AB or his original projections that they were superior prospects to Ball prior to being drafted.

Or is Sickels so focused on minor league (rather than highschool) prospects that we won't rank highschool prospects based on pre-professional experience as it is more difficult to project?


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Minor gripe- I don't think that the placement of a player on any list (no matter how good of an evaluator) really tells us much about a player's present or future value in most cases. I mean, yeah, we can be pretty confident that Byron Buxton is a better prospect than Brandon Jacobs, but we're usually swimming in the grey.

These list are to me, an exercise that is tailored almost exclusively to baseball nerds (like everyone on this board). We aren't scouts and we don't have the time or ability to track everyone, so these lists let us know who to be on the look out for. However, how precise they are, I'm unsure.

Ballplayers are a diverse bunch in terms of present ability, point on the age curve, potential ceiling, likelihood of reaching that ceiling and so on. Compare a guy like Joey Gallo to Brandon Workman. Workman is almost certainly going to have a major league career, but is likely going to be a reliever. There is some possibility he stick in the rotation, but there's also some chance he's relegated to mop up duty over his career. Joey Gallo on the other hand has a 70+ power tool, but K's 40% of his at bats.

How does one balance the floor of a guy like Workman and the possibility (which appears small, at this point) that Gallo one day is able to improve is pitch recognition skills and becomes a slugger at the major league level? It seems pretty much impossible to rank one next to the other, as they're such completely different animals (I love following both though).

I feel that this list is more of an observation that you and I as baseball nerds should be following these draftees because they're having some success and were well regarded of going into the draft than you and I should be worried about Trey Ball being a bust.

Uh, why'd you leave off Buxton?

My bad - meant 'Gausman' because Sickels has him as being graduated.

Figured it was something like that, but wanted to get it from the horse's mouth.

It's still considerably more than they have to go on with Ball.