Jeff and I rolled out our list prior to the season. After a month of play, how are the top 20 prospects doing?
#20. Boone Whiting
Whiting’s been on the disabled list to start the season and has yet to throw this year.
#19. Brandon Dickson
In 8 starts spanning 47.1 innings, Dickson has struck out just 31 batters — a decreased rate from 2011 — but maintains a nearly 3:1 K:BB ratio by limiting his walks. Dickson looks like a player good enough to get the occasional call up but unlikely to stick in the majors. He continues to be a solid workhorse for Memphis’ rotation this season. Interestingly, Dickson is the only minor league starting pitcher on the 40-man roster.
#18. Tommy Pham
Pham struggled badly to start the season and found his way back to the disabled list where he’s been for almost a month.
#17. Charlie Tilson
It will be another month before we see Tilson start his season with one of the Cardinals short-season clubs.
#16. Adam Reifer
Reifer is on the Cardinals 40-man roster and is in Memphis working to regain his familiarity with live action after missing 2011 due to a knee injury. Reifer walked two batters in his first appearance of the season and has walked 2 batters in the 16 innings that have followed. Recapturing his strikeout rate (currently below 7K per 9IP) will be key moving forward.
#15. Maikel Cleto
Converted from starting to relieving at the beginning of the season in a perplexing personnel decision, Cleto is currently sporting the best FIP of his career. He’s doing it by striking out more batters. So far so good in the conversion. What continues to make this a strange move is that Cleto displayed considerable upside as a starter with good walk rates (basically unchanged in relief) and a healthy strikeout rate. Time will tell whether the move to the pen works for Cleto in the long term.
#14. Jordan Swagerty
One of the most talked about prospects in Spring Training found himself undergoing Tommy John surgery to start the season. He’ll look to make a return in 2013.
#13. Joe Kelly
Kelly has steadily progressed through the system as a starter. His start at Memphis has been good but not great with dip in his walk rate and groundball rate. Kelly’s strong suit remains his ability to get hitters to roll over on his heavy fastball but triple A hitters have proven more resistant to Kelly’s repertoire.
#12. Ryan Jackson
Jackson continues to hit just enough to look like he might not be a complete black hole in the majors. Combine that with above average defense and you have someone that could be a good utility player or stop gap should Rafael Furcal hit the disabled list. The power mirage of Springfield is dissipating in Memphis where Jackon’s ISO is down by 33%.
#11. Eduardo Sanchez
Promoted to the big leagues. Good luck, Eduardo! Despite the promotion, however, Sanchez was off to his worst season thus far with a crazy high walk rate. Mark me down as unsure about the integrity of his arm.
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The real question is has the Top 20 list changed based on play so far this year.
I think that anyone who isn’t watching these guys on a daily basis and makes claims about changes in the top 20 list at this point is someone with little conviction and blows with the wind. I think that revising a top 20 list more than once a year is more obfuscating than enlightening.
I disagree often Top 20′s include people because of projection and expectations of the players from the previous year. I think we have enough of a sample size for movement in the back end of the Top 20. For Example, How can you justify Boone Whiting being a better prospect when Seth Maness when they have a similar profile as a pitcher yet Maness and succeeded at a higher level more than Whitiing did last year at a lower level. It’s also interesting how early season success Or Juan Castillo having as much success at QC as Stanley did last year. Or guys like Hector Hernandez having early season success, shouldn’t that effect prospect status?
I guess if you ignore the fact that Whiting was age appropriate last year and Maness is slightly old for his league as well as the fact that Whiting has much higher K rates – then you could say there is no case for Whiting over Maness.
Do you really think Hernandez with his nearly equal K:BB ratio deserves to be in the top 20?
I have been as big a booster of Castillo as anyone. But the guy is in his 6th year of pro ball and is in low A. Of course since Stanley isn’t even on this list Im not sure what your point is.
My list is different form this list which i\m sure is different from your list but I don’t see any Eddie Degerman’s or Blake King’s here so it seems silly to nitpick too much.
Not nitpicking I just think it would be interesting to know how things change from Jan to a few months into the season. I think there is a legit argument the guys I’ve mentioned even though I don’t necessarily have them on my list. Would just be interesting to know who rises and who falls based on performance this year so far.
I would hope that outstanding performance would have at least some effect on prospect ratings.
Regarding Hernandez even with the even BB/K rate he’s been very successful this year and is a talented lefty, that has to count for something right?
Successful by what measure?
Conventional measures
W-L so-so
ERA pretty good
WHIP so-so
More advanced measures
FIP Bad
K:BB Bad
groundball rate pretty good.
I would not call that “very successful” either conventionally or sabermetrically.
He’s slightly young for the league but he has 3 seasons of short season ball under his belt so he should be doing pretty well early on.
How I would judge success for him…..
Lefty starter-check
In his 7 games he went 5 or more innings while giving up 3 or less runs 6 times.
43 percent of his earned runs given up were in 1 start and in 3 innings.
He’s given up 3 runs in 1 start and 2 or under in 5 starts.
So ERA and what hand you throw with are how you judge prospects. Got it. Check.
Left handedness gives him an advantage over ever other pitcher that isn’t our Top 4.
Contrary to some people I still do believe in ERA. Essentially he’s had 1 really bad outing and has been good the rest of them.
He’s got outstanding off speed stuff, he’s got enough fastball to be a lefty. He really needs to work on his control but other than that I’m very happy with his season.
Scratch that advantage over everyone not in the Top 2 Tiers…
Tier 1 is Miller, Martinez, Jenkins, Rosenthal
Tier 2 is Swagerty, Kelly, Gast
I agree with Azu.
However, a separate list that might be interesting would be a 5-10 list most likely to graduate, or most ready for the show. This would fluctuate throughout the year based on performance as well as parent club needs.
For instance, Wong, Adams and Miller are getting close to knocking on the door, but none are on the 40 man roster. Dickson is the only starting pitcher on the 40 man.
Peter Kozma is not one of the top porspects, but he could be the next middle infielder called up.
I too agree that a revisit this early in the season is pointless…however, I like a midseason update. I also would like a rising/falling added to updates such as these.
By definition a prospect is an uncertain quantity, so you would think that any prospect list would be in flux as new data comes in.
As I noted in a comment in an earlier thread, tilson’s numbers in extended spring training are excellent, although they are still just est numbers.
Little worried about only 3 extra base hits.
If he has a .500 OBA would it matter that he only had 3 XBH’s? Besides, Barry Bonds got stronger as he got older, Tilson likely will as well :) .
I actually saw about 5 xbh’s in about 4 of his games in Spring. Not sure why he’s had so few since.
Charlie Tilson out until at least September after shoulder surgery
http://www.stltoday.com/sports/baseball/professional/birdland/prospect-tilson-headed-for-shoulder-surgery/article_37601306-9ebe-11e1-ac28-0019bb30f31a.html
Get Tilson some of Barry Bonds steroids and he can heal quicker and be stronger when he does get back. I like your thinking CC, albeit it would probably get him suspended for the first 50 games next year.
Does anyone know what the injury is for Boone Whiting and when he will be back?
A forearm strain or something. From reading about it it doesn’t seem like it should he severe enough to make him miss this much time.