Archive for the “Reader Top 20” Category1. Rasmus Not too shabby looking, if you ask me. Here’s the discussion question of the day – Is there a player that didn’t rank who you feel will rank highly next year? Who is your favorite sleeper pick? The last poll was a close one for a while until the Richard Castillo fan club came out in full force. I’m still not sure how high his ceiling is, but he does have youth on his side and an advanced feel for pitching, so we’ll see. What concerns me is his high fly ball tendencies and lack of a knockout pitch. Deric McKamey ranked him his #14 prospect and gave him the same grade he gave Mortensen and Lynn, and he’s a professional scout (for the Cardinals, actually), so maybe my feelings are wrong on Castillo. 1. Rasmus Here’s the final poll, with as many names as I could think of for the final spot.
Francisco Samuel is so far ahead in the last poll I’m just gonna call it now and move on. Maybe I shouldn’t stump anymore, I just felt it was a travesty Samuel had been so ignored before. Maybe there are just that many players ahead of him, and it’s not like he was super-high on my own list, but I believe he does deserve to be in the top 20. I cut off names that received 5% or less of the vote, I guess you all really disagree with our Tyler Henley selection. I didn’t have him in my top 20, but I can see the reasoning behind Roarke and the Robot’s decision to put him on theirs. I was a little surprised to see everyone so down on Ottavino and Herron, two pitchers that were easy selections for our top ten last year, but I guess it’s the whole single season performance conundrum. They really are tricky players to rank. Speaking of which, I thought I’d throw P.J. Walter’s name out there. He had a crummy season and demonstrated rather poor control by his normal excellent standard, but he is close to the big leagues and had a strong winter league performance – 3.09 FIP, 3.45 K/BB ratio, playing for Jose Oquendo and with battery mates Bryan Anderson and Yadier Molina. His bounce back was good enough to make for a story in the latest issue of Baseball America. (Subscriber content). I am in no way stumping for P.J., but I figure it would be interesting to see how one’s winter league performance effects his stock in the eyes of the crowd. In the last poll it seemed to help Tyler Greene. 1. Rasmus
Death by plunking averted. Adam Reifer won out as the #16 prospect. Lance Lynn was not far behind, close enough to put him at #17. With only two more spots to go I notice that Francisco Samuel hasn’t got a lot of love so far. Pardon me if I stump for him a bit here. For one thing, his name comes up frequently when other clubs are looking to deal with the Cardinals. Then also, for what it’s worth, he made Keith Law’s top ten Cardinals and KLaw believes he’s a potential Top 100 prospect for 2010. Says the KLaw:
Kevin Goldstein called him his sleeper going into the season. Other clubs love him. Prospect-niks love him. No one around here seems to. I know the walk rate is atrocious, but we’re talking about a 150 lb. kid without a whole ton of pro experience here. I also just realized I left off Tyler Henley, who came in #16 on the FR Top 20. That’s my mistake, Henley more than has deserved to be on the poll earlier. Also added are Tyler Greene, who had a strong showing in the AFL, and Tyler Herron, who was in our top ten last year. That’s three Tylers to choose from, and a reminder for me not to go with a trendy name when naming my 2nd born. 1. Rasmus
Allen Craig wins out at #14, with Niko close enough behind to give him the #15 spot. Seems about right to me, although if you don’t start voting for Adam Reifer, you might find yourself getting plunked with a 98 MPH fastball when you least expect it. It could happen in the restroom, in the breakroom, or while you’re sitting at your cubicle at work. It could happen on the drive home… Just remember, with every vote you give to someone else, Adam Reifer’s hatred towards you grows. This next poll I wanted to throw in a few different names, Read the rest of this entry » Yet another close vote. Mitchell Boggs beat out Clayton Mortensen by a total of five votes, and Kozma wasn’t all that behind the two pitchers. Because the voting was close between the three, I’m going to move things along in the Reader Top 20 by giving #12 and #13 to Morty and the Koz-Whiz and we’ll now jump to another tier of prospects, if you will. Despite their lack of proximity to the big leagues or long track record, Niko Vasquez, Lance Lynn, Francisco Samuel and Adam Reifer all made some prospect guru’s top ten because of their upside. Niko arguably had the best pro debut of any high school hitter in the draft and the best debut of any high school Cardinal hitter since Rasmus. Lynn to many is a sure-fire workhorse. Then you have Reifer and Samuel, two relievers with the stuff to close. And in contrast with the hype, you have a player who is all track record in Allen Craig. I’m really enjoying running through this exercise so far, more so than I thought I would. The choices you have all the way down at 14 are pretty good, so yeah, I’d say I feel pretty good about the system’s depth. 1. Rasmus
This is becoming a fun little exercise. Last time we had Jess Todd beat out David Freese in a photo finish. Now we just had Jon Jay win a close race, just beating out Clayton Mortensen, Pete Kozma and Mitch Boggs. I wonder if this has to do with the metrics that came out yesterday and revealed that our man Jay has some range. I guess this also speaks to the depth of the system. It’s just a hard system to rank, because after the top few guys, there are so many B, C+ type of guys who are pretty close to the big leagues. While I think there are some guys with higher overall future potential (Reifer, Vasquez), they are pretty far away. While B and C+ guys have relatively high rates of attrition, we have so many that quite a few should stick. That should make things a lot easier in the future to pay that big name free agent, because so many cheap, homegrown players be filling spots. What the ignorant, loud-mouthed, message board posting side of the fan-base doesn’t realize is that the Cardinals are indeed committed to winning. It’s just not in the “old ignore the farm system and trade every good prospect we can” mode that Jocketty was, as we found out, the market caught up with Jocketty and he was no longer able to spin his magic. If anything, he become the one getting spun. Building from within should allow more leeway in the future, allowing for the best of both worlds. 1. Rasmus For this next poll, it’s just the three highest vote getters from the last poll. Vote away.
That was the tightest race imaginable, with Todd squeaking by Freese by only three votes. In case you were wondering, to settle a definite winner I put a time limit as to when the poll would close, which was 12:01. I halfway expect someone circumventing the system and voting multiple times in order to screw with my head, but only a complete loser would do something so lame and pointless. Actually, I can see why both were so close. Both players burst on the scene to post two equally terrific seasons. Todd was BA’s Cardinal pitcher of year, Freese was their Cardinal hitter of the year. Both are close to the majors and both seem to be fan favorites, Freese for his St. Louis roots and Todd because “He Will Destroy Us All” fame. Both are solid prospects that project be contributors at the big league level, but are somewhat limited in ultimate upside.
#7 was a three horse race between Garcia, Freese and Todd, with Garcia taking the prize. Following Garcia, things were very close between Freese and Todd , so we’ll do a run off between the two for the #8 spot. Second place gets #9 to speed things along, unless anyone can give me a strong enough objection to do it a different way.
So far your results are looking an awfully lot like ours. Is that the confirmation bias, or are these more obvious then I thought? It should get trickier from here. Consider some of the other top tens. Baseball Digest Daily has compiled all the rankings into one handy spreadsheet, click over to the NL Central and see what I’m talking about. The first three or four are all about the same, but after that, the rankings diverge greatly. Some players that are top ten prospects on one list don’t make the cut, for example Jess Todd is # 4 on BA’s list and he doesn’t crack Keith Law’s. OTOH, Keith has Niko Vasquez and Francisco Samuel on his list. Kevin Goldstein has Adam Reifer. BA and our list are the only ones to have David Freese. That’s a lot of disparity. Here’s what we have so far. Vote now for #7.
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