{"id":15278,"date":"2013-01-30T10:07:56","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T10:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=15278"},"modified":"2013-01-30T10:07:56","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T10:07:56","slug":"prospects-are-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=15278","title":{"rendered":"Prospects are good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/MlbHlSq.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6025\" title=\"MlbHlSq\" src=\"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/wp-content\/MlbHlSq.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a>MLB.com published their <a href=\"http:\/\/mlb.mlb.com\/mlb\/prospects\/watch\/y2013\/\" target=\"_blank\">Top 100 prospect list<\/a> on Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n<p>As expected, the Texas Rangers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 shortstop prospect Jurickson Profar was listed as the best rookie-eligible player in the game.\u00c2\u00a0 The Baltimore Orioles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Dylan Bundy came in second and won the crown as the best pitching prospect.<\/p>\n<p>There is plenty of Major League news to keep up with, especially when factoring in the time difference. Covering all the Minor League news as well can often be a time commitment too far and the wealth of online resources about prospects, whilst being a goldmine to those with a keen interest in the topic, can only serve to overwhelm the rest of us.<\/p>\n<p>What I want to know about prospects is essentially:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Who are the best prospects in baseball?<\/li>\n<li>Who are the main prospects at each team that I should know about?<\/li>\n<li>How do the different farm systems rank against each other?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>MLB.com\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prospect coverage is led by writer Jonathan Mayo and is an excellent free resource for fans to learn about the above. The Top 100 list announced yesterday was preceded by a series of columns listing Mayo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s rankings of the top 10 prospects at each position and all of the rankings are now available to sort however you wish.<\/p>\n<p>The videos included for the best prospects can also be useful in helping you learn the pronunciation of the names. \u00c2\u00a0You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pronounce the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcl\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the Pittsburgh Pirates\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 right-handed pitching prospect \u00c2\u00a0Jameson Taillon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name (it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pronounced \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctie-on\u00e2\u20ac\u2122), for example.<\/p>\n<p>Away from the MLB.com coverage, the free resource I browse the most is the MinorLeageBall blog run by John Sickels. His <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minorleagueball.com\/2013\/1\/14\/3876450\/updated-2013-top-20-prospect-lists-per-organization\">team-by-team Top 20 prospect series<\/a> is essential reading every winter, whether you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re participating in a Fantasy Dynasty League or if you just have a general interest in learning about each team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best young players coming through.<\/p>\n<p>The player rankings constructed in the team-by-team series informs Sickel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s annual <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minorleagueball.com\/2013\/1\/28\/3925542\/baseball-prospect-book-2013-john-sickels\">Baseball Prospect Book<\/a>, available in print or as a pdf. If you enjoy his work for free during the season, buying the annual is the best way to show your appreciation.<\/p>\n<p>The one thing Sickels didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do prior to 2012 is help with the third question on my list. Ranking the farm systems is something he had consciously avoided in the past, primarily because he saw the process as being relatively unhelpful beyond the extremes of noting the very best and worst systems.<\/p>\n<p>Sickels finally gave in to the demand last year and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.minorleagueball.com\/2013\/1\/28\/3925786\/2013-baseball-farm-system-rankings\">now publishes a farm system list<\/a> accompanied by suitable caveats to explain the inherent limitations in the process.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals will be pleased to see their team coming out on top, whilst fans of the Detroit Tigers should make sure to enjoy their current Major League team with limited help on the way.<\/p>\n<p>That shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be too much of a concern for the Tigers because having a strong farm system is a means to an end, not an end in itself.<\/p>\n<p>After seeing the Cardinals at the top of Sickels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 list, the next thing I did was scroll down to see where my Oakland A\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s had ended up. They are all the way down at 26<sup>th<\/sup> on the list, but their descent from 10<sup>th<\/sup> in the 2012 list is predominantly due to prospects graduating up to the Major League team last season, which is exactly what you want to see.<\/p>\n<p>The same could be said for the Toronto Blue Jays. They were the best farm system on Sickels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 list this time last year and are now 22<sup>nd<\/sup>; however this is due to them trading away prospects to acquire the likes of Jose Reyes, Josh Johnson, Mark Buehrle and R.A. Dickey this offseason. \u00c2\u00a0The Blue Jays feel they have an opportunity to be successful over the next couple of seasons and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve used their prospects to give themselves that chance.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to know who to look out for during Spring Training, who might get called up this season or who might be traded away for Major League help, reading Mayo and Sickels is a must.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MLB.com published their Top 100 prospect list on Tuesday evening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[503,50,553,520],"class_list":["post-15278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-featured","tag-minor-leagues","tag-mlb-2","tag-prospects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15278"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15289,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15278\/revisions\/15289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}