BA Top 100
Dave · February 23, 2010 at 9:28 am · Filed Under Mariners
Baseball America just released their annual Top 100 prospects list today, with contributions from former USSM writer Conor Glassey. The world is full of prospect lists, but no one has as much information as Baseball America, and this is the ranking you should take the most seriously. The list is free, by the way.
Rankings of note for the M’s:
#11 – Dustin Ackley
#30 – Michael Saunders
#83 – Adam Moore
#94 – Phillippe Aumont
Oh, and if you want to know why the Rangers are scary, they have the #9 (Neftali Feliz), #13 (Justin Smoak), #17 (Martin Perez), and #43 (Tanner Scheppers) prospects on the list.
Phillipe is a Philly.
Nice to place 2 guys in the top 30, but yeah, the Rangers appear to be doing something right, and that’s scary. Even if the name “Tanner Scheppers” is woefully unintimidating-sounding.
Is it just me, or is the link faulty?
The M’s seem to do fine in the list. If every team were equally represented, each team would have a prospect between 1 and 30, 31 and 60 and 61 and 90. I would be interested in seeing which teams do the worst on this list.
And, yes, I think the link is faulty. I tried to access it from mlbtraderumors and could not pull it up.
Yeah, the link doesn’t work for me either.
I’d love to see Saunders have a big spring and earn the LF spot rather than a Bradley/Langerhans combo.
The link should be fine – our site is just crashing.
“Rankings of note for the M’s.”
Too bad the Mariners didn’t sign Tanner Scheppers. I still have no real sense of why they passed on him, beyond fears for his health and a signing budget disproportionately reserved for Ackley.
The list wasn’t bad.
The ratings on tools were whack though. I never saw so many 80’s in my life.
Any chance we might see an update to the Future Forty soon?
Ya think the Rangers would swap Feliz, Smoak, Perez and Scheppers for Bedard? His contract’s only .006 percent of the one A-Rod signed!
I’m just as happy the M’s didn’t take Scheppers (though I would have liked to see them draft Paxton) — I just don’t think his arm survives.
But yeah, Feliz/Smoak/Perez are a heck of a trio to have at the top of one’s farm system; the upside there for the Rangers is astronomical.
#11 overall for Ackley? I like the guy, but is he really that good?
When my mind tries to fathom a brand new #11 prospect with of/1b/2b credentials, I get giddy. Even if he doesn’t quite live up to his star potential, his versatility alone could make him an asset to the M’s for years to come.
I really hope Nick Franklin works out too so that someday we can have the rare pair of middle infielders who can hit left-handed. That would be perfect for our ballpark. A fan can dream…
How can Saunders be at 30?? Isn’t that like ‘should be an all-star someday’? I don’t see that much upside to Saunders.
I understand why he didn’t make this list having missed most of last year, but for prospects with upside Triunfel has to be ahead of Saunders. ?
Angels:
84 Hank Conger, c, Angels
85 Mike Trout, of, Angels
97 Peter Bourjos, of, Angels
A’s:
28 Chris Carter, of/1b, Athletics
29 Michael Taylor, of, Athletics
52 Grant Green, ss, Athletics
Texas was already mentioned but here is their list for completions sake:
09 Neftali Feliz, rhp, Rangers
13 Justin Smoak, 1b, Rangers
17 Martin Perez, lhp, Rangers
42 Tanner Scheppers, rhp, Rangers
Looks to me like the Angels might be in trouble.
The Rays have 7 on the list. #’s 6,18,34,35,54,67,68. That is impressive.
In the whole Top 100, there were 10 80s given out—and that’s for a player’s best tool, not his overall grade. We have…
Hitting: Jason Heyward (1) & Dustin Ackley (11)
Power: Mike Stanton (3), Jesus Montero (4) & Pedro Alvarez (8)
Speed: Desmond Jennings (6) & Dee Gordon (46)
Fastball: Stephen Strasburg (2), Neftali Feliz (9) & Aroldis Chapman (32)
Those are all fair, if you ask me.
Yes.
For those who haven’t seen the list. (1st link.)
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/rankings/top-100-prospects/2010/269546.html
How can Saunders be at 30?
And how can power be his best tool?
Spring Training could be interesting.
I’ve heard that our best farmhands are in the lower minors. Dunno if that’s changed since I heard that but it is a good thing or a bad thing that two of our three “prospects” practically are on the roster (Moore, Saunders) and one will be soon (Ackley)?
Have you looked at his minor league numbers? I don’t know why there’s this tendency to dismiss prospects based on their first ~100 ABs in majors; there were all sorts of people who were happy to see Adam Jones go in the Bedard trade on the same basis, and it was just as inexplicable.
They mentioned that the grading was a combination of potential and possibility of reaching that potential.
Hmmm. The reigning World Series Champion (and perennial payroll champs) New York Yankees have the number 4 prospect – a catcher in fact.
That tells me that high draft picks only take you so far in the prospect development field.
@TomC: yeah, it should also tell you that spending a lot of money on international free agents counts for a fair bit, too. Montero was signed in 2006 out of Venezuela for $2 million (though for some reason, the bonus was later negotiated down to $1.65 million).
Not really. Even Triunfel’s biggest fans have never seen him as a guy with really high upside. He’s a kid with very advanced bat control for his age who could grow into a consistent .300 hitter with gap power, and who could hit 15-18hrs/year. He also doesn’t have an established position. Saunders is an excellent defensive corner outfielder with better patience, more power, and more physical projection. Triunfel has him on bat control and has a prettier swing, but it’s an open question as to who has the higher upside. Personally I go with Saunders, but I’ve always been less of a Triunfel fan than most.
On the possibility of making an impact in the majors, however, it isn’t even close. Saunders is knocking on the door, while Triunfel lost a year of development time and has never in his career performed at a level that fully justified his hype.
This is my first post on USSM and I’m going to tread as lightly as I can because of that fact.
But I have been reading a lot of top 100 lists or prospect rankings lately and decided to go back in time to see how accurate these lists could be.
My overall conclusion was that its just a best guess scenario no matter what you do. And many guys who “can’t miss” do and many that are iffy, become stars. It’s still very possible that Saunders could be better than Ackley, no matter how much information BA has to go on. So while I still love these lists, they come with a big grain of salt for me.
2007:
1. Dice-K “Will be the best Japanese import ever. And no, we’re not forgetting about Ichiro.”
2. Alex Gordon
3. Delmon Young
4. Philip Hughes
5. Homer Bailey
6. Cameron Maybin
7. Evan Longoria
8. Brandon Wood
9. Justin Upton
10. Andrew Miller
11. Tim Lincecum
Yes, its only been two years, but how ridiculous does it look for Lincecum to be the 5th best pitcher on the list? And how many of the top 10 look like future all-stars?
Meanwhile Adam Jones sits at #28 (Good news for Saunders fans) Joey Votto is at 43, Ubaldo Jiminez at 84, and lets just say the whole list is littered with players that look more valuable now than Alex Gordon or Delmon Young.
Briefly, top 10 notables:
2006: 1. D. Young, 3. B. Wood, 4. Hermida, 5. S. Drew, 9. L. Milledge
2005: 3. D. Young, 4. Ian Stewart, 5. Joel Guzman, 6. C. Kotchman, 9. Andy Marte. (10. Hanley Ramirez)
2004: 3. D. Young, 7. K. Matsui, 8. Greg Miller.
2003: 2. Baldelli, 5. Foppert, 9. Gavin Floyd.
2002: 4. S. Burroughs, 6. Juan Cruz, 8. W. Betemit, 9. D. Henson.
But my favorite is 2001.
1. Josh Hamilton, of, Devil Rays
2. Corey Patterson, of, Cubs
3. Josh Beckett, rhp, Marlins
4. Jon Rauch, rhp, White Sox
5. Ben Sheets, rhp, Brewers
6. Sean Burroughs, 3b, Padres
7. C.C. Sabathia, lhp, Indians
8. Ryan Anderson, lhp, Mariners
9. Ichiro Suzuki, of, Mariners
10. Nick Johnson, 1b, Yankees
16. Antonio Perez, Mariners
42. Albert Pujols
Scouts do the best they can. And it’s nice to get excited about young players. I’m excited about Jason Heyward, Mike Stanton, Stephen Strasburg, and Dustin Ackley. But some will flame out and even though an organization has Ryan Anderson and Antonio Perez soon to be major league all-stars, it just rarely works out that way.
There was a time when the Diamondbacks had a system as good or better than what the Rays and Rangers have today. I’m more excited about what the young kids do on the field this year, which Mariners will make leaps forward than what the lists say, but I do still enjoy the lists for giving me an educated guess on what to look out for.
Nobody has ever represented the Baseball America list as anything other than an educated best guess. The scouting reports themselves are far more valuable than a player’s placement on any particular list.