ESPN's Top 100 MLB Prospects

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=law_keith&id=3840355

Have at it.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't realize that you have to be subscribed to the ESPN Insider to get 26-100.

 

If ESPN's list of the top 100 MLB prospects was anything like their baseball coverage, 40 of the prospects would be Yankees, 40 would be Red Sox, 10 of them would be Mets and last 10 would be from the other 27 teams.

 

Travis Snider will hit 30 homers next season.

 

at what level? He's no Ryan Braun. Snider will be good in the future, but he's not going to be the hot rookie this year.

 

Prodigious power. Strong build. Good defense, with a cannon for an arm. Extremely competitive.

As you can tell, I'm high on him and he might be a little too young (turns 21 in February), but he absolutely owned AA and I think they'd be wasting him in AAA Syracuse (where he also a very good run for part of 2008). I think he's just about ready to become the face of the Blue Jays.

 

He can't hit lefties that well, so he'll platoon at the start with the Blue Jays unless he rips up lefties in Triple-A. That will cost him PT and his average will probably be somewhere around .275, so 30 HR this season is a big stretch.
Longoria and Braun were special cases, most rookies tend to be somewhere around what Ellsbury & Fukudome did last year.
I think somewhere between what Jay Bruce and Joey Votto did last season is a more realistic expectation for Snider as a rookie.

 

Saw some Matt Wieters last summer in the Eastern League. I would suspect that some of his value is directly associated to his position. I thought another player on his Bowie team was a better pure hitter -- OF/1B Nolan Reimold.

Can anyone with Insider tell me where Padres farmhand Kellen Kulbacki is ranked?

 

Could that same person see if Gordan Beckham or Aaron Poreda are on the list? I would think they would be.

 

Beckham 36
Poreda 57
Kulbacki not ranked.
BA hasn't released its top 10 list for the Padres yet, but he'll probably be ranked somewhere between 6-12 considering Kulbacki was a top-20 prospect for the Northwest League and he had a good season in High-A. The problem, though, is that too many guys have had monster years in the Cal League and sucked later, so I think some people don't take them seriously unless they are studs since junior high.

 

I don't understand why Law has Pedro Alvarez at No. 38. Jim Callis of Baseball America, by the way, considers the guy the third-best prospect in baseball behind Wieters and Price. There shouldn't be that big of a disparity.

Daryl Jones (STL) and Aaron Hicks (MIN) are two toolsy outfielders who could be listed much higher next year.

It's amazing Carlos Santana (No. 13) was acquired for freaking Casey Blake. Also, Desmond Jennings (No. 25) should've had a bigger fall after missing basically all of last season.

Just a hunch here, but I think Eric Hosmer is gonna be a beast. (Hi Oz! )

 

Law says Alvarez could be back in the Top 10 next year with a good, full, healthy year. But missing 2008 and continued bad news about injuries and conditioning keep him low on Law's list.

 

Santana was one of those guys who was a relative unknown before blowing up in the Cal League last year. Don't buy on him.

BA tends to go with what the scouts they use as sources tell them, and they are usually really high on big-name college guys until they prove they shouldn't be ranked highly. Law does his own scouting.