Top Fifty Hold the Mayo

I have to wonder what exactly is the point of a pre-season top fifty. While visiting our friends at Minor League Baseball's milb.com website, I noticed that Jon Mayo's Top 50, which made its debut last season butting heads with our more venerable MLN FAB50 Baseball 2005 rankings, has been moved into a pre-Spring slot to join the other rites of Spring baseball beauty contests.

The preseason "top fifty" are the guys who were on the Non-Roster Invitee (NRI) lists who made their club's major league roster. You're up, you win. Game over. The rest are really chopped liver until mid-season. Once you roll out of camp, all bets are off until you prove what you're made of during the 2006 season.

Performance and opportunity will ultimately decide whether a player will advance, stay parked where they are playing, or start thinking about greener ball fields.

This top 50 apparently was hand picked by 23 members of the scouting community. It has a large number of the players that we touted in the FAB50 last year, including our No. 2 pick Delmon Young. We did our homework. Go figure.

Like all lists, you can take your shot. So I'll take one or three:

Using scouts' commentary alone is a bit suspect. There are a lot of agendas at play in evaluating player talent, particularly early in the season when reputations are either being built, humbled, or set up for a trade. Create a good impression for a big payday, or tear someone down a bit to make them seem less valuable. Last year Dioner Navarro was touted by the Dodgers coaching staff as the second coming. So far D is for 'dud', not 'dominator.' You need a broader sampling of people who see these guys and blend the different axes being ground to get something that looks like a fair and balanced, with no apologies to Fox, picture.

In the credibility department, one might ask how Justin Upton, who hasn't played a pro inning earns a no. 7 spot. Do Jon and the double dozen so-called serious scouts really think this guy is going to make the majors from South Bend in one season? As good as he is, he'd be the Rocketeer of the fast track to move like that. Realistically he may not rise much further than a class, perhaps two at best in his premiere pro season. That's a high forties ranking at best if the others are to mean anything. Meanwhile Matt Tuiasosopo, who had the same kind of early buzz, should make the list. He is totally absent.

Last we checked, top ten guys should be so hot that they burn a hole in the pocket of the team that kept them down on the farm either through the green cap of high dollar deals blocking them. These highly touted racehorses usually are missing an element or two. No one likes to say it, but there it is. For 9 out of 10, maturity in decision making on and off the field, and cold-confidence are usually what are lacking.

Take Delmon Young. He was missing the big C at the beginning of last season, but his command of the International League pitching last season seems to suggest that he should be able to make the leap at the beginning of the season. If he's not up when the season rolls out, then that's a big blow to the credibility of the D-Rays farm system. Look at the other Upton (BJ) and Young. If they can't get the heads of guys of this caliber into the major attitude position they need to both succeed personally and to help turn around the franchise with homegrown talent, then the Devil Rays have more serious problems than the goofy roof at the Trop or Legends Field twenty minutes away sucking off the crop of expatriot Yankee fans.

Justin Verlander comes in at no. 5. According to Mayo, command was his question mark. I thought that it was an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore that kept him from signing and playing in 2004. Or that sore arm that dogged him throughout 2005.

Verlander's maiden voyage in the majors was not unexpected, but it wasn't the performance of a one-season wonder boy either: He was 0-2 with a 7.15 ERA in his limited exposure to major league batters.

101 MPH heat is nothing to sneeze at, but the guy needs to also have the maturity and the good health to pull the rumored 3.12 million bonus with the $4.15M guarantee for the long haul. Thus far, that seems to be the far bigger question mark.

Hanley Ramirez ranked at 25 in a Marlins organization that needs his talent that badly. Maybe somone should offer him Justin Upton's No. 7 spot since he'll be a big leaguer this year without question.

Meanwhile, there are guys that the MLB.com staff don't look at because they're scrambling around trying to find out how Schilling is feeling or watch Pedro tap on his toe injury.

When we roll out our spring talent evaluations in a few days, I will tell you about a couple of players that the major league mouthpieces missed, including one guy on the New York Mets payroll whose bat makes that sweet sound you hear from a big league ballkiller.

Fantasy leaguers, you have been warned.

- Brian Ross