50 v. 50

Minor League Baseball put out its most recent round of Top 50 players for the end of the 2005 season. I think our MLN FAB50 Baseball rankings are better.  Here's why.

Lary BUMP

MLN MAJOR BLOGS

MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - MiLB.com came out not too long ago with Jon Mayo’s post-season Top 50 list of players. A lot can can change over time, even from mid-season to close, but we think our list will hold up better over time.

Thirty-two players were common to both lists. We profiled seventy-five players, the fifty more immediate prospects in the MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 and twenty-five players who were farther away from major league readiness in the MLN Ones2Watch™ (O2W).

Ten of the O2W players, including the top eight, appeared in Minor League Baseball's (MiLB)  Top 50, compiled by Jonathan Mayo, which focused on perceived raw talent in a survey of farm departments and scouts.

Our list was a snapshot of the minor leagues from spring up until last summer’s All-Star break.  Theirs was the last of several lists compiled over the season.

Eight of the players on the MLN FAB50 list, including our No. 1 pick Stephen Drew, made it to the majors and played enough to lose their rookie status. That eliminated them from consideration for the MiLB.com list.

Delmon Young has been No. 1 in the MiLB rankings over several of their lists. He has been a steady No. 2 pick for us.  The why of that is one of the places where the lists show their differences.

Young was a top 2005  pick for both Baseball America and MiLB's lists when we picked Tacoma Rainiers hurler Felix Hernandez to be  No. 1  in the MLN FAB50 Baseball 2005 rankings.

Hernandez is in the majors with the Mariners. Young stayed on the farm. This year, we picked Drew. He’s in the majors, and Young? Well...

Sure, Delmon is that good on his tools. He is almost universally considered the top prospect on the numbers. Of 510 possible points in Minor League Baseball’s poll, he received 491. It's well deserved. He's a great ballplayer.

What we ask in the FAB50 though, is this: Is any career just the numbers? 

The answer is: No. That's not reality. Too many other variables beyond a player's physical ability come into play in their total package.

How can you not ding Delmon, just a bit, for what  makes even his own club reluctant to use him at the big league level?  Right now, he is more famous for his bat tossed at an umpire in a game between the Durham Bulls and the Pawtucket Red Sox last season (See DEVIL RAY SZ. 04.27.06) than his bat swung at the plate.

Bad day? For some. For Delmon, though, it may be a sign of bad things to come, both on and off of the field.  He routinely goads the Devil Rays in the press, defying them not to call him up.  His now-famous temper has been an issue since he got into a tussle with another umpire in the Southern League in 2004.  If he is this difficult and mouthy as a minor leaguer, what is he going to be like when he becomes a major league player?

Young has a decent shot at moving on this spring, if he can keep his eye on the ball, his temper on low simmer and his mouth on mute.

The top 16 on the MiLB.com rankings also appeared in our  FAB50 or Ones2Watch. Three, which included Young (MLN FAB50 2006 No. 2), Alex Gordon (MLN FAB50 2006 No 7) and Brandon Wood (MLN FAB50 2006 No. 9), were in the top 10 on both lists.

Let’s look at the remainder of those among the top tens. Four of Minor League Baseball’s top 10 players were among our Ones2Watch™. All of them except Jay Bruce, No. 16, were among the top 10 O2W™ players.
 
Three of Minor League Baseball’s Top 10 were farther down our Top 50 list because they were farther down in their organizations.

Homer Bailey (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 38) and Philip Hughes (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No 45) still haven’t appeared in the majors. Troy Tulowitzki (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 32), who was in Double-A when we produced our list, shot all the way to the Rockies and up to No. 9 on the MiLB list.
 
Two players among our top 10, Humberto Sanchez (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 5) and Travis Buck (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 8), were injured at the end of last season. MiLB later explained at length why Sanchez wasn’t included, attributing it to poor conditioning.  Still the guy was a showcase deal player in the Gary Sheffield trade (Raw Feed: 11.11.06), so obviously the New York Yankees think that he is worth something more. It is also a mystery why Buck, who is easily the Oakland Athletics best prospect, wasn’t on that list.  His injury, a hernia, is annoying but not career threatening.

The MiLB.com 50 didn’t include two players who struggled late last season, two who were somewhat advanced in age and three catchers. MiLB apparently wanted players more flashy than Chris Iannetta (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No.42), Matt Tupman (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 47) and George Kottaras (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 48). Was this a watershed year behind the plate? No, but tomorrow’s catchers have to come from somewhere.

My feeling is that we on the FAB50 Committee missed the boat on Chris Denorfia (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 13), Dustin Pedroia (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 23) and Ubaldo Jimenez (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 24). Ubaldo has been full of promise without making full delivery on it for years.  Denorfia is someone for whom the Reds have great optimism, which is what carried him on to the list as high as he went. Pedroia remains a top prospect in the Red Sox infield, but his fate depends a lot upon how the free agency winds blow across the bags at Fenway.
 
I’d disagree with some of the players who were on their list. Ian Stewart (FAB50 Baseball No.49 (2004) and No. 42 (2005)) took a break from our rankings with a substandard year.  Likewsie the Atlanta Braves No. 1 prospect, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, played poorly enough not to be considered ready for ranking. Meanwhile former top Triber Andy Marte (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2006 No. 16), dealt to the other Indians, thumbed his nose at the big A as he went on a holy homerun tear in June, banging bombs in Buffalo for the Bisons, and was promoted to Cleveland.  Felix Pie is in a Chicago Cubs organization that overrates its prospects. Adam Jones didn’t impress me when I saw him in spring training and during the season.
 
Players from the Minor League Baseball list that received strong consideration for the FAB50 included Andrew Miller, Jose Tabata, Reed Brignac, Erick Aybar and Elvis Andrus. Most missed the lists only by a small fraction.

Luke Hochevar wasn’t among our O2W because he was playing pro ball in the indies for the Fort Worth Cats earlier in the season (See: "The Doubleday Code, SZ. 06.09.06). He wasn’t in the minor league system from Spring to mid-season, so he was ineligible for the MLN FAB50.

The thing that distinguishes the FAB50, though, from most of these talent lists, is that it is so pragmatic.  Sure, we’ve had guys on it like Dioner Navarro (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2005 No. 8) and Ian Kinsler, (MLN FAB50 Baseball 2005 No. 4) who might not always rank high on any of the other surveys, or with baseball junkies.  Yet they are both major leaguers.

Isn’t the point of these lists to try to point out to the fans, rotisserie leaguers, gamblers, and even the industry pros, who eat up ranking lists like fortune cookies, the players who are not only good, but will move up?

Our contention is that a lot of factors beyond the players’ tools come into play.  If a Kinsler or Denorfia has the eye of their management, they will probably make the big leagues, even if  players whom the scouts, touts, and fans think are more deserving sit stuck on the depth chart behind a Derek Jeter or a Barry Bonds. Meanwhile seeming superstars like Delmon Young continue to wallow down on the farm, even with great talent.

Fair? Maybe not, but then again, who ever said that baseball, in ranking or real opportunity, was fair?

The other thing that is better about the MLN FAB50 is that we go into depth on every player.  We give you our thinking on their career, their season, the common and uncommon wisdom about them, and the realities of their situation. Even our O2W list of the up-and-coming players gets a clearer explanation in one or two sentences than the Mayo lists at MiLB.  

 - Lary Bump is a freelance sports writer and baseball draft expert. He is also a Senior Consulting Analyst on baseball for MLN Sports.