The ever dangerous mid-season prospect ranking

I call it dangerous because I’m sure I may end up looking back on these and think to myself “what was I smoking?”. I have a love-hate relationship with prospect rankings. It’s just that they can so debatable, which makes them fun and also makes them mind-numbing. And I think some sites out there just throw together rankings all too willy-nilly, because people like discussing lists and it’s a cheap way to get people to visit and talk about your site. I don’t want to do that. But I have been thinking about this for a while…there have been some players who have had some serious helium-Jess Todd and Daryl Jones for example-and other players have fallen out of the picture. And there also was a draft this past June, in case you haven’t heard. So therefore, I figure my personal rankings could use an update. I’m not going to go as far as 25 like I do in the winter; we’ll just go with 15 for right now w/mini-snippets on why they are there.

A very early ranking of prospects

The next edition of “Three up, three down” should be up tomorrow. I’ve been a little busy lately so I haven’t really had time to put together any midday post ideas. So when in doubt, why not do a prospect ranking? The lazy bloggers’ way out! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken some time and really thought this through. When doing my rankings, I put my amateur GM hat on and just rank them in the order I’d want them in a trade. We’re about 40 games in; there’s been some moving and shaking. I don’t want to too heavily weigh early returns, but some prospects have gone splat (Maiques), while some are moving quickly through the system, which has to be taken into account. So for what it’s worth, here ya go:

Kevin Goldstein Organizational Rankings

I wanted to take Goldstein’s individual team rankings and run a quick and dirty check to see how it matches up against his organization rankings. Nothing complicated numbers wise and thus we’ve got some caveats to my method.

BA’s Top 100

Take it away, Maury.

“bopbadaba! badabahbahbahbaaaaaaah!”

Here’s BA’s Top 100. The list begins and ends with two Reds centerfielders-Jay Bruce and Drew Stubbs. In between, there are three Cardinals, the ones you would expect.

2. Evan Longoria
3. Joba Chamberlain
4. Clay Buchholz
5. Colby Rasmus

Later on down the row…

85. Bryan Anderson
97. Chris Perez

Thoughts anyone?

Prospects ranked by UPSIDE

Excellent Prospects, 100+
Colby Rasmus (120.7)
Very Good Prospects, 50-100
Chris Perez (54.2)
Good Prospects, 25-50
Jaime Garcia (49.3)
Jarrett Hoffpauir (45.4)
David Freese (39.0)
Clayton Mortensen (31.0)
Bryan Anderson (30.7)
Tyler Greene (28.5)
Mark Worrell (27.8)
Average Prospects, 10-25
Allen Craig (23.0)
Mark McCormick (15.6)
Adam Ottavino (14.7)
Blake Hawksworth (10.5)
Marginal Prospects, 0-10
Mitchell Boggs (8.3)
Tyler Herron (6.9)
Tyler Norrick (6.5)
Mark Hamilton (6.5)
Cody Haerther (2.4)
Brian Barton (2.2)
Pete Kozma (1.8)

Not to be redundant some of AZ’s earlier posts, but I wanted to go a little more in depth for those of you not familiar with how PECOTA and Upside work. This list has some major differences your scouting oriented rankings, but PECOTA obviously isn’t designed to be a replacement to scouting. Personally, I consider it another tool in the prospect evaluating toolkit; a computers way of evaluating prospects based on similarity scores and measuring their worth during the period they are under team control. BP defines it as:

UPSIDE is determined by evaluating the performance of a player’s PECOTA comparables. If a comparable player turned in a performance better than league average, including both his batting and fielding performance, then twice the number of runs he contributed above average is counted toward his UPSIDE. If the player was worse than league average, or he dropped out of the database, the performance is counted as zero.

Kevin Goldstein’s Top 11 Prospects

I’ve been waiting to see this list for quite some time.  I really like the format that Goldstein uses for his prospect lists.  Well the time has come despite our alphabetically challenged city name.  It’s a subscription article so we can’t just copy and paste but you can see the list and some interesting tidbits after the jump.

It’s That Time of Year – Top 100 Prospect Lists

In case you missed it, Kevin Goldstein and Keith Law both unveiled their Top 100 prospect lists.

Baseball America’s Top 30 Cardinals

This year’s edition of the Prospect Handbook are starting to be delivered if you pre-ordered through their website. Unfortunately, I did not so I won’t be getting mine for another week or so. It’s like having to wait until the weekend to celebrate your birthday. Grumble, grumble.

The Red Baron was kind enough to share the Top 30 with us, with the addition of Barton there’s been some shuffling at the top. Here it is:

1. Colby Rasmus OF
2. Chris Perez RHP
3. Bryan Anderson C
4. Brian Barton OF
5. Jaime Garcia LHP
6. Adam Ottavino RHP
7. Pete Kozma SS
8. Clayton Mortensen RHP
9. Mitchell Boggs RHP
10. Tyler Herron RHP
11. Jon Jay OF
12. Jess Todd RHP
13. Joe Mather OF/1B
14. Kenny Maiques RHP
15. Allen Craig 3B/1B
16. P.J.Walters RHP
17. Jose Martinez SS
18. Brad Furnish LHP
19. Kyle McClellan RHP
20. Blake Hawksworth RHP
21. Jarrett Hoffpauir 2B
22. Mark Worrell RHP
23. Mike Parisi RHP
24. Jason Motte RHP
25. Mark McCormick RHP
26. Blake King RHP
27. Mark Hamilton 1B
28. Luke Gregerson RHP
29. Tyler Greene SS
30. Luis De La Cruz C

A few observations after the jump-

John Sickels 2008 Cardinal Top 20

 Sickels rolled out his Top 20 Cards today at his blog.

Here’s the list, along with his quotes:

Colby ranked #7 prospect overall at MILB.com

While I could argue with some of Mayo’s selections in his top 50, I won’t argue with this. No other Cards were in his top 50.

Also, please keep voting here for our #18 Cardinal prospect over the weekend.

Baseball America’s Top 10 Cardinal Prospects

We’ve got a couple surprises in this list but nothing too earth shattering. Don’t forget the chat at 11 a.m.

1. Colby Rasmus, of
2. Chris Perez, rhp
3. Bryan Anderson, c
4. Jaime Garcia, lhp
5. Adam Ottavino, rhp
6. Pete Kozma, ss
7. Clayton Mortensen, rhp
8. Mitchell Boggs, rhp
9. Tyler Herron, rhp
10. Jon Jay, of

Comments after the jump.

Checking in with BA’s Top 30 Cardinal Prospects: 1-10

Finishing up the series of looking at who BA ranked in their top 30 Cardinal prospects during before the season. Here is part one and two.

10. Daryl Jones- The Cardinals continue to preach patience with Jones, and at times he shows flashes of brilliance but the results are seriously lagging. He has just a .550 OPS thus far for the Swing and has 50 strikeouts in 201 at bats. I’ve seen him play, he does look like a scouts dream but so far he’s a statistical nightmare.

9. Josh Kinney- As you all know, he’s out with TJ surgery. And he lost his dog. He did just have his own bobblehead day at Springfield this week, so I guess that’s a good feeling.

8. Mark McCormick- Our own Rickie Vaughn is still out with a strained shoulder and is just starting a throwing program, according to Derrick Goold. If he still has his velocity, he’s valuable. Hopefully he’ll learn that ever important lesson of learning to be a “pitcher, not a thrower.” Darn cliches.

7. Adam Ottavino Ottavino has been pretty strong, striking out 25% of the batters he’s faced but the walks are still an issue, as he’s given up 29 walks in 59.2 innings. Perhaps Dan Nelson is a terrible 2nd baseman, because according to Ott’s batted ball chart at Firstinning.com, batters are hitting .333 against him on ground balls to Adam’s left. That’s not going to encourage him to throw sinkers. .333 also happens to be his opponents BABIP, no wonder he just wants to just strike guys out.

6. Bryan Anderson – He’s roughly done the same thing in Springfield that he’s did for the Swing last year. He still throws out base runners, has issues with passed balls, hits for good average but has limited power. He’s not a monster prospect, but at 20 years old he’s really doing something to be proud of is still a ways off from his ceiling. His .354 BABIP seems rather unsustainable but he hits lots of line drives and doesn’t strike out much, so his ability to hit for average is very real.

5. Jon Jay-Hurt his shoulder and re aggravated it promptly upon returning. Hit just .235/.333/.373 in 102 at bats, mostly due to a slow start in April but was starting to really heat up in May, hitting a 1.090 in 25 plate appearances. Hopefully he comes back soon, I fear he was vastly overrated based on what he did in low A last year.

4. Blake Hawksworth- Wow, he got hammered yesterday. Hawksworth has shown excellent control but his K/IP ratio dog low and is reason for alarm. His comeback last season was inspiring, but my gut feeling is he’s not a going to be much of a factor in the future. I hope I’m wrong.

3. Chris Perez- He’s striking out 38% of the batters he’s faced, pretty freakish. The strike against him is that he’s a severe fly ball pitcher and his walk rate is too high. In other words, he’s a Dave Duncan nightmare. He’s exciting, but makes things too exciting for his own good too often. Once he cuts those walks down, he’ll be major league ready. I’d like to image he’s destined for Memphis very soon.

2. Jaime Garcia- Not quite the extreme ground baller that he was in A ball, but his 56% ground ball rate at AA is still pretty good. When he gets the ball elevated, bad things happen, as he’s allowed 11 homers in 73.1 innings. There was some nail-biting after his strikeout rate dropped precipitously once being promoted to Palm Beach, but that has come back with a vengeance. Unfortunately, his walk rate has doubled along with the return of the K’s. Still, he’s 20, and he’s pitching in AA and doing a fine job. There’s a lot to like here.

1. Colby Rasmus- Very streaky. He hit his 12th homer last night, hopefully that’s a good omen. .734 OPS in April, 1.138 in May, .544 for June. Also just a .695 OPS against left-handers while he has a .901 OPS verses righties. Looking at this slump he’s in, he’s really had some tough luck. His BABIP is .205 while he’s hitting line drives 22% of the time. His ground ball rate went up some, and he’s doubled his K rate, so some things are his fault, too. I wonder about why he’s suddenly striking out so much, I hope it’s not because he’s been solved. Alright, enough hand-wringing, he’ll be fine. I don’t believe in jinxes, so I have no issues saying he was born to be a major leaguer, and at 20 years old he’s done some impressive things upon being promoted aggressively. Hopefully he can start catching some breaks and start waiting for hit pitch rather then hacking away.

Since we’re at the half-way point, here’s my own personal half time Top 30, without comments, just for fun.

1. Rasmus
2. Garcia
3. Anderson
4. Perez
5. Ottavino
6. Hawksworth
7. Herron
8. Mather
9. Ankiel
10. Hamilton
11. Shaun Garceau
12. Degerman
13. Tyler Greene
14. Stavinoha
15. Jones
16. Jay
17. McCormick
18. Buckman
19. Maiques
20. Jon Edwards
21. Craig
22. Pham
23. Walters
24. Boggs
25. Norrick
26. Marti
27. Furnish
28. Motte
29. Daniels
30. Worrell

I’m sure I’m overlooking someone here, just going off the top of my head late at night here.