I’ve missed out on a couple Mid-Week Buzzes and Friday Fives over the last few weeks. After the minor league season officially came to a close, I spent a good chunk of time taking a breath from a long season of watching, learning, writing, and podcasting about the 20+ week campaign.
And then I began analyzing what the hell happened.
I cleaned up my stats database that contained daily box scores from every single full-season game this year. I dug into a new project that should be dropping in the near distant future. And finally, I began toying with some mini-rankings of prospects in the system.
A full-blown prospect list can be daunting. Ranking hitters and pitchers, acquired in a myriad of ways, aged 17 to 26 is a little ridiculous. But prospect lists are the lifeblood of minor league fandom, so I wanted to take a look at an easier way of consuming lists, as silly or as serious as they may be.
I posted one of these on Twitter and had some back and forth with you all, but I’m going to dig into two mini-lists here: Prospects Acquired in Trades of the Last Year and Prospects Participating in the Arizona Fall League.
The Trade Returns
1. Reggie Preciado | IF, Arizona
2. Kevin Alcantara | OF, Arizona
3. Owen Caissie | OF, Myrtle Beach
4. Caleb Kilian | RHP, Tennessee
5. Pete Crow-Armstrong | OF, Unassigned
6. Alexander Canario | OF, South Bend
7. Anderson Espinoza | RHP, Tennessee
8. Daniel Palencia | RHP, Myrtle Beach
9. Alexander Vizcaino | RHP, South Bend
10. Ismael Mena | OF, Arizona
11. Bryce Ball | 1B, South Bend
12. Greg Deichmann | OF, Chicago
13. Bailey Horn | LHP, South Bend
14. Yeison Santana | IF, Myrtle Beach
What a freakin’ haul, huh? Every single one of these guys has a legitimate argument of being a top 30 guy in the system. And really, the top six guys here might all be top 15 in the system.
I might be the low man on PCA overall, but I’ve seen people rank him as high as number two in the system. I tried to find a way to slide Palencia up a little higher, especially considering he’s got a triple-digit heater that he ramps up there deep into starts.
The AFL List
1. Ryan Jensen | RHP, Tennessee
2. Caleb Kilian | RHP, Tennessee
3. Nelson Velazquez | OF, Tennessee
4. Luis Vazquez | IF, Tennessee
5. Andy Weber | IF, Tennessee
6. Danis Correa | RHP, South Bend
7. Brendon Little | LHP, Iowa
While the longer list in this post features a much more prominent opportunity for debate, the rankings in the AFL (that kicks off today, mind you) are much more straight-forward. Jensen is The Guy here. Kilian and Nelly definitely follow behind as top 15 and top 40 guys.
I rank the relievers (Correa and Little) at the back-end with the middle infielders (Vazquez and Weber) filling out the middle. Your preference on the two shortstops comes down to what you dig on more: elite glove, suspect pop at the plate OR a do it all player with a questionable 2021 campaign.
The Mid-Week Buzz typically features a collection of tweets of mine that I’ve put out there for the public. But congratulations to you, today you got a front row seat to the notes app on my phone, a wild look at all sorts of random groupings of players and lists of prospects that mean something and nothing all at the same time. Think of it as Robert California’s notepad in The Office. I’m the lizard king.
Out of the Vines 