There’s two parts to rating the prospect. There’s projection on who is most likely…..and there is translating those projections into actual on field results. Obviously translating them becomes more important once you’ve progressed beyond the Appalachain or NY Penn league but it’s something that has to happen at some point, otherwise your eternally a prospect or you morph into a suspect and then a gym teacher.

The list I threw out is a compilation of all 30 MLB organizations in everyone of the 13 minor leagues in which guys skills are translating right now in actual competition against their peers. Now whether that continues or who falls off and who steps up is a different story but for actual performance and projectability these are the guys who stood out in 2011, on the field.

Some others stand out for projectability purposes only and that’s not ideal either. It’s really a combination of the both that provides the clearest picture. For instance who do you feel are the 4 best prospects in the system? I feel that’s Harvey, Familia, Wheeler and Flores. Their on both lists. Projection and a certain amount of translation of that projection relative to the level their at.

So I don’t know how you can say the Mets minor leagues is trailing the pack by a wide margin…..It’s not a great system, but it’s not bad either.

Some teams top 10 might not include a single prospect in the top 100, so how can you use that to judge a system? You can’t. There’s no context. With this list there is some context. It’s how our kids stand out against other organizations kids, not just our own.

Muno looked real good but he’s older than the comp and we’ll see in the Sally League. Montero was a surprise, apparently some people thought he looked real good. That’s nice to hear, a lot nicer than if Holt, Havens, Fern, Rustich ect ect ect…….

The fact that we have so few kids that standout in actual league play against their peers year after year though is very telling. Some of that no doubt is injuries although we can’t be the only organization to have injured prospects can we? What is the reason? Amateur scouting? Development staff? I have no idea but I do know this, year after year after year we are woefully under represented on this list and the play that we do get from our rookies on the Major League level their first or 2nd go around hasn’t been all that impressive either. Ike’s about the only one who has performed well right off the bat. Murphy in Sept 2008, that’s it.

In fact if you want to compare the Met top 10 to this list and how it has translated to the Majors this one has been a far more accurate barometer of what to expect by a tremendous amount and that’s going back way before Minaya too.

If you want to use it to see who the top 20 players in each league was for 2011, fine, but to judge the system as a whole by that isn’t accurate.

I always enjoyed being compared to my contemporaries based on the actual on field results and have found that this particular list is a fairly good harbinger of where everyone’s farm system seems to be, based not only on projection but also on production.

Feel free to disagree but I’d rather have 20 chances rather than 6 because I can take care of my own needs and use the surplus to to upgrade elsewhere and I’m not just counting on one or two guys coming through.

We had two guys come in at 20 and another (old for his league) come in at 18. What do you want from me?

So I don’t think it’s an accurate way to judge this system, or ANY system.

It’s more a list to go along with the pure projection type like the Sickels one.

Every year it’s the same. Last year we had 4. Texas had 20. Which one would you prefer?

I agree the farm is in much better shape then when Omar took over. No question about it but let’s not pretend it’s anything above average. 80% of it’s value is tied up in 4 players. Familia, Mejia, Harvey and Wheeler. Niewenhauss, Den Deker and Lagares are thought to be very likely 4th or 5th OFer’s, maybe not for us but for most teams. Flores and Valdespin aren’t considered locks by any wild stretch of the imagination.

Who’d they miss? Holt? Rustich? Pena? I find it a little hard to believe that Gorski didn’t make the list but it’s not all performance. Part is still projection and he is old for his league. Lagares may have been hurt by playing two leagues but usually guys that put up the kinds of numbers he did make both lists.

You would really think that one of Tapia, Urbina or Morris might have made the list while repeating the Appalachain League but none of them did all that well. Leathersich deserved a mention. Vaughn and Ceccilini despite being older for their League either had down years or have hit their ceiling. That’s what happens more often than not. Hate to say it. That’s why you need more prospects, not less and you need to get the one’s in the first and 2nd round, out of HS and pay them to come out early.

If we can pay Mo Vaughn we can spend the same on 10 super high end amateurs every single year between the draft and IFA and who knows maybe we had five guys that came in at 21 to add them too.

I don’t really have a problem with those rankings, I just have a problem with HOW your using them.

Now some of our guys that rank highly on Sickles list either didn’t play much or didn’t play at all. Mejia, Niewenhauss, Havens got hurt early. Nimmo signed at the last second and only had 44 AB’s. Mazzoni pitched 13 innings.

Basically the only guy on Sickels list that did play and wasn’t on Baseball America’s list is Puello, who although young for his league did show some serious regression, not that he can’t recover, just that he didn’t impress on the field in 2011, at least not enough to make the top 20 in the FL. St. League. On the bright side Muno and Montero did and Niewenhauss was #20 last year in the Eastern League.

Feel free to disregard this list all you want to but since it’s inception a full 25% of teams post season rosters have been made up of guys on this list and you can bet your bottom dollar they were more than 25% of the reason their teams got there.

we aren’t trailing the pack by a wide margin, our minors aren’t bad at all…..And I wish everyone would stop saying that it is because it’s simply not true – John Sickels said our farm system has improved doesn’t get enough respect, and he’s exactly right. Our minors is much improved, it’s still not great, but it’s certainly not bad.

Those attributes remain with you and then get added to and included in your actual performance as you get rated throughout your climb up the minors.

Guys Like Gee aren’t ranked all that high because they don’t possess an outstanding anything. Take 100 Dillon Gee’s and you’ll get 5 starting Major League pitchers partly for the fact that he’d still be in AAA in most systems or the pen.

He’s a good 5th starter. That’s not going to put him on many top prospect lists. He walks a lot guys, has a strikeout pitch that’s a changeup. Very effective but when people start looking for it……….

None of that means that he cannot be a very effective pitcher at times and a good overall starter but it does mean he’s on a razor thin margin of error. That’s why he was taken in the 21st round and also why he was not considered a top prospect (even in our system)

At his best he’s good, sometimes really good but often times pitchers aren’t at their best and that’s where the seperation in talent comes into play. Dillon cannot fall behind 2-0 and recover. To me his best comparison is Ed Lynch. Ed could throw a 4 hit complete game shutout a couple times a year and he could also be out of there in the 4th. Most times he gave you something along the lines of 5 innings 3 runs 5 hits 2 walks. Very seviceable, could do a lot worse but not usually in the conversation of opening day starter or preference to start game 7.

Gee does some things well. Fields his position, holds guys on, throws inside, mixes up four different pitches but he needs to do those things well just to get by because he’s not overmatching anyone and probably hasn’t since HS.

I like his moxie and guile but I wouldn’t use him as a complaint about prospect rankings because his ceiling isn’t that of a 1, 2 or 3 starter but in baseball the norm occurs a little less than in other things and I enjoy watching him pitch and hope he gets out of there unscathed each time out

A guy with a high cieling who has done nothing is then put above a guy who is NOT expected to be good but actually IS!

A guy like F-Mart who failed miserably last year was miles ahead of a guy who came into the MLB and won 13 games!

WHY?

isn’t the PROMISE supposed to be will the guy be a MLB player and how good of an MLB player he will be?

Or is it merely how good he could be if he didn’t suck or worse how good he was SUPPOSED to be but still isn’t?

Prospect to me means how good are his prospects for being an MLB player!

In his grade system he explains that C type players are average MLB players who have question marks and B’s who have a good chance of being successful.

The only difference between a A, B and C seems to be how many Question marks are KNOWN and UNKNOWN!

C’s are guys who have questions that have been identified, B’s are guys who have a chance but have not really done anything yet and A’s are guys who seem to be good and have the numbers to prove it! They have answered many of the questions if any existed.

A guy who starts off with little promise will NEVER become an A grade even if the numbers suggest he is!

Thats my real issue here, you start off high based on when you were drafted and then your performance can only lower your grade never increase it as your stuck with that first impression of ceiling and nothing you actually do in the Minors can change that!

Nimmo has hardly played even a month of A bal yet he is at the top of our list!

Really it makes no sense to put him above guys who are way more likely to be in the MLB before he even makes the jump to AA!

But there he is!
Yes he has a high Ceiling. When he shows some performance to prove that assesment is worth keeping then he should be put on the list!

I would much rather see them rank these guys based on the same statistical analysis used on MLB players than this pipe dream of best case scenario promise cause then we might actually see who is DOING well as opposed to who might do well if the initial scouting report used to draft them pans out as all good!

For example in Nov. 2005 our top prospects were:

Lastings Milledge
Yusmeiro Petit
Gaby Hernandez
Mike Jacobs
Phillip Humber
Carlos Gomez
Fernando Martinez
Anderson Hernandez
Brian Bannister
Alay Soler

The best list to look at is the top 20 per (minor) league in which the prospect impressed or just the top 100 period. Remember there are only 750 jobs total in MLB and on average only 50 open up each year that aren’t filled by current Major Leaguers that switch teams so any list of the top 10 multiplied by 30 teams is going to have 50 guys that come up and 250 that don’t.

Of the 2005 top 10 only 3 that appeared on the Met top 10 were among the top 100 prospects overall. Milledge, Petit and Humber and in the prospect game millions of things can derail a young kid that have nothing to do with tools or performance as well.

The prospects that we have that made the top 20 in each league relative to their competition based on their actual performance and potential upside in 2011 are:

Gulf Coast Rookie league # 20 RHP Rafeal Montero

Appalachain League No one

NY Penn League # 18 Danny Muno SS

Sally League No one

Fl. St. League #2 Harvey #20 Flores

California League #4 Wheeler

Eastern League # 13 Jeurys Familia

Int’l League No one

To provide some context with other teams.

Phillies 9, Braves 11, Miami 7, Mets 6, Nat’s 6

Pitts 9, Hou. 8, Cinn 12, Cubs 8, St.l 7, Milw 4

SD 18, Colo 13, LA 11, AZ 9, SF 10

NYY 13, Bost 12, TB 18, Balt 7, Tor 16

Det. 6, Chisox 5, Clev 9, Minn 5, KC 12

LAA 9, Oak 4, Tex 17, Sea 13

Fans always look at these lists and say hmmmm, we got this guy coming up, that guy coming up, this other guy on his way, some one else is looking pretty good but the reality is that every team has guys coming up and most of them have way more than we do and quite frankly most of their’s are more highly rated than ours.

No matter how you cut it only Milwaukee, Minnesota, the White Sox or Oakland has less than we do and now Washington having traded three of their 6 which begs the question, should they really have depleted what little depth and fresh horses they had especially in light of the fact that AJ Cole could very well BE Gio Gonzalez in 3 years.

Either way every team has 10 guys on this sort of list (or 20, 30 whatever) but when you put the prospects into context with other organizations prospects you can see that we are still trailing the pack by a wide margin.

to me, a-c makes sense, since anything more granular is impossible to catagorize. Even 3 options is tough.

I thought it was supposed to really be “incredible stud, future HOF talent” (so your griffey’s, A Rods, Strasburg types), “serious looking player that can be a legit ML, even a regular” and “guys that aren’t very talented, or have some major holes to go along with tools, and are unlikely to ever make an impact”.

and of course, every year guys go up and down. the grades are more like odds in a horse race. Just because the “experts” handicapped a player a certain way doesn’t mean they can’t beat the odds.

The separation is really among B’s and C’s. Not much to distinguish by the grades alone. Is Sickels covering his butt or does he really think they’re that close?

I don’t put much stock in these things as everyone knows but I will point out a few things:

First off the grades go from A-C not a lot of seperation in those gradings.

Clayton – there are only two more B grade players merely because of Wheeler and Nimmo! But Note Wheeler isn’t above Harvey in this list. And Nimmo is high because of projections not performance. F-Mart used to rate high based on projections as well!

Puello is almost as good a prospect on this list as Nimmo is! and OBP was used to give Puello a slightly lesser grade.

Last year the last guy on the list (20th) was Gee (Grade C) who came up and won an awful lot of games before the MLB caught up and he started to tire.
Lucas Duda C+ last year as was Familia, Duda made the MLB before everyone except Gee (C) and Familia jumped up to a B!

FMart was on the list last year as a B- and was rightly taken off this year’s list!

As with most of these MiL lists the grade is mostly about potential (and LOST) promise as much as it is actual performance.
A guy like Nimmo who hasn’t had a real chance to have a bad season stays high in grades while a guy who was at the bottom of the list can come to the big club and win 13 games! But he was 20th because he didn’t have high expectations that a Nimmo or F-Mart has!
F-Mart had them and he lost them due to injury and lack of performance which has finally dropped him off the list!

If two C type prospects can come up to the MLB and have the success Duda and Gee had then it just goes to show that even the last guy on the list can be a very good prospect and contribute on the MLB level.
Unfortunaly there are far too many who put these lists on a highly revered altar and do not realize that judging players on PROMISE is not the best way to go when building from within.

If anyone knew when they were making making thier list last year that Gee was going to win 13 games I am sure he would have been much higher than 20th with a B+ grade!

Even knowing that Harvey and Familia are closer to the show they put Wheeler between them despite saying he projects no more than either as a #2 Starter (Not the Ace many claim he might be!)

It would be much better if these lists were made based on the level they were actually in.

Then you might actually get some idea of who might be seen in the next year or two.
Wheeler is two years away, Nimmo about 3 or 4 and guys rated below Wheeler and Nimmo will be in the MLB way before Wheeler and Nimmo will.

It may make people feel better about the future since the now is pretty bleak but the truth is and showed when you compare last year’s lst to this year that a lot can happen in a year…
And last year’s #2 and #5 can drop like rocks in a sea of Helium!

yet the last guy on the list can come in and win 13 games or become one of your biggest bats that your counting on to declare your not punting in 2012!