Nimmo wouldn’t be in most organizations top 10. He’s only in ours because we have so few top talent prospects overall. In fact only one team, the White Sox, have less than we do.

What we have is 3 top talents (Mejia doesn’t count having passed the minimum threshold of IP in the Majors) After that numerous questions abound about everyone. Flores (position, power) Valdespin (eye defense) Den Dekker (bat) Puello (K’s) Lagares (eye power) Aderlain (eye defense) Havens (health defense) Kirk (starter or 4th OFer) Right now Nimmo represents 5 tool potential of which questions haven’t yet been raised but soon will and when he starts answering he’ll either stay or slide down as well.

The top 10 for each team is really more of a financial snapshot than a projection of future major league probabilities. The guys that are on most top 10 lists are the guys that would fetch the most interest around the league when discussing trades at this point in time. Prospects will move up and down as their performance does.

30 teams and 10 top prospects each at various stages of the minor leagues would represent a complete turnover of all 700 Major league jobs every 2.2 years. There isn’t going to be enough turnover to accomodate even half of them and some of these names will be replaced by future draftees and IFA’s.

The top 10 for each organization is best served as a guide for where a team might have a surplus or weak spot. The top 100 overall is best viewed as a valuation guide current on the day it was put out with just half of them expected to even make the Majors at best and many of those serving in small roles like utility player, LOOGY or long man.

The most valuable list in my opinion is the top 20 in each minor league. Not each minor league classification but each league itself. For instance AA has 3 different leagues, Easter, Southern and Texas. The prospects that are selected as the top 20 out of about 700 are the guys who are translating their tools the best relative to their competiton in the league in which they play but even those top 60 aren’t all expected to make it translate up to the Majors even from the relatively high level of AA. All told the top 20 in all 13 minor leagues is over 250 players but that’s one third of all the jobs available in MLB. Your not going to turn over the entire roster on every team every three years. What you are going to do is turn over about 5 spots every year and some will be filled from other teams and some will be filled by the minors. Maybe one or two jobs per team every year on average from the farm and the top 100 are where most of them come from but only about 45 of them actually do.

These lists are a who’s who of potential from which one can place an educated gamble on with the odds being somewhat less than 50/50 that prospect will even see the Majors. If you wanted more of predictive list of who’s actually going to become an All Star you’d have to settle for no more than a top 20 for all systems encompassing all prospects from foreign rookie leagues all the way up to AAA. On average about 1 guy per league.

Seems that being a top ten prospect around here has more to do with NOT doing anything to make someone worry than it about what they have done and will do in the MLB!

Right now Muno and Gorski are much closer but Evans and Fulmer have the upside and the time to put it together.