Raysbaseball Top 25

by Brickhaus on Feb 3, 2007 1:43 PM EST Comment 21 comments

Raysbaseball has finished posting its annual Top 25 prospects, which is available at http://www.raysbaseball.com/Top25Prospects07.shtml . The top 5 guys shouldn't be too much of a surprise, but there is some divergence from Baseball America's lists.

This was somewhat similar to a community list, with 8 Rays prospect watchers/bloggers (including a few from here - myself, YouAlreadyKnow and Tyler) ranking their top 30 to assemble a top 25. The list includes full descriptions of each of the prospects, together with the comments about the player from each person who ranked them.

Discussions of the list and the people who just missed are at http://www.raysbaseball.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=21

Top 10 teaser:

Delmon Young
Evan Longoria
Reid Brignac
Jeff Niemann
Jake McGee
Elijah Dukes
Wade Davis
Mitch Talbot
Jeremy Hellickson
Andrew Sonnanstine

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Comments

Dukes

He should be the #1 prospect, no question

by ian on Feb 3, 2007 2:33 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

um

no.

Even if you TOTALLY throw out the character/offfield issues (which you can't) hes not really #1 from a stats or scouting report standpoint

by nms on Feb 3, 2007 3:02 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Human ears

are deaf to sarcasm.

I ate a Grand Slam @ Denny's yesterday... pooped out a 2 run double today.

by slurve on Feb 3, 2007 4:11 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

keith law

i asked keith law in one of his espn chats about dukes and he said 'dukes was a better hitter than young' Look at how dukes has deceased his strikeout rate and increased his walk rate the past few years. He may not have the power upside of delmon young but Dukes should be better at OBP and a better all round hitter. Dukes did out hit young last year in AAA with considerable less at bats

by krgrecw on Feb 3, 2007 4:15 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

but they're young...

You can make a case that Dukes is a better hitter than Young right now. He's certainly much better at getting on base.

However, I think from a projected performance perspective, most folks seem to think Young has the better ceiling overall.

by FI on Feb 3, 2007 8:01 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

So what you're saying is

Dukes = #1 ? :-)

by ian on Feb 3, 2007 9:02 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Talk

about great young system... now if they only had an owner willing to spend or played somewhere where they could have strong fan support.... Vegas baby! lol

by Peter North on Feb 3, 2007 5:15 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

i'm

Draftee. YouAlreadyKnow ("yAk") and Tyler are regulars over here. Jim Wisinski and Patrick Kennedy (MrPrezz) are here every so often as well. UCFRays is Jason Collette from Rotojunkie. Jacob Larson did not participate, though I'm sure he has his thoughts up on his blog, DRaysBay.

by Brickhaus on Feb 3, 2007 5:17 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Yeah...

DRaysBay is going to have their own Top 25.

by The Rocc on Feb 3, 2007 10:11 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Niemann vs. Dukes

Please put a guy with injury questions, Niemann, below a guy with attitude questions in Dukes.

IMO Dukes has proven his only question is attitude, which is a fairly big question.

Niemann isn't quite as proven on the diamond and has equal questions but with his health.

Health worries me more and Dukes has proven more on the field.

ps: notice how the site underestimated Briggy, compared with BA, every year? I think they are doing it again.

Arthur: "Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!" Black Knight: "Yes I have." Arthur: "Look!" Black Knight: "It's just a flesh wound!"

by pedrophile on Feb 4, 2007 1:37 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Briggy?

re: "ps: notice how the site underestimated Briggy, compared with BA"

Both have Young-Longoria-Brignac. What do you mean?

by BobbyMac on Feb 4, 2007 11:53 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Briggy

I'm not sure how we're underrating him at all. #3 in the Rays system is still a top-30 prospect in all of baseball. The reason I personally ranked Longoria higher is power potential. Briggy's got great power, but Longoria is legit. His bat speed is a 70 on the 20-80 scale. That's ++ bat speed. He was also rated as the best power potential in the Rays system, over DY. Not to mention that he's only 3 months older than Reid.

by Tyler on Feb 4, 2007 1:18 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Bat speed & power

Does he have the fastest bat speed or the quickest to the plate?

Also how would you compare his bat speed to Brignac, Delmon, and Dukes?

How would you compare the power potential of the four?

Arthur: "Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!" Black Knight: "Yes I have." Arthur: "Look!" Black Knight: "It's just a flesh wound!"

by pedrophile on Feb 4, 2007 1:36 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Historically

In 2005 he was rated 11th but 6th on BA.
In 2006 he was rated 8th but 4th on BA.

That is all I'm referring to. I do think he's better than Longoria. But being 2nd/3rd is really no difference. I'm just pointing out in the past he was undervalued because the tools didn't show and now they are showing.

Arthur: "Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!" Black Knight: "Yes I have." Arthur: "Look!" Black Knight: "It's just a flesh wound!"

by pedrophile on Feb 4, 2007 1:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Subject:

In 2006 Sickels had him 12th. In 2005 he was 7th. My personal list had him 5th in 2006 and 12th in 2005. Different rankers will use different criteria to arrive at their conclusions. Brignac is a toolsy player so BA is always going to rank someone like him really high. Sometimes the toolsy player will break out and their high ranking will be justified, other times they'll rank Joey Gathright #3 (though even by BA's criteria that was an absurd ranking). I'm not sure what your point is, you can cherry pick examples from anyone's list and make it look like they screwed up.

by Jim Wisinski on Feb 4, 2007 2:42 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

nah

I'm not criticizing or saying they screwed up. I do realize BA rates more on tools and others a little more towards results. So I can see why BA ranked him as they did in the past and I can see why these guys also ranked him as they did. I'm just contrasting the rankings because I think Briggy may suprise even more this year. I think he may pass Longoria and even Delmon.

Arthur: "Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!" Black Knight: "Yes I have." Arthur: "Look!" Black Knight: "It's just a flesh wound!"

by pedrophile on Feb 4, 2007 5:04 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

??? lol

You think I'm Jake?

Wrong... very wrong.

Rays in '08....

by youALREADYknow on Feb 4, 2007 12:06 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

that pitching is coming around, too

wonder where Davis and Talbot would rank on other teams' top tens.

and, for that matter, am i the only one that thinks talbot is a better prospect than Davis?

more advanced
control of better assortment of pitches
excellent ratios

maybe it's just that A level prospects don't give me the warm and fuzzies.

by scooter on Feb 4, 2007 2:43 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

+1

Davis is a bit of an enigma to me. He started out last year on absolute fire. But the summer came around and he faded quickly. I don't have the exact stat splits in front of me, but the decent was pretty dramatic. So, is Davis the guy that dominated the first couple months, or the guy that faded as the season wore on?

His inconsistency scares me, and that's why I think he is probably a tad bit overrated on this list. Talbot should definitely be ahead of him.

by guru4u on Feb 5, 2007 12:32 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Davis

the reason Davis struggled to much in the middle of the year is the DRO made him throw his curve and change more. He was fine tuning his game. If you look at his month by month splits, they show this pretty clearly:

April: .67 ERA, 26.2 IP
May: 1.32 ERA, 27.1 IP
June: 5.59 ERA, 29 IP
July: 5.29 ERA, 34 IP
August: 1.55 ERA, 29 IP

He didn't fade at all, he was working on his game, and it all came back together the last month of the season.

by Tyler on Feb 5, 2007 4:31 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Tyler...

Thanks for the info. I had no idea he was working on two specific pitches.

We're getting hung up on semantics, but he definitely faded. Now, as you point out it looks like there was a very good reason for the fade, but going from a 1.32 ERA to a 5.59 ERA is definitely a fade.

Thanks again Tyler for the clarification. I actually dropped Davis in one league because of his struggles in June and July. Who did I pick up? Evan Longoria. I still say I improved my team on that transaction :)

by guru4u on Feb 5, 2007 5:56 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs