Boston Red Sox Organization Discussion

at the top, but the depth is still pretty solid. Some of my favorite sleepers are Alex Hassan, Henry Ramos, and Xander Boegarts. They had an absurd draft and are in position to have another one next year with the 19th pick and potentially another first rounder depending on where Beltre goes.

This kid is gonna experience some serious helium in 2011.

Kinda like the lil’ lefty. Mediocre ERA for Greenville, but excellent control, respectable K’s, and a four-year track record of both success & good health. Anyone seen Rivera pitch?

Also, why is Britton continuing to average 3 1/2 innings per start? (75 IP in 21 outings last year.) I’ve heard of conservative workloads, but that’s reeeeeal safe. Fifty-inning limit all season?

pretty much all the “high ceiling” guys are in high a-salem or lower, exept for lavarnway, iglesias, middlebrooks and lin (who are in aa portland), the only guys who might help in boston this year are weiland as a reliever and kalish.

salems rotation is stacked: raunaudo, workman, britton, balcom-miller and volz.

i’m looking forward to a see a full season of iglesias and see what his bat can do.

i think lin is still underrated, he will probably never hit for much power (although there might be a bit more than his .08x iso), but his bb% went up every year and his k% went down every year, that is one consistent prospect, plus his defense is said to be top notch.

and then there is lars…i still dont know what to make of him, lets see what this season brings

same goes for reddick though his flameout potential is much higher

navarro could be interesting, from hat i have season in the majors his defense seems pretty good and he did hit well in aaa

After which it becomes preposterously, insanely, mind-bogglingly deep. There are 60 guys that I believe would ordinarily be certain to make John’s book, another 30 that he could include easily, and another 30 that he might write up as bones to throw to the fans of a weak system. I don’t think anyone really knows how to rank a system like that. I’ll probably be posting a depth chart at SoSH in the next few days.

Three super-sleepers:

Pete Ruiz. 6-3 high school 1B who started pitching at age 20 in CC and was drafted in the 10th round in ’08, he did nothing in the system through July 1 of this year, when he had a 5.76 ERA and .336 / .376 / .533 allowed for Greenville. In his last 11 starts he fanned 62 and walked 7 in 65.1, had a 2.14 Component ERA, and held opponents to .223 / .251 / .331, which according to my translations meant he was outpitching everyone at AA. His last 7 starts were 44 K, 2 BB (yes, 2) in 41 IP. He reportedly developed a hammer curve to go with the unreal command. He had a 5.21 BB/9 in college, so the lack of experience compared to other prospects his age really seems to be the key.

Manny Rivera. His season was a club sandwich: 6 terrific starts, 5 awful ones, then 4 up, 5 down, 6 up. As I argue over at SoSH that kind of pattern (as opposed to one or two good games, one or two bad ones) indicates an upside as good as the good starts, and in those 16 starts he had a 2.34 Component ERA and .210 / .237 / .327 allowed, better translated numbers than Pimentel.

Chih-Hsien Chiang. Got a $375K bonus to sign out of Taiwan 5 years ago and has been promoted very aggressively while being converted from 2B to LF. OPS by months last year at age 22 in AA: 398, 598, 725, 877, 933.

Reddick still has a chance to be Garret Anderson with better D (his second half at AAA was mazing), but the way to get maximum value out of him was to have traded him to KC before they signed those other non-walker OFers. Still could happen.