Boston Red Sox Preliminary Prospect List

Forgot Alex Wilson.

I know his numbers are not great but this was his age 16 season and performed relatively ok, showing some pop for a guy with his stature. The people who have seen play rave about his defense at SS. Am not sure if he is a top 20 but he definitely deserves to be in consideration. To me he is in the same group of Perkins, De La Cruz, Ramos & Bogaerts.

Heard some good things. Very, very fast. Plus contact skills and defense. Power a question but slugged .455 this year.

Another guy I wouldn’t leave out is Brandon Jacobs. There is also the Cuban catcher Adalberto Ibarra. David Renfroe. Stephen Fife. Sergio Gomez is a pretty exciting young live arm… not much there presently, though, so not sure how much there is to come up with for a comment.

Someone who might have been forgotten is Junichi Tazawa. Of course he didn’t really change his stock in the last year or do anything worth writing about (had TJ), but pretty good chance we see him in Boston sometime in 2011 I would think.

Two guys I would urge you to consider for aggressive grades are Middlebrooks (plus offensive & plus defensive catcher who started to put it together) & Drake Britton (real frontline stuff and plus velo from a LH). I’m not sure if I posted my Sox list here before, but I’ll show it post Kelly trade now:

- Casey Kelly
1 Jose Iglesias
2 Anthony Ranaudo
3 Drake Britton
- Anthony Rizzo
4 Josh Reddick
5 Kolbrin Vitek
6 Will Middlebrooks
7 Oscar Tejeda
8 Garin Cecchini
9 Felix Doubront
10 Brandon Workman
11 Stolmy Pimental
- Reymond Fuentes
12 Sean Coyle
13 Yamaico Navarro
14 Ryan Lavarnway
15 Jeremy Hazelbaker
16 Bryce Brentz
17 Che-Hsuan Lin
18 Madison Younginer
19 Kendrick Perkins
20 Brandon Jacobs

I know people will be down on Brentz after a weak debut in short season… the thing I would emphasize there is that he’s actually pretty athletic and should be a pretty good defender. He just has that prototypical lumbering slugger skillset at the plate(Lots of power, mediocre contact skills, good patience, Ks), not in the field.

Reddick finished strong and I’m impressed be his defense. Could play CF but can be a real plus defensive RF with great contact and plate coverage skills with lots of power (Francouer-ish?).

I really like Vitek. Plus power, plus speed, great approach at the plate. All the tools to end up a plus defensive player someplace yet to be determined (in large part b/c he pitched and played all over the diamond in college).

& I would just remind everyone Iglesias was 19-20, dropped immediately into AA, into Maine (a very foreign environment for a kid who doesn’t really speak English well) and suffered from a wrist injury for much of the year (he’s fine now). His bat speed is ridiculous (was second only to Pedroia among all the players in Sox camp last spring). Month to month splits come with huge caveats and all, but pre injury Iglesias batted .288/.356/.409 in April (IN FRIGID MAINE!), .321/.325/.407 in May and then slugged in the .200’s for 2 months when he came back post wrist injury in August & September. Pretty striking difference. In fact, April/May he was getting a ton of positive buzz about how the bat was much farther along than expected. Bottom line… there’s really a lot to like about this kid’s bat, although clearly some risk and unknowns there, too. Closing the book on this kid after 221 ABs debuting in AA in Maine with a wrist injury seems silly to me.

Fwiw, I did make this list a month or two back and have yet to really go back and look at it, tweak it, etc…

I still like the system a lot.
Lavarnway is good.