Prospect Retrospective: Jorge Posada

As you are no doubt aware, Yankees catcher Jorge Posada announced his retirement a few days ago. This seems like a good idea to take a look at what Posada was like as a prospect, and how his career ranks in context.

Posada was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 24^th round in 1990 from high school in Puerto Rico. He was a draft-and-follow choice, not signing right away and attending Calhoun Community College in Alabama, where he played shortstop.

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With the organization ranking list done, my next "long term" projects are an integrated Top 100 list and beginning my 2012 draft coverage. The Top 100 list will come out in mid-to-late February, and the draft stuff takes time to research. I haven't focused on the draft yet. Matt will be posting quite a bit about it but I need to do my own research as well.

In the meantime, I am working on ideas for additional features. I have some things in mind suggested by readers. In no particular order, I am planning

*Anthony Gose vs. Starling Marte Smackdown
*Cheslor Cuthbert vs. Miguel Sano Smackdown
*Prospect Retros/Historical Prospects (make some suggestions)
*Front office interviews
*My favorite Grade C prospects

Feel free to suggest more ideas.

As you have probably noticed, we have a lot going on here at Minor League Ball right now. The 2012 Baseball Prospect Book comes out next week. I recently posted organization rankings, ranking the 30 baseball farm systems in order. That got a big response.

The other big news is the addition of Matt Garrioch and his draft expertise to the Minor League Ball roster. Matt had done great work at MLB Bonus Baby covering the draft. I have long wanted to expand draft coverage, and it made perfect sense to merge Bonus Baby into Minor League Ball.

Matt is extremely knowledgeable, his work deserves a wider audience, and he will make Minor League Ball an even cooler place. I will still be writing my own draft material, including the Shadow Draft, but you can expect to see Matt's work more and more frequently as we move into draft season.

There are other changes in the works for 2012. Nothing that you like about Minor League Ball will change, but we plan on adding more features. Our goal is to make Minor League Ball your one-stop shopping center for all your prospect needs.

I have good news and bad news about the 2012 Baseball Prospect Book.

The good news is that thanks to the response last week, we ordered some extra copies and everyone who has ordered the paper copy up to now will definitely get one. That won't be true for long, so if you want to be guaranteed a paper copy, order now!

More good news is that, barring any sort of technical glitch, this weekend we will be sending out the electronic .pdf version to everyone who ordered the electronic copy. Watch your emails!

More good news: we sent out the 50/50 list last night to all orders that gave us a valid email and will be sending that list to all orders within 24 hours of their receipt.

The bad news: we had planned on shipping the paper copies of the book starting Saturday, January 28th. However, there was a problem at the printing company, and they can't deliver the books to us until next Tuesday, January 31st, at the earliest. This means that the book will start shipping to customers on Wednesday, February 1st, at the earliest.

Technically this isn't late, since we had been advertising a February 1st shipping date all along. However, we had told some customers that we would start shipping the book on Saturday. It is disappointing that we can't do this, and please accept our apologizes.

This year's college crop is a little thin. The top has a sure fire SS that can hit, a solid back stop, several power arms and a couple power hitting outfielders but none of them project as sure fire stars. This list is slanted towards the players I have seen more and this list will be fluid up to the draft when I post my final big board prior to the draft.

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I'm Matt Garrioch. Some of you know me from MLB Bonus Baby, others may not, but I've been blogging there for just over a year about the MLB Draft. With so much cross over between the minor leagues and the draft, it only makes sense to merge the two blogs into one making this the one stop for prospect information.

Nothing that you previously enjoyed about Minor League Ball will change, as John will still be doing his draft pieces and continuing his Shadow Draft for the Twins. I will only be adding extra content here. John and I don't always have the same opinion on players but that makes for good conversation and gives you more knowledge of the future of the game.

To start, I will be posting my top 100 college and high school prospect lists. They will be up soon and I will detail specific players in the coming weeks and keep you updated on what is changing in the draft landscape as it approaches.

Top 20 Shadow Twins Prospects for 2012

As many of you know, for the last 16 years I've been doing a "Shadow Draft" in real time with the actual baseball June draft, and building up a sort of Alternate Universe farm system for the Minnesota Twins. Here is how the list looked a year ago.

In 2011, I graduated Brett Lawrie, Eric Thames, and Michael Bowden off the list, with Mike Fiers and Josh Satin also reaching the majors for brief looks by their real-life teams.

Of the players on the Real Twins Top 10 Prospect List by Baseball America, I don't have Joe Benson, Aaron Hicks, Kyle Gibson, and Chris Parmelee. I drafted Lars Anderson and Matt Sulentic in 2006 instead of Parmelee and Benson (oops!), Brett Lawrie in 2008 instead of Hicks (looks good so far), and Jared Mitchell in 2009 instead of Gibson (eek). You win some, you lose some.

Here is how my Shadow system currently looks.

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2012 Baseball Farm System Rankings

I have never done formal farm system rankings before. People have asked me to do it constantly over the years, but I guess I read too much post-modern stuff in college and the idea of saying "this farm system is better than that farm system" never appealed to me outside of generalities.

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You still have a window of opportunity to order your paperback copy of the 2012 Baseball Prospect Book. If all goes according to plan, we will start shipping the book next weekend. We will likely run out of paper copies very quickly so it is first come, first serve. We are also selling the .pdf version this year, so when we run out of hard copies you can still get the book in electronic format, although I know many of you prefer paper.

The book has prospect reports on 1205 players. Below the fold, you can find a few sample comments from the book.

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I thought yesterday's poll question regarding Yu Darvish and Bryce Harper would be closer. I thought Harper would win, but I didn't expect such a wipeout result, currently 88% in favor of Harper.

Would the result be the same if I asked a slightly different question? How about this one: if you had to spend $111 million on either Darvish or Harper, who would you pick?

The other poll question I recently asked was about Dellin Betances of the New York Yankees and Jarred Cosart of the Houston Astros, a pair of Grade B pitching prospects. Cosart came out ahead here with 53% of the vote. I asked this question because it came down to either Betances or Cosart for the final spot on my Top 50 Pitching Prospect list. In the end, I went with Betances.

I am taking tomorrow off. I hope to have my Organization Rankings complete on Monday or Tuesday at the latest, and we'll start adding other feature pieces as we move towards spring training.