Also, the "Holy Roman Empire" line is originally Voltaire.

underated: Kyle Davies, Adam Miller, Jeff Francis, Ubaldo Jimenez, Steven Shell. Most underated I'd go with Kyle Davies

I think he's a very good prospect, but imo he's being seen as 'too' good. That can very well change after next season.

I'll go with Ryan Howard and Huston Street as the two most overrated prospects.  

Underrated would be Ambiorex Burgos.  Legit 96 MPH fastball with movement, good mechanics for his age, 11.6 K/9 in the Midwest League as a 20-year-old, and never gets mentioned as a legit arm to watch in the future.  His command needs work and he has some growing up to do, but you could say that about a ton of minor league pitchers who get far more recognition with less impressive stuff.  

For under-rated: Ryan Church.  I have never understood why this guy doesn't get a legit shot.  He tore up the PCL last year -- yes, it was the PCL, but .343/.428/.620 is impressive, even if he put up those numbers on the moon.  In 347 AB: 54 XBH, 51 BB, 62 SO, with only four GIDP's.  That, and supposedly he has a plus arm and is at least an average defensive player.  It seems the negativity surrounding his future stems from his brief trial at the end of last year, in which he hit .175/.257/.238 in 63 AB's.  The thing is, those 63 AB's came over the course of 30 games, so he was getting a lot of pinch-hitting AB's and defensive replacement AB's, both of which only give the batter one shot at the pitcher, hardly a fair way to judge a player with Church's track record.

Those two seem to be the most consistently over- and under-rated, respectively.

Memo to Scott Boras...Already overrated: Jered Weaver and Stephen Drew!

Underrated: Delwyn Young, Adam Miller, & (oddly enough) Edwin Jackson.  Jackson is still only 22 years old - I think we have seen what he should do and cut him some slack for one bad season.

Because he's a relief prospect, and not a special one.  There are maybe four or five relievers in baseball who are dominating enough to have value comparable to a good starting pitcher; Eric Gagne, Brad Lidge, Mariano Rivera, Francisco Rodriguez, and if he can sustain his 2004 performance, maybe Joe Nathan.  

Street can't even come close to touching those guys in raw stuff.  He just doesn't have that kind of dominating, lights out repertoire that will allow him to be a dominant, multi-inning horse at the end of the bullpen.  

Street's a pretty safe bet to be a nice reliever, but nice relievers are literally laying around on the scrap heap just waiting for a chance to throw 50 innings in the show.  With all due respect to John, there's just no way he's one of the few best pitching prospects in the game.  

How do you know (that Loney is a good hitter)?

Scouting.  I've watched him hit pretty extensively, and wrote up my thoughts at Prospectus last spring.  On a mechanical basis, there's almost nothing wrong with his swing.  He has terrific bat speed, good plate coverage, solid understanding of the strike zone, developing power, and an ability to drive the ball to all fields.  

Obviously, his 2003 performance didn't show that, and as I mentioned in my first post, injuries are a concern.  But prospect analysis is not simply evaluating past performance and ranking by numbers; we're trying to find out who is the best bet going forward, and skills not reflected in performance still count.  

Obviously, I'm not arguing that Loney's 2003 performance doesn't matter.  I was as disappointed by it as anyone, though the injuries are a pretty clear mitigating factor.  I just feel like a pretty big part of the analysis of James Loney's talent is being overlooked in the rush to evaluate him by his 2003 performance.  And, well, that's not good analysis.

1. Dallas McPherson. He has great power, but if i were an Angels fan, i would be shitting my pants over his strikeouts. Maybe I'm exaggerating. During his september callup, including playoffs, he was just overmatched. He had 3 homers in 40 at bats, which is good. But the rest just stunk. Im a little skeptical.
2. Chris Nelson. For God's sakes, he has played less than 40 games in rookie league, yet im reading how this guy is gonna be huge and all this stuff. I wanna see him in higher levels.

1. Casey Kotchman. Except for him being in John's top 10 prospects, i haven't really heard anyone that excited about him. He's such a polished hitter. He's got a great eye, and gap power.

Underrated would be Robinson Cano, he had a great run in AA, struggled some in AAA, but was still young for the level at 21 and then went on and had a very solid DWL campaign yet he never seems to get mentioned on the RARE occasions where 2B prospects are discussed.

Yes.  Many times.

Do you know what your talking about?

Yes.  

He's arguably the most polished reliever in the minors.  

Like I said, he's a safe bet to be a nice reliever.  This has nothing to do with my assertion that he lacks the kind of potential to be the kind of impact reliever that he would need to be to justify a ranking as one of the best pitching prospects in the game.

Along with his pin-point accuracy where he can spot his fastball anywhere he wants, he has this great sharp slider. Like Jesse Crain.

That's pretty ridiculous.  His slider is nowhere near the Jesse Crain level.  It's an above average pitch.  Crain, along with Nageotte, has one of the best sliders in the game.  

He doesnt have Mariano Rivera's stuff, but can you prove to me somehow how he's NOT one of the best pitching prospects?

It's almost impossible to prove a negative, especially to someone who clearly has their mind made up.  I could, if you'd like, give you a list of about 15-20 pitchers I would much rather have in my organization.  In no real particular order...

Felix Hernandez
Matt Cain
Michael Hinckley
Anthony Reyes
Adam Miller
Chad Billingsley
Edwin Jackson
Kyle Davies
Scott Olson
Gavin Floyd
Jeff Francis
Merkin Valdez
Jose Capellan
Dan Meyer
Thomas Diamond
Scott Kazmir

There's 16 off the top of my head without giving it too much thought.  

You're talking about the 11 innings he threw in Kane County, 13 innings in Midland, and 2 innings in Sacramento? I'm sorry, but you can't dominate a level in that short of a period of time.  

Street has neither the pure stuff or the long track record of success of most of the other guys I named.  When Keith Foulke, who was traded twice for mediocre pitchers, is your best case scenario, you're probably not one of the best pitching prospects in the game.  

I guess the real question is how valuable an indicator minor league performance is in light of a pitcher not having knock-your-socks-off stuff.

I think tools matter a lot more for pitching prospects than for hitting prospects, and I'm a lot more likely to value a hitter who has good numbers but poor scouting reports than a pitcher who scouts aren't fond of.  I'm not nearly as high on Yasmeiro Petit as some others, for instance.  It is just too easy to breeze through the minors with a good changeup or a breaking ball that minor league hitters will chase that major league hitters will not.  For years, statistical analysts have been hyping soft-tossing guys with good BB/K ratios, and for years, they've been consistently off base.  

Guys like John Stephens, Jason Arnold, and Bud Smith have been sabermetric poster boys for undervalued pitching prospects and fallen flat pretty quickly.  Even a guy like Craig Anderson, who barely cracked 80 MPH and is now out of baseball, posted tremendous walk-to-strikeout ratios and garnered some support as a top prospect.  

We can talk about blending scouting and statistical analysis all we want, but we have to actually do it.  And we'd be well served by noting that the mediocre stuff but good performance types haven't exactly been the stars that we'd have hoped.  

Another player who seems to always be mentioned on underrated and overrated lists is Nick Swisher.  I hope he belongs on the underrated.