Nice foursome, Count.  Here's hoping we can look forward to years of classic duels between them.

While Whit's command obviously has a way to go, I think that HR allowed is a very underrated stat.  Even though he's walking guys he must have atleast some command because to only give up that many homeruns he must be keeping the ball down.  I like it when I guy doesn't give up too many long balls.  I think, considering his upside, B is a fair grade.

I gotta go with david on this one. Whittaker is a bit too erratic to be ranked this high for a guy who tops out at 91-94mph with no solid breaking ball.

If he threw harder maybe he'd deserve more of a consideration despite his walk rates and wild pitches.

Todd Linden certainly has some tools, but he has two serious problems that I think will keep him from making it: 1) his total loss of patience once he got to AAA (pretty decent OBP numbers in Shreveport his first year). 2) Much worse -- he's a switch hitter who's hitting success and power is almost totally limited to this RIGHT side.  A switch hitter who can't hit RH is trouble (JT Snow).  A switch hitter who can't hit LH is just not going to make it.

I saw alot of Lewis and Ishikawa (and others) in Hagerstown.  For Lewis, I was amazed and encouraged by the improvement he showed last year in SJ.  He just so often looked in Hagerstown like an incredibly talented guy who was picking this game up for the first time.  That he could bat 300 and have an OBP over 400 a year later in the Cal League is fantastic.  I also wish Ishikawa well -- he puts on Bonds like performances in BP. It's just jaw-dropping the power he can display.  But he gets in games and way too often seems to be passive and thinking himself into oblivion (the hitting version of Estes).  I hope he figures out the balance between patience and agressiveness because he's got one pretty LH power stroke.  

...take Schierholtz over Sanders right now, but Baseball America's comments got me excited about Sanders.

He's like 19 in A ball. Isn't that pushing it a little bit.

Whether he's ready or not it's pretty impossible to see him pitching in SF this year unless there's an epidemic on the staff. They won't start his clock until he's ready to start.  I think Foppert's first in line to join the rotation if someone gets hurt/traded/ineffective.  After that Cain's probably pitching against Valdez for the #2 position.  2006 Woody will be gone and possibly Tomko, too, if Cain's had another great season and appears ready.

Ainsworth to me just looks like one of those guys who doesn't pan out for whatever reason.  Foppert got hurt, of course, and I never saw him throw around 97 like he was supposed to.  So wait and see on him.  I'm sure his recovery will be fine from the surgery, we'll just have to see how hard he throws.

And Jerome Williams likes to eat.

I think you're being way too hard on both Williams and Foppert. Williams is 17-12 with an ERA under four so far in his career - yeah, he's been up and down, but I'd certainly take that level from a guy who is, after all, still getting his feet wet. Foppert wasn't great as a rookie in '03, true, and then he got hurt, but there are lots of guys who struggle as rookies and settle down later. Either or both could still front a pitching staff; they're both still relatively young, although whether Foppert can get healthy is anyone's guess.

Don't get all gloating too soon.  Ainsworth, in the short time he was with the Giants pitched quite well.  Unfortunately, he suffered a stress fracture of his right scapula and Sabean traded him to Baltimore in the Ponson deal.  Since then, he's had one injury after another and most recently had another surgery on his elbow which he previously had a TJ on.

Look for Williams to have a breakout year this year.  His stats so far are right there with the other W's from 2003, Willis and Webb.

Don't write off Foppert yet.  Many pitchers come back from TJ stronger than ever.

I think Noah Lowry makes a nice substitute for Ainsworth, don't you?

We're not finished yet, with Matt Cain, and Merkin Valdez waiting in the wings.  If you are looking for a real sleeper to keep your eyes out for, go with Pat Misch.

So, the Giants may not only have a big 3, they may have their own homegrown big 5 in a couple of years.  Williams, Lowry, Foppert, Cain, and Valdez.

The hype was not even close to the uber-hype that the A's and Met's top pitching prospects got in the early 90's when the 3 and 4-somes were coming up together at the same time.

Williams not doing that well?  You need to look at the facts first.  He had a great 3.30 ERA in his initial season, 21 starts, and in his second season when he was admittedly overweight (speaking of Blanton, Blanton looks like a bloated Ponson, if that is possible) and out of shape - which he corrected this off-season - AND he had elbow problems, he had a 4.25 ERA, which is not bad.  His WHIP both seasons were below 1.30 (1.26 and 1.29, respectively), which he has kept low all through the minors, with walks going down his second season but much higher HR rate accounting for about half his rise in ERA.  His maturity as a pitcher (beyond his years) has always been praised by most analysts I've read and he's going to be entering into only his 23rd age season.  If Sandy Koufax was around today and starting his career, you'd be flogging the Dodgers for keeping him around this failed, over-hyped prospect.

Foppert, in recent interviews, have finally admitted that he lied about his arm problems the whole season until his injury.  Everyone was saying in 2003 that they noticed his velocity had dropped but he denied it then when in reality he was gutting out each game until his arm couldn't take it anymore.  If he can regain the mid-90's velocity that made everyone rave about his abilities before the injury, he should be back on track.  From all reports, it sounds like he has recovered physically but hasn't gotten the speed up there yet but he's already ahead of the time table for "Tommy John" surgery.  Again, he is still very young, he starts the season as 24 years of age (he turns 25 mid-season).  So there is still time for him to do something good to great.

What I've noticed is that hype on any prospect is already something you need to take with a grain of salt no matter who it is coming up because anything could derail them before they reach the majors and even when they reach it, injuries seem to be a huge problem as well as the league learning about you.  Watching the Giants prospects over the years builds up an immunity to hype because many of them fizzled by the time they got up.  The A's are no better with their first hyped Big Rotation (Van Poppel, Conroy?, etc.) or even more recently, how about Eric Hinske, he's not looking so great for Toronto anymore, is he?  (Mike Caruso is our version of that)  Look at the Dodgers with Jackson and Miller, they were hyped even more than any of the Giants prospects have been, and the former has fizzled so far and the latter has been injured.

Lastly, 4 years?  Obviously you haven't been following this closely else you would have known that Foppert was not heralded as a prospect until mid to late 2002 season.  He was one of Sabean's many unheralded top draft picks (a converted pitcher in only his 2nd year of pitching for a little known baseball college?)and didn't get the big hype for making the majors until the off-season prior to the 2003 season.  He literally leapt to the top of the charts from nothing in one season.  So he has only been hyped about 2.5 seasons ago.