First of all, I've only expressed my opinions (plus a few speculative guesses about major-league general managers' reasons for not selecting Napoli prior to 2005), so please do not read anything more into that.  I don't mean to suggest that I am right or that you are wrong because this is almost entirely subjective speculation anyway.  I do not claim to be an expert, and I registered on this site mostly to enjoy reading and learning more about minor league prospects (and the interaction with other fans is a great bonus).

I agree with you on several details regarding Napoli.  He may have been a more productive MLB backup catcher in 2005 than one or more backup catchers.  But would you also agree that this is a difficult, if not impossible, evaluation to state with any certainty?

Without discounting that possibility, I can also imagine at least two reasons why MLB teams did not choose to draft him, even as a backup catcher only:

1. MLB GM's probably preferred the safety of the known quantities of experienced backups over an A-level young prospect.
   
2. Legitimate questions about Napoli's skill set and health then (which were answered to some degree in AA, but may or may not have been duplicated with the same or better success in the Show last year...or even by the end of this year, perhaps).

We disagree most as to whether or not Napoli would have been a competitive 1B/DH option then, and we differ on the purely speculative question of whether the 29 GM's who passed on him in the R5 draft were correct to select players with whom they perceived less risk to fill other needs to which each had assigned a higher level of priority.

Again, it doesn't mean that I believe that all of them were entirely correct.  In fact, since some of those Rule 5 draftees did not last the entire 2005 season in the majors, it logically follows that some GM's were not entirely correct in their assessments.  However, I can easily imagine why 29 GM's thought that Napoli was a riskier Rule 5 draft pick than the players who were actually chosen.

As a Kansas Citian, I hope you are entirely correct about Napoli's value as a backup catcher last season.  In that scenario, Napoli-Buck would have been a more helpful catching tandem for the Royals last season than Buck-Castillo, and perhaps the season would have had one more small bright spot (really, anything would have helped matters).  At the time, I would have personally preferred to see how a catching duo of John Buck and Paul Phillips, but Phillips definitely lacks Napoli's exciting raw power, and the rest is a different matter altogether.

Consider this, too: at least half of the basis for any speculation as to whether he would have been a productive backup MLB catcher in 2005 is because he was not drafted and developed his skills at the double-A level instead.  Whether one is skeptical or optimistic about Napoli's ability to produce at or beyond his minor league production for a significantly long career in the Show, the probability and degree of his future success are probably better from both points of view because he played full-time in the Texas League last year.  I also believe that Napoli's AA performance in 2005 is more impressive to just about anyone today than whatever his major-league equivalent numbers would have been as another relatively anonymous backup catcher.

However - it is not like his 29 HR's in 2004 were accompanied by 55 RBI's - he knocked in 118 runs so he was putting the ball into play.

You are definitely correct to say that Napoli put the ball in play more often than he struck out, and he was often productive when he did make contact.

On this matter, I think our biggest disagreement lies in whether his 2004 high-A stats indicated that he was ready for the Show.  That was his fourth consecutive year of A-ball (and his third year of spending some or all of the season at high-A Rancho), so I'm not surprised that he established career highs there.  It did indicate that he was mostly or completely recovered from his injury, but it was also the first and time in his career that he batted above .270 in a season.

Let's compare Napoli's 2004 (A+), 2005 (AA), and minor-league career numbers to Jeff Mathis's 2003 (A+), 2004 (AA), and minor-league career at-bats, hits, strikeouts, and contact outs (through 2005):

Player ABs Hit SOs COs BAVG KAVG COAVG
Mike04 482 136 166 180 .282 .344 .373
Mike05 439 104 140 195 .237 .319 .444
Jeff03 378 122  74 182 .323 .196 .482
Jeff04 432  98 102 232 .227 .236 .537

Career AB's Hit SOs COs BAVG KAVG COAVG
Napoli 1649 421 515 713 .255 .312 .433
Mathis 1923 536 369 718 .279 .192 .373

Whether looking at each players' combined final year of A+ and first full year of AA or their minor league careers, Mathis has produced more hits than strikeouts, nearly twice as many contact outs as strikeouts, and less than ten percent more contact outs than hits.  On the other hand, Napoli has produced fewer hits than strikeouts, less than a 3:2 ratio of contact outs to K's, and nearly 18% more contact outs than hits.

I don't believe anyone is denying that each player brings something positive to the table and can potentially succeed in some major-league role eventually.  The Angels, fans, and experts had many reasons to grade and rank Mathis higher than Napoli in the preseason, and Napoli must sustain his current burst of improvement over the next season and half and beyond to completely disprove those evaluations and expectations.  Most of all, I believe there is room for both prospects in the Angels' future, depending on their respective roles and continued development.