The guy is a 22 yo college hitter putting up a line of .243/.338/.351 at low A ball.  The fact that he was described as a gold glove defender doesn't mean much with that line.  Throw in the 71 Ks in 61 games and I don't have much hope as a Reds fan. The fact that 4 of the next 6 picks were Rowell, Lincecum, Scherzer and Snider just makes it worse.  I was not a fan of the pick at the time but now I just outright hate it.  

Anybody know when he's going to start playing.  I know they left him in extended spring training due to an injury but I'm looking forward to see how he compares to the other HS hitters from last years first round.                                                                                                    

Just want to see what the prevailing opinion is here on a site of die hard baseball fans as to who should and shouldn't be in the Hall.  I left Ripken and Gwynn off as I'm sure they'd get close to 100% on here too.  I'm curious to see how the percentages compare to what the actual vote was.  Vote for as many as you think are deserving.

I have to admit that I'd never heard of the guy until I saw BA's Prospect Hot Sheet but I only follow the Reds system and the top guys for fantasy purposes.  His line this year is unbelievable so far at Frederick.

10 IP/2 H/4BB/22 K

I looked up his page at baseballcube and they didn't have any biographical information on him.  Last year was his first year in the minors at age 21.  Based on his stats from last year, it looks like he has a bit of a control problem but his stuff must be filthy.  22 Ks in 10 IP.  Is this guy this years Liriano, quick riser up the prospect charts or are his first 2 games a fluke?  And where did he come from?

I was reading Neyer's new article at espn.com about teams with strong farm systems (he mentions the Dbacks, Dodgers and Angels) and it triggered an idea.  You've gone back and looked at previous individual lists to see how they turned out, why not look at previous team rankings.  Who had the strongest styems in the late 90's and has it translated to on the field success in the majors either by their prospects succeeding or being traded for vets?

You also get some good pub in the article from Neyer.  

What do you Twins fans think of him?  He was the guy I wanted because he comes from a small market team that's developed a great farm system, which is the model that I think Cincinnati has to follow to become competetive again.  Spending $21 million on Eric Milton types is obviously not the right solution.  I'm also glad the Beattie rumors were false as I'm not that impressed with his resume.

This is related to a fantasy proposition for me (keeper league/expansion draft) but I don't want to focus on that.  I've read often that a player's prime starts in the 27-28 year range but I've never read anything about when you can expect players to start to fall off or their prime to end.  I cherry picked a few big names and took a look at year by year numbers but that's just not enough data to extrapolate anything meaningful.  Is there any conventional wisdom out there for when an average players performance is going to start to fall off?  Is it different for pitchers and hitters?

What's this guys story?  I hadn't ever heard of him until the team of minor leaguers thread on Sunday when a couple of people listed him on their "teams" of top players in the minors.  I looked up his stats from this year and his K rate was excellent but his BB rate was poor and his H rate was ok but not great.  Plus it was in just 50 innings of work.  He was a 14th round draft pick in '04 out of HS.  On the surface he looks like a good guy to keep an eye on but not a can't miss prospect.  What don't I know that would make someone would consider him one of the top prospects in the game?  

Just found out the other day that he entered the draft this year through a newsletter my step-mom gets from the group home in Lafayette, IN.  My step-mom worked there long ago and I guess Clayton's parents are the new house parents, which is quite a selfless act for people who are entering their golden years but that's another story altogether.

The reason for this post was to get your opinion on him and see if he's going to be in the book.  Some background on him, he was a highly rated QB coming out of HS and came down to hometown Purdue (my connection as I'm a Purdue grad) and Michigan.  He chose Michigan much to my chagrin.  He redshirted his freshman year as Michigan's QB was a senior.  His Redshirt Freshman year (last year), he got beat out by a true freshman so he decided to play baseball in the spring.  Looking at his numbers, they weren't bad for taking almost 2 calendar years off from baseball.

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/R/clayton-richard-1.shtml

H/IP rate was a little higher than you'd like but the K/IP and BB/IP were both pretty good.

Then he pitched really well in the Pioneer League this summer again with very good K/IP and BB/IP rates and an average H/IP.  Sample size was too small in the Sally League to really tell.

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/R/clayton-richard.shtml

For a kid that hasn't played much baseball since HS, it would seem there would be a lot of room for development.  Any thoughts on him?  Is he going to be in the book?  

I'm getting down to the end of my fantasy draft and I'm looking for a potential keeper pitcher.  The usual minor league suspects are already on people's teams and most of the young major league pitchers are gone too.  I've only recently started keeping up with minor league evaluations and rankings.  Looking at Bush's Minor League stats, he had great H, BB, and K per 9 IP rates up until AAA and they were still pretty good there.  His walk rate was up a little and his k rate was down a little once he got called up but his hit rate was still pretty good and his ERA was good.  In the little reading I've done about him, it sounds like he has a lot of room to get better considering he wasn't a pitcher when he went to college and wasn't a starter when he started in the minors.  Looking for thoughts on his ceiling from those that have been following his career or that know a little more than I.