Hello everyone,

I have volunteered to collect people's Top 100 and report back to you with the results.  This will be a useful list on its own, as well as interesting to compare to our Community Top 100 and other lists.

The most onerous part of this process is not going to be computing the actual numbers, but rather organizing the files that everyone submits.  My experience doing this for other sites is that this is by far the biggest headache.  Therefore, I am asking you to submit with some fairly strict (but simple) requirements.  If you do this, your list makes it into the mix.  If you don't, I may be able to fix it, or I may just chuck it.  I'm not going to assess any kind of "User name requirement" such as seniority on this board or anything - rather, the organization of your list will be the chief criteria I use in accepting the submissions.  (I will, however, reserve the right to throw away a list that is obviously from a sabateur.) Can we all live with that?

If you submit your list in Microsoft Excel (preferred), I need you to save it for pre-2007 version (e.g., XLS 2003).  I also need it to be a simple list of three columns - one for the rank, one for the last name, and one for the first name.  Please do not list position, team name, or anything else.  This should look like the following:

1 Bruce Jay

2 Longoria Evan

3 Rasmus Colby

If you don't have Excel, you can send it as a text tile, saved as RTF format.  If you do this, please list as:  Numerical rank, followed by a space, followed by last name, followed by a comma, followed by a space, followed by the first name.  This will create a list that looks like this:

1 Bruce, Jay

2 Longoria, Evan

3 Rasmus, Colby

(Please do not submit a list that looks like this:

1. Bruce, Jay

or this

1 Jay Bruce

or this

1  Bruce,   Jay)

Some other requirements:

1. If you submit in XLS, BE SURE to save it as XL 2003.  Each layer should be on a separate row, and all rows should be consecutive (e.g., 50 rows for 50 players).  If you don't have Excel, try it as a list in rich text format (rtf).
2. Send the file to me at: Siddfynch AT gmail.com (note that this is NOT the email address found in my settings on this site).
3. In the file name, be sure to include the username you use on this site (e.g., "top50list from Siddfynch")
4. You MUST spell the names of all the players completely and correctly.  Do not send me "Moose" as an entry, or 'Mike Moostakas".  I'm willing to spend a little time fixing typos and spelling errors, but not a whole lot.  If your entry is chock full of errors, it makes it tough.  Be extra careful with the use of "s" and "z" in Latin American names.  Note that I do this myself with BA and BP and John's list each year, and they NEVER have typos in the names - it's not hard to avoid, with a little effort.
   

Time span

I've got a great window of time from Dec 16 to work on this.  Our own Commuity list will be done by then, and many other sites will be well into their reporting season, which means plenty of resources out there for informing our rankings.  Thus, I am proposing the following:

1. Call for submissions: Now
2. Deadline for submissions: Dec16
3. My report back to you:  January 3 (faster, if the files are clean)

List size and player eligibility

After reading the initial comments, let's make it a Top 100.  You can submit more if you choose.

Let's make eligibility based simply on:

1) a max of 50IP or 130 ABs in the majors (e.g., don't worry about service time)

2) a player has to have been either drafted or already in a major league program (e.g., no Stephen Strasbourgs)

Note:

I won't be checking that email account very often in the next week or so, so it's generally better to post questions/comments/complaints in this thread than by email to me directly.  Thanks.

Happy ranking,

Sidd

Yup, it's at:

http://itmightbedangerous.blogspot.com/

And, from reading the first two threads (excuse me, um "fanposts"), it looks like it could be pretty nifty.  He comes across as pretty genuinely interested in interacting with the readers, and already has a couple answers to posts up there.  He's crazy if he thinks he can keep up with the stream of questions he'll get, but even if he can settle into some sort of selective cherry-picking every so often, it's a cool move forward in this information age.

Future Redbirds has recently had some great interviews with Jeff Luhnow, the Cards' director of player development.  Between real-time interviews like that and blogs started by the SD front office, is it safe to assume we are starting a new age of front office interaction, where we can at least some prospect news directly from the source?  5 years ago , the Chris Perez callup "story" would have been broken only by the press; now it is broken by bloggers; in 5 years, will it be released directly by the Cards GM?

Just came across this while skimming the Milwaukee newspaper, www.Milwaukeenewsandsuasagepress.com/Melvin.  Given all the recent discussions about the seven-headed monster known as Heyward-Moustakas-LaPorta-Burgess-Schafer-Vitters-LaPorta -Snider in here, I thought it might be useful to some ongoing discussions (that will hopefully end by 2010).

Continue reading this post »

Great read on both Morales and Stewart, as well as on some prospecting philosophies in general.

Not sure how much is subscriber content, so I'll just post the link.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7076

Continue reading this post »

I don't think this is subscriber info, so I'll post the whole thing instead of abridging.  Originally tacked it into Prospect #37 diary, but  then felt it had enough tranferrable value to hopefully spark some larger discussion, especially in regards to other prospects:

From the Dec 19 chat at BP:

David (Sonoma State University): Is Clayton Kershaw REALLY that good? Why aren't the Dodgers more willing to trade him considering that they have Scott Elbert?

Nate Silver: Clay did a bunch of work on the pitcher DTs this winter -- I mean, some really thorough, painstaking work -- and one thing he found is that the difficulty curve for minor league pitchers is much steeper that we'd previously believed. So to the extent that Kershaw is a top prospect, it's at this stage more a scouting thing than a numbers thing -- his high walk rates are almost as much of a minus as his high strikeout rates are a plus. He's still an excellent prospect, but he's leaps and bounds behind the Clay Buchholz class of pitchers.

Continue reading this post »

OK, here's the supplemental round, which turned out to be even longer than Round 1 in  2007.  As before, the stats are from BB Cube and from MiLB.com, with supplemental info from blog sites and pre-draft reports.

As before, I have assigned grades, but I think the real value is just in knowing where the guys played, and what kind of numbers they put up.  These grades are also strictly performance-related, and don't factor in ceiling or overall outlook as a prospect - they are all about stats, as modified by ARL.

Continue reading this post »

Hey all,

I had wanted to put this up earlier, and now wish I had before Votto went on.  I'd have liked to see a discussion on how to deal with Votto before annointing him #13 (or whatever), but that's moot now.  I don't really think vote stuffing is the huge problem that others make it out to be - it's fairly easy to detect, we just need to agree on how to treat it.  

What we can do is have a poll that references how the community in general feels we should deal with this next time it comes up.  Doing so now, while there's no stuffing, will also help keep it free of passions over any one player.

Continue reading this post »

With 233 votes in, Brandon Wood wins #14 going away.  On to Round 15.

Once again the requirements are 130 AB/ 50 IP/ 45 Days on a roster not including September call ups.

Prospect Rankings
   1. Jay Bruce
   2. Evan Longoria
   3. Clay Buchholz
   4. Clayton Kershaw
   5. Joba Chamberlain
   6. Colby Rasmus
   7. Cameron Maybin
   8. David Price
   9. Travis Snider
  10. Homer Bailey
  11. Andy LaRoche
  12. Jacob McGee
  13. Joey Votto
  14.  Brandon Wood

Please post more suggestions for the list!

Also don't forget to send in your slurve top 50/100!

Continue reading this post »

All -

Here's the list I sent to Slurve, with my comments on a few selections.  I buried this down low earlier in another diary, but maybe we actually NEED more diaries about baseball in here.

Anyway, I think this is the sacrificial first list -  let's use it for target practice, and to help flesh out testers for the community poll, and to help form thoughts for JPahk's ranks.

Also to help my fanatasy draft, of course :)

Continue reading this post »

Hey all -

While putting mine together, I was reminded of some flaws that cropped up when I compiled a similar list of the Fantasy Baseball Cafe a few years ago.  There are a couple things you can do when you make this list that make it MUCH easier for the programmer (Slurve) to process these lists.  The main things is just a standardized format that let's the lists be sorted and searched with the minimum amount of hassle.  Rather than Slurve having to error-check each entry, we can each do it ourselves and save him a tremendous amount of headache.

Slurve, if you don't mind, may I propose the following? *A) List each player EXACTLY like this:

1.  Lastname, Firstname  

(as in EXACTLY number-period-tab-lastname-comma-space-firstname)

B). Use the full name, spelled correctly (watch the Z's and S's on the latin names!)

C). Do not use nicknames.

D). Do not add positions, team names, handedness, etc.*

Continue reading this post »