Last year's rookies, wrap up and best teams

by Dalman on Dec 10, 2025 11:02 AM EST Comment 12 comments

In the final runoff Andrew Bailey edges Julio Borbon wtith 54% of the vote to 45% of the vote making Bailey #26 in the poll and Borbon #27. Here are the final results with the player's results in last year's community prospect poll in parens if they were in it:

1. Matt Wieters, C Baltimore (1)

2. Tommy Hanson, P Atlanta (23)

3. Andrew McCutchen, of Pittsburgh (18)

4. Brett Anderson P Oakland (16)

5 Gordon Beckham, 3b CHW (47)

6. Rick Porcello, P Detroit. (14)

7.Elvis Andrus, SS Texas (24)

8. Colby Rasmus, of St. Louis (6)

9. David Price, P Tampa Bay (2)

10. Travis Snider, of Toronto (4)

11. Dexter Fowler, of Colorado (15)

12. Chris Tillman, p Baltimore(20)

13t. Matt Latos, p San Diego (124)

13t Derek Holland, p Texas (17)

15. Cameron Maybin, of Florida (7)

16t Chris Coghlan, of Florida (110)

16t Trevor Cahill, P Oakland (8)

18 Matt Laporta of/1b Cleveland (10)

19 Kyle Blanks, of San Diego (79)

20 Nolan Reimold, of Baltimore (9% in round 150)

21 Drew Stubbs, of Cincinatti (135)

22. Ricky Romero, P Toronto

23 Daniel Bard, P Boston (131)

24, Jeff Neimann, P Tampa Bay (116)
25. Jordan Zimmerman, P Washington (50)

26. Andrew Bailey, P Oakland

27. Julio Borbon, of Texas (81)

hm Marc Rzpecysnski P Toronto

hm Mat Gamel, 3b Milwaukee (33)

hm Jordan Schafer of Atlanta (36)

hm Brad Bergesen P Baltimore

hm Gio Gonzalez, P Oakland (69)

hm Clayton Richard, P San Diego

hm Gerado Parra, of Arizona (8% in round 150)

also receiving some support, Tommy Hunter, P Texas, Everth Cabrera, ss San Diego, Garret Jones, of Pittsburgh, Brett Cecil, P Toronto (48), J.A. Happ P Philadelphia

others considered but receiving only minimal support: Luis Valbuena if (Cle), Brett Gardner of (NYY), Cliff Pennington if (Oak), Taylor Teagarden C (Tex) (45), Sean West P (FLO) (147) Ryan Perry (Det), Randy Wells P (Cubs), Jake Fox 3b/of (Oak), Casey McGehee, of Milwaukee

If you have any overall comments about the list or about the process used to generate the list fire away. I will have a couple of comments but will make them below.

As a final poll, I thought it would be interesting to ask the question of which team goes into 2010 with the best talent from the class of 2009. Considering that these players will be under team control for 2010, 2011 and in a few cases 2012 that is a very good position for a team to be in, expecially a team trying to compete despite not being one of the five or so that are highest in revenue.

I've enjoyed it, and hope this poll is ending at about the right point for most of you. I know that given how strong last year's class is there are a number of players who didn't even make it to honorable mention who I think have a very good chance of having nice careers in the majors.

Poll

What major league team controls the best group of last year's rookies as measured by their expected future peformance (players down to the level of "also receiving some support" are listed net to the team name, although you may consider rookies who didn't

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Comments

Orioles and Texas

if anything their cases are understated insofar as Matusz and Feliz were that close to being part of the class or 2009 themselves. Both would have been well up the list of course making the difference between those two teams plus Oakland, and everyone else, even larger.

While it is interesting that so many of the players on this list ranked highly on last year’s list, those two factors aren’t exactly independent variables. For instance, while there is definitely a silver lining in Holland’s seemingly poor performance on the surface, a big part of why we see that so clearly is the same things that made us like him last spring. By another year from now it will be a lot harder to ignore good performance or bad in the majors, at least for now, we can chalk those things up to learning curve, luck, etc. Of course, Of course in the case of a Coghlan, Latos and Beckham performance at the major league level was strong enough to already have started us down the path to a significant re-evaluation.

by Dalman on Dec 10, 2025 4:59 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Voted Baltimore

I really wanted to vote Oakland, but I just cant see past Wieters… very close.

by alskor on Dec 10, 2025 5:10 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

Oakland also had Mazzaro, who didn't make the list

but whose performance was a little better than Cahill.

I suspect that you think tilting at windmills means something other than what it does

by bobnothing on Dec 11, 2025 12:05 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

And Josh Outman

who performed better than either of them, albeit for half a season before suffering the dreaded TJS-inducer.

They literally graduated an entire rotation’s worth of rookie SP (and a closer to boot). It would be hard to believe if it wasn’t actually true.

O'Hara: Detective Lassiter is literally on fire.
Spencer: What kind of fire are we talking about-- "Michael Jackson in the Pepsi commercial" fire, or "misusing the word literally" fire?

by PaulThomas on Dec 11, 2025 1:59 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Mazzaro, Cahill, and Gio all struggled

They were likely rushed and thats the risk their team rook on them. But cant ignore the fact all 3 were terrible in the majors as rookies, which takes them out of consideration. The upside of weiters alone destroys all those listed A’s players combined.Best case scenario: Weiters elite, all star level player. Those A’s pitchers mid to back rotation SPs. Give me quality over quantity any day.

by MagicMike23 on Dec 11, 2025 11:51 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

-1

I disagree with the notion that any of the three were terrible. Cahill and Gio had xFIPs under 5.00 and Mazzaro was at 5.10. None of them were great, but I wouldn’t call that terrible for pitchers who should have been in AA. Cahill and Gio have much higher ceilings than mid to back of the rotation SPs.

And it’s not like Wieters set the world on fire with his bat. There is absolutely an argument for Oakland.

by jar75 on Dec 11, 2025 12:23 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

-1

The only pitcher of that group that was headed to AA was Cahill
Mazzaro spent all of 2008 in AA and was texas league pitcher of the yr.
Gio spent logged over 200 innings in AAA in 08/09.
Cahill and Gio also have inconsistent stuff and lousy control, 2 huge red flags. Call up the or

by MagicMike23 on Dec 11, 2025 12:38 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Orioles

Guess this question as posed is pretty lopsided for the Orioles. For a franchise that has been down for quite a while now it will be interesting to see if they can do something to upset the Boston/Yankees applecart with this influx of talent.

by Dalman on Dec 11, 2025 12:05 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Baltimore

And with Matusz not even eligible for consideration in this poll.

Check out my website, it has scouting reports for all the Orioles' top prospects and is updated daily. www.oriolesprospects.com

Follow me on twitter @orioleprospects

by ravensfan3 on Dec 11, 2025 12:45 AM EST via mobile reply actions 0 recs

all three very deep

And, as mentioned, Feliz not eligible.

What is pretty remarkable is that if you were to ask which team had the best rookie class, leaving out the guys I included above,, the A’s with Pennington, Mazarro, Outman, the Rangers with Teagarden and Mathis, and the Orioles with Berken, Hernandez and Uehara would still be near the top. Incredibly deep classes for those three in particular.

by Dalman on Dec 11, 2025 3:28 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

I think this rookie class overall is very deep

Check out my website, it has scouting reports for all the Orioles' top prospects and is updated daily. www.oriolesprospects.com

Follow me on twitter @orioleprospects

by ravensfan3 on Dec 11, 2025 6:08 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

procedure

Before this thread vanishes off the bottom, does anyone have any comments at all about how the poll was done, how deep it went, or the time of the year we did it? I thought it went pretty smoothly although I was a bit concerned that we had been a round late on Zimmerman, I think that in other years 27 might get us deeper than we want to go but this year we were still talking about good players at the end, and I think that early in the offseason is a good time for this poll, with traffic around here otherwise quite light.

by Dalman on Dec 11, 2025 12:50 PM EST reply actions 0 recs