At 22 he k’d at about 31% between double and triple A. I really don’t think that we should be doubting Mike Stanton that much for this right now. He is still an excellent prospect.

has the Twins approach to hitting. They want players to be aggressive early in the count with fastballs, leading to fewer walks. When your batting .379, your not walking much anyway. I know people dislike his GB% and BABIP, but the Twins have a catcher win 2 batting titles with a GB% of 50.5% and a .342 BABIP for his career. Not saying that Revere is an elite hitter like Mauer, but their approach to hitting is similar, niether walks much, or k’s for that matter, and both would be happy to smoke a grounder right by the mound to get on base.

Ryan Howard? Or maybe you mean Big Papi… No, no.. you meant Prince Fielder…

Whatever!?!

I’ve never said they had anything other than a middle-of-the pack system…

As a point of reference for my homerism:

I was high on Ryan Braun when he was at Miami and scouts called him a mid-to-late 1st round pick.

I’m not saying I bat 1.000 - no one does - but I find prospects I like for a variety of reasons - not pick fave prospects within my team’s organization… I have a pretty good track record of finding talent (that pans out) before the June draft. I liked Kulbacki before the Padres drafted and I’m glad the Padres did. Keep in mind, he hit 20 HR in high A in 84 games there. His (and Hunter’s) numbers will take a dip this year simply from playing in San Antonio but both are legit and BA shouldn’t write Hunter off as CF. He’s one of those non-flashy CF’ers who is just always in the right place to make the catch. And his arm isn’t weak. It was written up that way by a scout because when he was in Rookie ball he was recovering from a high school pitching injury. He’s a stud.

…Now if you have better information, by all means…

I thought he was getting over rated mid-season when he was getting put into a lot of top 25. I expected the scouts to not be quite as high on him, compared to those only looking at dominant A+ ball stats; but the milb.com list is from a poll of scouts. I honestly don’t think he’s top 50, but leaving him off the top 100 altogether may be too much of a reaction in the other direction.

In the chat, Manuel described him as:

He’s more of a mid-rotation guy, maybe a No. 4 stater, who has trouble keeping the ball down, gives up a lot of home runs. the stuff is good not great. The HR rate really concerned me

But, I don’t know that he has had trouble keeping it down more than he really hadn’t had to much yet, before getting to AA. After all, there are a lot of strikeouts there up in the zone, mixing a four-seam fastball and curve. The problem is, Hellickson doesn’t have the pure stuff to get away with that quite as much at higher levels. But, there are other ways he’s good at getting outs as well.

Obviously, there are some things he got away with at lower levels that he won’t get away with at higher levels, but I still think he’ll make the adjustment well enough. His peripherals were still very good at AA; the walk rate and SO rate were both still excellent. With his command, I think he can learn where to locate better vs. better hitters.

While a guy can sometimes get over rated based on really dominant stats vs. weaker competition, I also think some people are too quick to abandon guys once they struggle a bit after a promotion. Look at how some people have given up on Gio Gonzalez or Ian Kennedy after struggling in the majors for all of their first 40 innings. Both of those guys will be solid starting pitchers. I think Hellickson will be in that class.

He could arguably be in the top 10 definatley the top 15 its Price, Bumgarner, Porcello, Hanson, Feliz…No way Hanson should be the 2nd best pitcher

I think you wanted to say “defendable,” because as far as I know, defensible is not a real word.

More to the point, if Prospect X (we’ll call him "Adenhart") has a terrible season, I’d need a really good rationale to list him among baseball’s top farmhands.

Conversely, if Prospect Y has an outstanding season—at the plate, in the field (let’s say he was 15 runs above average at his position in just 103 games, according to Sean Smith’s highly-regarded Total Zone rating) and on the basepaths, all while being young for his leagues and by all accounts very “toolsy”…well, I’d have to hear a very good reason why he wasn’t a top prospect.

I’m not smarter than BA. And BA isn’t smarter than me. Sorry, than I. But I thought the essential point of this thread was to analyze the analyst, so to speak. And Jones seems like the biggest oversight to me, so I brought it up in order to see what others thought.

I come neither to praise BA nor bury them. I was just curious whether anyone else at this site (there are a LOT of attentive prospect-watchers here) was as surprised by Jones’ omission. ;)

I have yet to read anything from anyone that doubts his ability. The only question is whether he can repeat the performance. But when an all-tools guy starts putting up numbers, the numbers usually stick (Kemp being a great recent example of that).