Minor League Ball Gameday Discussion, March 23

Good afternoon prospect watchers. Another snowstorm is on the way to Kansas and we are expecting up to a foot of the white stuff tonight and tomorrow. With every fiber of my being, I hope the road crews are safe and efficient Sunday night and that school is not cancelled Monday. Spring Break (which was this past week) is no break for parents, and the kids already missed almost a week of school before that with snow cancellations. Go road crews!

On the agenda as you keep track of spring training events today:

***Matt Garrioch and I worked up an extremely early 2013 Mock Draft which shouldn't be taken too seriously given the calendar but hopefully will get the conversation started at least. I'm sure much of it will look stoopid in June.

***Are the Astros and Marlins "abusing" the rules while they rebuild? Ben Horrow at Beyond the Boxscore looks at the issue, including some recent comments from Peter Gammons. Personally I don't see anything to complain about really in Houston, where the roster rot truly needed to be purged and the organization rebuilt from the ground up, hardly breaking faith with the fans or the rest of MLB, but the continued boom/bust cycles in Miami are another matter.

***Today's mandatory Yasiel Puig column comes from hopelessly biased Giants fan Grant Brisbee. Personally I am optimistic on Puig but even so I think he needs a good dose of Double-A/Triple-A to see how he handles pitching outside of spring camp and Arizona. That said, he could put up some gigantic numbers in offense-happy Albuquerque even with flaws in his approach, and it is entirely possible that we don't get a non-distorted read on his abilities until he actually faces National League West pitching in its native environment.