Minor League Ball Gameday, June 27

Good morning prospect watchers. My father-in-law remains hospitalized. The pile of work continues to build but if the choice comes down to family or work, I pick family. Other people make different choices but I have to live with myself. I appreciate your patience during the last week.

***Items on the agenda include looks at Ross Stripling of the Dodgers, Jaff Decker of the Padres, and Jeff Locke of the Pirates for a Prospect Retro. There will also be a Cole Hamels retrospective too since someone requested it. I hope to have something about Max Kepler of the Twins system done by tomorrow morning. And the International Signing window opens up on July 2nd, so we'll cover that too.

***I know the Futures Game rosters came out yesterday but I have not had time to look at them. My plan at this point is to do a roster review a few days before the Futures Game itself, given that the rosters usually change anyway and there will be more attention paid to it at that time.

***I haven't had time to do anything with the Top 150 revision but hope to get back on that this weekend.

***Yesterday's Minor League Ball Gameday thread. I haven't been able to review yesterday's results yet but there is lots of juice, discussion, and information in the thread. You guys are really carrying the water right now and I am very thankful.

***I mentioned yesterday in the thread about Dylan Bundy that it is a mistake to consider Tommy John surgery as routine and to assume that a pitcher will get right back to where he was before. It is true that the procedure is not as risky as it used to be, but there is a big difference in my mind between "not as risky as it used to be" and routine.

Perhaps it is a matter of semantics, but my point is that it is not something to be cavalier and dismissive about. It adds another element of uncertainty, and for me that is enough to knock Bundy's rating as a prospect from a Grade A to somewhere in the "B-range-with-high-upside" as a prospect. Health counts as part of my prospect grades, especially for pitchers. Right now Bundy is not healthy, and it will be at least a year before that data changes.