This

Cubs owner Tom Ricketts is playing the usual MLB ownership card of moving the team if roadblocks to renovating Wrigley Field are not eliminated. Hopefully–and I say this as both a Chicago taxpayer and a baseball fan sick of seeing billionaires fleece taxpayers for stadium money–Ricketts will pony up all the money required for renovation, with no tax breaks from our bankrupt, poorly-run city.

In steps Andy Viano, the president and general manager of the Schaumburg Boomers, an independent league team in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with an offer to warmly welcome the Cubs as tenants in their 7,365-capacity ballpark. “We will propose a fair and honest rent, no question about that, but we have one tenant that’s committed to winning a championship in 2013 so the Boomers would get first priority on dates.”

In summary….

Our tiny independent league stadium will gladly host a $2 billion-plus-in-value MLB franchise. Yes, they will routinely sell 25,000 fewer tickets per game as a baseline. Yes, they will be doing me an enormous financial mitzvah via the oddity of a MLB club playing in my C-grade shoebox. But yo. This will only happen if they–the $2 billion MLB franchise–agree to pretty much take a backseat to our indie league club because hey, we’re competing to be the biggest minnow, and they’re just a hungry whale.

Were I Tom Ricketts, my immediate presser reply would go something like: “Andy Viano can kiss my fucking ass. A ‘fair and honest’ rent would essentially be him paying me tens of millions of dollars per year for revenue lost due to playing in his shoebox. To reiterate: Andy Viano’s lips. My fucking anus. Ricketts out.”

Above by the way is Andy Viano’s headshot from the Boomers website. Andy Viano thinks a black dress shirt (an oxymoron) is ok for his public image. I am left to assume this shirt situation solidifies the impression of Andy Viano (who I’d never heard of before today because seriously)  I got from the “fair and honest” rent comment.

Martinez stayed on top of his fastball, throwing it almost exclusively at the knee level or lower. He was a bit erratic–he almost hit Brett Eibner with the first pitch of the game, and did hit Eibner in his second time facing him. I saw mostly four-seam fastballs from Martinez, and the game plan for him in this outing appears to be to have worked on throwing a lot of fastballs, and locating the pitch low in the zone.

Martinez gave up four hits over four innings. Eibner hit a low, hard grounder up the middle in the first AB of the game, which ricocheted off Martinez’s heel (Martinez was fine), back-to-back line-drive doubles, and a hard line drive single. When hitters were able to guess successfully that a fastball was coming, they were able to make hard contact.

Mechanically, Martinez was a  different pitcher than the one I last saw in 2011. That younger Martinez had a violent and erratic delivery. His balance and posture are greatly improved–Martinez is keeping his back straighter now than in his first pro season, maintaining well above-average posture through his delivery. He does finish his delivery with glove side drift after release, largely a factor of arm speed, but it’s not something I’m concerned about–the delivery was clean and repeatable throughout the four innings. Martinez does not generate a lot of momentum, or have a deep stride, but what he lacks there he makes up for with that electric arm speed.

As a fairly small-framed pitcher (6 feet even, 185 pounds) there is room for concern that Martinez is generating a lot of velocity primarily on arm speed. I’d like to see him add momentum to the plate with a longer stride, extending his release point, building that off of his improved posture and balance. His fastball is special–it looks like it’s coming out of a cannon when it leaves his hand. It’s an easy gas for Martinez, or at least he makes it look easy, due to his seemingly low-effort mechanics. Getting a little deeper on his release point will help that velocity play up by extending his release point.

All in all, I’m more impressed by Martinez than I was 2 years ago. I’d put an easy 70 on his fastball, a 50 with potential for a 60 on his curve, and a 50 on his command. He threw only a couple changeups in this outing, and I will pass on giving an opinion on that pitch until I can see it more.

There is a degree of uncertainty in the very elite prospects, and after you get through that group of less than 10 players each year there are question marks. Pitchers with great stuff who lack command. Undersized left-handed pitchers with great command and a nice changeup but low velocity and little physical projection. Hitters with big power in the batting cage but a significant amount of swing-and-miss in games that limits the translation of that power to game action. Shortstops who can hit but appear unlikely to stick at shortstop. Shortstops who can stick at shortstop but can’t hit. Raw athletes who have not fully developed baseball skills. Even this year’s unanimous top prospect, Jurickson Profar, comes with questions.

Two years ago, entering 2011, there were more than a couple consensus opinions on prospects, but for our purposes here, we will focus on two. They’re fresh in my mind because I finished listening to this week’s episode of the always-excellent “Baseball Show With Rany and Joe” podcast, which due to a brief tangent led to Rany Jazayerli saying, and I’m paraphrasing: “The Cardinals had the best farm in baseball entering this year. In 2010 the Royals had the best farm system in the history of baseball.”

Revisionism is easy, so this blog post could more or less write itself. It’s candy-from-baby here for several paragraphs.

November 2010, Kevin Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus, on the Royals: “This is not just the best minor league system in baseball, it’s the best by a wide margin. The more I wrote about these prospects, the more trouble I had figuring out any way for things to go wrong.” Keith Law, entering the 2011 season like Goldstein, ranked the Royals as the #1 farm in baseball, saying: “About a month or so after Dayton Moore took over as the Royals’ GM, he told me that he was alarmed to find how little pitching inventory he had in his new farm system and that addressing that vacuum would be a major priority for his front office. The phrase ‘Mission Accomplished’ has acquired an ironic connotation of late, but if anyone could use the phrase earnestly to describe his own efforts, it would be Moore, as the Royals have arms coming out of their ears.”

If Goldstein needed to find ways for the Royals system to go wrong, turns out all he needed to do was wait it out. And Law’s “Mission Accomplished” message is about as silly as the original he was gently mocking. Here is what has come from Goldstein’s top 11 Royals entering 2011:

Pretty bleak. 3.5 wins from 11 players, with the one who looks to have the brightest future at this point, Wil Myers, now in the Tampa Bay system. Of course, the whole point of this exercise is: Wil Myers might end up worse than the rest of them. We just don’t know for sure.

This isn’t to take anything away in general from Goldstein, who did a fine job covering prospects at Baseball Prospectus, or Law, who does the same for ESPN. Instead, it’s to say that prospecting baseball players is an inexact science, and a large body of people (Baseball America was also on the Royals bandwagon) can be wrong all at once in grades for player prospects. We should not take “Oswaldo Arcia is a top-30 prospect” to mean “Oswaldo Arcia is a future All-Star.” We should take it to mean something that lies in a gray area that might not satiate our desire for something hyperbolic or absolute. We should take it to mean that Arcia has a collection of tools, baseball skills, athleticism and projection that make him among scouts favorite 30 players in the minor leagues, and then kind of end it there.

Scouts and the people who not only scout but compile the opinons of other scouts like Law and Goldstein (before his move to the Astros front office) can miss in the opposite direction as well. As Jazayerli noted, the Cardinals have the highest-ranked farm system in baseball now. But what about the recent past?

Entering the 2010 season, just over three years ago, Law ranked the Cardinals 29th of 30 teams. The only positives in his capsule review of the system were catcher prospect Robert Stock (transitioned poorly to pitcher last year) and some power arms he said were probably destined for bullpen roles. Goldstein that year said the Cardinals system was “bereft of talent.” Below are Goldstein’s top 15 Cardinals prospects entering 2010, and below the line some players in the Cardinals system when he wrote they were “bereft” but did not rank.

If you’re adding that up, in terms of fWAR the system determined to be “bereft of talent” developed about 35 wins out of that batch, while the Most Best System In The History Of Forever And Ever Amen developed about one-tenth that amount.

This year’s golden boy of pitching prospects, Dylan Bundy, might be headed for Tommy John surgery and has not pitched yet this year. But even before that there were rumblings from people just a week ago who where saying Bundy wasn’t even the best pitching prospect in Baltimore. Long time mancrush of many a scout Jesus Montero is still struggling to get his MLB career out of neutral. Gerrit Cole still has all the stuff in the world but is barely possessing a clue how to sequence pitches or put together a gameplan. This stuff is not science, it’s art and instinct, and more often than it goes right, it goes wrong.

One thing I believe the prospect writers are not covering enough is organizational capacity to develop and finish players. St. Louis has it. They turned a lot of players who didn’t have a bright outlooks as prospects into MLB contributors on a World Series team. Kansas City does not, they have tended more to develop toolsy prospects into toolsy busts. Tampa Bay has it, they have a starting pitcher factory that churns them out. Baltimore has yet to turn one of its many high draft-pick stud pitching prospects into anything more than a useful middle reliever or “hell, we might as well try this guy” starter. San Diego struggles to promote pitching prospects into useful parts of their rotation. Atlanta has to make the tough decisions about who to hold back or send to a relief role.

The difference between Mike Montgomery in Durham and Mike Montgomery in Omaha might be the same as the difference between a piece of steel in a Detroit factory and the same piece of steel being shaped in a Bentley factory. I think organizational talent in finishing prospects is an important factor, and should be considered when projecting the future of a player in some small part, in conjunction with the player’s tools and physical projection.

I’m not talking about missing on a prospect. Missing on one player, well, if Law or Goldstein missed on only one they’d write a virtually flawless list every year. I’m talking about a systematic (by prospect writers as a whole) swing-and-miss on entire organizations. There is something for the Laws to learn from how badly they overhyped Kansas City and how poorly they estimated the Cardinals system. Maybe it’s organizational talent, maybe it’s something else, but I do hope they are looking at their processes and trying to find ways to get better.

Again, this isn’t to shit on Kevin Goldstein, or Keith Law. (Were we to want to shit on Keith Law, there are far easier ways, like his arguing with a Kansas City native over Twitter about where the best BBQ is in KC–Law as a non-native and a constantly smug wielder of the small-sample-size sword should probably take a step back from that laughable position, and a few others he takes on Twitter.) What I’m saying is: let’s drop the idea that prospecting is anything exact, and that it’s a process in need of constant change, whether it’s fine-tuning or shifting the outlook altogether.

If someone as smart as Jazayerli is saying today, two years later, that the Royals had “the best farm in history” then we have a problem with how farm systems are being ranked, hyped, panned, discussed. In hindsight the 2011 Cardinals probably had the best farm in baseball–not much of the talent making them #1 this year was absent from the system two years ago.

Perhaps it’s time to not label farms “best” or “worst” and instead for the prospect writers to describe them as what they really are. Instead of best, call a farm “The system that talent evaluators project to have the biggest impact at the MLB level” or something that is both less hyperbolic and a more accurate description of the actual situation. Instead of “bereft of talent” perhaps the right describer is “The system that talent evaluators expect to produce little, unless everything goes right.” “Best in history” and “bereft of talent” look kind of quaint in the rear-view window, and part of being a national writer on the prospect beat should include accountability* in hindsight, not speaking in absolutes, sometimes to the point of hyperbole, in the present. Looking back in the rear-view, if the 2010 Cardinals farm had been described as having low expectations unless some players reach their absolute ceilings, proving their current projections wrong, we could look back and call that perhaps an accurate description of their system in 2010. Instead, there’s a three-word phrase describing them that looks incredibly inaccurate and hyperbolic.

*Just as a general aside: my favorite best guesser, Jason Parks, does some really cool shit like publishing columns where he hold himself accountable for his misses. Parks is well worth following at BP simply because he gets that he’s not in possession of the final word, and has an understanding of the inexactitude of his work and a sense of humor about it.

In this regular season Wainwright has started 4 games, pitched 29 innings, struck out 28 batters and walked none. For some perspective, here are the starting pitchers with four or more consecutive starts with at least 24 innings pitched (6 per game), without a walk, and around or more than a strikeout per inning.

Jimmy Key, end of 1989 – start of 1990: 7 starts, 33 innings, 29 K, 4 HR, 5.45 ERA

Stephen Strasburg, time of injury in 2010 – 2011: 6 starts, 27.1 innings, 27 K, 1 HR, 1.98 ERA

Cliff Lee, end of 2012 – April 9 of this year: 5 starts, 37.2 IP, 37 K, 5 HR, 1.67 ERA

Curt Shilling, 2004: 5 starts, 36.1 innings, 34 K, 3 HR, 2.23 ERA

Ben Sheets, 2004: 5 starts, 32.2 innings, 31 K, 3 HR, 2.76 ERA

Schilling, 2002: 5 starts, 37 innings, 47 K, 1 HR, 2.19 ERA

Pedro Martinez, 2000: 5 starts, 36 innings, 44 K, 3 HR, 2.75 ERA

Bret Saberhagen, 1994: 5 starts, 34 innings, 32 K, 3 HR, 4.76 ERA

James Shields, 2007: 4 starts, 26 innings, 31 K, 5 HR, 5.88 ERA

David Wells, 1998: 4 starts, 30 innings, 30 K, 3 HR, 3.90 ERA

Ferguson Jenkins, 1971: 4 starts, 36 innings, 37 K, 4 HR, 1.50 ERA

Dazzy Vance, 1930: 4 starts, 32.1 innings, 31 K, 2 HR, 2.23 ERA

Wainwright, Present: 4 starts, 29 innings, 28 K, o HR, 2.48 ERA

That’s the list. Pretty good company, and only 12 other names besides Wainwright. What makes his stand out more? It’s four straight starts with no walks and without allowing a home run. No walks = throwing strikes. No home runs = not throwing mistake strikes, or throwing quality strikes. The six-game Strasburg run above includes a five-game run with no HR allowed and no walks. Greg Maddux only once went five starts without allowing a walk or home run. And then there are four guys who haven’t played since 1928 who had five straight starts without allowing a walk or a homer.

Wainwright is just shoving it right now. If his next start is walkless and homerless, he joins elite company, with one of the best five-game runs in the history of baseball.

We can rally all we want around the idea that the hitters are cold, point to their BABIPs and declare regression in order. We can insist optimistically that this is a team that will pull it together and score more in support of the pitching and defensive effort. That is, after all the team’s organizational paradigm: pitch and defend well, cobble together the runs where you can. It’s the Tampa version of Baseball On A Budget, and for the last several years, it has worked.

To continue on at their pace of 3 runs per game would put Tampa Bay at 486 runs for the year, far worse than the 2010 Mariners’ historically abysmal offensive production. Simply put, it will get better for the Rays offensively. The questions are:  How much better? and Are they doing everything they can to get better?

If James Loney gets better, what is “better”? Loney demonstrably has little power, with an ISO of .088 last year and .077 so far this season. He does not strike out a lot, but does not make a lot of hard contact. Loney puts balls softly into play at this stage in his career, and his offensive production is almost entirely dependent on walks and softly-hit balls finding holes. If Loney gets better, his best is still not a playable level of performance for a team with playoff aspirations.

Yunel Escobar isn’t much different. His ISO last year was just .091 and it sits at .053 currently for 2013. Escobar provides little power upside. Seventy percent or so of Escobar’s hits will be singles based on his power capability, and like Loney his offensive value is entirely tied up in how well his BABIP luck shakes out.

These are prototypical Rays, and the type of talent the team employs due to lacking the financial resources to field better players from the free agent market. Escobar was a makeup/performance-challenged project, much like Fernando Rodney and Josh Lueke and Sam Fuld and Formerly Fausto Carmona and Formerly Leo Nuñez, who is now in their minor league system. Underproductive or troubled players who are available for cheap and at at a career nadir, who the Rays see value in. Loney is a good defensive first baseman, who fits with the team paradigm of run prevention. That paradigm works better with a player like Carlos Peña, who is capable of 20 home runs in even a down year, and can give the offense a boost occasionally. Loney, who is goddamn awful to put it as politely as possible, is not a suitable player even on the bench for anything but a second-division team.

It’s not just Loney, there are the aforementioned projects of Roberto Hernandez and Yunel Escobar. Like Loney, they are underperformers and not roster-worthy on a good team for any reason beyond their cheap asking price. Unlike Loney, they are blocking other roster moves that could make the Rays a better baseball team in 2013.

Chris Archer, the best option for the firth starter job, started the year in AAA. Wil Myers, acquired for James Shields, is the best option for the right field job (given Ben Zobrist’s ability to play shortstop and second base), and has started the year in AAA.

Archer and Myers have small holes in their games. Archer is still finishing the development of a big-league changeup, a tool he needs to finish off left-handed hitters, and has occasional command problems. Myers has a bit of swing-and-miss in his game and needs a little refinement of his outfield routes. Why are Archer and Myers in Durham and not in Tampa Bay? Not performance or ability. Those small problems they have are not the roadblocks to their arrival as full-time fixtures in Tampa. Like Escobar, Loney and Hernandez, they are in the minor leagues as a financial move.

What this comes down to is money and club control. If Myers and/or Archer had Longoria/Moore types of multi-year extensions signed, my guess is they would be on the Rays 25-man roster now. The paradigm of sustainability is great–pitchers go one level each year in the minors, players are finished off completely in Durham and Montgomery before coming to the big club, and they almost never start their rookie year on opening day without a contract extension. Tampa Bay maintains control of the player through as much of their peak as possible.

Chris Archer has 0.035 years of MLB service time, per Cot’s Contracts. Myers has zero. Now, two weeks into the 2013 season, either could be called up and would remain Rays through 2019. Myers faces Super Two consideration unless held in the minors until late June. Superficially, these are smart moves by a smart team who is on a limited budget. A deeper look, though, makes them appear incredibly short-sighted.

Were the Rays to promote Archer and Myers today, the roster would take on an entirely different look. Myers would play daily in right, Zobrist would play both shortstop and second base, relegating Escobar and the almost-as-bad Kelly Johnson to less-than-full-time status, and Archer would push Hernandez to the bullpen. Run prevention? Improved. Run scoring? Improved. One could make the case that bringing up Hak-Ju Lee, a defensive stud at SS and a slap-hitter who can hit for average, improves things even further.

The Rays, however, do not want to play for now, they want to play for later. Sustainability is great, but the AL East is wide open this year, and a run to the playoffs helps poor teams with low revenues, even in Tampa St. Pete. Who the hell knows what the Rays will look like in 2020? And is this team, that has a track record of demonstrably producing MLB talent the past several years, think it will suddenly stop doing that? The players that an inevitable David Price trade will yield (unless new TV money leads to a Price extension) are not even in the system yet, and they promise to have some high ceilings. The players Tampa Bay will draft in 2015 and be part of the 2020 team are barely a blip on scouts’ radars today.

I’m all for sustainable practices in the front office, it’s the main reason I’m a Rays follower. If they looked like a 70-win second-division team this year, I would be fine with Myers, Archer and even Hak-Ju Lee arriving as September call-ups. But this is a team that can win this year and is opting to keep players who can help them win off the roster in order to protect where the team might be in six years. The long view, in the case of these two players (and Lee) seems very short-sighted.

For those unfamiliar with Fernandez, he’s a monster talent. Fernandez eviscerated low-A competition last year, striking out 34% of the batters he faced while only walking 6%, and posting an ERA of 1.59 and a FIP of 1.78. A step up to high-A didn’t slow him much: 27% K rate, 8% BB rate, 1.96 ERA, 2.15 FIP. Fernandez did this in a season when a lot of hype was dedicated to Dylan Bundy of the Orioles, who was just a little bit better than Fernandez and only 3.5 months younger.

Fernandez did not receive the chatter Bundy did in 2012, but no prospect in baseball increased his stock like Fernandez in 2012. When Baseball Prospectus released its list of the top 101 prospects at the end of February, Fernandez was ranked #6, a jump of 74 spots from the year before. Baseball America, who did not place Fernandez on its top 100 list in 2012 ranked Fernandez #5 this year. Keith Law rated Fernandez #18 in his list on ESPN a year ago, then moved Fernandez up to only #16 this year, making Law the highest on Fernandez a year ago but the lowest on him this year.  My own personal list has Fernandez in Tier 2.

Beyond the stat line, there is the legend of Jose Fernandez, popular among those who follow prospects and only sure now to grow. Fernandez was born in Cuba. His father left for the US in 2005, when Fernandez was 13. Fernandez made 4 attempts at defecting to the United States before he was successful. One attempt led to Fernandez, who had pitched in the Cuban National Championships three times, being jailed where he has said he was “treated like an animal.”  In another attempt at fleeing Cuba for the US, Fernandez’s mother fell out of the boat that was transporting them. Fernandez saved her from drowning.

As a teenager, Fernandez faced tougher challenges than he will ever go against in a MLB ballpark. Not surprisingly, his makeup is reportedly off-the-charts.

But why the hell does Miami need Fernandez up now? They’re clearly not winning in 2013, and are in rebuild mode. Leaving Fernandez, who has not pitched one inning above high-A, in the minors for just 10 days ensures an additional year of his services. Keeping Fernandez in the minors until mid-June delays his arbitration a year, ensuring Fernandez won’t receive Super Two status. Certainly the Marlins are in a position where they need all the good PR they can get, and rolling out the story of Fernandez’s courage and character should start to help repair their horrible reputation as an organization, and perhaps keep Giancarlo Stanton a bit happier.

Fernandez still has work to do before he’s a finished product. He is probably ready to help Miami win games this year. His fastball/curveball combination is outstanding, with the fastball sittin 95-97mph and the curveball already being a plus offering. But he is still developing a slider and a changeup, and the changeup will be necessary for him to reach his ceiling as a high-#2-with#1-potential starter. While asking him to finish necessary development at the MLB level is not something I think Fernandez can’t handle, I do think it will take time, and that it’s a waste of resources and a frivolous move that hurts the future of the club to bring him up now. The fire sale that sent several name-brand players to Toronto this off-season, which caused quite a ruckus, could be disguised as step one in a rebuild. But if you’re rebuilding, why burn service time with your very best prospect when you’re not competing? It’s schizophrenic, putting those two deals together, and this one puzzles me even more than the fire sale trade.

I’ll tell you this, though. I know which game I’ll be watching on MLB.TV April 7 when Fernandez gets his first start against the Mets.

Or, the Brewers are paying Lohse to be leauge average.

Which is roughly what he is.

Maybe he’s less than league average over the next three seasons. But 100% for sure he won’t be more.

Wow. A rational market for a free agent player coming off a career year. Wild shit.

From the time that I wrote my list and started typing the accompanying posts to the end of the year, Shelby Miller pitched 59 1/3 minor league innings, striking out 70 and walking only seven. He went from the pitcher passed up by Joe Kelly for a St. Louis rotation spot to the most dominant pitcher in the minor leagues and a no-brainer member of St. Louis’s post-season roster in under six weeks. In August, I went from having just read a little here and there about Addison Russell to enjoying in-person the religious experience of seeing Russell overshadow older players in low-A.

Things change for prospects in a short window like that, especially when we’re assuming the often futile task of putting them in some kind of order.

Instead of a Top 50, or Top 100, that lists players in a specific order, I’m doing a Top 54  (just to be arbitrary and to tie the number to the number in my online handle), and instead of ranking all the players I’m grouping them into tiers.

I like tiers. Tiers don’t leave me open to asking myself “Why do have Player X one spot higher than Player Y?”  The answer in some of those cases was a good one like “more upside” or “better in-game hit and power”, but it was often simply “I don’t know. I could go either way.” So I grouped them into tiers, since putting one prospect one spot higher or lower than another strikes me now as kind of silly. I like Oscar Taveras, Dylan Bundy and Jurickson Profar about the same. Bundy is a stud pitcher who looks like a future number one starter, which is not a tag I use lightly. Taveras is the best minor league hitter I’ve ever laid eyes on. Profar has all five tools, and they are all above-average–if he had just one elite tool he might eclipse Bundy and Taveras and sit alone in Tier 1. Between these three, however, there’s no present reason to rank any one of them higher or lower than the two others.

Of the 54 players, I have seen 19 live in person. I have seen most of the rest on television, either on a major network (Futures Game, MLB games) or milb.tv (all of the players in the high minors at least a half-dozen times each. I don’t count low-minors games in places with awful one-camera feeds as having seen the player.) There are only 6 players on the list I have not seen play in some form. Supplementing what I’ve seen from each of those players is my analysis of their statistical performance, and I’ve been influenced a little by what I have read from others, especially the guys at Baseball America, Jason Parks at Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law at ESPN and John Sickels at minorleagueball.com.

If there is bias in the rankings, it is me favoring players I have seen more of over players I’ve seen less, or players I’ve seen over those I have not. Matt Adams is a great example. Adams is very high on my list because I have seen him hit, and know what he can do. I’m ok with where Adams is, though. He’s a future middle-of-the-order 30HR .270/.330/.480 hitter almost without a doubt.

To shed a little light on my tiering of the players, beyond tools and stats, there are a two things I look at heavily. The first, and the most important to me, is age. On the surface, Francisco Lindor’s batting line in low-A this year is unremarkable: .257/.352/.355 is not exactly a world-beating line. However, when I factor in that Lindor was the second-youngest player in any full-season low-A league this year (his 11/14/1993 birthday makes him older than only Texas’s Rougned Odor) and that at only 18 years old Lindor was able to show the kind of advanced approach that produces an OBP over .350, that speaks volumes. Many future stars are still in high school, college, JuCo, or playing short-season ball or instructs at an age in which Lindor was arguably the Midwest League’s most exciting overall player. Age matters.

You should also know that I don’t give as much weight to minor league defense as most. I consider it, which should be obvious by the presence of Austin Hedges and a couple others on this list, but I don’t weigh it as much.  Of the 30 position players on this list, most earned their spot with their bat. The more likely a player is to hit well once they reach MLB, and what I perceive their MLB batting ceiling to be, is driving 70% of what you will read below. The more likely a player is to bat well at a premium defensive position, the more likely they are to be ranked higher than someone who will hit the same at a defensive position lower in that order.

However, I don’t consider being a defensive whiz in low-A to be a huge deal. Lots of teenagers are defensive whizzes in the low minors. Lots of strong arms and rangy quick-twitch players have that when they’re very young. I saw several low-A players in 2012 and thought “he could play defense in the majors today.” I did not, however, see anyone in low-A last year who could handle MLB pitching as a hitter. Simply put, it’s tougher to become a great hitter than it is to become a great fielder. You could substitute Albert Almora, Jackie Bradley or Aaron Hicks for the best defensive CF in baseball, Peter Bourjos of the Angels, and not lose much, if anything. But none of those three is nearly ready to hit at the MLB level. Beyond that, the bat will determine how long a lot of those defense-first players stick in the majors. Slick-fielding up-the-middle players tend to have Young Player Skills, and when Young Player Skills slow down or stop, the player loses utility. That slick-fielding SS whose bat does not develop will have a shorter career than the unathletic corner OF, 3B or 1B who can hit–those skills last longer. The hit tool needs time to develop, and when someone has it naturally, and has it at a high level, that’s far more special than a rangy teenage shortstop or a CF prodigy who can run down a lot of fly balls.

That said. If a player is likely to be defensively plus-plus at his position, and if his bat is good or developing into good, and that defensive position is one of the top three (especially catcher and shortstop), that player is going to get more consideration. Position matters, but being a defensive prodigy is not as big a deal to me as it is to others.

On to the tiers. Inside the tiers players are sorted alphabetically.

Tier 1

• Dylan Bundy, RHP, Baltimore Orioles  
  
• Jurickson Profar, SS/2B, Texas Rangers 
  
• Oscar Taveras, OF, St. Louis Cardinals

Tier 2

• Jose Fernandez, RHP, Miami Marlins 
  
• Shelby Miller, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals  
• Wil Myers, OF, Tampa Bay Rays 
  
• Taijuan Walker, RHP, Seattle Mariners

Tier 3

• Javier Baez, SS, Chicago Cubs 
  
• Xander Bogaerts, SS, Boston Red Sox
  
• Byron Buxton, OF, Minnesota Twins 
  
• Nick Castellanos, OF/3B, Detroit Tigers 
  
• Gerrit Cole, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates 
  
• Francisco Lindor, SS, Cleveland Indians 
  
• Zach Wheeler, RHP, New York Mets 
  

Tier 4

• Albert Almora, OF, Chicago Cubs .
• Archie Bradley, RHP, Arizona Diamondbacks 
  
• Carlos Correa, SS, Houston Astros 
  
• Addison Russell, SS, Oakland A’s 
  
• Tyler Skaggs, LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks
• Jameson Taillon, RHP, Pittsburgh Pirates 
  
• Mike Zunino, C, Seattle Mariners 
  

Tier 5

• Trevor Bauer, RHP, Cleveland Indians 
  
• Clayton Blackburn, RHP, San Francisco Giants 
  
• Jackie Bradley, OF, Boston Red Sox 
  
• Austin Hedges, C, San Diego Padres 
  
• Mike Olt, 3B, Texas Rangers 
  
• Yasiel Puig, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers  
• Miguel Sano, 3B, Minnesota Twins 
  
• George Springer, OF, Houston Astros 
  
• Christian Yelich, OF, Miami Marlins 
  

Tier 6

• Matt Adams, 1B, St. Louis Cardinals 
  
• Taylor Guerrieri, RHP, Tampa Bay Rays 
  
• Billy Hamilton, OF, Cincinnati Reds 
  
• Jorge Soler, OF, Chicago Cubs 
  
• Noah Syndergaard, RHP, New York Mets
• Mason Williams, OF, New York Yankees

Tier 7

• Chris Archer, RHP, Tampa Bay Rays 
  
• Oswaldo Arcia, OF, Minnesota Twins
• Nick Franklin, SS/2B, Seattle Mariners
• Kevin Gausman, RHP, Baltimore Orioles
• Carlos Martinez, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals
• Julio Teheran, RHP, Atlanta Braves
• Kyle Zimmer, RHP, Kansas City Royals

Tier 8

• Danny Hultzen, LHP, Seattle Mariners 
  
• Gregory Polanco, OF, Pittsburgh Pirates 
  
• Trevor Rosenthal, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals 
  
• Aaron Sanchez, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays
• Robert Stephenson, RHP, Cincinnati Reds

Tier 9

• Matt Barnes, RHP, Boston Red Sox
• Michael Wacha, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals 
  
• Kolten Wong, 2B, St. Louis Cardinals 
  

Tier 10

• Adam Eaton, OF, Arizona Diamondbacks
• Anthony Rendon, 2B, Washington Nationals
  
• Jorge Alfaro, C, Texas Rangers

The following are only players I saw in 2012.

Best Hitter: Taveras

Best Power, Raw: Sano

Best Power, In-Game: Adams

Best Fastball: Syndergaard/Bradley

Best Breaking Pitch: Archer

Best Changeup: Wacha

Best Command: Wacha

Best Defender, Catcher: Hedges

Best Defender, Infield: Lindor

Best Arm, Non-Pitcher: Hedges

Best Frame, Pitcher: Bradley

In MLB’s suit, they claim Biogenesis caused MLB to suffer damages, including “costs of investigation, loss of goodwill, loss of revenue and profits and injury to its reputation, image, strategic advantage and fan relationships.”  This, on the heels of The New Times telling MLB, when the league asked for the records of the investigation that outed Biogenesis and many players, “go fuck yourself.”

Were I an attorney for Biogenesis, I’d start by demonstrating how, during the quote-unquote “Steroid Era,” MLB enjoyed its largest growths in revenue since the NFL and NBA solidified their brands in the professional sports market. I’d demonstrate that MLB owners were able to fleece taxpayers for new-stadium money that lined their pockets, increasing their 30 individual brands and that of the whole league during the Steroid Era. I’d show how MLB teams, and the league as a whole, have enjoyed skyrocketing national and local television money during and since the Steroid Era. I’d ask for every MLB owner to divulge his/her/its financial reports, showing me their revenue, profits and franchise values starting in 1985 (Year 1 B.C. ((Before Canseco)) ) and running through the most recent season. I’d embarrass them, and they’d have asked for it with this suit.

MLB’s claim in the suit is that Biogenesis opened the league up to lost revenue stemming from suspensions of star players. Players MLB has not yet suspended, ironically, except a couple who were discovered to have used through MLB-administered testing, not The New Times. And it might be a little tricky to prove that the reigning champions in San Francisco lost any money due to Melky Cabrera being suspended, or that the reigning AL West champion Oakland Athletics lost any money when Bartolo Colon was sidelined due to suspension.

After asking all the above as a Biogenesis attorney, I’d ask MLB not-very-politely, “exactly how much money, and how much brand weakening, have clinics like ours earned you, and to whom do we send the invoice?”

The real case probably could come from the MLB Players Association, since their individual players, who help drive salaries up via enhanced performance and the subsequent contracts that performance garners, are the ones being outed and who are losing face.  I’m certain, though, that the MLBPA has no interest in such a lawsuit because it would serve nothing more than outing their own members. Which is exactly what I think MLB hopes to accomplish with this maneuver.

I don’t understand why people think his value will drop…His value only rises because there’s a greater need now. The demand for him is created by attrition when teams learn that their younger pitching can’t meet their need….The integrity of the game has been compromised. What baseball has done, it has created a dynamic where draft dollars are affecting the major leaguers. Teams are constructing clubs to be non-competitive, like Houston and Miami, so they can position themselves where they can get more draft dollars. Clubs are trying to finish last to create more draft dollars. And this dramatically affects the wild-card and major-league standings.

Hoo boy. Lohse’s value is on the rise per Boras. But MLB has compromised the integrity of the game because….teams perceive there to be no value in Kyle Lohse, relative to a draft pick. So, which? Lohse has value or Lohse’s value is depressed by a game that is rigged against his clients.

Re Miami and Houston, Boras is equating “not spending money on Kyle Lohse and other free agents” to “trying to finish last.” That’s a slippery slope. Houston is in a full-on rebuild mode. Every dollar spent on free agents this year would not get them an NL Central title. Houston would not be competitive even had they added Josh Hamilton, Michael Bourn and Zack Greinke (and made the smart move of avoiding Kyle Lohse at his price tag) this off-season. Houston wants to compete, and wants to compete ASAP, but they’re smart enough to know that Kyle Lohse isn’t pushing them over this year or next. Miami’s owner put the final nail in the coffin of  the Montreal Expos so he could buy the Marlins, and has used that franchise to line his pockets. He’s not trying to lose to save draft money, he’s cutting every salary dollar he can to keep on with Jeff Loria Business As Usual.

I wonder how Boras will present this to his clients who will enter the 2013 draft, the amateurs to whom he is an advisor. Do they not read comments like these, where Boras insists that MLB is robbing veterans to pay draft bonuses? Or is there an unspoken thing between Boras (and all agents) and his clients where it’s understood that Boras will say whatever he needs to for a given client at a given time, and all is forgiven and forgotten immediately?

The “integrity of the game” thing is just hot air. The integrity of the game is hurt by making the All-Star Game count toward home-field advantage in the World Series. The integrity of the game is hurt by ignoring steroids for 20 years, then, after an act of Congress and The New Times taking action by…suing a newspaper. The integrity of the game is hurt by capping international free agent and draft bonus spending so that the little window of hope small-market teams had to acquire high-upside talent via active professional scouting of the Dominican, Venezuela and elsewhere is wiped out. The integrity of the game is hurt when virtually every owner has fleeced local taxpayers for hundreds of millions to build new stadiums.

Kyle Lohse not being signed by now is, oddly in my view, integrity. It says teams won’t spend too much money on a pitcher who just came out of a 4 year/$41 million deal in which he was hurt for most of the first two years, made only 103 starts in those four years, and was really worth only about a third of his money. Lohse not being signed, after he turned down a $13.3 million one-year offer from St. Louis (more than he’s worth) to seek out more, tells me there’s some intelligence in MLB front offices regarding him, not that the game is rigged. If this were Greinke still sitting on the market, with teams not willing to punt a draft pick to get a guy who’s almost at ace level, we could talk about collusion and integrity and bad ownership. But Lohse isn’t Greinke, or 1986 Tim Raines. He’s a guy who probably won’t earn what he’s paid in the next few years, and is a player who should reduce his contract expectations.

Of course, Boras can’t say all that out loud. And what he’s absolutely not going to say out loud is: “I completely mis-read the market on my client, thought he was worth more than he is, and have not done as much as I can as his agent to ensure he gets the best deal the market will bear for him.” That would be Boras speaking the truth. All that shit about the integrity of the game is just posturing.

Side note. Boras had another client, Michael Bourn, on the market this off-season. Bourn, who is entering his age-30 season and over the last four years has produced fWARs of 4.9, 4.7, 4.1 and 6.4 signed February 11, 2013, with Cleveland, a textbook second-division club. This was over six weeks after B.J. Upton, who is entering his age-28 season, signed to take Bourn’s spot in Atlanta, after four years in which Upton produced 2.4, 4.1, 4.1, and 3.3 fWAR. Did Bourn, a far better player than Upton, get more years and/or more money than Upton? Nope. Upton signed a 5 year/$75.25 million deal, and Bourn got 4 years and $48 million. Bourn is the better player and got less years and over $27 million less in salary. Like Lohse, Boras didn’t get the most for him. And that has nothing to do with the game being rigged against free agents. Ask Atlanta, who gave up a pick to sign Upton. Or the Angels, who gave up multiple picks to sign Josh Hamilton and Greinke. Thing is, Kyle Lohse just isn’t in that company.