Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Down on the Farm: BA Giants Top 10 Prospects

Andy Baggerly finally got the chance to put his Giants top 10 prospects up on BA.com. I thought his list was surprisingly similar to mine:

1. Brandon Belt
2. Zack Wheeler
3. Gary Brown
4. Francisco Peguero
5. Ehire Adrianza
6. Brandon Crawford
7. Thomas Neal
8. Charlie Culberson
9. Eric Surkamp
10.Tommy Joseph.

Two names on his list not on mine: Surkamp and Joseph.

Two names on my list not on his: Chuckie Jones and Dan Runzler(BA changed their criteria for relief pitchers this year. Runzler would have qualified in previous years.).

I believe in Thomas Neal's bat and think his glove and arm are underrated. I have him at #3.

Brown and Peguero are back-to-back in both lists with Brown in front due to being more likely to be the CF.

Adrianza and Crawford are on both lists with Adrianza leading for similar reasons.

I haven't seen the Top 30, but from the chat, it sounds like a lot of the players are in similar positions in both lists.

Sounds like Surkamp is expected to be 100% by spring training which is great news. If he is truly fully healthy, he should be ranked higher than #39 on my list, although Baggs and the Giants organization seem higher on him than I am. Baggs did admit that Surkamp's ceiling is probably as a #4 starter.

4 comments:

  1. http://sanjose.giants.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110120&content_id=16471426&vkey=news_t476&fext=.jsp&sid=t476

    have you read this? I thought it would be something you would enjoy

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  2. Clint,

    Thank you. Great reads, both the one about the top 10 prospects and the Q/A with Brandon Belt. I really like Joe Rizo, the SJ Giants play-by-play guy. He really writes great articles for the website. I hope the Giants give him a chance to move up in the organization. He works really hard to be knowledgeable about all levels of the organization, seems to be enthusiastic about the players he covers and about communicating that to the fans.

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  3. Just a quick take on this top 10, to add some perspective...

    Belt - 5th Rounder
    Wheeler - 1st Rounder
    Brown - 1st Rounder
    Peguero - Latin FA
    Adrianza - Latin FA
    Crawford - 4th Rounder
    Neal - 36th Rounder (!!!)
    Culberson - 1st Rounder (sup)
    Surkamp - 6th Rounder
    Joseph - 2nd Rounder

    Half of the list were taken in the 5th round or later, with 2 FAs and a 36th rounder. That means we are either REAL shallow, or have done a pretty good job of finding those dandies in the garbage cans.

    We have 5 other 1st rounders in the system (Main, Noonan, Fairly, Williams and Gillaspie) that are not included in this list, so it isn't like we don't have these guys around who could "get it" all of the sudden and reach their once-potential.

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  4. Neal was a 36th rounder, but he was a draft-and-follow (which no longer exists) that received a $250K bonus, which is around 3rd-4th round money, I believe.

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